Good riddance

Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of Hell.

Thus begins Joseph Galloway's obituary for Robert McNamara, coward.
I will never forget how angry I was to find out a few years ago that McNamara had turned against Vietnam in 1967 but hadn't had the courage to speak out then, when it would have made such a great difference and possibly saved tens of thousands of Americans and Vietnamese.

She's no Oprah

Josh Marshall writes about Palin's not-yet resignation:

. . . given the thundering derision that has greeted her decision and exposure as a quitter of gargantuan proportions, is it possible she'll reconsider? After all, if she's resigning, why doesn't she just resign? Why wait until the end of July?
Again, I don't think it's likely. And I can't fathom a scenario in which it was planned all along. But remember we're dealing with a deeply erratic and probably mentally unstable person who does lots of completely whacked things at the drop of a hat.

Yes, this scenario had occurred to me as well -- and I think it is actually quite likely that she will change her mind again, particularly if the job opportunities down south aren't materializing.
Basically, she is a popular "public figure" but as an employee, she would be a train wreck -- her only real career opportunity now is some sort of media gig, but she doesn't have the management skills to run her own TV show or the maturity to listen to somebody else's direction.

Pay2Play

Miss Manners could have told her -- you don't charge admission to your own party, you just don't!
It's become known as the Pay2Play scandal, that plan by the Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth to charge admission to a series of dinners in her home so that lobbyists could snuggle up to politicians and journalists.
Weymouth has now sort-of apologized, though her true regret seems to be only that she was just terribly, terribly misunderstood.
Reminds me of that joke "We've already established what you are, we're just haggling about the price."
I know nothing about Weymouth except what I have read in the last few days, but I suspect Weymouth wanted to be as influential in Washington as Katherine Graham was, without spending 30 years to do it. So she came up with the idea of hosting these parties as her quick way to become Washington's queen. It might have worked, too, if she hadn't also been trying to make money off them -- it wasn't only her own staff she was selling access too, but also all those supposedly influential politicians and Obama staffers who were going to be the Fearless Freep act that those lobbyists were paying to see.
I don't think the Washington Villagers will forgive this tackiness, and nobody will be coming over to the Weymouth house for dinner any time soon.

Sunday morning cartoon

So I missed Saturday, so sue me.
But really, sorry about that. Here's two for one:
Saskboy points to this great site of the 25 greatest Calvin and Hobbes cartoons ever.

And, in honour of my summer holidays starting and a bunch of projects I want to get done:

This just in

Proof positive that Rush Limbaugh IS a big fat idiot!

Redneck hicks

Thumbs up to a move by the provincial government to seek advice on the issue of same-sex weddings and civil marriage commissioners.

Would the writer of this Rawlco Radio news story be so pleased if the province was intending to let marriage commissioners use religious grounds to refuse to perform marriages for Aboriginal people? Or Jews? Or Catholics? Or Ukrainians?
The message from our provincial government to those marriage commissioners who don't want to perform gay weddings should be this: that any Saskatchewan marriage commissioner who doesn't want to officiate at some marriages has the right to do so -- just resign as a marriage commissioner.
But Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party government wants to maintain Saskatchewan's international reputation as a bunch of redneck hicks. They think its OK to send a message to gay people that the government of Saskatchewan regards them as second class citizens.
Come to think of it, that means they ARE a bunch of redneck hicks, aren't they?

Revenge of the activists

So this is why Palin resigned?

Asked why Palin was stepping down as opposed to finishing her term (which ends in 2010), the [head of the Republican Governor's Association] cited pesky bloggers and activists as the reason.

Sure, we called her Bible Spice and Cariboo Barbie, but ... wow, just wow -- I just didn't realize us bloggers were so influential!
Not to mention all those activists that the Republicans laughed at during the presidential campaign as such wimps. Who's laughing now?
And apparently Palin still thinks she could be president, when she runs away from a few bloggers?
Actually, of course, this whole story stinks like a three-day-old Alaskan King Crab. Stay tuned.

What a great photo

From the Ottawa Citizen


Canada Day fireworks above Parliament Hill. Photo by Mike Carroccetto, The Ottawa Citizen

Great line of the day

From DougJ at Balloon Juice:

I can’t help but be struck by the contrast between the outpouring of sympathy for people who put money in an investment scheme they didn’t understand and the outpouring of contempt for people who took out loans they didn’t understand. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that Madoff’s victims are wealthy and white, while subprime loanees are (inaccurately) seen as mostly poor and black.

Bring back 9-11!

Were there any Londoners who missed the Blitz after World War II? Any Russians who pined for another Stalingrad? How about Cambodians reminiscing about the good old days of the Killing Fields?
Yet there are wingnuts in the United States who want thousands of innocent Americans to die in another 9-11 attack, just so they can feel like warriors again.
Following is the most bizarre exchange I think I have ever read:

Michael Scheuer: The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.
Glen Beck: Which is why, I was thinking this weekend, if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.

Fiendishly clever, these terrorists -- they drive Glen Beck and his ilk around the bend by NOT ATTACKING!
Keep up the good work.

Canada is worth it

So I was thinking just yesterday how glad I was that we weren't going to be insulting our fellow Canadians by reenacting the Battle of the Plains of Abraham this summer.
Then today along comes this story whining about how Quebec City is losing tourist money this summer because a town in New York State is reenacting some other battle at Fort Niagara.

A New York town should be the big tourism winner after the National Battlefields Commission's decision to cancel plans to re-enact the Battle of the Plains of Abraham this summer. . . .
More than 2,500 people will take part in the depiction of the Siege of Fort Niagara, where French defenders of the garrison at the mouth of the Niagara River surrendered to the British on July 25, 1759.
Youngstown is across the river from Niagara-On-the-Lake, Ont.
Horst Dressler, president of the Quebec Historical Corps, says history buffs have thrown their support behind the Fort Niagara re-enactment.

But then we find out that this reenactment isn't exactly ground-breaking, in fact they do it every year:

Eric Bloomquist, programs manager at Fort Niagara, says the re-enactment typically draws about 10,000 visitors every year, but he expects upward of 15,000 this year.

Meh! Its a small price to pay for Canadian unity, I think.

Comedy Network is Teh Suck

Isn't it annoying that every time a Canadian wants to watch a Daily Show clip embeded in a news story we're get told disdainfully that Big Brother doesn't allow it.
Instead, we are supposed to find the link to the Comedy Network and then we have to find the link to the Daily Show and then we have to search through all of the clips to find the one we were interested in.
If we can even remember by then what it was...

Great line of the day

One of the best things about the internet is being able to find great writing whenever I want to. I searched for writing about Canada Day and found Peter T. Smith in the Fredericton Telegraph-Journal about Canada Day and being Canadian:

I think our sense of being Canadian comes as much from a shared set of values as it does from contact with our cultural institutions. I think we're also in the process of developing a new incarnation of our national myth.
John Ralston Saul made a compelling argument late last year in A Fair Country that we're not English or French or modeled on any European tradition at all, but rather we're essentially an aboriginal culture. Aboriginal culture, Saul contends, is marked by peaceful but unresolved tensions between groups and an ever-expanding circle than embraces everyone. 'We are a Metis civilization,' he asserts, because that was what we were for most of our history, before we embarked on a century and a half of constitutional debates and trying to settle issues that should remain dynamic.

Conspiracy theory

So the Minnesota Supreme Court has now managed to delay the Al Franken Senate seat decision until the very end of June.
And now the US Supreme Court is on vacation until September.
So if the Minnesota Supreme Court rules that Franken was elected, and if Minnesota Governor Pawlenty signs the certificate of election, and if Norm Coleman then appeals to the SCOTUS ...
well, well -- apparently the summer Justice on duty could issue a stay to prevent Al Franken from being sworn in. So Al Franken would remain in limbo for the rest of the summer and into the fall.
And apparently the summer Justice on duty is Samuel Alito.
Oh, I'm sure its just another crazy conspiracy theory....

Cheering

Finally Iraq is cheering the American military.