3.14

Happy Pi Day (3.14) Domino Spiral:

Turkey-head

For years I have confused Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, with Rowan Atkinson, AKA Mr. Bean. When I have written about the profoundly disappointing lack of leadership in the English church over the last decade in regard to gay marriage -- and how this has split the Anglican congregation as a result -- I kept typing "Atkinson" by mistake.
But when I read William's latest idiocy maybe I'm not confused at all.
Williams really IS a turkey-head, isn't he.

Rush is taking the rest of them down with him

A hundred advertisers bail on right wing radio:

To all Traffic Managers: The information below applies to your Premiere Radio Networks commercial inventory...They’ve specifically asked that you schedule their commercials in dayparts or programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity).

It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch...

Get those LOLcats outta here!

The Internet testifies at a parliamentary committee:

“All right, we'll carry on,” Mr. Preston sighs, removing a sloth from his lap and passing it gently to an aide.
“Like!” someone calls out.
“Like!” someone else calls out.
“Re-sharing!” someone calls out even louder.
“Headdesk,” the Prime Minister says.
“Steak, caramelized onions and Stilton on a baguette,” a voice says calmly as three baby pandas roll across the room and out the other door.
“Sushi from Omi!” another voice chimes in.
“Honey Crisp apple and a bagel. At my desk. Sigh,” says one who presents only as a purple egg.
“Why do people keep telling me what they're having for lunch?” the chairman inquires, gazing fondly after the pandas.
“I'm sorry,” a page apologizes. “That's Twitter.”
“I am hungry,” the chairman admits. “I'd buy us both lunch, but I've just given all of my money to Mr. Kumalo, a Nigerian prince.” He taps the side of his nose knowingly.
“Cherry cupcake?” 11 million babies seated in flowerpots ask kindly from the Pinterest section.
“No, thank you,” the chairman says. “Can we please just continue with our witness and – for heaven's sake, why are three-quarters of the people here naked? All right, Mr. Toews, yes, yes, someone give that walrus a bucket, in your duties as … ?”
“First!” someone shouts out from the back, followed quickly by: “Too long; did not read. You are so brave! Hugs! Thanks for sharing your story. This sucks. Check out my blog! Manolo Blahnik shoes! Yves Saint Laurent shoes! Authentic! Free shipping! $39.99! RON PAUL 2012! RON PAUL 2012! RON PAUL 2012!”
“What?” Mr. Toews asks. “What is that person shouting about? What's he even saying? None of that has anything to do with the issue at hand.”
“Well, I'm sorry, Vic,” Tony Clement explains, with a shrug. “You invite the Internet, you're going to get a comment thread.”

T'was brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.

Because shut up, that's why

I think the word has gone out -- everybody just SHUT THE F**K UP about the robocalls scandal.
The NDP are still talking as are the pundits but the Harper Cons know the media won't keep covering it if nobody on the Conservative side says something stupid again.
Which works unless there's something new to talk about.

Last refuge of a scoundrel

Samuel Johnson said patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
These days, its setting up a website.

"We are propelling the War Canoe"

Its fascinating to read the Canadian blogs today.
The Galloping Beaver front-pagers are doing a bangup job keeping us up-to-date on the robocall scandal: among others, here, here, here, here, here, and most recently here. And Alison gathers up the stories here and RossK is all over it here. and Dawg here. The Sixth Estate has assembled the definitive list of 77 ridings where hoax phone calls have been reported. Buckdog notes how the media is responding to Con spin even though the strategy to blame 31,000 complaints first on the Liberals and then on Elections Canada voting lists should be laughable. Fern at Dammit Janet calls it crowdsourcing and says

We are propelling the War Canoe...the blogosphere and twitterverse will have a grand time hunting the evil-doers down.

"Mistakes were made"

Ken Mehlman's apology for going along with the Bush campaign's anti-gay ballot initiatives in 2004 isn't quite to the scale of McNamara's apology for lying about Vietnam, but in terms of the damage done to thousands of Americans, its closer than one might think.
Cowardice is never an acceptable excuse.

So It Has Come To This

From xkcd:

Works for me.

Shorter

Conservatives on the ethics committee:

Enough chatter about Harper stealing the election! We need to talk about how the Liberals hurt Vic Toews' delicate fee-fees.

False equivalency

No, Canadian media, embarrassing a minister isn't just the same as trying to suppress voter turnout. Montreal Simon gets it:

while Vikileaks may have embarrassed Toews, it was not illegal, and should not be mentioned in the same breath as this criminal attempt to steal an election.

I looked at the vote gap in all of the ridings that the Liberals and the NDP are now investigating, plus the fine summary at Sixth Estate.

Many of these ridings had margins of thousands of vote, sometimes more than 10,000, so a suppression of voter turnout would likely not have made a difference in the final result.
But how about these six seats?

The Conservative candidate squeaked in, defeating the incumbent party in every case.
- Elmwood Tascona (MB): Lawrence Toet (Con) defeated incumbent Jim Maloway (NDP) by 300 votes out of 33,000 cast.

- Etobicoke Centre (ON): Ted Opitz (Con) defeated incumbent Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Lib) by 26 votes out of 52,000 cast
- Mississauga East-Cooksville (ON): Wladyslaw Lizon, (Con) defeated Peter Fonseca (Lib) by 600 votes out of 47,000 cast. Fonseca was not the incumbent, but the seat had been held by the Liberals since the riding was created in 2004.
- Nipissing Timiskaming (ON): Jay Aspen (Con) defeated incumbent Anthony Rota (Lib) by 18 votes out of 42,000 cast.

- Willowdale (ON): Chungsen Leung (Con) defeated incumbent Martha Hall Findlay (Lib) by 940 votes out of 54,000 cast.

- Winnipeg South Centre (MB): Joyce Bateman (Con) defeated incumbent Anita Neville (Lib) by 800 votes out of 40,000 cast.
And I'm wondering about some of the other close seats now, too.

Oscar chat

I thought the show went OK this year but the crowd didn't seem to be all that excited about most of the winners except Meryl Streep and Christopher Plummer.
I DO NOT understand why Martin Scorsese didn't win. The crowd didn't understand it either, I don't think.

Great line of the day

Matt Tabbi on the Republican Presidential Race -Conservative Chickens Come Home to Roost:

This current race for the presidential nomination has therefore devolved into a kind of Freudian Agatha Christie story, in which the disturbed and highly paranoid voter base by turns tests the orthodoxy of each candidate, trying to figure out which one is the spy, which one is really Barack Obama bin Laden-Marx under the candidate mask!

Be sure to read the whole thing. H/T

Being, as usual, a few years behind the States, I expect we will see the same deification of Harper among our Conservatives here as we saw with Republicans about Reagan in the US -- provided Harper leaves before he triggers our gag reflex, of course, and gets chewed up and spit out by the Canadian people like we have done with all of our other prime ministers for the last 40 years.

Twitter fail

I recently put a twitter widget on my page to show my twitters -- then nobody was commenting on my posts and I couldn't figure out why until Saskboy managed to leave a comment that the twitter widget was preventing live links in any post that was located beside the box.
So the widget is gone.
I haven't really figured out this twitter thing, anyway -- I don't have one of those smart phones to tweet on and while I do have random thoughts about everything all day long, I find they are seldom interesting enough to tweet about. Does anyone really want to hear about whether my hamburger at lunch used the right kind of bun?
And thanks, Saskboy.

Contempt

As we learn more about the robocall scandal, the magnitude gets bigger and bigger, and the contempt of the Harper Conservatives for the Canadian people becomes more and more obvious.

Even Andrew Coyne is utterly disgusted

There were not a few calls: there were thousands. They did not occur in one or two ridings: there were at least 18 of them, scattered across the country . . .
There isn't any doubt that this was election fraud . . .

This is far beyond just "dirty tricks" that we always hear candidates complain about, like knocking over campaign signs. "Inaccuracies can occur" isn't going to cut it, and neither will the usual 'rogue staff' excuse.

Somebody in the central campaign headquarters of the Conservative Party thought this up.

A bunch of other people in the central campaign headquarters approved it and agreed to finance it.

Constituency workers across the country provided the voters lists and wrote the misinformation scripts.

And the Conservative candidates, those men and women who are now Members of Parliament, said sure, OK, let's lie to my constituents, whatever it takes to get myself elected.