Just two more sleeps

I still get excited about Christmas.
Welcome Christmas while we stand heart to heart and hand to hand. Christmas Day is in our grasp as long as we have hands to clasp.



For my readers -- who have become my friends -- I hope your Christmas is merry and bright.

Festivus

From Seinfeld:



Enjoy!

Al Gore

So I see Time magazine wimped out.
Quite obviously, the person of the year for 2007 was Al Gore.
Has any other person in history won an Oscar and a Nobel Prize and organized a world-wide rock concert, all in the same year? Has anyone else ever galvanized the world into action the way Al Gore has done? Bono writes:

He has an almost embarrassing faith in the power of facts to persuade both believer and skeptic. His enduring and overarching trait is, as it turns out, the pursuit of truth ... scientific truth, spiritual truth. That — and grace. Right now, he is an America the world needs to meet.

But I guess Time just couldn't do that to the Republicans and the oil companies and the car manufacturers who buy ads. They all would have been simply furious.
Not to mention how embarrassing it is for Americans every time they realize they could have had Al Gore as president and instead they got Mr. 24 Per Cent.
And how embarrassing for the media, who covered the 2000 election as though it didn't matter who won -- tell that now to the 3,000 people who died on Sept. 11, 2001 because the Bush administration couldn't be bothered to take terrorism seriously, or to the half million people who have died since in Bush's wars.
But picking Al Gore would have brought all this into the discussion and so, in the cowardly tradition of today's American media, Time picked Vladimir Putin instead.
Wimps!

Shopping

One of the things I love about shopping for Christmas gifts is that I see things I would never have stumbled over otherwise.
Like this great mug I saw today. It said "I want to be just like you....only thinner and more successful".
Now, I can't think of anyone I could actually give this too -- most of the people I know already are thinner than me, and more successful too -- but I thought it was funny, all the same.

Only in Saskatchewan

Only in Saskatchewan would the words "Hey, the weather forecast on Thursay is for minus seven" be followed by "Won't that be nice?"

Great line of the day

Digby describes the increasing religiosity of the American presidential campaign and observes:

...I don't think it's too much to ask that if these candidates are all going to run as the second coming that they be able to heal the sick with a universal health care plan...

But that would cost money!

Mecca becomes the shining city on the hill?

One of the tragedies of George Bush's America is that, for much of the world, America is no longer the shining city on the hill. Along with increasing hostility toward America comes increasing skepticism that democracy is the alternative to dictatorship. Onlookers around the world could well come to believe that "democracy" is just a tricky way of stealing people's oil and then killing them -- after all, America brought "democracy" to Iraq and more than half a million Iraqis died.
But people living under a dictator's heel must have hope. And if American democracy now appears hostile and fake, then they will look elsewhere -- perhaps toward an ideology like Islamic fundamentalism.
Meteor Blades writes a very interesting piece about Libya and Muammar Gaddafi in which he notes a significant trend within the underground opposition to Gaddafi's dictatorship:

There is a growing religiosity . . . Women who had begun in the 1980s to give up the head coverings decreed by Libyan tradition now wear hijab everywhere, even on the university campus. And jimar, the veil, which was never a part of Libyan dress, is becoming ever more common. Women meet in homes to study the Koran, and the opposition is said to be more Islamist in its focus than in the past. For many, this move toward fundamentalism reflects similar moves in other dictatorships, a kind of under-the-surface opposition to the regime with dangerous potentialities.
Musa Kusa [Libyian foreign intelligence chief] once boasted that he knew every man with a beard in Libya, hinting that he knew whom to arrest if any opposition to the regime appeared. No more. Beards, a symbol of quiet resistance, can be seen everywhere.

And a merry xmas was had by all

Now here's a family who will have a really great Christmas this year, I'm sure -- particularly when their son tells his mean, judgmental, egotistical father where to stuff his $9,000 and moves in with his "delinquent" friends.

Telling Canada where to go

Harry Hutton and his commenters are shocked! SHOCKED! at how mean Canada is being toward poor persecuted Mark Steyn.

What did I miss?

Turned into the week from hell at work -- sorry for the lack of posts.
One of these days, I'm going to retire and then western civilization will crumble, I'm sure.
So what could I have blogged about this week but didn't?
Well, of course, Teh Mulroney -- his fabled Irish charm is just so last century now, isn't it? Of course, money laundering and bribery and income tax evasion aren't particularly attractive traits.
Then there is the Great Isotope Shortage -- its interesing, isn't it, that the so-called Liberal hack is still employed while the actual Conservative hack is gone already.
And more election horserace coverage from the United States -- all this inside baseball stuff about their primaries is endlessly fascinating to Americans and just endless to the rest of us.
And speaking of baseball, the Mitchell report strikes me as just a little overblown -- and I get the impression that many sportswriters, who know BS when they hear it, are angry that the testimony of a batboy would be treated like gospel. Just goes to show that there are Curveball-types everywhere.

Leadership?

After ducking and bobbing and weaving and kowtowing to George Bush and trying to sabotage the whole conference, Canada grudgingly accepts Bali deal. Then our very own Fearless Freep, John Baird, demonstrated a firm grasp of up-is-downism when he said:

“There is a certain price of leadership, and I don't apologize for that.”

I guess the kind of leadership he is talking about is the lead-from-behind kind.

Cranky

I try to avoid being a cranky old fart who goes around muttering about the good old days, but does everyone else hate Firedoglake's new format as much as I do?
The main page is chock-full of blue "read more" boxes and half the time I can hardly find the bylines of the authors I like and the beautiful photos that used to appear on the main page and draw you into the articles have mostly disappeared and please, please save me from any more website "communities" that I have to "join" and...
Oh, time for a coffee, I guess ...

Shop 'til you drop

Whew! Its not easy, singlehandedly keeping the Canadian economy going. But I keep trying...
Time to relax with three of my favorite Christmas videos -- enjoy!
First, the funniest version of We Three Kings ever done:


Next, the bells do Carol of the Bells


Finally, the oddest couple who ever sang together, from the oddest Christmas Special ever made:

Great line of the day

Digby on presidential candidate "character" issues -- first, she recalls Bush saying the CIA shouldn't give an accused terrorist any pain medication for a broken leg, then she continues:

...there is ample evidence that the Republican candidates for president this time, in different ways, have all shown a similar penchant for a nasty, simple-minded meanness or outright sadism. But the press is ignoring that once again in favor of predigested GOP spin which explores in detail such character revelations as Clinton's "brittleness" and Obama's "aloofness" and Edwards' "inauthenticity." Never mind the people who say they want to start deporting massive numbers of people because they are all diseased criminals or those who want to "double Gitmo." As far as the press is concerned, their biggest problem is figuring out which ones are the most Christian.

Emphasis mine.

The operative word is "control"

Chet at Vanity Press highlights this story about a deaf man who was tased by police because he couldn't hear their commands.
I noted one aspect of this story that I thought very significant -- the police explained their taser use by saying "The first few minutes getting control of the scene are very, very important."
And that's the key word - " control".
If you look at the recent stories about use and abuse of Tasers, it seems to me that they are not being used anymore just for safety or protection, or to deal with hysterical psychotics, or because police felt endangered. Nope, now they're just being used to control a scene -- the doctrine seems to be, if someone doesn't respond immediately to being yelled at, then tase 'em! That'll teach 'em!