Insite insight

Even the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, which basically never met a federal Conservative it didn't like, thinks the continuing federal attack on Insite is wrong.

Let the Games begin

Wasn't it neat to see so many happy, cheering people greeting Wayne Gretzky and running pellmell after his truck as he carried the torch through downtown Vancouver, even though the rain was pouring?
And an estimated 150,000 people were lining the Vancouver streets today for the end of the torch run.

Here are some opening ceremony photos.





I was glad these athletes did not leave the Games.


Protesters were there too -- police said 1,500 protesters, Ubyssey said 5,000.


Was there actually an attempt to provoke a riot? Vancouver police seemed to think so:

Protesters intent on provoking police moved to the front of the line and began throwing traffic barricades around. Their tactics then escalated as they sprayed vinegar in officers' eyes, threw sticks, and spit on members.

And earlier on Friday, protestors at the torch relay struck a blow for anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism by preventing some Canadian veterans from welcoming the torch into Victory Square. As one commenter said:

I believe in the right to protest but when I watched the protesters block the Olympic torch from being brought to the cenotaph in Vancouver today where the Veterans were waiting I was really disappointed. These veterans asked what they could do for their country and their moment was taken away by a group of people who are asking what their country can do for them.

Stay classy, folks.

Dumb and dumber

And this is a nation which thinks of itself as the world's only superpower?

McLeroy moved that Margaret Sanger, the birth-control pioneer, be included because she “and her followers promoted eugenics,” that language be inserted about Ronald Reagan’s “leadership in restoring national confidence” following Jimmy Carter’s presidency and that students be instructed to “describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.” The injection of partisan politics into education went so far that at one point another Republican board member burst out in seemingly embarrassed exasperation, “Guys, you’re rewriting history now!” Nevertheless, most of McLeroy’s proposed amendments passed by a show of hands.
Finally, the board considered an amendment to require students to evaluate the contributions of significant Americans. The names proposed included Thurgood Marshall, Billy Graham, Newt Gingrich, William F. Buckley Jr., Hillary Rodham Clinton and Edward Kennedy. All passed muster except Kennedy, who was voted down.

I'm surprised they didn't boot Hillary as well.

Great line of the day

Pogge has a deep thought:

Maybe the real reason Stephen Harper prorogued parliament was so the opposition parties wouldn't be able to make fun of the government during Question Period when Canada wins the award for the ugliest pavilion at the Olympics

New York

So my sister has been planning for the last year to get to New York for the Westminster Dog Show -- some travel for the sightseeing or the restaurants, she travels for the dog shows, she's been to Crufts in England, to California a couple of times, she almost got to New Orleans until Katrina happened two weeks before the dog conference was scheduled.
Anyway, of course she was worried the last few days about the snowstorm and flights being canceled and all that.
Well, she left this morning -- and got right through. Just 15 minutes late landing in Toronto, just half an hour late leaving for New York -- Air Canada flies 11 times daily to New York, and eight of their flights were canceled today, but hers was one of the other three -- she said they had a rough landing at LaGuardia, but now everything just fine and no bedbugs in her hotel either.
She's on a roll!

Great line of the day

The Rev Paperboy writes about the recent travesty where a New York school principal actually called the police about a 12-year-old girl who scribbled on her school desk and the police actually arrested her.

This kid is probably lucky they didn't taser her when she started crying . . . . Way to put the "Pal" in "Principal" Ms. Grant! What do you do if the kids chew gum in class, waterboard them?

Emphasis mine.

Gone

I just couldn't stand it anymore.
You know what I'm talking about -- those awful, borderline offensive ads that are on website after website.
Those teeth chomping into a sugar cube. And more teeth glowing green.
That fat woman in a bikini, lying across the middle of every page.
And the before-and-after photos of some man's hairless torso.
So I finally installed an adblocker.
And it works -- they're gone! Beautiful. Of course, now Kos is trying to guilt me into subscribing.
But that's a small price to pay.
It occurs to me that the dominance of personal hygiene and dieting ads isn't going to prove to be a particularly attractive or substantial economic model for the internet, is it?
When you buy a magazine like Macleans or Chatelaine or Time or Rolling Stone, the ads are national brands with some substance to them -- cars or fashion, appliances or insurance.
When the only companies which advertise on websites are touting whiter teeth and thinner bodies, its like they think the only people reading the blogs really are pajama-wearing slobs with Cheeto breath.

Olympics almost here

The Olympic Village at dusk

Just five more days until the 2010 Olympics begin. I have set up some sports sites on the blogroll to keep up with the events. And there will be a Saskatchewan Pavilion near BC Place, too.
From Vancouver's CityCaucus, I found this great rap:

Great line of the day

Mr. Sinister summarizes the Stephen Harper panic:

Realizing that prorogation was the worst political mistake since Pierre Trudeau handed John Turner a list of his friends to find jobs for, the PMO is starting to throw furniture out the windows, in a vain attempt to get the Langevin Block to levitate. You can almost hear them screaming "Hey Canadians, you don't like prorogation? What if we never take a break again? Would you like us better? Huh? Huh?" And still, the long, sad, decline in their fortunes continues.

Emphasis mine.

The day the music died

February 3 was the day the music died.
I miss the songs Buddy Holly would have written had he lived.
And John Lennon.
And Jim Croce.

Great news for bloggers

Jim Pankiw wants to make a comeback:

“I’m Back!” the 43-year-old announced in a news release distributed to media outlets Wednesday . . .
“After a brief (but very direct and explicit) statement, Dr. Pankiw will answer any questions provided that they are not of a personal or disingenuous nature,” the release states

And Saskatoon bloggers cheered -- its always more fun when Jim Pankiw is willing to be kicked around again, not to mention being an inexhaustible source of bloggage.
Like this one, from the same news story:

..."He said to me once, he goes, ‘Austin . . . sometimes reporters report the news in a different way because they’re always looking for a great headline.’ I mean, who isn’t, right? He said, ‘Here’s an example. . . . Let’s say that I went and rescued my dog and he was drowning or something. It wouldn’t be, Jim Pankiw Saves His Dog, it would be, Jim Pankiw’s Dog Can’t Swim.’ "

Oh, no, no, the great headline would be, "This dog don't hunt" -- a phrase which The Urban Dictionary defines as "An obviously faulty endeavor; ... predictive of failure."
Sorta writes itself, doesn't it?

Silly season

Why does anyone care about where Danny Williams has his heart surgery or what Rahm Emanuel says or how miserable the Edwards' marriage was or what Obama said about gambling in Vegas or finding out John Baird is gay?
I think we must all have a touch of cabin fever.

Worst airport in the world

From The Onion

He'll get high with a little help from his friends

We've see Harper the Kitten Whisperer, then Harper as Mr. Blue Sweater and the Piano Man. Now he's becoming the Great Humanitarian.
But using the world's poor as a photo backdrop to raise poll numbers at home has triggered everyone's gag reflex. And in fact, this might well backfire on Harper if his cabinet uses it to justify CIDA funding for pro-lifers.
Steve V. sums up the issue:

It actually makes you angry on one level, the way this Prime Minister is clearly manipulating genuine human plight for NAKED partisan advantage. That said, I do find it somewhat refreshing that Harper's new projection, the great international humanitarian, is basically going over like a lead balloon, the disconnect so striking to border on embarrassing.. . .
Here's my cynical take on the chronology, which I'd wager is BANG ON.
Serious political problems at home, plummeting support that has sent shock waves through the PMO, completely derailing their ENTIRE winter and spring strategy, which was supposed to set the stage for electoral bliss. In the midst of the hammering the Conservatives were taking, a natural disaster occurred. The government responded with opportunistic zeal (I'm sure there was a genuine component, but only a fool doesn't consider "the wheels turning" in the PMO), high profile photo ops, swamping the media, seeing this event as the channel changer they desperately wanted.
The PMO saw the positive press for their Haiti response, which SUDDENLY produced this epiphany- we can re brand this Prime Minister as a humanitarian, taking a lead on the world stage, an advocate for the disadvantaged. Never mind, that all policies to date either contradicted the new messaging and/or demonstrated COMPLETE AND UTTER INDIFFERENCE, the PMO plowed ahead with the notion, cobbling together new initiatives. It was all political calculus, but this PMO believe if you say it, they will come, any level of true historical inspection a temporary obstacle.

Curiouser and curiosier

Four wingnuts wearing phone company costumes were arrested the other day for trying to bug the offices of Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu.
Stupid, huh? When a Landrieu staffer asked for their ID, they said they left it in the truck.

The U.S. Marshal's Service apprehended all four men shortly thereafter.

Now they're saying they were actually just trying to investigate whether her phones were busy or not.
Well, this explanation makes even less sense.
I smell a barking fish here, or a smoking gun or something.
Initially, all the attention was focused on James O'Keefe, the guy who played a pimp to sting ACORN last year. And the news stories also mentioned Robert Flanagan, 24, who is the son of the acting US attorney for the Western District of Louisana.
Blogger Lindsay Beyerstein has pieced together some background on another of the gang that couldn't bug straight

One Stan Dai was listed as the Assistant Director of the The Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence (ICCAE) at Trinity (Washington) University. . . . Stan Dai spoke about torture and terrorism last June at a "CIA day" organized by the Junior Statesmen Summer School at Georgetown. The program included a field trip to the CIA and lectures at Georgetown the next day, according this event program I found online. As we know, Dai served as the assistant director of a program dedicated to steering young people into careers in intelligence. Get this: according to the flier, Adam Brandon, the press secretary of FreedomWorks (Dick Armey's town hall mob outfit) was on the same program.
. . . Prior to that, he served as the Operations Officer of a Department of Defense irregular warfare fellowship program.

And the plot sickens. A commenter at Emptywheel's post on this issue says:

Dai’s co-conspirator Flanagan was on a similar track.
Flanagan’s resume indicates he is enrolled at the Missouri State University’s Department of Defense and Strategic Studies. This curious institution is in Fairfax, VA (not in Missouri). It is headed by William Van Cleave, another neocon figure (a member of Wolfowitz’ Team B!). It graduates 15 people a year. And it is next door to NIPP (National Institute of Public Policy).

In a later post, Beyerstein digs into Flanagan's resume a little more -- turns out he has interned for two Republican politicians and claimed that he "briefed legislative staff on areas of national security and international relations."
So these guys have spent years thinking of themselves as intelligence operatives and national security experts.
This makes even more ridiculous the explanation of the incident as an investigation of busy phones.
Does anyone remember how low-level the Watergate burglars were, and how stupid the whole thing appeared to be at first?
I'm just sayin...