Very strange

Strange days indeed

Priorities

Sigh.
The United States can be so mixed up at times -- I wouldn't be surprised if they start passing laws to limit the sale of pressure cookers, even though they can't seem to pass any laws about limiting guns.

A message from Iraq to Boston

These 2 Boys Have A Message For Boston, And It's Kind Of Beautiful:



It made me wonder if anyone in North America had ever thought of sending a message to all of the cities and towns and neighbourhoods in Iraq which have been devastated by IEDs.

Trudeaumania part deux

Canada's interminable Liberal leadership race is finally just about over.
And Justin is going to win:

The outcome is pretty much a foregone conclusion: Justin Trudeau, eldest son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau and the party's undisputed rock star, is widely expected to win handily....Most party insiders — including realists in the five rival leadership camps — are privately predicting a comfortable first ballot win, with Trudeau taking anywhere from 60 to 80 per cent of the votes cast.

You mean all those so-called "news stories" I have been reading over the last several weeks about how there was going to be such a low vote turnout and how Joyce Murray or Martha Hall Findlay or somebody was going to come firing up from behind and sweep the race turned out to be based on nothing but horse race journaminalism, thin air and Tory spite?
Quel suprise!

"Those" people, Premier Wall?

Premier Wall gets called out by NDP leader Cam Broten for incoherent blather about gay people -- but of course Wall is not homophobic because some of his staff are gay or some gay person is nearby or freedom or something....
First Broten asked Wall about whether the Saskatchewan Education department website should mention gay-straight alliance groups in high schools, and Wall reacted by talking about religious freedom:

On Wednesday in question period, Wall said, "There are some other issues in (other) provinces that we've noted and I think we need to explore those issues with respect to the alliances. And I think specifically of religious schools .... We have to be concerned, and I hope the member is concerned, about the protection of freedom of religion, as well."

Then reporters asked Wall on Thursday whether he thought being gay was a choice and Wall reacted by talking about "those" and "some" who are "very close geographically":

"I really have not thought about it a lot. From everything I've heard from those, I know some who are very close geographically to us right now, no."
His staff later explained that he meant there are government staff members who are gay.

Broten got it right:

Broten expressed concern that "the premier has trouble saying 'gay' in question period, it sounds like."

Cats and dogs

From a commenter on Daily Kos

Great line of the day

A reader at Carolyn Hax provides one of the best summaries I have ever read about the vulnerability of poverty:

On feeling like the bad-luck fairy has moved in with you and is sleeping on your sofa:
People with plenty of money have crummy luck all the time, too, but it’s just an inconvenience for them. My parents are millionaires. Last week their heater, car, and garage door broke. So what?
If they were poorer, each problem would’ve caused two more problems. People living on the edge are vulnerable to every mishap in a way that is catastrophic. It’s very hard to break the cycle. You need a string of good luck that lasts for years.
By the way, I’ve always tried to live within my means and got hit with the housing crisis in a perfect storm that reduced me to zero. So I’m not saying here that poorer people are doing something wrong; it’s just about having more than enough money to be able to recover.

Emphasis mine.

This Might Be The Best 35 Seconds Of Your Day

This will be the newest Youtube meme: This Might Be The Best 35 Seconds Of Your Day! - YouTube



I have no idea who, where or why, but its delightful.

Harper uses Chinese pandas to avoid Canadian people

Bob Rae on the TV last week, with a throwaway line to the press who asked him about the group of dissident Con MPs:

If they wore panda suits, maybe the Prime Minister would pay attention to them.

And Edstock at the Beaver gives us this great poster:



Again it was embarrassing to see how blatantly Harper and his handlers used the pandas to avoid meeting the Aboriginal walkers.  This CBC story describes the disgust which greeted Harper's cowardly decision.  A St. John's Telegram editorial says:

But take it out of the realm of politics and into the world of simple politeness — a group of young Canadians, aged 18 to 21, walked 1,600 kilometres through a Canadian winter to bring a message to Ottawa.
The least the prime minister could have done is put their effort on par with a photo-op with a pair of pandas.

Thousands of Canadians turned out to meet with the walkers when they arrived in Ottawa:


More Aboriginal walkers are on their way to Ottawa.

UPDATE:  Just found this Gable cartoon, too:

Hello darkness -- the powerful anti-pipeline commercial

From the Coastal First Nations: The Sound of Silence: CFN release commercial reminding British Columbians of Dangers of Oil tankers.  Paul Simon let them use his song for this cause.



Here is the CFN report on the impact of an oil spill due to the Northern Gateway project.

Great line of the day

d r i f t g l a s s writes about the buildup in the United States to the Iraq War, and flags one aspect I had not understood or appreciated before -- how many in the media and the Washington beltway used the war fever as an excuse to bash the leftists who opposed it:

When the crisis came, many good people were misled by war criminals who lied and lied and lied and turned those good people's sense of duty and their faith in their civic institutions against them. And from my vantage point as a deeply flawed and failed human being, the good people who were defrauded and terrorized into making a mistake do not require anyone's forgiveness.
But when that crisis came and they were given complete freedom of movement, professional Conservative public intellectuals took that opportunity to whip out a gun, leap up on the table and use their privileged positions in the public square to threaten to waste any Hippie who opened his fucking pie-hole.

And that I cannot forgive.

Words we need to remember here in Canada, as the Harper Cons lead the bashing of Trudeau and Mulcair and anyone else who opposes their "action plan" BS.

Our national Harper headache

How often do the Harper Cons send out a press release that uses the phrase “Harper Government"?
About eight times a day.
Yes, its true -- every four hours, just like a headache pill, some poor civil servant is emailing the media another "Harper Government announces..." missive:

..between September 21 and December 11 (when the question was tabled), the federal government sent out 449 press releases in English using the phrase Harper Government.
So, about eight times every weekday, a government organ issues an official communication branded with the name of our prime minister. You can double the figure if you include the French version.
These were no mere passing references: Of these 449 press releases, I counted 412 slugged with a title that began “Harper Government….” followed by a suitably impressive verb, such as “helps,” “invests,” “boosts,” “supports,” “appoints,” “highlights,” “encourages,” and “commemorates,” among dozens of others.
My favourites:
“Harper Government Helps Gluten-Free Bakery Deliver New Product Line,”
“Harper Government Highlights Role of East Coast Privateers in the War of 1812,”
“Harper Government Showcases Agriculture at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair,”
“Harper Government Agreement Will Bring Versatile New Oat Variety Closer to Market,”
and “Harper Government Supports the 2012 Women’s Wrestling Championships.”

Does Harper think we will forget who is the Prime Minister if the PMO doesn't keep reminding us?
Or maybe its just another attempt by the staff to make Harper easier to live with.
Remember Rick Mercer's story during the prorogue crisis of 2008?

...while the nation wondered if the government would fall, junior Conservative staffers were ordered to be outside 24 Sussex Drive by six-fifteen in the morning. Their job was to stand there in the dark, with the temperature well below zero, and wait for the PM to appear...to applaud, wave and sing "O Canada" loudly as the motorcade pulled out of the gates and drove Stephen Harper to work.
Harper, by all accounts, actually believed that the young people were there of their own accord and represented a groundswell of love and support for his actions. Staffers in the Prime Minister's Office know that he is easier to handle when being applauded and not questioned. This way, nobody has to suffer at the hands of the inconsolable bear.

As long as they keep churning out "Harper government" press releases, maybe nobody has to stand around waving at him on cold Ottawa mornings anymore.

Government of the Blue Meanies

This is so amazingly mean-spirited and petty, its actually embarrassing to read.
In October, 2011, the Harper Youth in the Privy Council Office worked all weekend just to disappear Parks Canada's participation in announcing a new national park.
And the adults who run Parks Canada had no choice except to listen to these know-nothing jerks and twist their ceremony into knots to try to do what the Harper Cons wanted:

...the carefully wrought plan started to unravel days before the event when a vetting team at the Privy Council Office began to pick apart the agenda, the news release and two background documents... officials demanded a raft of changes, many of them designed to quash Parks Canada’s identity at the event.
A so-called “backgrounder” for handout to news media, for example, erased the agency’s name altogether....
“No Parks Canada banner — the brown and yellow is ugly. Please stop using this,” an unidentified official demanded in a note....A PCO note said to purge all three Parks Canada officials from the dais, and to find a politician to be the MC...Harper’s central communications unit also demanded unspecified changes to Kent’s prepared speech, but the minister did not accept them.
In the end, Parks Canada CEO Alan Latourelle had to sit the in audience, not on the stage...

In a courageous show of defiance, they used the banner anyway.  I'll bet someone got fired for it.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

We saw Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers perform, and later attended a Liam Clancey concert when the group had broken up -- a memorable evening because afterwards we were part of the group that sat around with him and gassed about music and Ireland and Canadian beer.

Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem:

Good luck, Mike MacDonald

Mike MacDonald has had a liver transplant.
He has always been one of our favorite commedians -- hope he returns to good health and good form: