Did they bang the drum slowly?

I was looking on YouTube to post a reading of In Flanders Fields when I found this song and it expressed better my feelings about war generally -- though it relates particularly World War One: Green Fields of France.

First, learn to say you're sorry

So now Air Canada thinks that smiling at customers will help:

"it's up to each and every one of us to work together to be sure that we're also out in front in the soft attributes such as a ready smile, eagerness to help customers and simply perform jobs well."

Well, yes, that would be nice.
But first, Air Canada has to learn how to apologize to its customers.
Look, its like this. In Canada, things will always go wrong for Air Canada travelers at our airports. An international company like Air Canada is affected whenever American airports screw up, and this is going to happen regularly. Also, we're heading into storm season, when airports in Eastern Canada regularly have to close due to winter weather. Also, Toronto-Pearson is an airport which is so big it is beyond a human scale, yet this is a central airport for Air Canada's operations. Finally, Air Canada seems to have a "just in time" business model where there is no capacity for back up planes or crews or gate staff. The result? Small problems will inevitably become big problems. Flights will leave without the customers who paid to get on them. Or the customers will be there but the flights won't be. Or the customers and the flights will connect but the luggage will go astray.
So, Air Canada, you're going to have to spend a portion of each work week, if not each day, apologizing to people.
Please, learn how to do this right -- I don't want abject misery ("Oh, forgive us!"), nor to I want any non-apology apologies ("I'm sorry if you're upset") or the insult apology ("I'm sorry but would you want to fly in a plane that might crash?").
Rather, I want just a simple, sincere "I'm sorry this happened. Here's what we are going to do about it..."

Next year country

Bryan Schlosser's photo of Ken Miller leaving the field

Ghandi-style

Over at the Sideshow, commenter QrazyQat suggests that progressives use Ghandi tactics to pressure the Obama administration:

I want to suggest that we keep in mind the Ghandi method for getting results from our new administration and Congress.
In a nutshell: You ask for everything you want and use, if necessary, some action (like finger wagging, or marching, or whatever) to get them to acknowledge your demands; when they offer a smaller concession (as they always do, because they don't want to do it all) you congratulate them for acceding to you and call off the action.
Then you repeat it.
They get used to giving in, and eventually they just give in every time, until finally they've given in so much they're up to what you asked for the first time out.
It's like working the refs, Ghandi-style.
This is not to be confused with the Buffy/Ghandi style which you use for wingnut politicians:
BUFFY: Hey, Ken, wanna see my impression of Gandhi?
(crushes his skull with a club)
LILY: Gandhi?
BUFFY: Well, you know, if he was really pissed off.

Lipstick on a pitbull

So maybe the Liberals have succeeded, at least for now, in forcing the Tory pitbulls to grin and bear it.
I admit I haven't really been following much about Canadian politics just lately, but I noticed that the tone of this story two days ago was much different than this story today. And what came in between was this story yesterday.
Steve at Far and Wide explains what's going on:

Setting the tone, letting the government know that the Liberals will not roll over, they are prepared to vote against legislation which comes without compromise or consultation, nothing will be jammed down our throats, is really what caused the Conservatives to sing a different tune. How else to reconcile Harper's mouthpiece threatening a mere three days ago, only to now hear Harper "isn't eager" for confrontation? The only thing that's happened in the intermediary, a largely defiant and united Liberal caucus sending a clear signal that this parliament it's a different animal.

I have an idea

Maybe people would buy more cars if they cut their prices.

Two little boys

Photos from a Manassas, Virginia rally:

A loneliness about him

I think Lance Mannion's article is probably quite perceptive because he brings his knowledge of performance and drama to this analysis:

What some have called his cool, others have called reserve, and others have resented as aloofness, appears to me to be a deliberate, disciplined, stepping back. He's watching himself with a deeply critical and skeptical eye, ready to come down hard on the first sign of an emotion or egoistic urge getting out of hand . .
Good performers---and a politician on the stump is a performer---are often their own toughest audience, particularly the ones who aren't naturals. Some performers are able to watch themselves with a sense of humor, others with an ironical detachment. Obama seems to be watching himself with an open grade book in his hand.
And there's a loneliness about him. . .
with Barack Obama we have a President-elect who is a reluctant public figure. He strikes me as a brilliant, active, but scholarly man, introspective, even introverted, who's been granted gifts for public speaking, moral persuasion, and leadership that he is temperamentally not inclined to enjoy . . . I think Obama became a politician because he felt it was his responsibility, not because he thought it would be fun.

And he goes one to discuss why Joe Biden, who does think politics are fun, is Obama's perfect vice-president:

Biden's the guy you can see reminding an annoyed and exasperated President Obama to smile and nod while listening to a blowhard and a boob waste his time by smiling and nodding himself. Biden's the sort you can see walking you to the door after you've just been dressed down and having you convinced by the time he's helped you on with your coat that you've been given a medal and a two-week vacation . . .
Biden, I think, is the perfect complement to a basically shy and skeptical man interested more in policy than in other politicians, drawn more to individuals than to crowds, more at home in private than at ease in public.

I think this may be why it took Hillary supporters a little while to warm up to Obama, because he didn't have that spontaneous, warm, gregarious manner.
But once you get past that difference, then his commitment to leadership and his simple basic decency simply shines.

Sarah who?

Cariboo Barbie has no future in the Republican party because she would not follow instructions.
And that is an unforgivable sin for a Republican.
So we will wave buh-bye as she disappears back into the Alaskan wilderness...

Amazing story

From Tiny Revolution, by Jonathan Schwarz:

It's September 12, 2001. You're sitting in front of a TV, watching footage of the World Trade Center collapse over and over and over again.
All of a sudden, someone from seven years in the future walks out of a tiny temporal vortex, and tells you: George W. Bush is going to fuck this up so badly that in 2008, the United States of America will likely elect as president a black man whose middle name is Hussein and whose father was Muslim. Oh, and he also admits he's used cocaine.
I think it would have been easier to convince me of the reality of time travel. 'No, no, I believe you really are from the future. But the other stuff, that's CRAZY.'

Celebrations

Celebrating the Obama win around the world:

Japan:



Obama Girls, a hula dance group formed in honor of Obama's Hawaiian heritage, perform hula to celebrate Barack Obama's victory in the U.S. presidential election in Obama, Japan.

India:

ndian Siddi Tribals eat sweets as they gather in Ahmedabad in celebration of Barack Obama's election victory.


A sand sculpture congratulating US president-elect Barack Obama by Indian sand artist Sudarsan Patnaik

England:

Guy Fawkes celebrations featuring effigy of Obama.



Kenya:


Paris:


Holland:


Indonesia:

Students at Obama's old school.

Australia:


Israel:

Great line of the day

From a comment on Daily Kos about traveling:

We won't have to pretend to be Canadian anymore.

Free at last, free at last

Thank god almighty the United States is free at last.



I'm listening to MSNBC go into lyrical poems of praise for Obama -- "one person who did this, who found a voice and inspired us, this one guy figured out the potential of the word hope and put it before us."

No on Proposition Hate

I was surprised to see that a few people from California have visited this blog -- so this one is for you.
Please, Californians, vote No on Proposition 8.
It is a simple matter of human rights.
The Mormon Church has given $20 million to the campaign to make gay marriage unconstitutional in California -- as Jon Stewart pointed out, this is the church that founded Utah because they were being discriminated against by other religions.
Here is the latest commercial which shows what is at stake:

Great line of the day

Over at Far and Wide, a comment from deBeauxOs defines what the Liberals should be looking for in terms of "electability":

Oh good grief. Just pick someone who appears remotely shag-able.
Of course that just eliminated the usual suspects.