Some fun now

Alison informs us about Harper's Afghan panel. Oh, ain't we havin' some fun now.

Vast right-wing conspiracy

Democrats and whistleblowers and people who don't do what the Bush Administration wants seem to end up slimed or jobless or in jail.
Like Don Siegelman and Usman Ali and Rogelio Mejorada-Lopez and Joe Nacchio and Richard Clarke, Teresa Chambers, Richard Foster, David Lappa, David Lewis, Douglas Parker, and Eric Shinseki and the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed.
Rachel Maddow added more on Countdown yesterday:

“Twelve year old Graeme Frost, meet Cindy Sheehan, meet 9/11 widows, meet Staff Sgt. Brian McGough, meet Michael J. Fox, meet the kids who were targeted by Mark Foley, meet Jack Murtha. I mean, Graeme Frost as a twelve year old now joins an esteemed list of Americans who have been personally attacked, personally slimed, called liars and cowards and frauds, and threatened for daring to publicly espouse a view that the right disagrees with. I mean, just when you think you’ve found the person who they can’t possibly slime, I don’t know, say a twelve year old kid just out of a coma, turns out yeah, the bar does actually go that low, it’s just astonishing.”

The message is chillingly clear, isn't it -- go along to get along, because if you get out of line you'll be hammered.
Yes, Virginia, there IS a vast right-wing conspiracy.

You realize of course this means war

There always reaches a point in a Bugs Bunny cartoon when Bugs, the heretofore aggrieved innocent, decides he has had enough. That's when he declares -- to Daffy, or Yosemite, or the bull, or the gangsters, or the tenor -- "You realize of course, this means war!"
I think the blogosphere has finally reached that point with the wingnuts -- the Greame Frost attacks are the last straw.
I haven't seen such outraged commentary since Shiavio -- here and here and here and here.
Wolcott sums it up perfectly:

Rush Limbaugh and his fellow talk-radio troll dolls didn't "pervert" conservatism--he didn't lay siege to some maiden fair and debauch her virtue. Rush Limbaugh didn't inject an "ideology of hate" into conservatism, he extracted the contemptuous, divisive animosity inherent in the Gingrich doctrine and sugared it up with comedy and his own personal saga for popular consumption. He, like Clarence Thomas, was just what the Republican overseers ordered. Rush Limbaugh is modern mainstream conservatism in all its bullying bluster, hypocrisy, jolly ignorance (global warming etc), slavish submission to military, corporate, and executive power, and slimeballing of political opponents. To believe otherwise is like putting your faith in those few remaining Republican moderates who always manage not to come through in the clutch, who put up a brief show of conscience or faint dissent before the inevitable capitulation. It's a little late to suddenly look around and realize what sleazebags you've got on your team, especially since those sleazebags were there before you arrived. The only difference between Limbaugh and the orc pit of the right blogosphere is one of degree, or perhaps I should say radius.

Emphasis mine. And be sure to check his "radius" link -- yes, it DOES mean what you think it means.

The "Rodney Dangerfield" Strike

I support unions, because it benefits both the employer and the employee to bargain collectively.
But to continue to be effective, unions have to deserve respect -- particularly, for public sector unions, from the public. This 3-month Vancouver strike has now passed irrational and is moving toward ridiculous.
I have been involved in several strikes over the years, and even a two-week strike is tough. I can't imagine what it would be like to walk a picket line for 12 weeks, with no end in sight and facing mortgage payments and car loans and school fees.
Certainly union members have to support each other, but they also have to get some results from their union leadership. Reading the stories about the recent vote, I begin to wonder if these union leaders are going to break their own unions because of their intransigence.
Now the inside workers have voted to go back, but the leadership of the outside workers urged members to vote against a settlement for some piss-poor reasons:

For the 1,800 outside workers the sticking points were overtime, grievance language and the city's ability to contract out their work.
"It's not money," said Dave Van Dyke, a member of CUPE 1004's bargaining committee.
"It's about mostly language. A couple of non-monetary items. Something like overtime shift language."

Sounds pretty blase, doesn't he? Apparently the workers have construction industry jobs now anyway, so they're not suffering:

Many outside employees feel little pressure to accept the Foley package because they have found employment in the construction industry

And they apparently don't care whether the people of Vancouver can use their parks or playgrounds, or get their streets cleaned. And they don't care that some of the inside workers will be kept off the job because of picketing at common job sites. The attitude seems to be, I've got mine, Jack, so screw you!
In a fever of solidarity, the library workers also voted to stay out -- but the library staff are the group of civic workers that could find themselves out in the cold for a long, long time. I worry that this could be one of those strikes where, sometime next spring, somebody says "Oh, are the library workers STILL out? I'd forgotten."
Basically, and with apologies to the librarians I know, libraries fall into the category of 'nice-to-have', not 'need-to-have' -- once the building permits are being issued again and the garbage is being picked up, the strike will be just a bad memory for most of the people in Vancouver even if the library workers are still picketing.
And maybe this strike won't even be remembered much. Vancouver Sun columnist Miro Cernetig sums up the attitude:

This civic strike has hardly proven the urban disaster that many anticipated. In fact, it has made a lot of people start to wonder about just what they are paying for in that ever-rising tax bill that arrives every spring from city hall . . . Yes, there have been inconveniences this summer. You can't check out a book from the library. You've got to learn a few new urban survival techniques to keep your backyard from stinking up . . . The flow of permits from city hall is at a crawl. . . . But the take home message so far from this summer's strike is that Vancouverites have proven surprisingly adept at making do with less city government. We haven't, despite the warnings, reached some tipping point that will shut the city down.

An ineffective strike ultimately results in making public sector unions weaker -- they don't get no respect.

& Ceiling Cat sayz, i can has light? & light wuz.

Check out the Lolcat Bible translation project

Not quite ready for prime time

Once again, Conservative cabinet ministers demonstrate why Harper doesn't want them to open their mouths.
Canadian Cynic flags Peter MacKay accusing Denis Coderre of "a dangerous and elaborate stunt" for traveling to Afghanistan, exactly one day before Maxime Bernier and Bev Oda arrived there.
And Alison flags two of the dumbest remarks ever made by Canadian politicians -- Bernier's JFK hommage, and Oda's "little cakes" giveaway.

Great line of the day

Hunter talking about how unpopular Giuliani will be as the Republican candidate:

. . . who wouldn't like a guy who traipses around the country wearing 9/11 like a superhero's cape -- like a toddler tying a towel around his neck and pretending to be Superman? It may be terrible for the country, but the comic possibilities are endless. You put him and Clinton as the nominees, and red state voting booths will look like the sand wastes of Dune.

Emphasis mine.

Great post of the day

From Dave at Galloping Beaver -- You'd think Iran would at least send Bush a "Thank You" card. Read the whole thing, but here's a taste:

By ignoring the histories of the peoples of the Middle-East, by failing to acknowledge the political depth of those countries and by disparaging populations which they have not studied, the current American political leadership (and its advisory bodies) have overlooked centuries of astute political acumen, adept military strategy, well-educated populations and a long record of out-thinking and out-maneuvering an opponent.
. . . Bush has allowed this semi-educated crowd to lead him into a corner surrounded by paint that will never dry.

Whew!

Another Thanksgiving dinner for seven successfully completed!
And a great time was had by all.

Great post of the day

From Balloon Juice, on what is wrong with the Republican party:

... A bunch of bedwetting, loudmouth, corrupt, hypocritical, and incompetent boobs with a mean streak a mile long and no sense of fair play or proportion.
Seriously- what does the current Republican party stand for? Permanent war, fear, the nanny state, big spending, torture, execution on demand, complete paranoia regarding the media, control over your body, denial of evolution and outright rejection of science, AND ZOMG THEY ARE GONNA MAKE US WEAR BURKHAS, all the while demanding that in order to be a good American I have to spend most of every damned day condemning half my fellow Americans as terrorist appeasers.
And that isn’t even getting into the COMPLETE and TOTAL corruption of our political processes at every level. The shit is really going to hit the fan after we vote these jackasses out of power in 2008.
Screw them. I got out. They can have their party. I will vote for Democrats and little L libertarians and isolationists until the crazy people aren’t running the GOP. The threat of higher taxes in the short term isn’t enough to keep me from voting out crazy people and voting for sane people with whom I merely disagree regarding policy. Hillarycare doesn’t scare me as much as Frank Gaffney having a line to the person with the nuclear football or Dobson and company crafting domestic policy.
That is why the Republican party is in shambles. The majority of us have decided that the movers and shakers in the GOP and the blogospheric right are certified lunatics who, in a decent and sane society, we would have in controlled environments in rocking chairs under shade trees for most of the day, wheeled in at night for tapioca pudding and some karaoke.

Super Tuber

Senator Larry "Wide-Stance" Craig's special recipe. (via)
You can't make this stuff up...

He's baaaak!

Look who's getting lots of publicity lately -- a prize from the Fraser Institute for NAFTA, plus he just published a catty memoir.
But I wonder why he thinks that Canadians, or even Harper's Conservatives, want him to be visible in politics again? We had enough trouble getting rid of him 14 years ago.
Personally, I never had that big a problem with Mulroney, but the rest of the country hated him so much that he singlehandedly destroyed the Progressive Conservatives as a legitimate political party in Canada -- they never recovered from 1993.
But he's still entertaining, isn't he -- let's not forget this:

One out of three kittens vote for Harper

Poor Harper -- it must be driving him to drink.
He makes nice with the press, he plays to his base with a drug "crack-down" while also burnishing his national security cred, he even has photos of homeless kittens on his website...and he STILL can't get support from more than one out of three Canadians:

Despite a hellish month, a new poll suggests the federal Liberals remain in a statistical dead heat with the Conservatives in public support nationally and are actually leading in most provinces.
Although they've been bombarded with negative news coverage, suffered disastrous byelection results and are feuding publicly, they're only two percentage points behind the Tories nationally.
The Conservatives' 33-31 per cent lead in the latest Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey falls within the margin of error, while the NDP is at 16 per cent and the Green party is at 10.
The Liberals actually lead the Tories in the three largest provinces, throughout Atlantic Canada, and among women and younger voters.

Imagine what could happen if Dion actually started to run the Liberal Party!
Anyway, getting back to Harper, I can't believe he has really changed any spots. He just cannot stop wagging his finger at us about saying the course in Afghanistan, playing the humanitarian card this time:

"We took that responsibility as a country and I think we should see that responsibility through to the best of our ability," he said . . . the mission is a moral responsibility to not only the families of the 71 Canadians who've lost their lives in the conflict, but to the people of Kandahar and NATO allies.

Once again, the argument seems to be, basically, nothing more than the We're Here song (sung to the tune of Old Lang Syne)-- "We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here..."

"People's lives have been brutally affected"

Well, I don't know the facts of the case.
But I think the defendants' lawyers should just shut up for a while about how awful the legal case has been for their clients.
It will take some time before we will feel sympathetic toward the people who supervised the blood transfusion service that gave Canadians AIDS and hepatitis.
The defendants, however much they have suffered, are at least all still alive.

I know you are but what am I

Just guess who said this with a straight face:

. . . reports about very innocent people being thrown into detention, where they could be held for years without any representation or charges, is distressing . . .

Gee, I think the hundreds still in Guantanamo just might agree, don't ya think? (via Digby)