Outraged innocence and plaintive pathos

If you sensed a certain lack of enthusiasm from the Harper Cons about their own decision to approve the Northern Gateway pipeline, you were right.

A day after accepting a review panel’s recommendation to impose more than 200 conditions on the Northern Gateway project, a government spokesman is now insisting the Conservatives have not approved the pipeline.
Instead, it’s just “a maybe,” a spokesman for Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford says.

@jbourbeau Inaccurate. Government support dependent on proponent meeting 209 conditions imposed by independent regulator. It's a 'maybe'.

— ChrisMcCluskey (@ChrisMcCluskey) June 18, 2014

So when the protests gear up, this is how the Harper Cons are going to play it -- outraged innocence and plaintive pathos.
They will stamp their little feet and proclaim how we have hurt their delicate fee-fees if we dare to claim they approved Northern Gateway.

The coming partition of Iraq

The War Nerd explains what is happening in Iraq -- basically, the country is being violently partitioned into Sunni, Shiite and Kurd countries and there's just about nothing anyone can realistically do, or perhaps should do, to stop this from happening:

ISIS is a sectarian Sunni militia — that’s all. A big one, as militias go, with something like 10,000 fighters. Most of them are Iraqi, a few are Syrian, and a few hundred are those famous “European jihadis” who draw press attention out of all relation to their negligible combat value. The real strength of ISIS comes from its Chechen fighters, up to a thousand of them. A thousand Chechens is a serious force, and a terrifying one if they’re bearing down on your neighborhood. Chechens are the scariest fighters, pound-for-pound, in the world.
But we’re still talking about a conventional military force smaller than a division. That’s a real but very limited amount of combat power. What this means is that, no matter how many scare headlines you read, ISIS will never take Baghdad, let alone Shia cities to the south like Karbala. It won’t be able to dent the Kurds’ territory to the north, either. All it can do—all it has been doing, by moving into Sunni cities like Mosul and Tikrit—is to complete the partition of Iraq begun by our dear ex-president Bush in 2003. 

Yes, it makes sense, though this is not a part of the world that I can easily understand. I keep remembering Robert X. Cringley's description of his experience in Teheran in 1986 when he saw just one horrific battle in the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War. He wrote this in 2004, just after Bush was reelected:

I...decided to go see the war since I had been in Beirut and Angola, but had never seen trench warfare, which is what I was told they had going in Iran. So I took a taxi to the front, introduced myself to the local commander, who had gone, as I recall, to Iowa State, and spent a couple days waiting for the impending human wave attack. That attack was to be conducted primarily with 11-and 12-year-old boys as troops, nearly all of them unarmed. There were several thousand kids and their job was to rise out of the trench, praising Allah, run across No Man's Land, be killed by the Iraqi machine gunners, then go directly to Paradise, do not pass GO, do not collect 200 dinars. And that's exactly what happened in a battle lasting less than 10 minutes. None of the kids fired a shot or made it all the way to the other side. And when I asked the purpose of this exercise, I was told it was to demoralize the cowardly Iraqi soldiers.

It was the most horrific event I have ever seen, and I once covered a cholera epidemic in Bangladesh that killed 40,000 people.

Waiting those two nights for the attack was surreal. Some kids acted as though nothing was wrong while others cried and puked. But when the time came to praise Allah and enter Paradise, not a single boy tried to stay behind.

Now put this in a current context. What effective limit is there to the number of Islamic kids willing to blow themselves to bits? There is no limit, which means that a Bush Doctrine can't really stand in that part of the world.

So Tony Blair and Paul Wolfowitz and Bill Kristol are again trying to tell everybody how America should pacify Iraq?  Ain't gonna happen.

Liberals win in Ontario, hooray!

I haven't written any posts about the Ontario election campaign because I haven't been following it very closely, but now that the results are in, here are some random observations.
First, I am just so glad to see the Liberals win in Ontario, and the Conservatives lose. I sincerely hope this will mark the last time we will see a political party in Canada ever think it can get elected by threatening to throw people out of work.
On a personal basis, I am glad that Kathleen Wynne won, just to show once and for all that people will vote for a woman who is gay -- and the crowd cheered when Wynne invited her partner to join her on stage during her victory speech.
There will be lots of analysis for the NDP, but it seems that people blamed the NDP for causing the election in the first place, over a budget that was perhaps not outstanding but was at least OK, and they also accepted Wynne's argument that a vote for Howarth was a vote for Hudak.
The polling companies are going to have to look at their "likely voter" models -- even just before the election, the polls showed Wynne and Hudak in a dead heat, though maybe it will be found that the Liberals were able to use the Hudak threat to get their vote out.
Oh, and David Walmsley, editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail, should be ashamed of himself for fucking with his editorial board and then lying about it. I agree with Dawg

When a party tries to send opposing voters down a blind alley, the same party covertly attempts a “decline your ballot” strategy to give itself an electoral edge, and the editor-in-chief of a major newspaper essentially lies to the public (and is defended for doing so), something has gone badly awry with the way we do politics. Democracy is fragile, requiring the people themselves to make it operational. When they are deliberately misled by party and press alike, seemingly with impunity, we’re heading down a nasty slippery slope.

Happy dogs

There's nothing like a happy dog.  If you're ever feeling a little down, just watch these videos:



And of course the story of little Fiona:

Tweet of the day

June 7, 2014—the Greatest Comment in the History of the Internet has been posted. pic.twitter.com/rxkzXdq01c

— Cosmo%20Catalano (@cosmocatalano) June 7, 2014

Here is a larger version of the comment, in case you can't read it:

Get it - Got it - Good

So let me make sure I have this straight.
Even though Nigel Wright did give Mike Duffy $90,000 to pay off his Senate debt, and even though it is illegal to bribe a senator, the RCMP did not bring charges against Wright because...
well, because firstly, it wasn't actually a bribe anyway because what could Duffy possibly have given Wright in exchange?
And because secondly, the payment would have been legal as long as Harper had approved it.
Or at long as Wright BELIEVED that Harper had approved it.
Though apparently there could be no actual evidence that Harper had approved it since Harper knew nothing, NOTHING, about it and the RCMP has seen "no evidence to suggest that the Prime Minister was personally involved in the minutiae of these matters."
Now, describing $90,000 as "minutiae" strikes me as a bit of a stretch, particularly during last spring when there was a perfect storm of media coverage of everything Duffy all day every day.
But never mind. I think I've got it.

Told ya so!

When Julian Fantino was first appointed to the Veterans Affairs post -- eleven months ago! -- most of us progressives agreed that this was a disastrous decision by Harper.
Sure 'nuff -- now everybody realizes it:

With his ineptitude, walking away from veterans seeking a meeting, ignoring the plaintive cries of the spouse of a veteran suffering from PTSD, he has raised the profile of frustrated veterans and has single-handedly cemented a perception of an unflinching, uncaring, government disrespecting those who served this country with honour.
In the House of Commons, he has responded to questions of compassion by reading talking points.
Harper inexplicably placed a man with decades of experience with the regimental, hard-line, top-down approach to policing in a portfolio where he needed someone exuding sincerity, concern and a common touch.

Try sincerity, for a change

The Harper Cons must be wondering, what do we have to do to satisfy these guys?
After revealing the inadequate jury-rigged process which lead up to the Nadon appointment, now the Globe and Mail is describing Harper's new made-in-Quebec process as less than ideal:

The provincial Justice Minister was proudly telling the National Assembly that they had established a precedent, charting “the course for things to come.” Federal sources, however, were saying the opposite, and insisting that giving this kind of power to a provincial government was just a one-off, and not to be repeated. We need some clarity, please.

Actually, it is sincerity that is needed.
If the Harper Cons were making a sincere and honest attempt to find two best possible Supreme Court justices, then Canadians would be fine with whatever process they decided to use.
What we are seeing here now is only a profound cynicism, with politics as the only consideration -- that and childish pouting from the PMO, whose fee-fees are hurt by all the bad press so they're taking their ball and going home.
Whether Canada actually finds two outstanding justices in the Quebec list will be merest chance.
But you know what they say about sincerity -- if you can fake that, you've got it made.

Fixing the TFWP? Fuhgeddaboudit

Tasha Kheiridin at iPolitics knows how to fix the TFWP.
The only problem is, the Harper Cons are too incompetent to do what she suggests:

Solutions to the abuse of temporary foreign worker programs ... should be to ensure that foreign workers don’t serve as cheap labour, but only as labour of last resort....
This means proper enforcement. It means inspectors going undercover to verify that hotels and restaurants are actually unable to meet their needs from the pool of local domestic workers. It means unscheduled visits to check on farm workers’ and nannies’ living conditions. It means prosecuting employers who abuse their employees, and denying them access to the programs, while protecting affected workers so they do not fear retribution.
This type of enforcement, and fair treatment of employees, costs money. More, one suspects, than would be covered by the $275 fee now charged to bring in a temporary foreign worker. That cost should be borne by the employer, not the taxpayer. Those who complain such moves would destroy their business, or expand the nanny state, should remember that these programs are not a right. They’re creatures of the state — and if the state can’t run them properly, they should be shut down.

This makes a lot of sense.
And its never going to happen, not as long as Harper and Kenny are fumbling around -- they think management is telling people to shut up.
As Ralph Goodale says, this government's policy is chaos.

In HofC-QP: Now HarperCons are suggesting TFWs working side-by-side with Canadians should be paid more -- govt's policy is in chaos (2/2)

— Ralph Goodale (@RalphGoodale) May 26, 2014

#YesAllWomen is for us all

The power of Twitter and of its 140-character stories is now clear to me for the first time -- the #YesAllWomen hashtag  Here are some examples of why it is is the most important thing you'll read today

"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." - Margaret Atwood #yesallwomen

— Jen Kirkman (@JenKirkman) May 25, 2014

Because women are taught to carry our keys like a weapon in case we're attacked in a parking lot. #YesAllWomen

— annie cardi (@anniecardi) May 24, 2014

#YesAllWomen because I used to have to hide my car at a relatives to keep my ex from constantly slashing my tires.

— MMG ♕ (@megantheg) May 26, 2014

#YesAllWomen because statistically speaking out of my group of close friends at least 4 of them will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime

— Julia Janlynn (@juliannajanlynn) May 26, 2014

#YesAllWomen because the question "why didn't she leave" is asked more than "why did he hit her"

— Donna Fitzer (@ThatGirlDonna) May 26, 2014

#YesAllWomen because when i told my dad i don't dress for sexual attention he replied with "who else would you dress for? yourself?"

— jazzle (@hopeloze) May 26, 2014

My college-bound daughters must have weapons, self-defense classes, use the buddy system & know never take a drink from a boy. #YesAllWomen

— Amy MacKinnon (@AmyMacKinnon) May 26, 2014

The #yesallwomen hashtag is filled with hard, true, sad and angry things. I can empathise & try to understand & know I never entirely will.

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) May 25, 2014

#YesAllWomen
If this scale seems logical to you, you're part of the problem. pic.twitter.com/cWL9qLXA9d

— Atheist EDU (@atheistedu) May 26, 2014

Today is Towel Day

Towel Day - Celebrating the life and work of Douglas Adams:

A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

Blazing Saddles is 40 years old!

Mel Brooks on 'Blazing Saddles' at 40, Richard Pryor's Genius, and Keeping His Edge at 87 - The Moviefone Blog:

All the executives at Warner Bros. had seen the movie. And their head of domestic distribution, Leo Greenfield, God rest his soul, said, "Let's bury the movie. It's embarrassing. It's disgusting. We can't put the WB shield on this. Let's write off the $2 million budget. I've never done this before, but I beg you, let's bury this movie." And God bless him, John Calley, who's gone now too, said, "Let's have a screening."


Right from the first scene, they never stopped laughing. Me as the Jewish Indian, they went nuts. People were running up and down the aisles. Ted Ashley, who ran Warner Bros. at the time, took me into the manager's office, and he had a legal pad with notes, and he said, "Cut out the farting! That's out. Can't punch a horse. Can't hit an old lady! No sir! Can't use the N-word. Verboten! It's all out." He had 22 notes. And when he left, John Calley was with me, and I crumpled up the notes and threw them into the waste paper basket. We just went with the audience's reaction, which was stu-PEN-dous! The manager of the theater said he thought there was an earthquake, he'd never heard the place rock so much. And it went on to do exceedingly well."

How to get rich

So I noticed there are now more than 13,000 books on Amazon about how to make money by investing.

It made me recall the singularly priceless piece of investment advice which my father gave to me, lo these many years ago:

Buy low. Sell high.

Follow this advice, and you are bound to be as rich as I am.

This is why we can't permit another abortion law in this country

Because when politicians get the chance, they will spend endless time passing more and more ridiculous and picayune anti-choice laws.
Like this one in Missouri last week:

requiring a woman to wait 72 hours from the time of her initial medical consultation to have an abortion (current law mandates a 24-hour waiting period)

Or these ones in Louisiana

HB 388... would promote back-alley abortions by forcing the closure of three of the state's five clinics as a consequence of requiring their physicians to have admitting privileges at a hospital within a 30-mile radius that has obstetrical-gynecological services....
• HB 1274: This bill, already passed unanimously by the Louisiana House, would mandate that a pregnant brain-dead woman be kept on life support until the fetus develops far enough to be viable.
• HB 1262 mandates that physicians or other qualified persons provide a pamphlet to women seeking abortions. The pamphlet cannot come from an abortion provider but it can come from someone who counsels women not to obtain abortions. It would list the "serious psychological impacts, including severe emotional distress and mental and behavioral health afflictions" that supposedly accompany abortions.
• HB 305 prohibits "Knowingly providing any materials of any kind to school personnel or any other person for viewing by or distribution to students at a public elementary or secondary school, or at a charter school that receives state funding, regardless of the topic or viewpoint of such materials, if the materials are created by or bear the identifying mark of an organization, individual, or any other entity, or of an affiliate of any such organization, individual, or entity, that performs elective abortion. ..." That's right. Even if the topic is how to cook a cherry pie, anybody affiliated with an abortion provider or using materials developed by an abortion provider cannot make a presentation of the contents at a public or charter school.

And then the pro-choice activists have to spend their lives fighting these idiotic laws in the courts, where they are almost invariably overturned.  We don't need this in Canada.
Our politicians in Canada already waste enough time with pointless political stunts that do nothing but harass people.
Canada doesn't need to spend its time talking about another abortion law.

Fun for the weekend

From io9 - This animated short is the best 10-second adventure you'll take today: