Great line of the day

Booman writes about Obama's first year:

Obama is by nature a bridge-builder. He isn't afraid of the other side and sees value-in-itself to working with them. He assembled a Team of Rivals and former opponents in his cabinet. Early on, he reached out by inviting Republicans to attend public workshops at the White House. The response was an embrace of Birtherism and Teabagging, combined with rigidly disciplined obstruction on a totally unprecedented scale . . .
Obama will need to become tougher. His challenge will be to do so without losing that bridge-building quality that was so integral to his message of hope.

Napolitano is an idiot

As a mother who just watched her two children get on a plane today, I found this CNN interview with Janet Napolitano profoundly bizarre.
She babbles perky talking points about how everything is just great and everyone should feel perfectly safe because "the system worked" and other airlines were warned about the Detroit bomber right away and nothing bad happened -- and she blithely ignores Crowley's observations that it was apparently only the bomber's own ineptitude and the quick thinking of other passengers, not federal watch lists or airline security procedures, which prevented a tragedy.
I don't know who told Napolitano that her job was to pat people on the head and focus on airline profitability instead of public safety, but she needs to cut it out. This interview hit a sour note.

Enjoy!

From the Claymation Christmas special:

Again?

Harper is talking about proroging Parliament again, I guess to avoid having to deal with Ignatieff and his Liberals over torture, climate change policy, the list goes on.
Sure Steve, you just do that.
Canadians who are struggling to find work and to pay their bills and their taxes are sure to be sympathetic -- Prime Ministering is such hard work, ya know, that sometimes you just need to throw the country into an uproar so you can get a few days of peace and quiet, without those annoying questions coming up again and again.
The most pathetic and enduring image from last December was Rick Mercer's report about how Conservative staffers had to show up at 24 Sussex at 6 am to cheer when Harper drove by, so he would be in a better mood when he got to the office.
He thought they were real.

Happy Festivus

Top ten list

The Onion selects the top ten news stories of the last 4.5 billion years.

Take your pick

Theft? Or incompentence? Not much of a choice, but there it is.

Is my memory failing?

So our finance minister is scolding Obama about the US debt.
Funny, I don't recall Flaherty ever saying anything to George Bush about his deficit, but of course, my memory could be failing.

Great line of the day

Jane Hampsher has lost her mind and Ezra Klein calls her on it while also providing a rationale for the American health care reform bill:

. . . Hamsher's list implies that the bill is failing relative to a world in which we don't kill the bill.
But in that world, there's still no drug re-importation. Still 50 million uninsured. Still rampant cost growth. In the world where we pass the bill, most everything gets somewhat better, if not good enough. More people have insurance. The insurance industry ditches its worst practices. Fewer families go medically bankrupt. More people catch diseases early, when they can be cured, rather than late, when they become fatal. People who would otherwise have died live. The medical system begins the process of updating itself for the 21st Century, and responding to the cost pressures it's placing on the rest of the country.
The world in which we kill the bill is a world in which everything just continues to get worse, and politicians are scared away from the issue for decades. A world in which we pass the bill is a world in which things get better, and politicians remember that they can pass big pieces of legislation that take on, or begin taking on, big problems.

Death Star anniversary

This is a little grim but has its moments. "If we don't rebuild, the Jedi's win"

Nobody tells MacKay nuthin'

Dawg alerts us to this horrible story about a prisoner being kept in a intolerably hot cell, and once again poor Peter MacKay just didn't know anything about it:

Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s office said the Global National report was the first they had heard of the incident and they’ve asked the defence department for more information.

Isn't it just too bad that nobody associated with the Canadian military in Afghanistan thinks to tell the Minister about this stuff?
Or so we hear.
Could I suggest something? Perhaps the Canadian government could write up some sort of document -- call it a "policy" or a "directive" or something like that -- which lists all of the offices which are to be told about bad things that happen in Afghanistan. And perhaps the office of the Defense Minister could be on that list?
Just a suggestion...

Advice for Tiger

ESPN reporter Bill Simmons passes on the list of things Tiger Woods should do according to PR advisor Dan Klores:

1. If you can’t tell your wife the truth from the get-go, recognize immediately that you shouldn’t marry again, and that the grass isn’t always greener from the other side.
2. Hit the links, start giving huge bucks to African-American charities, show up at church, double your dose of Viagra and use it for your wife, understand “it’s never going to be the same,” see a shrink two to three times per week minimum, do Larry King, then a few weeks later do Leno.
3. Demand your money back from The Enquirer, and demand your money back from any of the girlfriends.
4. Ignore every so-called “crisis communication” expert who sought a headline by claiming you didn’t get out in front of the story, because they have obviously never been caught cheating on their wives.
5. Attend the NBA All-Star Weekend’s slam dunk contest.
6. Tell the world that Sarah Palin is an idiot so at least 52.9 percent of Americans will agree with you.

I thought the last one showed flair.

Goodbye to the Doctor

Well, losing the doctor may be a brilliant negotiating triumph but we saw Halladay pitch in the game we went to in Toronto last summer, and he was a joy to watch and I'm sorry to see him go.

What I learned

Reading the latest comments to my Olympics post, I guess I can admit that I have learned something from this post.
If all politics are local, then some are very local indeed. I had no idea there was such a depth of anti-Olympic feeling in Vancouver, and I think many people in the rest of Canada would also be surprised. Here I was thinking that Vancouver as a whole was proud to be chosen to host such an event, and that the people who lived there were lucky to be involved in the Olympic events.
Instead, I am wondering whether there has ever been another Olympics where such a number of people in the host city are so vehemently opposed, and their opposition is so heartfelt and entrenched, that they can find nothing good to say about it.
Sort of the way I felt about George Bush coming to speak in Saskatoon.

Octopus's garden

Scientists find octopus that carries, assembles coconuts for shelter. Ringo was right:

I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus' garden in the shade
He'd let us in, knows where we've been
In his octopus' garden in the shade