Great line of the day

Dawg:

conservatism isn't a politics. It's a diagnosis.

If Hillary Clinton was President

If Hillary Clinton was President today....
...the media would be talking about her failure to connect with ordinary voters, particularly men, because she's such a bitchy ball buster.
... there would be a Republican-financed Tea Party-type of movement, but it wouldn't be based on how Muslim-black the president is ("because he's really not one of us, you know"). Instead, it would be called the American Liberty movement (thus co-opting the "women's liberation" terminology) and it would be based on how mean and bitchy and ineffective the president is ("because that's the way women are, you know")
.... we would be seeing report after report about how everybody in the White House hates Bill, and how Bill is really running the country and telling Hillary what to do, and how they fight all the time behind the scenes. Oh, and there would be reporters on full-time 'Bill booty watch' assignment to catch him just glancing at any other woman. The tabloids would be having a field day revealing his secret love nests and linking him with every woman in Washington
... Vince Foster and the Arkansas land deals would be all the rage again. In fact, it would be a well-known fact in Republican circles that Bill and Hillary engineered the whole economic meltdown to cover up for how they and their Friends Of Bill and their Arkansas friends and their Hollywood friends made millions on the bailouts.
... Official Washington would have tut-tutted about everything connected to Chelsea's White House wedding. Sally Quinn would have been outraged at how pathetically classless the Clintons are. And how outrageous that Madame President picked an Oscar De La Renta gown-- he was born in the Dominican Republic, you know? And it showed far to much of her arms!
... self-proclaimed progressives would be pissed off at Hillary.
... and the media would be talking about how the Democrats were going to lose control of Congress at the mid-terms "just like Bill did" because of voter anger at Hillary.
In other words, business as usual.
(cross posted at Daily Kos)

Criminalization of dissent continues in Toronto

After a Toronto judge on Monday refused police and prosecutor attempts to rescind G20 protester Alex Hundert's bail, Hundert was arrested at 10:30 on Friday night for the "crime" of speaking to Ryerson students at a panel about "movement building and ongoing resistance to the G20 agenda".
Apparently, his previous bail condition about not "participating in public protest" now means that he is not supposed to say anything to anyone in public anymore.
Its getting pretty old, folks, watching Toronto police continue to justify their own violence during the G20 police riot by pretending that the G20 protesters are evil masterminds.

Great line of the day

Apropos of my previous post, John Cole says:

I will never understand Democrats. Ever. If the Democratic party was a football team, they wouldn’t need to schedule any games with other teams. They could just have their offense and defense attack each other all day.

Jane Hamsher is at it again

She just cannot stand that uppity, disrespectful Obama -- how dare he make a joke about something FireDogLake thinks is important!
As a commenter pointed out:

...on the day that FDL gets its most fervent wish that it has been bitching & moaning about for months and Elizabeth Warren is named a presidential adviser and head of the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection…Jane chooses to post about a perceived slight in a lighthearted speech by the president. It’s almost like the mission here is nurturing grievances rather than acknowledging that something that progressives wanted done by the administration, you know, GOT DONE. It’s almost like nothing that Obama does will ever be good enough for the former Hillary/Edwards/Dean/Kucinich/Nader/Any Given Backup Quarterback supporters around here who worked sooooo hard to elect Obama (ahem) because there will always be a movable goalpost to whine over or a bit of perceived disrespect to get all huffy about. Oh wait…that was the President’s point in the first place.

Oh, and how's that crusade to get Rahm Emmanuel fired working out for you and Grover?

Enjoy

And this one (which they won't let me embed.)

What's the matter with Tony Blair?

Thers sums up what is wrong with Tony Blair:

the more Tony Blair seems to have accepted the idea that SOMEONE needs to take on the mantle of Defender of the West, the more he comes across as a guy who Grima Wormtongue would have sneered at as too sycophantic & spineless. The stiff upper lip meets the quivering lower-lip sensing tongue. It's just embarrassing.

MS patients won't take No for an answer

MS patients, and their families, are obviously starting to have an effect on federal intransigence toward the blocked vein treatment for multiple sclerosis.
The party line which trashed even doing any research into the possible treatment is starting to crack. The organization Direct MS has now done an analysis which concludes that Canadian medical scientists whose research is supported by drug companies should not be the ones deciding whether research into a non-drug treatment for MS is justified:

This would be like asking oil company executives if we need a definitive study on climate change.

A new internet tradition

You're heard of jumping the shark, underpants gnomes, thrown under the bus, and even I am aware of all internet traditions.
Well, now we have "F**king the cow".
A new internet tradition is born and you were there.

"The morning will come when the world is mine"

Reading about the Tea Party Triumphant reminded me a bit of this:


Not to go all Godwin on you, of course, but there's a whiff of this in the States just now.

Great line of the day

In the Globe and Mail, Douglas Bell writes about why the G20 protesters should not have been arrested:

I’m willing to bet that Olivier Lanctot didn’t commit the crimes of which he is accused. What he is guilty of is being young and possibly naïve, of imagining that dissent requires no justification beyond the content of his own intellect and conscience. He is in short every parent’s son or daughter searching for a way of being; of asking the questions it takes a lifetime to answer. Criminalizing dissent the way the federal, provincial, and city authorities did during the G20 was more than just a temporary suspension of civil rights. It was a violation of the fundamental covenant between youth and experience. If we let this slide we will fail ourselves and our children.

Emphasis mine.

2?

You've got to be kidding!
Oh, well...

The stupid, it burns

I notice that Bush's Counterterrorism advisor, a dingbat named Fran Townsend. is appearing on CNN's State of the Union tomorrow.
I will always remember watching her say in 2006 that Bush's failure to capture Osama Bin Laden wasn't a failure at all --

"it's a success that hasn't occurred yet."

A convenient yet profound concept, really.

But will he listen?

So Conservative MPs are now supposed to tell Stephen Harper when he is wrong -- only in committees, of course, because the Conservative caucus knows their political career is toast if they object publicly to anything at all.
But when Harper is told that he is being stupid, will he listen?
I doubt it. He never has before.
(HT Alison)

Simple answers

POGGE reminds us that when the Harper Conservatives were elected in 2006, the Employment Insurance fund was estimated to have a huge surplus, something like $57 billion. Now they're talking about raising EI premiums because when the Harper Conservatives set up the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board two years ago they only gave them $2 billion to start with.
So POGGE asks a very logical question which doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone else: What happened to the other $55 billion?
Easy. They spent it.
This has been another edition of simple answers to not-stupid questions.