Being a parent

Jim Griffieon writes about being a parent in a post titled Gratitude. It starts

Several friends and acquaintances have recently announced their first pregnancies, and I find myself offering the usual pithy niceties and dull truisms, an aloof veteran patting the backs of the new recruits just before they hoist themselves over the top into the maelstrom of shrapnel and armament. Welcome to the trenches. I hope you don't mind the smell of human excrement.
But there's more to it than just that....

Thanks to Nancy Nall for linking to this piece.

Broken record

Shorter Peter MacKay:

You've obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a shit.

Actually, I don't know why we would be the least bit surprised that our Conservative government didn't care about what was being done to Afghan prisoners -- they don't think it's their job to help Canadians who get into trouble abroad either.

Disconnect

Dawg finds the smoking gun -- the Corrections Canada official who testified today that she saw no signs of torture when she was in Afghanistan is the same person who complained three years ago about needing new boots because she was walking through too much blood and shit in the Afghanistan jail cells.
So was she lying then? Or now?

Next year country

Damn.
Good on ya, guys. You played your hearts out for us, but, as my son quipped, for once the 13th man did you in.

Twitter Hamlet

Lance Mannion gives us the 21st century Hamlet:

SwtPrince_dk Oh that this 2 2 solid flesh wld melt thaw resolve itself=dew

SwtPrince_dk RT @Marcellus Something is rotten in the state of DK || Ya think?

SwtPrince_dk RT @DaneKing I am thy father’s spirit || Oh yeah? Prove it!

SwtPrince_dk @Horatio In heaven & earth > yr philosophy

SwtPrince_dk 2B or not 2B that is the ? Thoughts?

SwtPrince_dk Alas, poor Yorick I knew him @Horatio. See my blog for post I wrote about him, Infinite Jest. http://snurl.com/tehlk

SwtPrince_dk @Horatio Fie on the 140 character limit!

SwtPrince_dk @Horatio Forget it. Never saw the point of the @NorwayFort subplot anyway

SwtPrince_dk @Horatio iphone battery dying too. Irony?

SwtPrince_dk @Horatio The rest is silence

Saturday Morning Cartoon

How to Play Football (1944)


Our Riders were still called the "Regina Roughriders" when this cartoon was made, so maybe that's why they weren't featured in it!

Pig in a poke

Anybody who voted for the Saskatchewan Party because they assumed that this gang would do a better job managing public revenues is realizing about now that they bought a pig in a poke.
The latest mess is the screw up of school financing -- last spring the Sask Party did the bidding of their rural base by lowering school taxes and eliminating the ability of school boards to set their own mill rates.
Now with the drop in potash revenues, its becoming clear that they won't be able to afford to backfill school budgets like they promised they would.

Oh, the humanity!

Best Thanksgiving moment evah!.

Building a life

I have often hoped that the American football players who come to Saskatchewan to play football would realize that here is a place where they could build a life.
Instead of breaking their contracts and leaving the first chance they get, to break their hearts and lose their skills sitting on an NFL team bench, or to disappear into the second-banana coaching staff at Redneck U, these young players could stay in Regina, where they could not only keep on playing football at a high level but also become a leader and a highly-respected contributor to the community.
Darian Durant gets it.

"I don't think a quarterback has been around here for longer than four or five years in a long time," Durant said. "I just want to change the culture.
"We have a good nucleus here. Let's build around it, and let's try to build a dynasty."
Durant is actually the first Saskatchewan quarterback of note to take his first professional snap with the Riders and develop into a starter.

On his website Durant promises "We will make Rider Nation proud!"
Double D, you already have.

$15.3 million? Oh, never mind

Mint officials double-counted some gold bullion they sold, and also underestimated the shrinkage of the gold during processing.

Well, OK then. And you know those taxes I'm supposed to be paying you next April? Well, there's gonna be a little shrinkage, just a few bookkeeping errors really, but don't you worry boys, you'll get most of it, I'm sure...

That clunking sound

That clunking sound you hear is the other shoe dropping on the Afghan prisoner torture story.

Watching the game

You could shoot a cannon down Saskatoon streets right now -- everybody's watching the game.
Go team, go!!!
UPDATE:

Psalm 109 verse 8

You know, if it was Muslims who claimed they were "joking" about killing Obama, the American media would be outraged. But its people who call themselves Christians, so never mind...

Great line of the day

About the Con attempt to smear diplomat Richard Colvin, POGGE writes

But it doesn't matter how faithfully you serve this government. If it becomes convenient for them to throw you under a bus, then under the bus you go.

This is just the latest example in a long line which demonstrates that the Harper government values loyalty above all else, not competence or principle or accomplishment. God help us all if these guys ever get a majority.

Word salad

More word salad from Sarah Palin

O'Reilly: Let me be bold and fresh again. Do you believe you are smart enough, and incisive enough, intellectual enough, to handle the most powerful job in the world?
Palin: I believe that I am because I have common sense, and I have, I believe, the values that are reflective of so many American values. And I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the, um, the, ah -- kind of spineless -- a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with elite Ivy League education and -- fact resume that's based on anything but hard work and private-sector, free-enterprise principles. Americans could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership. I'm not saying that that has to be me.

And considering that Palin cobbled together courses from four colleges to get a degree, and since has spent almost her entire working life being paid a public-sector salary, she really means it too, you betcha!