Reality check

Alison has an important post about the Conservative government's funding cut-offs to Status of Women groups.
The argument, apparently, is that women don't need these groups anymore:

At the time of the budget cuts, Gwen Landolt of REAL Women, the traditional-values group which has spent the last 25 years fighting against equal rights for women, explained that groups (like SWAG) are no longer needed because "women are equal now".

Hmmm -- so everything's peachy, eh?
Let's just check out this claim. And here are the facts, from the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women:

There are 2.8 million women in Canada living in poverty. That's one in five women. Fifty-six percent of the poor in Canada are women. ⁽¹⁾ . . . To be poor in Canada means to be surrounded by wealth but have no access to it. It means having to choose between paying your rent, bills, groceries, transportation, doing your laundry and buying necessary medical supplies. It means not having the money for many things other Canadians take for granted: visiting relatives, buying clothes to apply for jobs in, giving birthday or Christmas gifts to your kids. It means living in inadequate housing - often in disrepair and in overcrowded, high-crime neighbourhoods. It means that even five bucks is a big deal. It doesn't necessarily mean being on social assistance. The majority of the poor work for wages, either full- or part-time. ⁽²⁾. . .

And here's a "reality check" on Canadian women's equalityl:

* At every level of education, women in Canada earn less on average than men. For example, in 2003, women who are high school graduates earned 71.0 % of what male high school graduates earned for full-time, full-year work. Women with post-secondary degrees earned 68.9% of what their male counterparts did for full-time, full-year work. Postsecondary education does nothing at all to narrow the wage gap between women and men.
. . .
* In terms of the ratio of male to female earned income (the wage gap), Canada ranks 38th in the world. The following countries are among the many with less of a wage gap between women and men than Canada: Switzerland, Cambodia, Kenya, the Czech Republic and over 30 others.
* Canada ranks 25th in the world in terms of the representation of women in professional and technical occupations, after the United States, Barbados, Lithuania, Argentina and many other countries.
. . .
* Since the cutbacks of the 1990s, fewer women than men qualify for Employment Insurance (EI) regular benefits. . . . Women form the large majority of part-time workers in Canada, accounting for more than a quarter of the female paid labour force. Although they are forced to pay into EI, they find it difficult to qualify for EI maternity and parental leave, as well as sick and unemployment benefits. The majority of minimum wage workers in Canada are women. They find it hard to live on 55% of their salaries, which is what EI offers, when even their full salaries for a full year of work still places them below the Low-Income Cut-Offs (“poverty line”). They are also forced to pay into EI while not being able to afford to take much leave, thus subsidizing the leaves of better-off workers.
. . .
* Do women make “choices” to be economically disadvantaged, particularly by having children? If every woman decided not to have children, the human race would be wiped out in one generation. We need to recognize the value of women’s paid and unpaid work, as some other countries have done through concrete policy supports for women’s economic equality.
. . .
# It is no coincidence that the majority of social assistance recipients are women and children. In Canada half a million children with poor mothers are growing up on inadequate amounts of social assistance that do not cover basic needs. Canada has one of the highest rates of child poverty because we have less supports for women than many industrialized countries. The proportion of lone parent mothers living in poverty in Canada is a social policy choice, not an individual one.
. . .
# Child care is not a “hand out”. It is estimated that the mothers of young children contribute $53 billion of Canada’s GDP, representing 5% of the total GDP. That is taking into account the monetary value of their paid work, not the even greater value of their unpaid work as mothers of the next generation of Canadians.

For more, see the Women and The Economy website and links.

Great line of the day

TRex tells us that within a day after Bush and Congress shat on MoveOn, 12,000 supporters raised half a million dollars to run new ads.
As TRex describes it:

...every time the Bush administration demonizes an opponent, an angel gets its wings.

Dion unplugged

Well, well. Maybe the shock of losing Outremont has finally shaken Stephan Dion out of his ennui.
First he steps up and takes the blame

"...there is a perception of me that is not me, that has been a caricature developed by my opponents. … I need to tackle this problem. I have seen that on the ground in the by-elections – people are saying Mr. Dion, we don't know you, or Mr. Dion, we know who you are, and we don't like it – so I need to help my party in solving this problem and in showing to Quebeckers how much I am proud of what I am as a Quebec City kid.”

Then he goes on the offensive. Today he attacked Harper's foreign policy as mediocre, rigid, simplistic, amateurish and incompetent.
Then he got specific:

Dion accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of slavishly following the lead of U.S. President George Bush on foreign policy - abandoning the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases, ramping up defence spending, and ignoring human rights violations in the pursuit of terrorists.
"Mr. Harper has given Canada a foreign policy that draws its inspiration from the American right, a foreign policy that does little to advance Canadian interests," Dion told a foreign relations think-tank. . . .
He said the government has bungled the issue of Afghan detainees, proved incapable of administering Canadian aid in the country, and sent a series of confusing mixed signals on when the combat mission will end.
"It's always worrisome when a politician constantly flip-flops, but when people's lives are at stake, it's inexcusable," Dion said . . .
Dion chided Harper for refusing to intervene in the case of Omar Khadr. . .

Dion went on to outline what a Liberal government would do instead.
It is refreshing to see Dion speak in his own voice.

Swearing out ceremony

This story describes the bizarre case of a British music professor, Nalini Ghuman, who was suddenly and inexplicably barred from re-entering the United States for some reason the State Department refuses to explain. I think its safe to assume that, like with Mahar Arar, somebody made a mistake but will never admit it -- and Condi Rice has neither the ability nor the integrity to clean up an embarrassing bureaucratic mess.
But this line at the end of the story was what struck me:

The society has invited her to lecture at its conference in November, which, “in a fortunate circumstance,” Mr. Atkinson said, is to be held in Quebec . . . she can expect Canada to let her in.

Well, maybe -- unless we've created a Fortress North America Customs Union by then.

Dion loses, but Harper can't win either

This article about the Quebec byelections describes the Liberal campaign debacle:

Last night’s three byelections were the first that Dion had to face since he became Liberal leader last December and many — both inside the Liberal party and outside of it — saw the byelections as a test of his ability to bring the Liberals back to power and to deliver Quebec. In the end, not only did the party lose one of the few safe ridings it has left in Quebec, but it polled in the single digits in the two other . . .
Fueling the discontent even more was an article published over the weekend in which unnamed Liberal supporters of Dion and Michael Ignatieff traded barbs over whether the poor campaign was the result of incompetence, or of sabotage by Ignatieff supporters trying to undermine Dion’s leadership.

Well, if they are, it won't take much.
Because there's not much Dion leadership to undermine.
Dion's leadership so far has been nothing more than the Peter Principle in action -- first, he did a great job as Environment minister in convincing Canadians about the importance of taking global warming seriously, then he demonstrated great consensus-building skills in that UN environment conference in Montreal, then he ran a great leadership campaign... but it's been almost a year, and Dion just hasn't taken it to the next level.
He become the kind of politician who opens his mouth to change feet. When he says anything at all.
Several over at Liblogs are predicting the Liberals won't want a general election until 2009, because of these by-election results. But Harper will now be itching to go this fall, and so will the NDP -- if they can find or create a winning issue.
Luckily, Senate reform isn't it.
Senate reform would win top prize as the most boring topic in the history of the world, if anyone could stay awake long enough to write up the nomination.
But Harper's position on most issues is actually going to lose him votes -- when it comes to Afghanistan, climate change, customs union, softwood lumber, security partnership, etc., a majority of Canadians tend to support the "liberal" position, whether small-l or large-l.
This makes it all the more infuriating to see the Liberals being led so poorly right now. Because all we have to defend our progressive Canada from a majority government of Harper Conservatives are the Dion Liberals.
Jesus wept.

Great line of the day

The Bush administration has tried to inflate the magnitude of the Iraq War by comparing it to every major war ever fought by America. Now, its Korea's turn.
Matthew Yglesias explains succinctly what is wrong with this comparison:

...the difference between Iraq and South Korea isn't just that post-armistice our troops stopped taking casualties in Korea. The bigger difference is that a US military presence in Korea was part of a larger strategic doctrine -- defending the anti-Communist ROK government from the Communist government in Pyongyang as part of a larger strategy of containment -- that made sense. What we're doing in the Gulf right now is driven by confusion, hubris, and vainglory.

The more apt comparison, of course, was and still this one: that Iraq is Vietnam on speed.

Blue skies

I didn't believe it at first.
Could anyone think that the colour of blue paint chosen by a landscape painter a thousand years ago would be used by a so-called scientist today to deny the reality of global warming?
But there it is, via Chet, via Richard, we find the press release that argues today's global warming is just part of a 1500-year "natural cycle", see, because there are "thousands of museum paintings that portrayed sunnier skies during the [supposed] Medieval Warming" period.
Well, their skies were not only blue, but also full of astrological symbols and chariots, so I guess they had pollution of a kind too:



Chet notes that, when indoors, medieval people also apparently played chess sideways while surrounded by little musicians:


And I found that angels supplied medieval doctors with artificial legs for easy and bloodless surgical transplants:


Makes about as much sense as Medieval Warming...

$20

Here's a story about Canadian soldiers being court-martialed for drug trafficking.
The new defense lawyer for one of the soldiers wants a delay because he has to read the 900 pages of disclosure evidence which the investigation has produced.
Over a $20 bag of marijuana.

Betray-Us

Hollywood producer Jon Robin Baitz knows good theatre when he sees it. And he liked the General Betray-Us ad:

I rather liked the MoveOn ad from the Times. It was crass, but these are crass times. It was simplistic, but these are simplistic problems, basic ones -- after all -- the American people have been treated as foolish consumers of a product -- in this case a war -- by an administration that hovers in a bipolar helix between hapless fervor and rank cynicism. Depending on the day . . . I liked the ad because it was cheap and street, and true in spirit.

And contrary to all the hype, The Man Called Petraeus (in Digby's memorable phrase) has apparently been described by his own boss as "an ass-kissing little chickenshit". Ouch!
Apparently CENTCOM commander Admiral Fallon and General Petraeus hate each other's guts. This explains the bizarre story from last week about how the Pentagon had agreed to disagree on Iraq. And may also explain why Bush was so quick to announce he would bring 30,000 US troops home next summer (which means, in reality, that he is leaving 130,000 US troops in Iraq indefinitely) -- Bush didn't want to wait for Fallon's recommendation that three-quarters of the US troops leave Iraq by 2009.
Petraeus may find he has won the battle, but lost the war.

Same old same old

Well, what have we here?
The real Tories are breaking through -- the wheeler-dealer Tories, the play-fast-and-loose-with-the-public-purse Tories, the "rules are for sissies" Tories, the Tories that Canadians have loved to hate for the last 20 years:

. . . it appears the Tories transferred money in and out of local campaigns not just to generate federal refunds, but to hide national expenses that exceed the limit.

Quel suprise! And they were doing this while Harper was raking the Liberals over the coals for corruption.

Alex the parrot

Research parrot dies
In the grander scheme of things, this is, of course, completely unimportant news. But all the same, one could argue Alex contributed more to the world than, say, Paris Hilton ever did ...

Great image of the day

From Alison at Creekside, Humpty Harper defines "consensus"


Alison notes that the "consensus among Canadians" Harper promised before extending the Afghanistan mission has now become "50 per cent plus one" in a parliamentary vote.
And I note that my little prediction back in June is coming true:

MacKay . . . predicted [Canada's] involvement in the rebuilding and redevelopment of the war-torn country will continue for a "very long time."
"That's the exit strategy," MacKay said.
"When the Afghanistan government can take care of its own interests, then we can come home . . . ."

Another F.U., or maybe two

So here's today's headline: Top U.S. commander says 30,000 troops could leave Iraq by next summer.
Yeah . . .
But, darn it, they just won't know for sure until next March.
Which is, of course, AFTER all the Democratic primaries.
So none of the Very Serious Democratic presidential candidates will be allowed to criticize the war in the meantime, because that would Endanger The Troops and Jeopardize The Mission and Unnecessarily Lengthen The War. And that would all be the Dems' fault.
And then, gosh darn it, Bush would have to fight Congress tooth and nail to get Our Boys Marching Home just in time for the Republican Convention.
And Bush is also giving everyone a crystal rainbow pony castle set, too . . .



Gee, I think I'm getting a little cynical in my old age, eh?

The human face of data mining

The F.B.I. data mining revelations seem sort of technological and confusing until you see the human face of Mahar Arar.
It was this kind of "community of interest" thinking -- where guilt by association is assumed and supposedly proven by innocuous contact with someone else who is being watched for no good reason either -- that got Arar shipped off in the middle of the night to a Syrian prison for two years.

Rock 'n roll party

Here's the first of the "story series" songs (at least, these were the first I heard)

It's My Party


Followed by Now Its Judy's Turn To Cry


Then there was Edward Bear's Last Song plus Close Your Eyes, but darn it they're not available on YouTube.
But as a consolation prize, here's this classic:


And this version by Twisted Sister.