Goodbye cruel world, I'm off to join the circus*

What a wonderful story -- Quebec's own Cirque du Soleil is a social movement helping at-risk youth around the world as well as a circus:

. . . the initiative has expanded to 19 countries. 'We don't want a uniform program around the world, but one in sync with the rhythm of the country and its culture,' explains Michel Lafortune, co-ordinator for the Cirque du Soleil's international social circus programs.
The programs' team works with circus-arts instructors to teach troubled youth how to clown around, juggle and do more advanced circus techniques. Kids learn to use their imagination and balance, and to test their own physical limits.
The instructors help them improve self-esteem, develop social skills and gain a sense of humour. They also teach self-control and discipline, and channel risk-taking and adrenaline in a positive way.

*

Oilers!

I know that Carolina is a great team and they probably have as many or maybe even more Canadian players than the Oilers do, including some Alberta players. And I know the Carolina fans are great sports fans. And I know its Southophobic to feel this way. And I know I'm showing my age.
BUT -- there's just something EUHHH about a team from a place without outdoor ice winning the Stanley Cup.
Besides, wasn't that just a great OT goal?

Great line of the day

The Galloping Beaver writes about this Bush trip to Iraq compared to the last one:

There have been no reports of plastic turkeys in any of the hundreds of mess halls. Just the one walking around on two feet with a Secret Service detail surrounding him.

Emphasis mine.

Hello? Anybody home?

So Bush flew all the way to Baghdad to pay a surprise visit to the new Iraq government.
He couldn't tell anyone he was coming, of course, just in case all those loyal allies leaked it to the insurgency to set up a rocket attack.

U.S. President George W. Bush (L) speaks as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki (C) and his Defence Minister Abdel Qader Jassim listen during their meeting in Baghdad June 13, 2006. (REUTERS/Ahmad al-Rubaye/Pool)

And isn't it just so lucky that they were at home? If he had come a day earlier, they would have been out:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (L) meets Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi in Tehran June 12, 2006. (Stringer/Reuters)

Are we still in Kansas, Dan?
No, Tony, we're not in Kansas anymore.


And here's what was going on in Iraq during Bush's five-hour visit -- I wonder if his helicopter flew low enough to see any of this?

. . . one of the six coordinated bomb attacks lies on a road in Kirkuk . . . June 13, 2006. (Slahaldeen Rasheed/Reuters)


. . . a car bomb exploded in Kirkuk. . . . .(AFP/Marwan Ibrahim)


Iraqi women mourn as they sit near stains of blood . . . Kirkuk. (AFP/Marwan Ibrahim)


. . . a roadside bomb . . . killed 3 civilians and wounded another 8 near a market in central Samarra. . . . (AP Photo/Hameed Rasheed)


. . . a parked car bomb . . . in the al-Washash market Baghdad . . . killed five people and wounded 13 others (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)


. . . a man who was among those killed from a bomb attack . . . in the holy city of Najaf . . . . REUTERS/Ali Abu Shish


Abbas Ahmed . . . injured when a parked car bomb exploded Monday night in. . . Sadr City. . . killed five people and wounded 41. . . (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)


destroyed house from . . . car bomb attack which killed 10 people and wounded 25 others in a market in western Baghdad . . . . REUTERS/Ali Jasim


A man walks away from . . . one of the six coordinated bomb attacks, which killed at least 14 people in . . . Kirkuk. . . . REUTERS/Slahaldeen Rasheed


Iraqis look at a motorcycle, destroyed during a car bomb attack which killed five people and wounded 26 in Balad . . . . REUTERS/Moqdad Abbas


An Iraqi boy holds blood-stained clothes at . . . car bomb attack which killed five people and wounded nineteen in Baghdad's Sadr city . . . REUTERS/Kareem Raheem


Iraqi men spray water onto the burning car owned by Ahmed Ali al-Yasin, the brother of Asaad Ali al-Yasin the head of Samarra city council, after he was injured with his son Othman Ahmed Ali, by the explosion from a timed-bomb attached to the car . . . (AP Photo/Hameed Rasheed)


Iraqis carry mock coffins with pictures of members of the Mehdi Army fighters who died fighting the U.S. forces in 2004, during the remembrance ceremony in Baghdad's Sadr city . . . REUTERS/Kareem Raheem


A man at the scene holds up the body of a small child said to have died during a U.S.-led raid near Baqouba in Iraq, Monday, June 12, 2006. . . . The U.S. military said coalition forces had killed seven terrorists and two children, whilst local residents accused the Americans of targeting civilians. (AP Photo)

Irish Coffee, anyone?

I'm pleased to report that Irish Coffee is now a health food! IrishHealth.Com is reporting on a new study which says:

Consuming coffee seems to have some protective benefits against alcoholic cirrhosis and the more coffee a person consumes, the less risk they seem to have of being hospitalised or dying of alcoholic cirrhosis.

So drinking coffee WITH booze MUST be good for you, eh?

Great lines of the day

I read this on a blog comment somewhere today but I can't find it now. Anyway, I thought it was funny, so here it is:

Hollywood is high school with money.
Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.

Cat 2; Bear 0

Cat 2 - Bear 0
This is the Jack the Cat from New Jersey who chased a bear up a tree. Twice.
Apparently this cat had been declawed, too -- see, its all in the attitude!
I found the photo at Digby's.

The Office from Hell

What a fun place to work:

a whistleblower at the Newcastle office [of the Rural Payments agency] outlined a series of allegations about his workplace to a local newspaper, which included:
-- Staff leaping naked from filing cabinets, which was caught on closed circuit television (CCTV);
-- A new craze of vomiting in cups and leaving them to fester in cupboards until they are discovered through the horrendous smell;
-- People taking drugs and having sex in the toilets;
-- Swearing and having fun-fights in the reception area; and
-- Staff holding break-dancing competitions during working hours.

Gee, in my office we just have a potluck lunch at Christmas. We really let loose, though, going all out on the Nanaimo bars . . .

Soft in the head

When is a deal not a deal?
When it's a joke!

Good guys or bad guys?

The government says secret evidence, closed-door hearings and indefinite detention are key tools in fighting international terrorism.

Or should that read "in undermining democracy and the rule of law"? Hmmm, I'm not sure.
But I think I'm glad it is our Supreme Court which will decide, not the American version.

Suicide is painless?

Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris demonstrates the firm grasp of reality and commitment to face unpleasant facts which has characterized the American military since the War on Terror began:

"They hung themselves with fabricated nooses made out of clothes and bed sheets . . . They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us."

So three prisoners at Guanranamo commit suicide and he's mad at them?
If killing yourself is an "act of warfare" rather than of despair, then I guess the 210 US soldiers who have committed suicide since the Iraq War began should now be regarded as having died in combat?
. . . 'Cause suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.

Crossroads

Non-Sequitur

Aha! So now we know who to blame!

Several months ago, Digby wrote a post about how the rightwingnuts would launch mean and hysterical personal attacks as they saw people turning away from their point of view and had no rational argument to persuade them.
And here it all comes.
Nicholas Berg's father said about Zarqawi's death:

. . . I'm sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that . . . Zarqawi is also a political figure, and his death will re-ignite yet another wave of revenge, and revenge is something that I do not follow, that I do want ask for, that I do not wish for against anybody. And it can't end the cycle. As long as people use violence to combat violence, we will always have violence.

Well, what an outrageously Christian thing to say -- rightwinger Ace of Spades says:

The moral vanity of these people is disgusting. Attempting to remake themselves into Holy Angels, they instead make themselves into monsters. Does this asshole really think it's an enlightened human response to feel as bad for the death of your son's butcher as for your son's? He thinks that attitude makes him better than other people? I think it makes him less than human, personally. When he dies (which he will, of course, as we all will; no death threat intended), I hope his son slaps this stupid fuck right in the face.

The Jersey Girls say:

We did not choose to become widowed on September 11, 2001. The attack, which tore our families apart and destroyed our former lives, caused us to ask some serious questions regarding the systems that our country has in place to protect its citizens . . . we asked for an independent commission to investigate the loopholes which obviously existed and allowed us to be so utterly vulnerable to terrorists. Our only motivation ever was to make our Nation safer . . . there was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. There was no happiness in telling our children that their fathers were never coming home again. We adored these men and miss them every day. It is in their honor and memory, that we will once again refocus the Nation’s attention to the real issues at hand: our lack of security, leadership and progress in the five years since 9/11 . . . We should continuously be holding the feet of our elected officials to the fire to fix these shortcomings. . .

Well, how dare they talk about issues instead of dishing out gratitous personal insults in response to what the Bottle Blond Harpy said about them:

These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process . . . These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzies. I have never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much.

And Cindy Sheehan? Well, SHE said:

The Camp Casey experience has given so many of us back our hope. Veterans who fought in Vietnam and in Iraq said that coming to Camp Casey restored their hopes of living a near normal life. Families who, like mine, tragically have had a loved one killed in war found hope in the fact that so many Americans cared about our sons and daughters and were willing to sacrifice something to come out and show solidarity in our struggle to ask: "What Noble Cause?"

So of course Opinion Journal editor James Taranto has no option except to describe her as a "fascist fishwife".
And Al Gore says:

. . . the highest and best use of my skills and experience is to try to change the minds of people in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world about this planetary emergency that we simply have to confront . . . I hope to get the message about the climate crisis to more people in a shorter period of time. I've been trying to tell this story for 30 years, and the debate in the science community is over. And my single objective is to try to move our country, and to the extent I can play a role in it people elsewhere, past a tipping point beyond which the politicians in both parties will feel compelled to start competing by offering genuinely meaningful solutions to the crisis . . . This is not a political issue. It is a moral issue. . .

So Tucker Carlson describes Gore this way: "He's a wild-eyed religious nut. And his religion is the environment." while big-oil shill Sterling Burnett dishes out the Nazi analogy, saying the film is "propaganda" and adds "You don't go see Joseph Goebbels' films to see the truth about Nazi Germany. You don't want to go see Al Gore's film to see the truth about global warming.
And lets not even mention how Michael Moore is toppling the very foundations of the free world by playing a piece of film showing Dear Leader doing nothing, NOTHING, for at least five whole minutes after being told that the United States was being attacked.
Hmmm -- reminds me of something ... somebody spoke and I went into a dream .... The Editors describe right-wing dreaming:

I think it feels like sleeping in late. I think it feels like you are having a really wonderful dream, the kind where everything just kind of makes sense like you always thought it should, and you feel very warm and protected and special and safe. And the only problem is that, every nine minutes or so, the damn alarm clock goes off again, and the dream starts to break up, and you start remember about reality, and how it’s not like your bed, how it’s often cold and hard, uncomfortable and confusing. So you lash out, still half-asleep, reaching for that snooze bar, and your hand lands in a half-empty cup of last night’s sleepytime tea, lurches away, knocking the teacup and the lamp off the bedside table with a crash, and you slap blindly a few times until you hit that big fat snooze bar, and it’s quiet again. And in an instant the broken lamp and the broken cup and the tea soaking into the carpet are forgotten, along with the stresses and disappointments and commitments of the real waking world, and you are once again fast asleep and dreaming, in a warm, soft, safe and special dream where everything really makes sense, just like you always knew it should. For about, oh, nine minutes.

The light at the end ot the tunnel?

Any hope that Zarqawi's death in Iraq represents progress toward peace in Iraq seems to be mistaken. That light at the end of the tunnel is actually just an oncoming train. At The Washington Note, Nir Rosen analyzes the impact of Zarqawi's death:

. . . in death Zarqawi struck one final blow for his cause. He had come to Iraq to fight the infidels and become a martyr, gaining entry to paradise. And so he did, the infidels finally killed him and his supporters now believe he is in paradise. This only proves that Iraq is the place to go to if you want to gain entry to paradise, kill infidels, and become a martyr. More will flock to replace him and avenge him. Expect to see a new group, naming itself after Zarqawi, claiming responsibility for attacks targeting Shia leaders or Shia shrines in Iraq, but also in Lebanon or Saudi Arabia, where tensions between Sunnis and Shias have been simmering since the war in Iraq.
We in the media are often pilloried for only reporting "the bad news" in Iraq. But there is no good news. Its too dangerous to even tell you how bad things really are, but they are worse than what you see on the media, not better. The insurgency is passe, Iraq is about the civil war, chaos, anarchy, random and deliberate violence everywhere. And it is spreading throughout the region. Instead of stabilizing the Middle East, the US war in Iraq is tearing it apart, destabilizing it, reviving radical Islam and jihadism and giving a bad name to reform and democracy.

Great lines of the day

Thanks to Galloping Beaver for the reference to Allison's post at Creekside, called So how are we all doing then?:

. . . just last week the 101st Fightin' Keyboarders, Canadian Division, were all happy about Harper and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, plus of course they still have the one in Iran to look forward to. But now, at the first whiff of fertilizer, suddenly it's as if they've just realized the abyss can see them in their jammies.

Emphasis mine.