Next year country

Thanks, Canucks, for giving us a great series.

Well, duh!

Missing Iraq money may have been stolen, auditors say.
A million here, a million there, pretty soon it adds up to some real money!

Nice to see

Nice to see the United States and Canada united at last -- in our hatred of the Miami Heat and our joy at the Mavericks win!

Great line of the day

Steve V writes about Harper's delusional foreign policy hubris:

Irrelevant on climate change, non existent at the United Nations, playing NO role in key diplomatic initiatives, retreating from traditional development and aid, apart from the military angle, we've fallen badly in the eyes of the world. . . . while Conservatives wave the flag at home, enamoured with our supposed international greatness, remember abroad that flag isn't placed so prominently on backpacks anymore, and that's far more telling than rhetoric.

Lighten up

Oh, come on, folks. He can't fly commercial, but if Stephen Harper wants to take his daughter to watch a Stanley Cup game, why shouldn't he?
If we had had the chance to do that with our kids, we would have done it in a heartbeat, and it would have been an unforgettable memory.
Just too bad it had to be THAT game.

Try to imagine how little I care

Some days its difficult to find something in the news I care about.
Because one thing I don't really care about very much is whether consenting adults have affairs, talk sexy on the phone, take sexy photos of themselves or their lovers, consume Viagra, bathe in green tea, advertise on Craigs List, or otherwise indulge themselves in odd or embarrassing scenarios.
As long as its not abusive or exploitative or illegal, their behaviour is really of concern only to the spouse and the children, even when its one of those awful erotic asphyxiation deaths.
That goes for Anthony Weiner, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, John Edwards, George Rekers, Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, David Vittner, Bill O'Reilly, Bill Clinton, David Carradine, Sharon Smith, Princess Diana, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt . . .
Glenn Greenwald raises a good point about the Weiner media circus:

... the pretense of substantive relevance (which, lame though it was in prior scandals, was at least maintained) has been more or less brazenly dispensed with here. . . . This is just pure mucking around in the private, consensual, unquestionably legal private sexual affairs of someone for partisan gain, voyeuristic fun and the soothing fulfillment of judgmental condemnation. And in that regard, it sets a new standard: the private sexual activities of public figures -- down to the most intimate details -- are now inherently newsworthy, without the need for any pretense of other relevance.

“Please help me feel safe in this city again”

The Morden inquiry into the G20 debacle is going to be the only official public review we will ever have about what happened in Toronto a year ago.

The review, launched by the police services board last September, aims to tackle questions that remain on the minds of many Torontonians almost a year after the summit last June: Who gave the orders that led to the “kettling” of peaceful protesters at Queen St. and Spadina Ave.? Why did police disperse demonstrators from the designated “Free Speech Zone” at Queen’s Park? Who is responsible for the miscommunication of the so-called five-metre fence law?
It will also examine the issue of officers removing badges, the conditions at the temporary G20 jail on Eastern Ave., and the police board’s role in planning and oversight of police operations for other large-scale events.

Just so nobody forgets what it was like:

And how terrified the police were of the DFHs:

Thanks for the teeth

I have finally found the man I owe my teeth to.
He was Dr. Irwin Mandel, who just died in New York at age 89.
I was one of those kids who always had cavities. We didn't know anything about flossing when I grew up, and the first time I ever heard of teeth cleaning I was in my 20s. In spite of having had braces, so at least my teeth were straight, I continued getting cavities all the time and I was certain that I was just going to lose my teeth when I was 55, like my Dad did, and have to wear dentures ever after.
But a dentist convinced me that if I really tried to take care of my teeth -- flossing, regular cleaning, etc -- then I could keep them forever. He turned out to be right. I have a few crowns now, as my filling-filled molars wear out, but no plates and no dentures.
I have always wondered where this good advice came from and now I have found out the source -- it was Dr. Mandel whose research into preventive dentistry was the beginning of it all.
Thanks, Dr. Mandel, for saving my mouth.

About protest

Johann Hari writes about the proof that protest works: :

The first ever attempt to hold a Gay Pride rally in Trafalgar Square was in 1965. Two dozen people turned up – and they were mostly beaten by the police and arrested. Gay people were imprisoned for having sex, and even the most compassionate defense of gay people offered in public life was that they should be pitied for being mentally ill.
Imagine if you had stood in Trafalgar Square that day and told those two dozen brave men and women: “Forty-five years from now, they will stop the traffic in Central London for a Gay Pride parade on this very spot, and it will be attended by hundreds of thousands of people. There will be married gay couples, and representatives of every political party, and openly gay soldiers and government ministers and huge numbers of straight supporters – and it will be the homophobes who are regarded as freaks.” It would have seemed like a preposterous statement of science fiction. But it happened. It happened in one lifetime. Why? Not because the people in power spontaneously realized that millennia of persecuting gay people had been wrong, but because determined ordinary citizens banded together and demanded justice.
If that cause can be achieved, through persistent democratic pressure, anything can.

(Via)

D-I-S-R-E-S-P-E-C-T

The general opinion of the throne speech was ho-hum, enlivened by Brigette DePape's politely disrespectful protest:

In response to the pearl-clutching about how awfully disrespectful Brigette was of the dignity of Parliament, somewhere Michael Ignatieff is laughing.
Impolitical reminds us who started this pissing contest:

Not caring that one of your ministers inserts a "not" after a document had been signed by others, for example. Not respecting members of parliament who ask the government for the most basic of financial information supporting billions in purchases the government seeks to make. Making light of an historic contempt verdict . . .Breed disrespect, reap protest.

Next year, Harper will have all the pages strip-searched before they enter the Chamber.

Some days, all you've got is your dog

Like Mickey Rourke said.
So check out the dog which is now wandering here and there on my sidebar -- its a gadget from aBowman and he'll chase the ball, scoop up the treats, chew on the bone, follow the cursor, sit and lie down. And sleep.

What else are they lying about?

Reading the story about how the Harper government deliberately excluded critical oilsands data from an environmental report done for the United Nations forces me to ask:

So what else is the Harper government lying to Canadians and to the world about?

One thing is for sure, the United Nations will never believe anything we say ever again.
And I wonder what the G8 now thinks about listening to Harper?

After the tornado

ER Stories describes what it was like to be in the Joplin hospital during and after the tornado::

I remember a patient in his early 20’s gasping for breath, telling me that he was going to die. After a quick exam, I removed the large shard of glass from his back, made the clinical diagnosis of a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) and gathered supplies from wherever I could locate them to insert a thoracostomy tube in him. He was a trooper; I’ll never forget his courage. He allowed me to do this without any local anesthetic since none could be found. With his life threatening injuries I knew he was running out of time, and it had to be done. Quickly. Imagine my relief when I heard a big rush of air, and breath sounds again; fortunately, I was able to get him transported out. I immediately moved on to the next patient, an asthmatic in status asthmaticus. We didn’t even have the option of trying a nebulizer treatment or steroids, but I was able to get him intubated using a flashlight that I held in my mouth. A small child of approximately 3-4 years of age was crying; he had a large avulsion of skin to his neck and spine. The gaping wound revealed his cervical spine and upper thoracic spine bones. I could actually count his vertebrae with my fingers.
...As I finished up what I could do at St John’s, I walked with two RN’s to a makeshift MASH center that was being set up miles away at Memorial Hall. We walked where flourishing neighborhoods once stood, astonished to see only the disastrous remains of flattened homes, body parts, and dead people everywhere. I saw a small dog just wimpering in circles over his master who was dead, unaware that his master would not ever play with him again. At one point we tended to a young woman who just stood crying over her dead mother who was crushed by her own home. The young woman covered her mother up with a blanket and then asked all of us, “What should I do?” We had no answer for her, but silence and tears.

Great line of the day

From Kevin Drum via Steve Benen:

“Every once in a while I feel like I’ve succumbed to partisan madness and need to back off and assume a bit more good faith and sincerity from thinkers and activists on the other side. I need to treat conservative arguments with a little more respect and a little more generosity. But then….”

Is that a celphone in your pocket

Or are you just glad to see me?
(NSFW)