Pretty soon you're talking about real money!

A billion here, a billion there -- pretty soon you're talking about real money!*
The Defense Department ended up releasing the Afghanistan war costs today -- and golly gosh darn it, they just couldn't quite get those figures out before Question Period went on vacation, oh well, better luck next year.
But here's the question anyway --if the Afghanistan mission is really ending in 2011, as Harper quickly announced during last fall's election campaign, why are we going to be spending $150 million $943 million $1.47 BILLION in Afghanistan for 2010-11, and $178 million $779 million in 2011-12?
As Dave says, the new figures

shine a nasty bright light on something they really don't want you to know - same mission; different description.

Don't cry for me Argentina

And thus, "hiking the Appalachian Trail" joins "wide stance" in the new folklore of America.

Let him rot

The Canadian government wants Canadian courts to let Canadian citizen Omar Khadr rot in Guantanamo because it's not the job of the Canadian government to protect Canadian citizens:

Ms. Mueller said the Crown rejects the view that it is legally required to protect Canadians under the Charter of Rights when they face charges outside of the country.
“There is clearly no duty to protect citizens under international law,” Ms. Mueller told the court.

God keep our land glorious and free.

Iran

The War Nerd thinks the protests in Iran are going to fizzle -- the young people are sick of the regime but aren't strong enough to overthrow it. He makes this comparison:

magine Iranian Islamic tv covering, say, a classic culture-war US election like Nixon in 1972. You’d see Persians in expensive turbans blanket-covering every demonstration, every love-in (well, maybe not those so much), every draft-card burning…and then the US government announces that Nixon just stomped McGovern in the biggest landslide ever. Who’d believe it? That is, unless you knew that for every loud camera-hog hippie you saw on tv there were about a hundred fat nobodies wishing Kent State was a daily event.
Until those Ahmedinajad silent-majority hicks start tweeting, we’ll never have a clue what they think. And like Nixon’s people, or Forrest’s dragoons, they’re not really the Twitter type.

Great line of the day

On a radio program yesterday, a former Republican congressman was advising a 62 year old retail clerk with diabetes that her health insurance problems would be solved if she could go out and find herseif a job with a big employer. Oh, yeah, lots of big companies are hiring 62-year old clerks now.
And on Limbaugh's program today, Mark Steyn was apparently nattering on about whiney seniors who don't want to pay for their own prescription drugs.
So here's what Digby says about these two:

Conservative politicians and their wingnut welfare queens are just a bunch of heartless, rich jackasses, basically, always have been. But people are no longer quite so sanguine that they're going to get the chance to be rich, spoiled jackasses too so these lines don't read quite as hilarious or as "common sense" as they used to. A public servant telling some 62 year old retail clerk that she needs to stop bellyaching and find a job with a big employer so she can get health care is so "let them eat cake" that I can hardly believe he said it. And some overpaid creep calling senior citizens who are living on a thousand dollars a month "spoiled" is just asking for the guillotine, which in America is a metaphor for a tax rate of 90% on any fatuous wingnut gasbag who has the nerve to say something like this after what they've done to this country.

You know, what amazes me is this: the Republicans are searching high and low for an issue that will make them popular again with the American people. Its staring them in the face -- in the 2010 midterms, one party is going to be able to call themselves "the party that fixed American health care" and its not going to be the Republicans.

WATBs

The wingnuts will turn the world inside out just so they can keep on feeling sorry for themselves.
Case in point -- the Supreme Court dismissed a challenge to B.C.'s 'bubble zone' law yesterday, marking the end of an eleven-year legal battle to keep in place a law that let women enter abortion clinics without having to face down an anti-abortion picket line.
And in their story about the dismissal, the Western Standard wrote:

It continues to be difficult to be a pro-lifer in BC this week, thanks to Canada's Supreme Court . . .

-- because not being allowed to harass women somehow makes life more difficult for the harassers!

We've had it

Canadians have had it with the RCMP. We're fed up to the teeth with the lies and evasions and ducking and weaving and sense of entitlement.
The Star Phoenix Editorial says::

The lawyers for the four officers involved in the Tasering were quick to say their clients deny the claim in the e-mail, saying it damages the reputation of the officers.
These would be the same officers who laughably and unsuccessfully tried to get the B.C. Supreme Court to prevent Mr. Braidwood from issuing a finding of misconduct against them because they felt, as federal employees, they were beyond the reach of a provincial government to hold them accountable.
To drag Supt. Rideout, Chief Supt. Bent and his deputy McIntyre before the commission in September to explain the e-mail, and presumably the four officers again to contradict their boss's words, only adds to the circus this saga has become.
If only Canadians had an opportunity to drag the whole sorry lot of them before a tribunal to hold them accountable for the irreparable damage being caused to an iconic national institution.

Ian Mulgrew at the Vancouver Sun says:

If Roberts had cried over Dziekanski mother's pain, I would be moved -- but a veteran lawyer wet-eyed over another screw-up in this case? I think they were crocodile tears.
Commissioner William Elliott's carefully parsed press release was equally unbelievable: "This was simply an oversight. Unfortunately in an exercise of this magnitude, such an oversight can occur."Bollocks. No one but a moron overlooks the import of an e-mail like this.
The officers deny the explosive content is true and Roberts says Bent was wrong in what he said. But their protestations ring hollow after almost 18 months of bluster and denial. So does Elliott's threadbare these-things-happen excuse.
The situation is as bad as the most virulent critics of the Mounties feared. This is no longer about four officers who made mistakes in judgment: It's about an organization that thinks it is above the law.

Gary Mason at the Globe and Mail says:

Lawyers representing the four officers said Friday that Chief Supt. Bent got it wrong. The officers insist no such conversation occurred.
And we're supposed to believe them . . .
Supt. Rideout is also saying Chief Supt. Bent got it wrong.
And we're supposed to believe him. . . .
Chief Supt. Bent is now saying he doesn't remember the conversation with Supt. Rideout. I guess not. And I guess we're supposed to just accept that. Pretend it never happened. Something that Chief Supt. Bent made up, I guess. What a disgrace.. . .

And a commenter to the CBC story compares what the RCMP are experiencing now to what the Canadian military experienced during the Somalia inquiry:

I can only hope that Dziekanski represents the nadir of the fortunes of the RCMP. There seems to be little room to slide lower.

Anti-neocon is not anti-semitic

It is sad to see the Washington Post as neoconservative shills but that is what they have become. Glenn Greenwald writes about the Froomkin firing, the descent of the Post into political hackery, and the increasingly stupid tactic of trying to shut up neocon critics by flinging around the "anti-semitic" label:

Along those lines, Andrew Sullivan -- who has been criticizing neoconservative dogma and the Post's allegiance to it for the role it played in Froomkin's firing -- is predictably being smeared as an "anti-semite" by the usual manipulators of that term. Andrew rightly notes that "these vile smears are designed to police the discourse some more," but it's so striking how nobody cares anymore about these smears because they've been so overused and are so transparently dumb (Andrew himself dismisses them as "tedious," and that's all they are).
Everyone knows what neocons are. Everyone knows that "neocons" are not tantamount to "Jews." Most Jews reject neoconservative ideology. Some of the leading and most scathing critics of neoconservatism are Jews. Many leading neocons -- Dick Cheney -- are not Jewish. Depicting criticisms of "neocons" as "anti-Semitism" is every bit as manipulative as applying that term to those who criticize Israel. Neoconservatism is a radical, deceitful and destructive ideology and nobody is going to be deterred from aggressively pointing that out because Weekly Standard, National Review, Commentary and The Washington Post Editorial Page casually toss around the word "anti-Semite" in order to intimidate people out of that criticism. Those people and that tactic are far too discredited for that to work with anyone. It doesn't inspire fear -- only pity and contempt. That The Post is a leading house organ for neoconservative opinion is an important fact and screeching "anti-Semitism" at anyone who points it out will achieve nothing.

However, I think Greenwald has misinterpeted the basis of the "anti-Semitic" charge -- regardless of their personal religion, it is the core belief of neocons that Israel's continued existence can be ensured only by the belligerent warmongering and anti-Muslim bluster that typifies neoconservativism. Therefore, ipso facto, they believe that anyone who opposes this approach is endangering Israel.
Ridiculous. I certainly don't have a formula or answer or solution to the issues of the Middle East, but starting more wars over there cannot possibly be an improvement.

Saturday Morning Cartoon

Oh, Belvedere! Come heah, boy!

Justice part deux

Finally
You know, this whole thing makes me afraid to leave the country because I cannot trust my own government to help me come back. It's scary.
And maybe Jack Layton really said it best:

What the hell is wrong with these people, Mr. Speaker?

Justice with mercy

I am glad that Guy Lafleur is not going to jail.

Great line of the day

This is a line, not for just a day, but for the ages.
This was said by Japan's central bank and has been quoted solemnly on dozens of financial news sites without any sign that anyone thought it was a funny way to describe good news, or sorta good news, or not bad news really, or not as bad news as it could have been, or .... oh, whatever:

economic conditions, after deteriorating significantly, have begun to stop worsening.

Well, that's a relief isn't it?
(H/T to a commenter on Calculated Risk.)

A committee?

Was that the best you could do for unemployed Canadians, Iggy?
Call it a "blue ribbon panel" if you like, but its just a fucking committee.

Here's a suggestion

A Montreal woman has the same name and birthdate as a criminal and apparently its up to her, rather than to the Canadian government or the border guard agency, to do something about it:

Ménard says a police officer suggested she change her name to avoid future confusion.

So what would they think if she changed it to Josee Vermer?
Or how about Lisa Raitt?
Rona Ambrose?
Would anybody with those names be handcuffed at the border?

I love the internets

Yesterday was World Naked Bike Ride day