Shorter

Shorter Globe and Mail:

Next time I need a job, I hope Sun News remembers that I supported their "mandatory carriage" campaign.

Le Blog

Jean-Paul Sartre's Blog at the New Yorker:

Wednesday, 22 July, 1959: 10:50 A.M.
This morning over breakfast S. asked me why I looked so glum.
“Because,” I said, “everything that exists is born for no reason, carries on living through weakness, and dies by accident.”
“Jesus,” S. said. “Aren’t you ever off the clock?”

(h/t)

Whine and jeez

I used to like Phil Mickelson until he started whining about how awful it is that he is going to have to pay more taxes on an income of merely $40 million a year. As Tbogg notes, Mickelson got his start playing on a city-owned golf course.  But now he's rich so he complains about paying the taxes that would help out other kids.  I'll bet his sponsors were none too pleased with his threats to quit playing -- now he says he's not going to insult us again by talking about how tough it is to be Phil Mickelson.
Cry me a river, Phil.

I just looked around and he's gone

1968 was the year I was finishing high school.  Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. There were violent riots at the Democratic Convention, Prague Spring ended in disaster, Nixon was the US president, and my cousin had to go to Vietnam.
But 1968 was also the year that Pierre Trudeau got elected.  And Apollo 8 took the Earthrise photo that December.  From that perspective, it seemed we might survive.
I sometimes wonder what kind of president Bobby Kennedy would have made.

Comics

Non Sequitur

#Ottawapiskat

The newest hashtag is #Ottawapiskat -- SilentNoMore at Daily Kos explains:

Reacting to the outrageous hypocrisy of the Harper government, the artist Aaron Paquette created the brilliant twitter hashtag #Ottawapiskat, eliding Attawapiskat with Ottawa (derived from the Algonquin adawe, to trade.) Margaret Atwood and Naomi Klein quickly gave the hashtag legs

Here's some of the tweets:








And more:

The Chief in #Ottawapiskat is the 4 th highest paid gov't leader in the world. He makes US$296,400 compared to $42,000 for average person
— judyrebick (@judyrebick) January 16, 2013

In #Ottawapiskat if Chief Harper dsn't like the questions, he closes up t band office 4 months at a time #proroguer #idlenomore
— 350orBust (@350orbust1) January 15, 2013

They act like they're running the place, but they were elected by less than a majority of voters, and many didn't vote at all #Ottawapiskat
— Cathie from Canada (@CathieCanada) January 17, 2013

They ram through new laws that nobody reads or understands, to let them do whatever they want #Ottawapiskat
— Cathie from Canada (@CathieCanada) January 17, 2013

Star-Phoenix gets it right

Refusing to join the knee-jerk triviality displayed elsewhere, the editorial writers at the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix understand the bigger picture: Serious talks just beginning:

Over the last generation, more First Nations members - particularly women - have been getting educated and are now connected through social media.
They may not have a cohesive message but, like the rest of us, they know what's right and what doesn't work. The Ottawa meetings and activities this week indicate that we have only just begun the process of trying to bridge that gap.

And historian Jim Miller also explains why meeting with that nice old man in a suit is so important for First Nations:

The Crown is the symbol of their relationship to the rest of society as First Nations conceive it to be. They insist on the eternal nature of the treaties they made, and choose not to recognize that the rest of Canada has evolved a different relationship to the Queen.

Wake up and smell the magnolias

Dawg recognizes the ugly truth that Idle No More is revealing about Canadians:

We’re a racist, settler country, and it’s high time we stood up and faced that fact, and dealt with it. How anyone can read the comments threads appended to online media stories about Chief Spence and Idle No More and not smell the magnolias is beyond me. And the dreary parade of white finger-waving pundits in the national media is part of the problem. They give respectable cover to the shrieking bigots in our midst.

Sixth Estate, and Simon, and Dawg are doing yeoman's work in exposing the inadequate, embarrassing, blame-the-victim response of the national press to Theresa Spence and Idle No More.  As Mr Sinister tweets:

Having looked at both the government and native positions, the media has decided who the real victims are here....It's the media #idlenomore
— Mrsinister (@mrsinisterlefty) January 11, 2013

Playing games

It worries me to see games being played over something so important. If Spence follows through on her threat not to attend the hard-won meeting with Harper just because the Governor General isn't there then she is mistaking form for substance.
David Johnston is a nice old man in a suit who lives in a castle and makes speeches.
The only two people who matter at this meeting and who can actually get something done here are Shawn Atleo [corrected] and Stephen Harper.

Says it all, really

From the Freeway Blogger:

Another Theodoric of York moment

So, Harper is going to meet next week with Aboriginal chiefs, including Theresa Spence.
Maybe this time he won't just snarl about how Aboriginal people should just shut up and be grateful for all those schools and houses and social programs.
Maybe this time he will understand that politicians cannot continue to drive wedges between the peoples of Canada.
Maybe this time he will actually show some leadership toward a federal-provincial-municipal effort to develop a 2013 version of the Kelowna Accord to improve the education, employment and living conditions of Aboriginal peoples across the nation, to embrace a new partnership for shared resource development, and to inspire Canadians toward a new paradigm with Aboriginal people which would ....
Naaaaaaaahhh!
Sorry, but I just don't believe Stephen Harper is capable of this kind of leadership, and neither is anyone in his cabinet.

Harper just doesn't get it

Even the National Post is asking Harper to get off his high horse and meet with Teresa Spence before he loses all moral authority to lead the country:

Harper should have met with Spence immediately, nipping her movement in the bud. Doing so now will be deemed a climb-down. Nevertheless, he must do so. The alternative — to allow this woman to put her life in jeopardy, and perhaps die, for the sake of preserving political pride — cannot be contemplated.

The parallel I am remembering now is Cindy Sheehan -- George Bush came out of their 2005 confrontation looking cowardly and weak, and then Hurricane Katrina finished him off.

And now for something completely different

The Atlantic has an article about Monty Python as The Beatles of Comedy:

It’s a pity that the word irreverent has lost its weight, so that it’s come to seem a mere synonym for cheeky. The Pythons were irreverent in the deepest sense. They had automatic respect for nothing. Everything was fit matter for comedy: religion, national differences, cannibalism, Hitler, torture, death, crucifixion. They created a parallel world in which nothing was serious. They were like boys: they not only weren’t afraid; they didn’t know they should be afraid.

Happy New Year

I'm home with the flu and a weird rash on my arm this new year's eve -- though we usually don't go out anyway, just have family and friends in and I cook chicken livers and bacon -- but not this year.  So we've been enjoying the photos of New Year around the world.
UPDATE: It's shingles so I am being treated for that]

Tokyo


Sydney


Myanmar


Moscow



Athens


Paris


Edinburgh


London


New York


Couldn't find any Canadian photos yet...

Great line of the day

Sixth Estate on racist bullshit:

... the people presently braying that we get rid of the Indian Act and “make the Indians” modernize are doing exactly the same thing as the people who passed the Indian Act in the first place: saying that we know what’s best for aboriginal people in this country, and we’re going to provide it for them, whether they want it or not.
No. The way forward is through negotiation and compromise. It will be long, it will be painful, and there will have to be concessions on both sides.
It’s strange to find that the conservatives are my enemies in this. Usually, they insist that big government is never the answer, that people should be allowed to decide for themselves rather than having their choices dictated to them by the state, and that this country upholds the rule of law and the importance of tradition rather than strictly doing what seems expedient in the moment.
Except, apparently, when it comes to aboriginal affairs.