Oops

Cringe-inducing typo outside N.C. school:

They knew it was a bad decision, and they did it anyway

Remember how, when the census plan was first announced, it seemed to be almost off-the-cuff, a housekeeping matter, an ill-considered decision which nobody could explain very well because it hadn't really been discussed very much, to the point that I recall speculation about whether Harper even knew about it.
Well, the today's document dump shows that the Cons have been planning this since March, and maybe earlier, and they knew all along that Stats Can thought the voluntary survey wouldn't work.
What was ill-considered was their belief that nobody would care.

Shifting into "D"

Obama gave a hell damner of a speech Monday in Texas:

... it’s as if these guys took the car, drove it into the ditch, then -- so we put our boots on, we walked down into the ditch, into the mud. We pushed; we shoved. Meanwhile, they’re standing back, they’re watching us -- (laughter) -- drinking a Slurpee or something -- (laughter) -- and saying, well, you’re not pushing fast enough and you should push this way instead of that way. And they had a lot of commentary, but they sure weren’t putting their shoulder behind pushing.
And finally we get this car up on level ground. Finally we get it back on the road. And these guys turn to us and say, 'Give us the keys back.' (Laughter.) Well, no, you can’t have the keys back because you don’t know how to drive. (Laughter.) You do not know how to drive and so you can’t have the keys back. (Applause.)
Now, here’s another interesting thing -- I want you guys to think about this. If you have a car and you want to go forward, what do you do? You put it in 'D.' (Laughter.) When you want to go backwards, what do you do? You put it in 'R.' (Applause.) I'm just saying. That’s no coincidence. (Laughter.) We are not going to give them the keys back.

Publish Post

Freeloaders

So I guess everyone who uses Census data has just been freeloading while the feds did all the work.
Those poor downtrodden MPs just aren't going to put up with such an outrageous workload any longer.
I also think its just terrible that its the federal government who have had to manage all those soldiers and airplanes and warships --after all, its not as though the army is actually doing anything in particular on Parliament Hill, so why should our federal politicians have to put all this effort into Canadian defense?
And how about all those economic stimulus programs? What a bunch of freeloaders THOSE people are!
And its absolutely outrageous that the public should expect those hardworking MPs to maintain the Criminal Code, where they're always getting into arguments about whether something should be illegal or not. Our MPs aren't usually the ones being robbed or shot or swindled, so why should THEY have to do all that work passing laws and building prisons?
And how about running foreign embassies and issuing passports and setting rules for immigration? Its such a lot of work, and do the MPs get any benefit from it? No, the MPs are already in Canada, so why should they have to care about people who aren't?
I'm sure our MPs would much rather be golfing or eating out or taking a nice nap, and they'd have time to do this if only all of us freeloading Canadians would just stop pestering them!



UPDATE: Chet said it first.

Shorter

Shorter Nixon Foundation as they try to pretend the Watergate scandal never happened:

Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who.

Finally getting it

Joe Klein finally gets it -- the US-Iraq War was legally indefensible, corrupt, and morally wrong:

The essential principle is immutable: we should never go to war unless we have been attacked or are under direct, immediate threat of attack. Never. And never again.

Exactly.
Personally, I based my opposition to the Iraq War on the United Nations. If a country cannot convince the United Nations Security Council to approve an aggressive war -- or cannot convince even a significant minority of the Council that a war is justified -- then its wrong to go to war, it isn't justified.
What we already know about what happened in Iraq during this war is sickening --from White Phosphorus in Fallujah to vicious ethnic cleansing in Baghdad. Once the US soldiers are gone, the stories yet to be told will be truly horrifying.

Paging Elmore Leonard...

This could be an Elmore Leonard novel.
Scene one: A courier arrives one night at Peel Region police headquarters with a load of fruit he considers to be very suspicious. Under the mangoes, three police officers find 12 dozen bricks of cocaine.
Scene two: The RCMP arrive to say that the cocaine wasn't really cocaine at all -- it was a sting operation aimed at the Toronto traffickers for the cocaine smugglers in Peru, and the bricks contained tracking devices. So they pick up the cocaine bricks from the police evidence room -- but find there are 44 bricks missing.
Scene three: Using the GPS signals, RCMP find 15 of the missing bricks hidden in the garage of one of the police officers, and several more in a dumpster near the house of another officer.
Scene four: Disgrace, dismissal and prison loom -- not for the cocaine traffickers, but for the Peel police officers.

I thought it was just me

Nancy Nall describes how women play fantasy closet like men play fantasy football:

The first week of August marks the tra­di­tional Notic­ing of the Chang­ing Light for me, which means I’m going to grab at least one fat fash­ion mag­a­zine off a news­stand and start plan­ning my umpteenth fan­tasy closet.
Fan­tasy closet is like fan­tasy foot­ball, in which women start with the blank slate of a well-designed empty closet — with lots of attrac­tive, Con­tainer Store stor­age options — and fill it with non-existent clothes we can’t afford but pre­tend we can. Then we wear them in fantasy-closet dress-up games . . .

She also has some great stuff about photo retouching in fashion photography.

Just a coincidence, I'm sure

My son noticed that whenever we see a news story these days about police abuses during the G20 protests we almost immediately see another press release from Toronto police adding another few photos to their "most wanted" gallery.
Funny how that happens, isn't it?

Psych!

Not confident that the Alouettes will be able to defeat the Riders tonight, the Montreal Gazette tries to psyche the Riders out of winning::

A victory over the Alouettes tonight at Molson Stadium would prevent the Roughriders from emerging with a 4-2 record -an important bellwether in team history.
In 100 years of existence, Saskatchewan has won only three Grey Cups (in 1966, 1989 and 2007). During each of those seasons, the Roughriders had four wins and two losses after six games. So what happens if the Roughriders disregard a good omen and improve to (gasp!) 5-1?
Such a record is reflective of a powerhouse. But should the Roughriders covet that label? Can they handle that status?

Yeah, I think we could.
UPDATE: Darn -- 4-2 it is!

Cancer country

Christopher Hitchens describes his journey to Tumourville

The new land is quite welcoming in its way. Everybody smiles encouragingly and there appears to be absolutely no racism. A generally egalitarian spirit prevails, and those who run the place have obviously got where they are on merit and hard work. As against that, the humor is a touch feeble and repetitive, there seems to be almost no talk of sex, and the cuisine is the worst of any destination I have ever visited.

Stupid day

A clown car full of ridiculous news stories this week --
Like this one: some guy who says he is a soldier who speaks Arabic sends an email saying he's seen veiled women laugh at airport security staff -- oh, sure, because people around the world are always laughing at airport security staff these days, aren't they?
And then there's this one: Dog chews off man's toe, saves his life -- oh, sure, and did you hear the one about the choking doberman.
And this one: Mobile phones responsible for disappearance of honey bee -- oh, sure, I'll bet they all received a mysterious phone call at the same time.
And today we found out the real reason why the Harper Cons are building those new prisons -- sounds like they want to start making sex illegal again.

Leadership

I had never thought very much of Mayor Bloomberg in New York City, but he showed true leadership today in his speech supporting the Manhattan mosque.
Whereas in Canada, our political leaders want us to be afraid of an invisible crime wave.

How I spent my summer vacation

Actually, just hanging around the house, doing housey things, it was fun and I feel somewhat organized for the first time in about two years -- its amazing how much junk accumulates, isn't it. I've been making trip after trip to take stuff to the Mennonites, which seem to be just about the only charitable agency left here which still handles their own donations.
But I've also been having fun reading other people's blog posts about their vacations.
Like from Doctor Grumpy:

Today we went whitewater rafting. Our guide, I swear, was a guy named Stoner.
[Middle son]Craig, of course, was horrified at the idea he might get wet, and so insisted on sitting in the middle of the raft. [Eldest son]Frank and [daughter]Marie loved the idea of getting soaked, and even wanted to help row. So Stoner gave them each a paddle.
For a while they were somewhat helpful, and it kept them busy. Until we hit a stretch of non-rowing quiet water.
Somehow a shouting match broke out, and I turned around just in time to see them beating each other WITH THE PADDLES while Craig tried to hide in the bottom of the raft. Before I could yell at them to stop, Frank sent Marie’s paddle into the river. Craig, trying to avenge his sister, stood up and knocked Frank’s into the river.
And now we were heading into white water, with half our paddles gone. Stoner was clearly horrified to be watching his company’s property floating behind us, and began frantically steering the boat to try to get them, while Mrs. Grumpy and I paddled away. The next few seconds sent some big waves crashing over the raft, drenching everyone (including Craig). He began hitting Marie on the grounds that it was her fault he was wet, since she’d lost her paddle.
Fortunately, we were able to collect the paddles at the other end of the rapid run. But we spent the rest of the day hearing from Craig about how this was “the worst day ever” because he got wet. All the kids, when we got back to shore, agreed that they liked the river rides at amusement parks better. Wimps.

And from Lance Mannion on the Maine coast:

There be whales here
You can categorize your own brand of geekitude by whether the title of this post made you think of Herman Melville or Star Trek or both.
Late this afternoon, after we’d set up our chairs and towels on a high spot on the beach at Nauset, I spotted a white-hulled sailboat far out on the horizon. The rest of our gang rushed headlong towards the water to throw themselves into the breaking waves but I stayed put with my binoculars, thinking that a closer look would show me that another Edward Hopper painting had come to life for a moment.
That happens down here, Edward Hopper paintings coming to life, and it’s no surprise, since the Cape was one of his favorite subjects.
Today happens to be Hopper’s birthday---he’d have been a hundred and eighteen---and it would have been a nice coincidence if it was one of his sailboats hauling by.

But just as I got my sights trained on the boat something black and rounded broke the surface in the foreground. It rose with a splash and disappeared with another toss of white foam and I thought:
“Whale?”

Nancy Nall stayed around Detroit:

It was hot this week­end. How hot was it? Here’s one of the neigh­bors at Alex’ house:

Alex said he’s never seen a squir­rel relax like this. I have, once. It was on a pic­nic table, and it was stretched out, belly down, in much this fash­ion. It was also on a hot day. Spriggy would stretch out like this, terrier-style, but almost always on a cool sur­face, like a tile floor, or even wood. That pic­nic table wasn’t cool, but maybe it was, rel­a­tive to every­thing around it.

And John Cole now has two dogs instead of just one:

In Retrospect It Was a Bad Idea
The dogs were driving me crazy and I couldn’t get any work done as apparently three walks before ten am is not enough, so I took them to the park to run. And they ran about 200 yards away from me, and Lily promptly spent the next minute and a half rolling in something. This picture can not describe the stench, but if I had to guess what it was, I would guess the rotting rancid remains of Satan’s bowel.

Ah, those lazy hazy crazy days of summer.

Long weekend