May the fourth be with you

We even drove past the comic book store today and saw a bunch of people in costume, but we still forgot that today was Star Wars Day because May the Fourth and all that.
Checking You-Tube, there seem to be an extraordinarily large number of Star Wars videos using Legos, I don't know why.



And don't forget Patton Owsalt's rant extraordinare, too.

How much is $3.1 billion?

It's hard to comprehend a figure like $3.1 billion.
Here's some examples of what us ordinary Canadian mortals could buy if we had this amount of money to spend:

62 million bottles of really good wine
Two hundred thousand cars
Eight thousand pretty nice houses
Pretty good salaries for four thousand people a year for ten years, plus the daycare costs for their children

Or, to put it in another way that we're all thinking about this time of year

Every penny of what me and more than 25,000 other Canadians paid in federal income taxes last year.

So that's how much the Harper Cons lost track of when they were frittering away those "anti-terrorism" dollars on airports and police and databases ... and gazebos, don't forget the gazebos ...

It was always Paul for me

We got tickets today for Paul McCartney in Regina in August -- as teenagers growing up in Saskatchewan, we never thought we would get to see him in person.


We're just a wee bit older now, of course, but I can hardly wait.

Pro-bullying legislation

The Cons have passed a law that allows police to bully anyone they want to:

The law will allow police to detain people pre-emptively and hold them for as long as three days without charges and would give authorities power to compel testimony through so-called investigative hearings at which people are brought before judges to answer questions.

Under Paul Martin, the police never used these powers. Under Vic Toews and the Harper Cons, does anybody think they'll be so careful and circumspect? The record so far isn't very reassuring.

Well, thank goodness that's over

Was it just me or did the United States completely lose their mind over the last week?

Shortly after the blasts occurred, the tabloid [New York Post] falsely claimed that 12 people had been killed and a Saudi national was in custody; and then, to add insult to injury, they ran a front page photo which libelously depicted a high school track star as a federally-sought suspect.
The Post then continued to stand by their reporting long after it had been proven wrong.
Meanwhile, on CNN, Wolf Blitzer and the "best political team on television" once again found themselves unable to keep up with a breaking news story that doesn't involve a poop ship—and were subsequently commended by their boss for it.
And lest you think the shit show was confined to old media, allow me to disabuse you of that notion.
On popular websites like Reddit and 4Chan, amateur detectives conducted a crowdsourced investigation which wrongly named a missing college student as the wanted culprit; but that didn't stop them from congratulating themselves on their sleuthing

And by the way, the Czech Republic and Chechnya are not the same place...

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.