He'll get high with a little help from his friends

We've see Harper the Kitten Whisperer, then Harper as Mr. Blue Sweater and the Piano Man. Now he's becoming the Great Humanitarian.
But using the world's poor as a photo backdrop to raise poll numbers at home has triggered everyone's gag reflex. And in fact, this might well backfire on Harper if his cabinet uses it to justify CIDA funding for pro-lifers.
Steve V. sums up the issue:

It actually makes you angry on one level, the way this Prime Minister is clearly manipulating genuine human plight for NAKED partisan advantage. That said, I do find it somewhat refreshing that Harper's new projection, the great international humanitarian, is basically going over like a lead balloon, the disconnect so striking to border on embarrassing.. . .
Here's my cynical take on the chronology, which I'd wager is BANG ON.
Serious political problems at home, plummeting support that has sent shock waves through the PMO, completely derailing their ENTIRE winter and spring strategy, which was supposed to set the stage for electoral bliss. In the midst of the hammering the Conservatives were taking, a natural disaster occurred. The government responded with opportunistic zeal (I'm sure there was a genuine component, but only a fool doesn't consider "the wheels turning" in the PMO), high profile photo ops, swamping the media, seeing this event as the channel changer they desperately wanted.
The PMO saw the positive press for their Haiti response, which SUDDENLY produced this epiphany- we can re brand this Prime Minister as a humanitarian, taking a lead on the world stage, an advocate for the disadvantaged. Never mind, that all policies to date either contradicted the new messaging and/or demonstrated COMPLETE AND UTTER INDIFFERENCE, the PMO plowed ahead with the notion, cobbling together new initiatives. It was all political calculus, but this PMO believe if you say it, they will come, any level of true historical inspection a temporary obstacle.

Curiouser and curiosier

Four wingnuts wearing phone company costumes were arrested the other day for trying to bug the offices of Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu.
Stupid, huh? When a Landrieu staffer asked for their ID, they said they left it in the truck.

The U.S. Marshal's Service apprehended all four men shortly thereafter.

Now they're saying they were actually just trying to investigate whether her phones were busy or not.
Well, this explanation makes even less sense.
I smell a barking fish here, or a smoking gun or something.
Initially, all the attention was focused on James O'Keefe, the guy who played a pimp to sting ACORN last year. And the news stories also mentioned Robert Flanagan, 24, who is the son of the acting US attorney for the Western District of Louisana.
Blogger Lindsay Beyerstein has pieced together some background on another of the gang that couldn't bug straight

One Stan Dai was listed as the Assistant Director of the The Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence (ICCAE) at Trinity (Washington) University. . . . Stan Dai spoke about torture and terrorism last June at a "CIA day" organized by the Junior Statesmen Summer School at Georgetown. The program included a field trip to the CIA and lectures at Georgetown the next day, according this event program I found online. As we know, Dai served as the assistant director of a program dedicated to steering young people into careers in intelligence. Get this: according to the flier, Adam Brandon, the press secretary of FreedomWorks (Dick Armey's town hall mob outfit) was on the same program.
. . . Prior to that, he served as the Operations Officer of a Department of Defense irregular warfare fellowship program.

And the plot sickens. A commenter at Emptywheel's post on this issue says:

Dai’s co-conspirator Flanagan was on a similar track.
Flanagan’s resume indicates he is enrolled at the Missouri State University’s Department of Defense and Strategic Studies. This curious institution is in Fairfax, VA (not in Missouri). It is headed by William Van Cleave, another neocon figure (a member of Wolfowitz’ Team B!). It graduates 15 people a year. And it is next door to NIPP (National Institute of Public Policy).

In a later post, Beyerstein digs into Flanagan's resume a little more -- turns out he has interned for two Republican politicians and claimed that he "briefed legislative staff on areas of national security and international relations."
So these guys have spent years thinking of themselves as intelligence operatives and national security experts.
This makes even more ridiculous the explanation of the incident as an investigation of busy phones.
Does anyone remember how low-level the Watergate burglars were, and how stupid the whole thing appeared to be at first?
I'm just sayin...

Give it back to Steve Fonyo

Rev. Paperboy calls bullshit to the decision to take away Steve Fonyo's Order of Canada and so do I:

I still think this is unfair, hypocritical and just plain mean-spirited. . . .Admittedly Fonyo has not led an exemplary life since he was awarded the Order at age 18, but he was not given the award for the life he was going to lead or for his ongoing contributions to Canada - he was given the award for finishing what Terry Fox started, running across the country on an artificial leg to raise awareness of and money for cancer research.

And if getting into legal trouble or behaving disreputably is grounds for rescinding this award, the Rev. asks, what about Conrad Black and Garth Drabinsky, not to mention the former Prime Minister who accepted envelopes of cash in hotel rooms?

UPDATE: And Guy Lafleur was convicted of perjury last year.

Just for fun

A peculiar but compelling countdown

Great line of the day

Andrew Sullivan writes a profound post about Obama's State of the Union speech and what it means for the future of the United States:

I've lived in Washington for twenty years. I saw in Obama the real hope that something constructive could emerge from the corruption and decline of the recent past. I saw last night the civil tone that marks a responsible politics, rather than the glib cynicism and mock heroism that has marked us in much of the new millennium . . .
Last night, I saw one of the few men left able to see the depth of the crisis and not lose faith in this country's ability to overcome it.

Emphasis mine.

"You're from the 60s!"

I've always regretted that they had to call the reclusive author in Field of Dreams "Terrence Mann" instead of J.D. Salinger, though having him played by James Earl Jones instead of, say, Dennis Hopper, was what made that movie.
Anyway, I love this scene in particular, and always thought this was likely what J.D. Salinger would have said, too -- "Oh my God, you're from the 60s! Out, back to the 60s, back!"



Who knows, maybe he did actually say this to W.P. Kinsella.

Dirty Harry meets Rain Man

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

Democrats on parade

I can't tell you how pissed off I am at the gutless congessional democrats who are scurrying away from health care reform as fast as their little feet can scamper.
Here's their plan for the nine months, until the midterm elections:
1. Do nothing controversial anymore
2. Blame Republicans for nothing getting done.
They don't have a plan for the nine months after that, because these lucky duckies might well lose their majority in the House, and they won't have to worry about governing anymore.
Then the Republicans will get to spend the next two years holding hearings on Obama's birth certificate.
I can hardly wait.
So right now we're still reading about all sorts of magic pony 11-dimensional chess scenarios from the progressive blogs as they frantically try to save the democrats from themselves.
The latest is to get 51 Senators to pass a reconciliation bill to revise the worst features of the health care reform plan that very same Senate voted to support a month ago, and then the House is supposed to vote in favour of both the Senate bill and the bill that guts it. And thusly, health care reform will be achieved!!
Yeah, that'll happen.

Pathetic

This is laughable -- Jane Taber reports on the list of Conservative activities today which supposedly demonstrate just how darned busy the Cons are, working for Canadians.
And just about all of the 30 or so events listed are variations on ministerial press conferences, the type of event which could easily have been scheduled anytime in the last week or the next -- and would have been, if the Commons had actually been open as scheduled.
How dumb do they think we are?

"No to perogie" protest

25,000.
That's the estimate of how many Canadians gathered on a cold and snowy Saturday to protest Harper's prorogue of Parliament. Here are some photos from today's protest across Canada

Vancouver


Toronto




Ottawa


Edmonton - home of the "no to perogie" sign


Saskatoon

Saturday Morning Cartoon

And now for something completely different: A History of Evil by Norweigian animator Ole Magnus Saxegård


h/t Drawn.

Not a throwdown

Not a throwdown this week with POGGE -- just me chiming in with another Kate and Anna McGarrigle song, the Log Driver's Waltz

Saskatchewan anti-prorogue rallies on Saturday

Just checked and Google lists more than 2,000 news stories about Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, including lots about the protests tomorrow.
Regardless of how the Cons keep trying to spin this prorogue as routine and no big deal, my son points out that Harper himself changed the meaning of prorogation in Canada when he used it last December to save his government. Reap what you sow, hoist by his own petard, and all that.
Here's a neat map of all of the anti-prorogue rallies tomorrow -- there's even going to be one at Trafalgar Square in London.
Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament posts this information about Saskatchewan rallies on Saturday:

SASKATOON, SK RALLY
Date: Saturday, January 23
Time: 1:00 pm local time
Location: City Hall
RALLY PLANNING GROUP
http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?ref=sb#/group.php?gid=264977381210

PRINCE ALBERT, SK
Date: Saturday, January 23
Time: 1:30 pm
Location: PA Union Centre, 107-8th St. E.
co-sponsored by the Prince Albert Chapter of The Council of Canadians and the PA and District Labour Council

REGINA, SK
RALLY
Date: Saturday, January 23
Time: 1:00 pm
Location: Scarth Street Mall
RALLY PLANNING GROUP
http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?ref=sb#/group.php?gid=253266656648

By the way, the group now has more than 210,000 members. Considering how derisive some of the Cons were when the group first started, what occurs to me is "Some chicken. Some neck."
And in other news, the Liberals are giving grades to various damage control strategies being tried by Conservative MPs. Here's one that got an "A":

Conservative MP Ed Holder picked his constituents’ most frequent complaints for his “Holder’s Happenings” newsletter, including:
* “This is a dictatorial Prime Minister. MPs aren’t allowed to speak their mind. Why did he do this?”
* “What happens to Bills now before Parliament?”
* “You’ve shut down democracy. What’s not getting done in Ottawa?”
* “This just gives MPs more vacation!”
* “Won’t you be using this time to go to the Olympics?” and,
* “You don’t work if you’re not in Ottawa.”

Oh, I'll bet the Tory spin doctors are pretty pissed off about that.

Great line of the day

Jon Chait tells the democrats don't panic!

The difference between the parties is that Republicans ignore the establishment’s advice. After Obama’s election, conventional wisdom insisted that the GOP would have to move to the center. Instead the party moved further right. And whatever the policy merits, it has worked politically. If Republicans had cooperated more with Obama, it would have given him bipartisan accomplishments and made him even more popular.
The GOP’s ability to ignore establishment nostrums in the face of defeat is its great electoral strength. Democrats, by contrast, have a congenital tendency to panic. Abandoning health care reform after they’ve already paid whatever political cost that comes from voting for it in both houses would be suicide. Even if Coakley loses, the House could pass the Senate bill as is, avoiding the need to break a filibuster, and tinker with it in a reconciliation bill that can’t be filibustered. The only thing preventing the Democrats from following through would be sheer panic.

Emphasis mine.
However, as I predicted, House Democrats are already backing away from health care reform --- cowards! I just hope calmer heads will prevail.
Along those lines, Josh Marshall lays down the challenge for Obama:

This is the biggest testing time the president has yet faced. It could be a key turning point in his presidency. Over the next forty-eight hours the president is going to come under withering pressure to walk away from reform. It'll come from the left and the right, and in various different flavors. It will come from shocking directions. The president is going to have to find a way to say, No. We're doing this. He'll need to stand down a lot of cowardly and foolish people in his own party. He'll have to stand down the vast and formless force of establishment punditry and just say, No. We're going to do this. And he's going to have to make the case to the public, not necessarily convince all those who have doubts about health care reform but make clear that he thinks this is the right direction for the country and because he thinks it's the right thing to do that he's going to make it happen.

Dream on, FDL

Jon Walker at Firedoglake writes

If Coakley loses in Massachusetts, I don’t see how health care reform passes without reviving reconciliation, and, by default, the public option.

These people are really living in a dreamworld if they think a Democratic loss in Massacheusetts would lead to a positive result for health care reform in the United States.
If Coakley loses, then health care reform in the United States doesn't pass at all.
Thanks to the teaparty wingnuts last summer and the progressive push-back this winter, reform is already barely alive now. Reid and Pelosie stitched together a very small majority to pass what they have got now.
If Coakley loses, her loss will be blamed on HCR and the whole initiative will again be radioactive for your Democratic politicians. The talking heads would talk about nothing else for the next two weeks except for how foolish Democrats would be to continue with such a loser initiative, so bad that it will cause even the bluest of the blue states to vote against a Democrat. So then the Democrats in the House and in the Senate will be too scared to pass any health bill at all -- not the Senate bill, not reconciliation, nothing.
Bye-bye health care reform.