Photo parade

Hooray, the US health care law was upheld! So here's some cheerful photos for today:


Pictures that will restore your faith in humanity


Pictures that will make you say awwwww


Awkward cat sleeping positions


Things your pets do while you're away

Didn't we used to have a press gallery?

In an article about the horrendous refugee bill under which doctors are supposed to refuse basic health care to any brown people the Harper Cons don't like, Jim Creskey writes:

. . . the personal hardship stories and legal fallout that will result from the law's various measures and the way they are put into practice are yet to reach the notice of Canadian public opinion.

Didn't we used to have a press gallery in Ottawa that was supposed to keep the public informed about things like this, so that they could develop an opinion?  Or are twitter wars keeping everyone too busy these days?

Great line of the day

POGGE describing another screw-up of the Harper Cons:

You don't get good government from people who think government is the problem. And the crew in charge at the moment are just the ones to keep proving that. Over and over.

Too many pets?

When you can't tell whether your child's finger was bitten off by your pitbull or your piranha, then maybe you have too many pets.

Here's another complete waste of time

Try this game -- Find Five.  It is appallingly addictive.

Remember

Six years after the Harper Cons moved into government and they still don't seem to realize that governments are judged not on what they say but on what they do.
Apparently there's going to be a Conservative rally in Quebec this weekend and Harper is going to give a speech and so he has to figure out what he can talk about.
He's burned so many bridges in Quebec that he's been reduced to asking Brian Mulroney how the Cons can improve their image.

Mr. Mulroney still remains a respected political figure in the Quebec and probably knows it better than any current Conservative, while Mr. Harper can’t shake the stereotype of being a Western cowboy out of touch with la belle province.

Do ya think maybe that's because he IS a Western cowboy out of touch with la belle province?
Does Harper think his winning personality and enormous personal charm (/snark) will convince Quebecers to just forget all about the insults that the Harper Cons keep dishing out?
Here's David Climenhaga's list just from last fall:

The peculiar decision in mid-August to bring back the “Royal” prefix to describe the Canadian Navy and Air Force. No one in English Canada cared much about this any more – it was a fight lost by another generation. Yet it remains a powerful symbol of an unequal past in Quebec. It would seem this was done in the wake of a royal visit to please a few grumpy old vets and an even smaller number of nutty members of the tiny Monarchist League of Canada.
The decision to cut Quebec shipyards out of a $33-billion naval shipbuilding program. Much was made by the government of the “non partisan” nature of the civil-service-run bidding process – an oddity in itself given the contempt with which these Conservatives normally hold “bureaucrats.” But what are programs to build largely unneeded strategic naval vessels but domestic-make work arrangements that benefit various regions of the country? This is, after all, at the heart of the American political-economic model our Conservatives so much admire.
The bizarre decision at the end of October push to appoint a unilingual Auditor General when fluency in both official languages was right there in the job description. The chosen one, Michael Ferguson, said he was recruited by a corporate headhunter and that he never bothered to read the job description – some auditor! This despite the fact that the understanding that key public-service jobs will be held by people fluent in both languages is part of the historic compromise that has (barely) held the country together.
The similarly inexplicable appointment in mid-October of the unilingual Ontario judge Michael Moldaver to the Supreme Court of Canada. Justice Moldaver has promised to learn to speak French, a nice gesture, but not very meaningful under the circumstances.
The double slap of the Conservative plan to destroy the national shotgun and rifle registry, which is popular for good reason in Quebec – where the hideous Dec. 6, 1989 massacre of 14 young women at Montreal’s École Polytechnique prompted the drive to register these weapons – and the Harperites’ adamant refusal to share the data collected and paid for by Quebec taxpayers as well as the rest of us.

Don't the Harper Cons realize that Quebecers will remember these things?
They're pretty good at remembering.

Takes one to know one

I think we know who the complete and utter asshole actually is.

Dumb

Of all of the dumb prosecutions we've seen over the last several years, from Martha Stewart to John Edwards, the attempt to demonize baseball players and cyclists as big-time criminal drug abusers has to rank as the dumbest.
At last Roger Clemens has been found not guilty on all counts, for the second time, joining Barry Bonds (mostly) and Lance Armstrong (hopefully).
Meanwhile, of course, professional football players just keep on getting a little stronger every day...  but shshsss!  Let's not talk about that.
Scott Lemieux sums it up

If only Clemens has tortured someone on behalf of the federal government or committed a massive bank fraud — he could have saved a lot of money in legal expenses…

Two-tier health care is here

The Harper Cons have taken the first steps toward dismantling medicare for everyone by classifying refugees as "second-tier" people who aren't going to get the same kind of health care everyone else can get.
And if they get away with it, what's to stop them from doing it again?
How about immigrants next, and then families of immigrants, because they haven't paid enough taxes yet. Then for people who are unemployed, because they're not paying enough taxes. Then for people who are employed, because they can buy their own health insurance. They'll always be able to find another "good" reason to cut people off medicare.
One thing we always have to remember is this: politicians HATE medicare -- they hate having to spend so much money without having any control over it, without being able to cut any ribbons or send out any press releases. They hate that Canadians take it for granted, and we aren't grateful to government anymore for it, we just complain about it to the politicians.

An absolute crock

Twenty people connected to David Del Mastro, Dean's cousin, or to his electrical business in Mississauga, are such political activists that they each gave Dean Del Mastro a thousand dollars in the 2008 election campaign:

He said it was reasonable to believe that his employees volunteered to each give $1,000 to a candidate running for election in a riding three hours away.
“Why wouldn’t they?” he asked.

And if you believe that, I've got this bridge I could sell you...

It's actually a class war

DougJ at Baloon Juice says the fighting about politics is actually about class:

I used to think that the purpose of neoconservatism was to give some intellectual cover to the right, and that it gained power in the United States because the right gained power. I think I was wrong. Neoconservatism is attractive to elites because it flatters them and tells them they are superior. It’s the perfect ideology for an overclass filled with mediocre minds, fat wallets, and delicate fee-fees.
I also used to think “both sides do it” was just a way of empowering the right and trashing the left. Now, I think it’s just an easy way for the establishment to dismiss all criticism of itself. Hand out a double technical and everyone will have to shut up for a while.

The list keeps getting longer

There's going to be a whole lot of stuff to revoke once the New Democrat Liberal party gets elected -- now we can add this "Canada doesn't want any wretched refuse" immigration bill to the list.

A national embarrassment

The Harper Cons think the role of the police is to protect their delicate fee-fees?

Along with terrorism and organized crime, “embarrassment to the Canadian government” was considered one of the threats facing security forces at the G8 and G20 summit meetings in Ontario 2010, according to newly released military records.

It was the way police acted that turned out to be the national embarrassment.
That, and the millions the Cons wasted.

Fist pump

Yes! Female pilot tosses passenger off flight for making sexist remarks:

A Brazilian airline says one of its female pilots tossed a passenger off a flight because he was making sexist comments about women flying planes.
Trip Airlines says in a Tuesday statement the pilot ejected the man before takeoff as he made loud, sexist comments upon learning the pilot was a woman. . . .
Trip says it won't tolerate disparaging remarks made about any of the 1,400 women working for the airline.

Tough

Ever since we got a flatscreen, I have enjoyed watching tennis because I can finally see the ball.
What a game it was tonight at the French Open. If you ever want to really understand the phrase "when the going gets tough, the tough get going" it was on display in this amazing match between Djokovic and Tsonga.
Tsonga was the crowd favorite and he almost won - four times in the fourth set he was at match point. But Djokovic kept battling back and when Tsonga couldn't finish it then, everybody knew the fifth set would belong to Djokovic.