the woodshed

What we talk about when we talk about conservatives

2012-01-27T10:50:00.000-05:00

Never mind all the guff about Ronald Reagan. Reagan was an amiable-seeming father figure who did what his wife and her astrologer and Exxon told him to do. He regularly fell asleep in Cabinet meetings and by the end of his term didn't know where he was half the time.
Richard Nixon, Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich pretty much invented the modern conservative movement by harnessing the power of Barry Goldwater's Birchers and bigots, funded by corporations eager to buy the kind of legislation (or lack of it) that would allow them free rein to empty America's pockets without having to give any of it back.
You can learn all about this from just about any mainstream political history text, but I would recommend Rick Perlstein's Nixonland to anyone who really wants to learn how American politics got to be the witchbag of corruption, sleaze and demagoguery it is these days.
Also, the film Boogieman, which chronicles Lee Atwater's work appealing to Southern racists to make the GOP the party of the Confederate States of America.

And if this had been written about anyone else, it would leave welts on their back, but it will simply roll off of Newt's carapace while he tells his half-bright supporters about the big bad liberal New York Times and how they are out to stop him from saving America.

Midweek reading

2012-01-25T20:41:00.000-05:00

Just a couple of things for your midweek read that I happened across:

If Rob Ford's opponents on council were "two steps to the left of Joseph Stalin" as he claims, they would long ago have had him icepicked to death in Mexico or sent to starve to death in Siberia.. At the very least, he would have been sent to a re-education camp by now.
A Scary Thought: Do We Really Need "If You See Something, Say Something?" | The National Interest Blog

And speaking of reading:

#7 Requiem for an Assassin By Barry Eisler
Fast-paced fun with freelance assassin John Rain. For those not in the know, Barry Eisler is a former CIA agent turned thriller writer, so his take on the espionage novel is a bit different. Great action scences, authentic spycraft, thought-provoking observations on how violence occurs and how the mind deals with it.

I read and reviewed this when it first came out, back when I used to get paid to read and review books ( I reviewed an earlier Eisler book in the John Rain series "Hard Rain" but forgot to save an electronic copy for my own use, though the review is quoted at his site). I've also communicated with Barry a few times via email and bulletin boards and only narrowly missed having a drink with him in Tokyo one time.
He also wrote the introduction for the only English language book of which I can claim partial authorship. He blogs a bit and sometimes writes for Huffpo and Firedoglake. For an former spook with a fixation on knives and martial arts, he's strikes me as a pretty nice guy. His books, however - and I mean this in the nicest way - are like potato chips: it's difficult to stop at just one.

#8 Fault Line by Barry Eisler
A non-John Rain thriller that leans heavily on the liberal elite vs conservative warhawk cultural divide in American culture. Definitely worth reading and like Eisler's other work, a thinking man's thriller with plenty of emphasis on tradecraft and the technical side of espionage.

Music worth paying for!

2012-01-23T21:36:00.000-05:00

From Tbogg we learn that Bob Dylan has donated the royalties/waived the rights to a whole bunch of his songs for a fundraising album of Dylan covers for Amnesty International.

Some samples:

War criminal feels the wrath of American military justice!

2012-01-23T16:08:00.001-05:00

That will teach him a lesson! And let the dire fate of marine Staff Sgt. Frank G. Wuterich be an example to every other soldier on the battlefield that the rules of war and human decency must be obeyed.
Well, mostly.
Unless you get angry because one of your fellow soldiers is killed, then ordering your men to shoot the nearest women and children is kinda like a bunch of unpaid parking tickets or getting caught shoplifting. Assuming of course the women and children are brown not-Americans foolish enough to have been born in a country to which the United States takes a dislike.
Three whole months in the stockade and forfeiture of two thirds of his pay for those three months. Assuming the USMC commandant doesn't step in and reduce the penalty.
And certainly the United States military doesn't want such a wanton law breaker and killer within its ranks, well not as a Staff Sgt. anyways, so he's been busted down to Private for now.
Imagine for a moment that an Iraqi soldier was responsible for killing 24 Americans - say U.S. security contractors or soldier, not women and children - what do you think the consequences would be? Can you conceive of any possible scenario in which that man would not be killed? Either through legal means with a quick show trial and a hanging or by presidential order and special forces hit team?

Smug, okay maybe a little, but I think it's justified

2012-01-20T13:56:00.002-05:00

with a tip of the beaver hat to the esteemed Mr. Otter, who reads & comments but does not blog

Trash talking us into war

2012-01-18T21:45:00.001-05:00

I think most reasonable people, at least in hindsight, would agree that one of the things the Liberals' got right under Chretien and Martin was keeping Canada out of the gigantic deadly goat rodeo known as the Iraq War.
Remember how in the months that lead up to the invasion we were told again and again that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, that there was no question he was working on 'nookyalur' weapons, that Saddam Hussein was seen french kissing Osama Bin Laden under the bleachers during the homecoming game. This was all given as gospel truth by the White House, Pentagon, CIA and about 90% of the Western Media.
And yet, hundreds of billions of dollars and a million or so deaths later, we know it was all bullshit. They were wrong or lying or both.
Iraq was about as close to having nukes or a means to deliver them as say, Guatemala is and was about as much a military threat to its neighbours at that point as Belgium is to France, Germany and Britain.
Outside of a very few conservative true believers and George W. Bush's inner circle, no one, least of all the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, think the invasion of Iraq worked out well.
Remember too, that Stephen Harper very much wanted Canada to take part in the Iraq War.
Now that Harper has his majority, he cannot and will not be denied his opportunity to show the world that Canada is a major player on the world stage just as capable of killing lots of non-Western Nogoodniks and Nogoodnik women and terrorist children as any other NATO member and not just some namby-pambly peacekeeper. Truly, lives could be saved if someone would just give the man a ruler, tell him the centimetres are really inches and send him off to measure his little Cheney.
Even though the current U.S. president is likely to be reelected without having start a war with Iran, Harper, ever hopeful of a victory for his Republican fellow travellers, is already laying the groundwork to take Canada into the next war of choice.

“I’ve raised the alarm as much as I can, but obviously I don’t advocate particular actions publicly. I work with our allies to see if we get consensus on actions,” he said.
Mr. Harper said he has no doubt that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. “There is absolutely no doubt they are lying,” Mr. Harper said, referring to statements by Iran that the nuclear program is for peaceful uses.
“The evidence is just growing overwhelming. This is not, as was the case of Iraq, merely the opinion of allies,” he said.
The development of nuclear weapons as one of the purposes of Iran’s nuclear program “is just beyond dispute at this point,” he said. “The only dispute is how far advanced it is and how far off it will be until they actually develop those weapons and develop the capability of delivering the weapons.”

Given that Israeli and U.S. conservative hawks have been warnings Iran is just x-number of years/months/weeks/days/hours away from "getting the bomb" roughly every two weeks since the Shah was chased out of Tehran, I tend to take such certainty with a bushel or two of salt.
Given the number of sabres being rattled at it, Iran would be wise to follow North Korea's example and actually get hold of some nukes. Saddam Hussein didn't and look what happened to him.
Mind you, it isn't just that Harper want to get his war on for its own sake, he also thinks he sees a way to turn a dollar or three for his oil-patch pals:

Also during the interview, Mr. Harper linked the debate over the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas with concern over Iran’s threat to blockade the main shipping route for oil in the Middle East. “It’s pretty obvious what the right decision is … not just from an economic and environmental standpoint, but from an energy security standpoint,” Mr. Harper said. “When you look at the Iranians threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz, I think that just illustrates how critical it is that supply for the United States be North American,” Mr. Harper said.

The winning quote from the interview though, by far was this bit of classic right wing projection. The same comment could have come from any leader in the Middle East, Asia, Eastern Europe, South America or Africa in discussing the United States and conservative Canada.

“In my judgment, these are people who have a particular, you know, fanatically religious worldview, and their statements imply to me no hesitation of using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes,”

It isn't your imagination, they really are talking to themselves

2012-01-18T13:54:00.001-05:00

The SUN-TV news network was never intended to cover the news, it was intended to make the news. Some might even say make up the news, but what I mean is that the gang of clown-shoed commentators put together by right-wing Quebecor chieftain Pierre Karl Peladeau and former PMO flack Kory Teneycke are paid to act out and grab headlines, not to report the news.
Nobody watches SUN-TV outside of a few elderly shut-ins, the staff at QMI newspapers who are a captive audience, Blogging Tories and professional media watchers.

Bill Brioux, a freelance TV writer for CP, owner of TVFeedsMyFamily.com and a former Sun Media TV columnist, has access to BBM numbers. He says the audiences for Sun News Network are indeed minuscule.

“Very few Canadians watch Sun News Network. A look at the BBM Canada overnight, estimated ratings for a typical mid-week night, Wed. Dec. 28, showed that their highest rated show was The Source with Ezra Levant at 10 p.m. with 38,000 viewers across Canada. ByLine with Brian Lilley at 9 pulled 35,000. Only 5,000 and 6,000 of those viewers were between 25 and 54, across Canada. There are more people, on any given night, in a mall in Toronto,” says Brioux.

So who does watch Sun News Network? “The vast majority of the few viewers SNN does get are way over 50, outside the demo advertisers want. So SNN draws enough on a nightly basis to fill a senior’s mall,” says Brioux.

He went on to say that after the top two shows, Sun News Network gets even fewer viewers. “Beyond Lilley and Levant’s shows—the two highest rated SNN offerings by far—everything else stiffs,” says Brioux. “Charles Adler has bombed from the beginning, drawing 8,000 at 8 p.m. and 2,000 at 11 p.m. on the 28th—and zero in the 25–54 demographic both hours, across Canada.”

As for David Akin’s Daily Brief, Brioux says 6,000 viewers tuned in over the supper hour. But the late-night slot tanked. “Daily Brief at midnight got zip and zip—so few viewers, BBM Canada could not measure them. The same night, CBC News Network peaked at 198,000/60,000 viewers.”

The idea behind the "news" network is to make a lot of noise through calculated and contrived outrageousness and get the other media in the country to pay attention. This results in the media that most people do watch and read - the CBC, CTV, Global TV, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Province et al - reporting "both sides of the story" and thus giving the radical right wing side of an issue equal balance with the truth, thus advancing the radical conservative neofascist agenda.
Every time Ezra Levant prances around in a fright wig or tells a foreign executive to go fuck his mother for opposing the destruction of the environment, every time some ignorant spokesbimbo insults a guest and spouts nonsense, every time Michael Coren tells the audience that real Canadians hate brown people and non-Christians --it makes the news, the blogs (including this one) go nuts and people talk about it.
With very few exceptions - and they should be ashamed of themselves - the people on SUN TV don't care about the news or journalism or truth - that isn't the business they are in. They will say or do anything to get covered by other media. They have to, because no one is watching them.
Essentially, SUN TV is engaged in cultural trolling and the way you get rid of trolls is to quit feeding them. So I call on other bloggers, other journalists, the real news media in Canada to stop giving these trolls the oxygen of public attention.
As long as the CRTC refuses to force cable companies to make them a standard station and force subscribers to give them money, SUN-TV will not turn a profit. Eventually PKP will get sick of shovelling money down a hole and Levant, Adler, Coren, Erickson and the rest will all be forced to go out and try to get real jobs.
And being a professional clown only looks good on a resume if you are applying for a job at Ringling Brothers or a rodeo.

Street curling

2012-01-17T15:21:00.002-05:00

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

2012-01-17T14:06:00.001-05:00

and I don't have a goddamn fireplace to curl up in front of with a good book while it drizzles outside (Rain? in January? in Canada? Are you shitting me? There ought to be a foot-and-a-half of snow outside by now at least, not this filthy mud.)

So I decided I needed a little Florida on Monday and reread this old favourite while waiting in the car for Mrs. Paperboy to go through a two hour job interview for a job for which she is massively overqualified.

#6 The Deep Blue Goodbye by John D. MacDonald
The first in MacDonald's series of books starring Travis McGee "non-conformist, boat bum, knight in slightly tarnished armour" is, like most of MacDonald's stuff, a 'page-turner' (a cliched term I loathe, but in this case accurate without the negative connotation of something only sold in train stations and airports).
McGee's Florida is a dark and sunny place, full of bikini babes and human sharks. This first one in the long running series, most instalments of which I read before I finished high school, is a bit long on the philosophizing and has a relatively simple plot compared to later works. Some of MacDonald's riffing on sociology and psychology is a bit dated, but like Fleming's James Bond, the strength of the characters, especially the hero, carries the story along very nicely.
MacDonald was already a well established writer, having published dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories in the 50's. He had publishers begging him to write a series featuring the same character for several years before he sat down and wrote not just this first book, but six more besides between 1962 and 1964 featuring "Dallas McGee" - the first book being written three time before he was satisfied with it. The Deep Blue Goodbye sat in the publishers' office while he wrote the rest - just to make sure he could write a series. Of the first seven books written, two were never submitted for publication as MacDonald considered them failures. (Have a look here for a more comprehensive account of the creation of the series). He wrote over a million words before allowing the publishers to go ahead and bring the first book to market. The first three were published in rapid succession with the fourth and fifth close behind. MacDonald kept writing them until his death in 1986 and they continued to top the bestsellers charts.
I don't think they rise quite as high as Chandler's best, but they certainly follow the trail he blazed and the quality of writing is pretty high for the genre, the plots and characters ring true and the philosophical insights are...uh...insightful.
If you've never read any of the 21 (or is it 22?) books featuring Travis McGee, this one is a good place to start.
I've been to the library this week and just had returned to me three big boxes of books I left behind with a friend when I took off for Japan 15 years ago, so there is plenty of grist for the mill. Time to start turning some more pages.

readin' readin' readin'

2012-01-14T15:30:00.001-05:00

#5 The Sister Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
Not many reviewers can resist comparing The Sister Brothers to the Cohen Brothers' version of True Grit and not without reason. The dialogue has the same declamatory feel and both works have their own odd sense of humour. It didn't win the Governor General's award for nothing. A fine, seemingly simple style (which is always the hardest stuff to write) and a few truly memorable scenes and images.
And if the Coen Brothers don't do the film version, there is no justice in this world.
As usual, leave suggestions in the comments.

Another day, another trial balloon

2012-01-13T22:47:00.027-05:00

Fresh from launching a trial balloon on reopening the abortion debate that he swears he has no interest in reopening (mainly because it is too handy a chunk of raw meat to dangle in front of the base at fundraising time) Steven Harper sends his legal beagles forth to reopen the debate over same sex marriage that he swears he has no interest in reopening. Amid the screeching, outrage in response to their clumsy er, backdoor effort to test the waters the Justice Minister is backpeddling at light speed.
The whole foray was ill advised to start with and as transparent a bit of wind testing as has ever been seen.
The lawyers for the feds, who would not be responding to this case in the way they did without checking with the boss first, argued neither woman was legally able to marry a person of the same sex under the laws of Florida or the United Kingdom, where they reside. "As a result, their marriage is not legally valid under Canadian law."
The whole thing could have and should have been avoided by citing the fact that Ontario divorce law has a residency requirement. That makes some sense, since if you don't live here, things like orders to divide property or share custody become much more difficult for Canadian courts to enforce.But no, Harper decided this would be a good time to mess around and provoke a freakout, thus giving him a chance to a) burnish his "see, I'm not really a bigot" credentials by tut-tutting about this "misunderstanding" b) blame the Liberals for not creating perfect legislation (that his party opposed) and c)reopen the legislation to 'fix' it.
These trial balloons, along with the earlier push to villify the CBC, are great tools for Harper because they allow him to rile up the base and squeeze them for cash to fight "those lousy socialists and liberals who are obstructing the grand conservative agenda to remake Canada" and lay the groundwork for changing things without having to do any actual remaking until he's damn good and ready to do it.
Well played, you baby-noshing, dead-eyed low-rent Machiavelli

Beatles Reunion!

2012-01-13T19:03:00.003-05:00

And a bunch of other stuff I found

Now that Stephen Colbert is sort of running for the Republican nomination and outpolling Jon Huntsman in South Carolina, does that mean he will be included in the Republican leadership debates? (Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease)
Another reason where I live is cooler than where you live. And that's not counting the new outdoor rink at city hall.
It is Friday, so naturally you are listening to Driftglass and Blue Gal on the Professional Left podcast. Any other activity would be a less-productive use of your time and theirs
No one can possibly be surprised by this, though the fact that the person who got rich giving so many Americans diabetes will now get richer by promoting diabetes medication is really an "only in America" moment.
Predictable despicable douchebag, as predicted, behaves in a predictably despicable douchy way
Meanwhile, in the Excited States the militarization of your local police force continues.
Copy editor humour
That whirring sound you hear is Comrade Che spinning in his grave. If we could hook a generator up to him, he could light up South America all over again.
From our Very Short Answers to Stupid Questions dept. Yes. Supporting evidence here (It's nice when the fish swim into the barrel and hand you a grenade like that)

Headlines we wish we could use

2012-01-12T20:42:00.001-05:00

The United States Marine Corps - America's No. 1 fighting force

(sorry, I couldn't help it)

The joy of books

2012-01-10T19:44:00.000-05:00

A little something in honour of my 50 book project.

(for Dan and Tammy)

Whatcha reading?

2012-01-09T23:00:00.002-05:00

As mentioned previously, I've embarked on a little project this year to read 50 books. Partly because I found I had started to cut down on my off-line reading late last year and partly just for the hell of it. As with hard-boiled eggs, I figured 50 was a good round number for books. Nothing too arduous, just plug along at a book a week, right? Should work fine as long I don't decide to read anything more ambitious than your average airport news-stand pot-boiler, right? We will see how the system works when I tackle some meatier stuff later in the year. But for this week, a pair of quick engaging reads that the ripped through in not time.

#3 The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler
Noir before there was Noir. Chandler is one of those writers of genre fiction who is so good that he rises above simple genre writing and moves on the plane of "Literature." Of course it helps that he practically invented the hard-boiled detective genre.
This is one of his later, less-known novels, and one I've had sitting on the self for a couple of years where I've saving it like a vintage wine. They aren't making any more 1990 Chateau Latour Paulliac and Chandler isn't writing any more novels, so to get to read one for the first time is always a treat.

#4 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
I read this year's big contribution to Geek Lit in a single afternoon with only a short break to fetch the daughter from school and to cook my ought-to-be-world-famous eggplant parmesan (baked, not fried, so as not to be too greasy). Great read for any and all geeks, nerds, gamers, or anyone who grew up in the 80s or watches Big Bang Theory and says "Pfft, those aren't real nerds, I'll show you real nerds - come and meet my friends from the games club." The first novel from the screenwriter of the movie Fanboys. If you liked the movie or have ever spent time in Second Life or a comic store or been to an SF convention or John Hughes movie marathon, you'll like this book.
Apparently, I am not the only one to read and enjoy this recently.

Currently in the on-deck circle: more Chandler, The Sister Brothers and some early Vonnegut and some Gabriel Garcia Marquez, if I can find my copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. Please, if you have suggestions, leave them in the comments.

Canada's little ray of SUNshine

2012-01-05T12:32:00.003-05:00

Canada's ethical snake-oil salesman and Glenn Beck wannabe Ezra Levant continues to keep it classy. As far as I can tell, Ezra's objection isn't that Chiquita Banana keep paying right-wing death squads to murder labour activists in South America, but that they are denying that they are boycotting tarsand products as a PR dodge. How dare they obey free market principles, eh Ezra? I don't know how the mother of the Chiquita Banana exec feels about you suggesting her son should have carnal knowledge of her, but your mother must be so very proud of you.

a project

2012-01-03T03:30:00.000-05:00

My plan for this year is to read at least 50 books - just about one a week, which for me shouldn't really be a stretch provided I don't get too bogged down on something long and challenging - so naturally I hope to read lots of challenging material this year without too much rereading of stuff with which I"m already familiar. I'll try to post at least once a week telling you what I'm reading and what I thought of it. I welcome your suggestions in comments.
Admittedly, the first two books of the year are not exactly "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu" but I'm sure they won't be the trashiest thing I read this year.

#1 - The Life of Python
By George Perry
Written just after the release of "The Meaning of Life" as a biography of the Monty Python gang, it does offer some insight into the way they worked, but is dry as the sahara. Go watch them in action instead of reading this now largely irrelevant career chronology.

#2 - Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra
By Richard L. Boyer
Part of a 1970's Holmes revival, recently reprinted. Reasonably workman-like prose, a few plot holes, but mostly a solid genre read. Apparently, rewrites of this particular title, mentioned in one of the original Conan Doyle stories, has been essayed at least three times by three different authors.

Making people stupider

2012-01-02T17:58:00.000-05:00

(JimDandy Goodness, with his sponsored argument between atheists and agnostics, and annoyance at dimwits who discount meteorology because it isn't 100% accurate 100% of the time got me thinking about this, so blame him.)

Not to kick off the new year by sounding like the opening of a Seinfeld episode, but what is the deal with horoscopes?
Does anyone with an IQ above room temperature really put any stock in these things any more? Seriously, does anyone you know that you would trust with anything more dangerous than a crayon or a soft plastic spork consider the phrase "what's your sign?" anything other than a cheap pickup line or punchline? (the answer depends on who's asking the question: Stop, Yield, Do Not Enter and You Must Be This Tall to Ride being among the best answers)
I ask, because amid all the arguments I see everyday in the newspaper about how we must be steely-eyed realists and put our faith in neither in socialist dreamers with their notions of the universal goodness of man nor in laissez-faire ideologues and their invisible hand of the marketplace, I notice that virtually every newspaper I see still devotes a quarter page a day to "What the Stars Reveal."
Truly, this is the oldest con-game in the history of mankind, even older than monotheism or patriotism.The numb-brained belief that the position of the stars and planets determine the content of your personality and the events that occur in your day-to-day life has been with humankind since we started looking up. It was the quest for more accurate star-charts for our soothsayers that drove us to develop astronomy in the first place.
As a newspaper copy editor, I have to read and edit this crap almost every day and have done so at several papers over the years and for the life of me I cannot ever recall seeing even one entry on a single day that wasn't so vague as to be totally meaningless.
Today's example for those whose birthday is Jan. 1: "This year waves of surprises keep hitting, forcing you to at least think. What you have taken for granted will be up for questioning. Curb becoming controlling when faced with instability."
Wow, pretty darned insightful, eh?
I'm pretty sure most of the drivel printed in the horoscope columns these days is either written by a not-very-sophisticated computer program, or somebody who has been drunk off their ass and recycling the same column since 1974. Either way, someone is making a living off of this shit and that money and effort would be better spent on almost anything else, even Ezra Levant's column. (though the intellectual rigor is of about the same level, Levant's columns are occasionally funny, at least accidently.)
I know this is shooting fish in a barrel and about as worthwhile as bitching about the weather, but really, shouldn't the news media be trying to encourage a little more intellectual rigor?
I appeal to my fellow working editors Could we not make better use of the shrinking amount of space in all of our publications to run more news about something that really matters - like whether Brittany Spears can make a comeback or the Royal Wedding or whether Rick Santorum can get elected president?

RIP and en garde

2012-01-02T15:44:00.001-05:00

Swordmaster Bob Anderson has laid down his blade at last.

Have a disgustingly happy Christmas

2011-12-20T11:26:00.003-05:00

The height of political sophistimacation

2011-12-15T11:15:00.000-05:00

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
-John Stuart Mill

This epigram from Mill has been bouncing around my brain for a few days now, sparked in part by an evening of sparring on Twitter with a bunch of dedicated gun nuts who were crowing about the end of the gun registry, and in part by this post over at the Galloping Beaver condemning some of Margaret Wente's recent columns in the Mop&Pail .

Both bring me to the same conclusion: that conservatives have abandoned any pretense of trying to put together sound, practical public policy based science, professional expertise and common sense and have instead decided to just do whatever they think will piss off "liberals" or "socialists" or "hippies" or whatever nonsensical catch-all label they've adopted this week for their imaginary enemies from Rush Limbaugh, Charles Adler or FOX TV's evil ventriloquist dummies .
We see it every year when they hold Earth Hour. You know the environmental awareness event where everybody shuts off all the unnecessary gadgets and goes without electric lights and stuff for part of an evening as a sort of feel-good event with little actual practical impact on environmental problems that is intended to raise awareness. You might take part, you might ignore it, but to the hard-core conservative base, it is taken as a challenge to turn on every light in the house and idle the truck in the driveway for an hour, just to be contrary and hopefully bait a 'liberal.'

My evening on Twitter with the gun nuts was like trying to push shit up hill. Every time you demonstrated that their argument was nonsensical, they would change tack. You showed via statistics that most gun murders were committed by people without previous serious criminal records, they argued that the government was afraid of an uprising by armed patriotic law-abiding citizens. You explained that no matter many times they had seen Red Dawn and how many guns they cached, the police and military would still have them outgunned, they suddenly wanted to talk about the right to hunt to put food on the table. You point out that they admitted they didn't hunt and they wanted to claim that cars are more dangerous than guns and on and on.
I'd go back and list some of the Twitter conversations if I had an infinite amount of time and patience but the tone of most of the posts from the pro-gun tweeters was "nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah stupid liberals!" They were mostly delighted to have won a victory over the forces of law, order and common sense mainly because they figured they had shown us evil, prejudiced, corrupt, intolerant authoritarian liberals at thing or two.
When I tried to pin down one guy on why the hell he needed a collection of semi-automatic (which sometimes means convertible to full auto) military style weapons, he admitted that he didn't hunt and he wasn't a sports shooter - he more or less said that he wanted to have them because people like me didn't think he should have them. In other words, he wanted them because he thought of it as some kind of trangressive behaviour that would annoy "liberals" and "socialists," which sounds to me like a very dangerous and expensive way to annoy your neighbours just for laughs. If that's all he wants them for, why not just get a yappy dog that barks all night instead of something that, if handled carelessly or used with malicious intent, could leave people dead?
But no, this gun nut and many others would rather spite "the enemy" than let the police keep a valuable tool.
Speaking of valuable tools, let us move from the aptly named base to the elites: Margaret Wente's column, while it points out that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, then goes on to tell us that poor aren't really poor because they all have colour TVs and none of them are dying of smallpox anymore.

The story is the same in Canada. In Ontario, for example, 65 per cent of the bottom fifth of families by income have air conditioning. Seventy per cent have DVD players, 65 per cent have cable TV, 56 per cent have home computers and 98.9 per cent have colour TVs. (Thirty years ago, even the most affluent families had few, if any, of these things.)

Wow, it sounds like the poor in Ontario really have it easy! Until you think about just how much stupid and wrong is packed into this one paragraph. Many public housing developments or rental apartments come with air conditioning whether you can afford it or not. Getting your TV via cable has been the norm in Canada for about 40 years, especially in cities - have you tried using the old rabbit ears to pick up the new digital signals? Good luck with that.
Wente is correct that not even the most affluent families had DVD players or home computers in 1981, because DVD players hadn't been invented yet and home computers were still in their infancy (The original Apple Mac didn't come out for another few years, though a few of us already had big 16K or even 32K desktop BASIC machines from Radio Shack. I don't think even the Commodore 64 was on the market at that point.)
As for her claim about colour television being a rarity in 1981, let me say two thing. First, Ha! and second, I'm not sure you can even buy a B&W set anymore, hell it's tough to find a TV that uses a tube anymore.
What this column, and so many, many more of Wente's have in common is that they are built around her efforts to be contrarian, to challenge what she sees as "conventional wisdom" and "political correctness" - to be a rugged individualist and an independent thinker. Which is all well and good if one is:

a) someone who is an outsider, not a member of The Establishment and former managing editors of the Globe and Mail and the Report on Business are pretty much the definition of The Establishment; and
b) not completely full of shit. Independent thinking still requires thinking, not merely contradicting what a lot of other people are saying and then trying to justify your contrarian position by making shit up. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.

This column, like much of Wente writing is little more than a defence of privilege and justification for being a selfish prick, which is pretty much the entire raison-d'etre for most people self-identifying as conservatives these days. They are selfish pricks who needed to come up with a justification for being selfish pricks, so they constructed a rickety morally-bankrupt psuedo-philosophy to try to defend their awful behaviour.
It was much the same when the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. Lots and lots of comfortable white people came up with all kinds of bullshit reasons that segregation was necessary and even beneficial rather than simply admit that they were racist shitheads. Over time, these bullshit reasons were seen for the bullshit that they were and the racist shitheads recognized as what they were.
So when someone claims they are a Randite libertarian conservative or a lassiez-faire market capitalist -- which loosely translated mean "I'm all right, Jack" -- what it usually means is they are a selfish prick who just doesn't want to admit they are a selfish prick.

Just in time for the Christmas shopping season

2011-12-09T18:12:00.000-05:00

Shopping season being upon us, we here at the Woodshed are making our list and checking it twice. Kids are often difficult to buy for, as toy trends come and go and today's cool, must-have gadget is tomorrow's obsolete paperweight. Bearing that in mind, we bring you this indispensible list of the five best toys of all time and a list of runners-up. As a father of two and a big kid at heart I can attest to the accuracy of these lists. I have played with all the toys listed at one time or another and all of them have been a huge hit with both my kids and virtually every kid I know.
Found via Twitter (see, it is too useful for something other than filling time waiting for the bus)

When $90 million isn't really $90 million

2011-12-07T18:06:00.000-05:00

Before you go opening your piehole about how "those Indians get a free ride" and are just "spending all our tax money on booze, big screen TVs and new snowmobiles" or some such bullshit, let me suggest you go and read the facts on Attawapiskatt.

Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward men...

2011-12-07T17:19:00.001-05:00

...Unless they happen to be Iranian or North Korean or Syrian or Mexican or Jordanian or Nicaraguan or Cuban or Russian or French or Chinese or Australian or Kenyan or Swiss or anyone else who may not have applauded loudly enough when the United States of America raised an eyebrow. At least that is the policy I would expect if a certain presidential candidate get a chance to keep a promise he made today.
If, like me, you though Stephen Harper's appointment of John "Shouty McLoudmouth" Baird as minister of foreign affairs was a bizarre choice for a position that requires delicate diplomacy and a nuanced approach to dealing with difficult situations, boy oh boy, are you gonna love this.
Republican flavour-of-the-week and frontrunner Newt Gingrich has promised that, if elected president, he will appoint former never-confirmed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Yosamite Sam impersonator John Bolton as U.S. Secretary of State.

One can only assume this would mean that Turkey/Sharia conspiracy theorist Pamela "Atlas Juggs" Geller would be named Undersecretary-in-charge-of-bombing-anyone-who-so-much-as-expresses-a-dislike-of -bagels-or-Jackie-Mason-nevermind-looks-sideways-at-Israel-god-forbid.

Thankfully Newt, like Herman Cain, Sarah Palin and Christine "Not a Witch" O'Donnell before him, isn't really running for president. He's running for his own TV show on FOX and multimillion-dollar book contract.

Another casualty in the war on the poor

2011-12-06T17:26:00.000-05:00

I'm sure the message many of the one percent will draw from this is that handguns are too inexpensive.

I'd like to give the whole world a big hug...

2011-12-02T15:27:00.000-05:00

Shamelessly stolen from PZ over at Pharyngula, music by Jonathan Colton, whose work you really, really need to become more familiar with.

This looks promising

2011-11-28T13:25:00.002-05:00

It is kind of Thunderbirds meets the Prisoner via Monty Python, the Batman TV series and a really low budget Japanese sci-fi series.
This is just the trailer, the series started last week and can be found here.

the Constitution doesn't mention GPS tracking

2011-11-27T18:47:00.001-05:00

My suggestion if you find one of these on your vehicle would be to either drive to a truckstop and stick it on a tractor-trailer with out-of-state plates, or box it up and mail it to the White House (I would suggest using the local police station or FBI office as a return address to avoid having the Secret Service kick in your door)

the return of Friday music!

2011-11-25T11:50:00.000-05:00

A couple of tunes for what appears to have become the second largest national holiday in the U.S. and rapidly in Canada, too. Why celebrate Easter, Diwali or Labour Day when you can embrace rampant consumerism and materialism, and maybe get trampled to death to save $50 on a new flatscreen, purse or gadget?

Headline of the week, maybe of the year

2011-11-24T16:43:00.000-05:00

Thank you Toronto Star , for making the headline suit the story

We spent a billion dollars for this?

2011-11-23T02:51:00.001-05:00

Note that most of these people were arrested in pre-dawn raids BEFORE the G20 demonstrations began, thanks to the use of infiltrators and police spies and agents provocateurs. And it cost taxpayers about a billion dollars, not including the fake lake and Tony Clement's gazebo.

obviously these 17 people posed an serious existential threat to country and civilization and it was worth every cent of that billion dollars to lock them up for the last year and to arrest over 1,000 people, only about 100 of which still face charges.

1,000 word post

2011-11-21T16:10:00.001-05:00

Shamelessly stolen from Montreal Simon, whose excellent blog should be regular reading

the other kind of beat poets

2011-11-20T13:23:00.002-05:00

Former Poet Laureate of the United States and UC Berkley professor Robert Hass didn't want to believe that the police were needlessly beating students at Occupy Berkley, so he went down to the demonstration to see what was happening and lo and behold, he and his wife got their fair share of abuse.

My wife bounced nimbly to her feet. I tripped and almost fell over her trying to help her up, and at that moment the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students. It was stunning to see. They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me — it must be a generational reaction — was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines. NONE of the police officers invited us to disperse or gave any warning. We couldn’t have dispersed if we’d wanted to because the crowd behind us was pushing forward to see what was going on.

I suspect that people will only take this for so long before there is considerable pushback against the police. The more sons and daughters of the middle class that get teargassed, peppersprayed and beaten, the fewer fans the police will have among the populace, and the more they will be viewed as the enemy rather than the protectors of the populace.
When that tipping point is reached, there is going to be real and lasting damage to the fabric of society.

Somebody please explain to me how UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike is one of the "good guys" and not a criminal. He's the one you see at the start of this video pepperspraying a group of seated, non-threatening, clearly non-violent protestors.

What makes him any better than the small time gangbanger, Hells' Angel thug or mob enforcer? This kind of action will not always be met with chants. When the general populace start to see the police as the enemy instead of those who serve and protect, it is a bell you can't unring.

Fetch the smelling salts, someone said "Fuck" on the internet

2011-11-17T22:15:00.003-05:00

As I write this, the number one story under Canada on Google news is the report by the privacy commissioner about the government collecting too much information about us, especially at airports. The number two story is about a carpenter from Winnipeg saying "fuck you" someone (who was definitely asking to be told) on the Internet.
Normally this would not be a story, but the carpenter in question is NDP Member of Parliament Pat Martin, who first expressed his anger over the government swiftly closing debate on the budget bill.

"This is a fucking disgrace... closure again. And on the Budget! There's not a democracy in the world that would tolerate this jackboot shit,”

followed by

For gods sake. In these uncertain economic times, don't you think our parliament should be debating our federal budget? Some due diligence?

These drew a series of tweets in response. Many of them, including my own, agreeing that, yes it is a fucking disgrace that the Harper government considers Parliament an inconvenience at best and that its passing of major pieces of legislation with little or no debate has the whiff of autocratic fascism. It also drew the predictable pearl-clutching trollery of the usual crowd of ignorant twerps who are more worried about the use of naughty words than they are about the government abusing its power.the one that broke the camel's back being from some hardcore Catholic fundamentalist anti-gay anti-choice dingbat who goes by the moniker of Lettingsmokeout

@PatMartinMP Sad how a foul mouth socialist capitalizes "Budget" but not "god" #ndp #cdnpoli

That was the first of several tweets by Lettingsmokeout condemning "socialism" (apparently the Pope doesn't care for socialism and since he is god's official spokesman, he couldn't possibly be wrong) which led Martin to respond with an annoyed "Fuck you" -- to which I would only add "and the altar boys you and the pope rode in on."

Such people don't deserve to be given the time of day. Before you accuse me of anti-Catholic bigotry let me say I've nothing against Catholics that I don't have against adherents of any other major religion. Most are fine people, its the few that get carried away that spoil it all. Religion is like whisky - it's a comfort, but those who start letting it run their life get annoying fast.

Having gotten what he wanted, the mook in question makes sure the jackals at SUN-TV are notified and seeing a shiny object, the pile-on begins with much hand-wringing and pearl-clutching about decorum in politics and those awful, awful socialists.

Well, fuck that noise.

Pat Martin is entirely correct to be as mad as hell and the language he used was entirely appropriate to the situation and the medium.

In the 46 days that Parliament has been sitting it has closed debate at least five time, ending debate on the omnibus crime bill and the gutting of the Canadian Wheat Board among other issues. This is the most times that closure has been used in such a short span and by the end of the session will likely be the most it has ever been used. That is what happens when you have a majority government that cares more about its narrow ideological agenda than about democracy.

No one was talking or writing about the number of times the government has shut down debate and pushed through legislation without allowing the opposition to examine and debate the bills., it has happened so often it isn't considered a story anymore.

But thanks to Pat Martin and a few well chosen words, that story is now at least being mentioned in passing, even if only as the reason the Winnipeg-Centre MP got angry.

Guys like Pat Martin are exactly what politics in this country need. We can no longer afford to have the opposition "go along to get along" - we can't afford to play nice while the other side is engaged in scorched-earth take-no-prisoners endless campaigning. We need an opposition that will dig in its heels and scream bloody murder every single time the Harper government tries to pull a fast one, every time it puts corporate profits ahead of public good, every time it puts cementing its own power ahead of good public policy and fair play.

the original Lord of the Rings

2011-11-15T23:08:00.001-05:00

(and this explains the label)

What they fought and died for

2011-11-11T11:52:00.001-05:00

While I dislike the thought of politicizing Remembrance Day any more than it already has become politicized, neither can I stomach the idea of the leaving it to the flag-draped yahoos who are so busy venerating the holy troops that they forget what exactly those people who made the supreme sacrifice and those who survived were fighting for and against in World War Two.

Not everyone who signed up volunteered, and not everyone who volunteered went for some high moral reason. Some of them signed up because they needed a job, because they were ashamed not to join up, because all their friends were going. Many were conscripted. That doesn't matter. What they thought they were fighting for, whether it was "king and country" or as I once heard it put "keeping India British," isn't as important as what they fought for in terms of practical effect. Nobody joined the army to stop the Holocaust, they didn't even know it was going on at the time, but the practical effect of fighting the Nazis was to put a stop to their efforts to kill all the Jews.

They were fighting for your right to disagree with others, even to disagree with wearing poppies on Nov. 11. They were fighting for your right to speak out against authority - even if it means squatting in the park or public square. They were fighting for your right to be free from being asked for your papers any time a cop didn't like your looks. They were fighting for the rule of law, for equality of strong and weak, rich and poor. They were fighting against racial and religious discrimination.

They were fighting against fascism.

Fascism isn't just Nazis or the style of government under Mussolini. It rather emphatically is not what existed in Russia under Stalin or China under Mao, though it shares their bloodthirsty totalitarianism. Fascism didn't begin or end with the Second World War. There were plenty in England, Canada and the United States that were open fascists and many more that thought it was swell that Mr. Mussolini was able to make the trains run on time or that Mr. Hitler had done great things for Germany.

Fascism took a serious beating from 1939 to 1945, but it wasn't stamped out. Spain stayed fascist. Indonesia was pretty much a fascist state under Sukarno and Suharto and it has raised its ugly violent head numerous times and places in Latin America.

Fascism is not dead, it just smells bad. So bad that people who espouse it don't use that name anymore, don't even realize for the most part that what they are espousing is fascism. But calling it "chocolate freedom liberty dessert" doesn't make it smell any less like the shit it has always been.

I won't point any fingers at any groups or individuals here. You can figure out who they are for yourself. There are a few handy checklists or definitions at the usual place, but I'll provide you with two I think are the most complete. As you might expect, there is a great deal of overlap, and oddly enough, both come up with 14 identifying characteristics.

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forgo civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Umberto Eco put together a similar list in his excellent 1995 essay Eternal Fascism, saying that fascist movements share these traits (I'm paraphrasing his longer essay)

1. Fascism is driven by an urge to control. Somebody has to be in charge. The boss must show they are dominant. You must obey authority.

2. Fascism requires an enemy. If there is no handy enemy, one must be created. This enforces unity, puts everything on a "war footing" and plays to the Manichean mindset and enforced simplicity that goes hand in hand with anti-intellectualism. People are a lot easier to control when they are scared of something.

3. Fascism constantly looks to the usually imaginary past as golden era that must be reclaimed. Fascists are all about seeing the country "reborn" and seeing us get back to the "good old day" before smarty pants effete intellectuals and decadent bohemians ruined the country. "We want our country back."

4.Fascism is violent. Either in the imagery they employ, the eliminationist language or in the actual physical act, fascists love the notion of taking direct action rather than thinking. "Lock them all up and throw away the key!" "All the politicians do is talk talk talk, why don't they DO something!" See the movie "Joe" or read any blogging tory for all the examples you could want.

5.Fascism worships strength and simplicity. Whenever someone starts talking about the need to demonstrate "strong leadership" and "common sense" whether its through bombing someone or imposing a flat tax, you are getting a whiff of fascism. Ditto for all the fascination with anyone in a uniform that gets to do 'heroic' stuff like soldiers and police. They want action heroes. They want the guy who hangs drug dealers, not the guy who comes up with a way to successfully treat addiction or reform drug dealers.

6. Fascism is aristocratic. For all its populist talk, fascists worship power and that means worshipping people who are perceived to have power and use it to take decisive action, whether it is the grand exalted leader, the titan of industry, the general or the university football coach. The rank and file think that the powerful person is a hero and they aspire to be like them. Their heroes are not Nobel winning scientists, great artists or philosophers or humanitarians.

How long?

2011-11-09T23:37:00.001-05:00

This week at Berkely.

How much more will the wealthy's bought and paid for politicians rob from the poor to give to the rich?
How much more will people allow their economic and social mobility to be restricted?
How much longer are audiences going to tune in while those in the political media bubble continue to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted?
How many more homeless are going to freeze to death?
How many more people are going to lose their homes?
How much more will education and social welfare spending be cut to pay for 'law and order'?
How many more tear gassings?
How many more taserings?
How many more pepper sprayings?
How many more kettlings?
How much more unprovoked brutality are people going to put up with before nonviolent demonstrations and civil disobedience turn into a rain of paving stones and molotov cocktails when the riot police arrive? How long before people start sharpening their pitchforks and lighting their torches?
Tick...tick...tick...

Things go better with Koch!

2011-11-07T16:15:00.001-05:00

The Koch brothers (not exactly as pictured above) would like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, or at least the world's billionaires anyway. Unfortunately, the song they want to teach them appears to be the Horst Wessel Song. Class warfare - it's the real thing!

So here is a little tune from us to them:

Bonus link: Alison over at Creekside has more on the Koch brothers oil pipeline machinations.

Nail injured in clash with hammer

2011-11-03T19:54:00.000-04:00

As a journalist I understand the need to use value neutral terminology in describing events much of the time, but sometimes my colleagues and I go a bit overboard. I spent a few moments yelling at my radio over one such incident last night.
In their coverage of the events surrounding the call for a general strike in Oakland, California, last night, the CBC mentioned that strike had been called by the Occupy Oakland group after demonstrators there clashed with police last week.
I don't mean to single out the CBC as a quick look around shows many other media outlets used the same terminology. "Clashed" is a word used in newswriting when you know there was a fight, but you aren't sure who started it. "Clashed" suggests each side gave as good as they got. What happened in Oakland on Wednesday night may or may not have been "clashes" between police and protestors, but the event that lead to Wednesday's call for a general strike was not a "clash," it was an unprovoked, carefully coordinated attack by police on peaceful protestors who were guilty of little more than loitering in a public space and littering.

Riot police stormed the Occupy Oakland camp around 5 am on Oct. firing baton rounds and tear gas and arresting 85 of about 170 protesters who had been camping in the downtown park for about two weeks.There was no suggestion that the protestors were violent or even unruly. Many were asleep when the hundreds of riot cops moved in and detroyed the encampment. That isn't a "clash," that's a "raid" or "an attack" or a "police riot."

The police even threw a flash-bang grenade at people trying to help a man who was nearly killed after his head "clashed" with a baton-round fired by riot cops.

Scott Olson, the man shot in the head with the baton-round, (essentially a either a hockey puck fired from a grenade launcher or a cloth bag full of birdshot fired from a shot gun) remains in hospital with a fractured skull. He survived two tours of duty with the marines in Iraq before coming home to be shot while fighting for freedom.

I think its pretty clear who the police in this case are serving and protecting, and it ain't the 99%

Rick Perry is not as think as you stoned he is!

2011-11-01T17:43:00.002-04:00

Here are the "high"lights of soon-to-be-former-presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry's recent speech in New Hampshire. If you want to sit through the entire addled trainwreck you can watch it here.

He doesn't look sleepy and he isn't slurring his speech enough for it to be booze and he isn't jumpy and hyper enough for it to be cocaine and his teeth are too nice for it to be meth. He's a bit too animated for it to be weed (though it really reminded me of this), so I'm guessing some kind of hallucinogen, but he's not trying to hug anyone so it probably isn't X and he doesn't have the manic grin or unblinking laser eyes of someone on LSD, so it must be something a bit more obscure - I'm guessing ibogaine.

After all, he wouldn't be the first candidate to get derailed by ibogaine.

there is a reason that many newspaper websites don't allow comments

2011-10-30T20:12:00.001-04:00

And that reason is this: People who comment at newspaper websites are stupid, as are many people who complain to newspapers, as are many people who work for newspapers.

Pour yourself a drink, I feel a screed a-comin'

Not offense to the fine people that employ me, and my opinions are my own and not intended to represent or reflect theirs or anybody else's.

Simply put, the newspaper story linked to above is a monument to stupidity on all fronts. In a nutshell, two teachers at a public school decided not to have their junior kindergarten students take part in the school's Halloween events and some Sun-TV viewing parent has decided somehow or other that this is political correctness run amok and destroying Canada.

Stupid like this happens all the time.

But in this case the parent has obviously run to the local newspaper and the editor there hasn't been wise or assertive enough to get rid of them and has instead given them a platform for their incoherent objection to the teacher's possibly ill-considered but totally harmless decision. The reporter assigned to the story wasn't smart or assertive enough to either refuse such a stupid assignment or simply come back and tell the editor "there's no story there boss, just some idiot who needs to stop watching Michael Coren and reading the Toronto Sun.." It's either that or the editor and reporter, tired of being harrassed by this dumbell decided to shine a light under this woman's rock in the hopes that she would scurry away rather than embarass her family.

This kind of stupid "let's you and him fight" process of stirring up a false controversy to provide front-page fodder has a long and mostly ignoble history dating back to the yellow journalism of the Hearst papers ginning up the Spanish American War and continuing to the work of Glenn Beck and hate radio. Given the track record of the paper in question, I suspect it is less a case of ginning up a story or stirring the pot for fun and profict and more a case of not being able to tell the Mom "thanks for your call, but we aren't interested. Go peddle crazy someplace else." And not getting a comment - or more likely a "no comment" - from school's principal or the teachers involved is unforgiveable.If they declined to speak and referred the reporter to the board spokesperson, fine, but say so in the story.

And last, but hardly least in the parade of stupid, we have the usual assembly of commenters who take time out of their busy schedule of eating paint chips and masterbating to Rush Limbagh to pen little screeds about how the liberals and immigrants from Whoknowswhereistan are ruining perfectly nice white Christian holidays like Halloween.

The teacher's decision was taken partly, I suspect, to keep the four- and five-year-olds from having the crap scared out of them by the older kids' more gruesome costumes, partly to spare themselves from the risk of Mormon or born-again Christian parents accusing them of teaching Satanism to toddlers and partly to keep from having a bunch of overexcited, overstimulated, candy-jonesing four- and five-year-olds on their hands for the day. Instead, they are doing a nature-themed black-and-orange day for the little ones.

It isn't a decision I would have made. I often scare small children, sometimes even on purpose. I'm absolutely in favour of baiting fundementalist whack jobs ("Think of it as lesson on Comparative Religion, Deacon and Mrs. Smith, I'm sure little Caleb and Faith won't try to have a human sacrifice at home and will save their ritual cannibalism for communion on Sunday") and I would have thought that filling the little bugger full of sugar and then sending them home would have been fitting revenge on their parents for any of a myriad number of sins real or imagined committed against the teachers. But then again, I'm not tough enough to be teaching junior kindergarten.

And you can be sure revenge in some form will be taken against the blameless kid involved. Their file will have "this kid's mom is a nut who will call the media anytime the mood strikes her" stamped all over it and teachers will from now on treat the poor child like a beaker of nitroglycerine, meaning that anything off the beaten track in terms of educational experiences or source material will be strictly verboten.

The concerned mom, worried that her little treasure won't get to have the bejezzus scared out of him or her or get to show off the $10 princess trollop jr.or mega-macho action-man costume from Value Village to her classmates, thus denying mommy the chance to compete with other mommies, even raises the spectre of the War on Christmas.

“We’re losing Canada — in Canada,” (name removed in hopes of avoiding annoying lawyery emails) said Friday, stressing schools celebrated Halloween as a slightly ghoulish but fun unofficial holiday when she was a child, but are increasingly turning away from this. “They’re taking away my choice as a parent. This is my culture. I’m from Canada.”...(snip)...
“I don’t want it to be a black-and-orange day,” (name removed in hopes of avoiding annoying lawyery emails) countered, saying she’s now anxious about whether celebrating other traditions may be nixed, including Christmas.
“How much more of Canadian culture are we going to lose?”

She carries on as if the teachers are serving beaver curry and have cut up the flag to make a turban for the her daughter to wear to the human sacrifice and Constitution bonfire. Granted, I've been out of the country for a few years, but when did trick-or-treat day join hockey, the RCMP, maple syrup and complaining about the damn French/Les maudit Anglais as the cornerstone of our national identity?

She's Canadian, we get it. That and $5 will get her a double-double and an apple fritter at Tim's - so what? I can only assume from her insistence on asserting her Canadianess that she thinks denying her little one a chance to participate in the Halloween festivities is somehow the work of nefarious non-Canadian forces.

That is certainly the message the trolls who came out from under their bridges in the comments at the site seized on.I'm not sure what foreign culture they think is being catered to since no one outside of North America pays any attention to Halloween and the only cultural group in North America that objects to it are the Mormons and Christian Taliban who think its a celebration of witchcraft that will turn their kids into cross-dressing Satanic gay readers of Harry Potter novels or some such nonsense.

I don't recall ever seeing troops of Turks, Italians, Brazillians or Chinese out demonstrating against Halloween. I haven't seen any anti-Halloween rallies organized by Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews or Rastafarians. Who exactly do these dimwitted commenters think is destroying their culture?

The so-called politically correct crowd don't have anything against Halloween. It has long been the holiday of choice for those pursing lifestyle choices that don't meet with conservative approval. A chance to dress up and act out? A pagan festival when everyone is a weirdo? Giving away stuff to kids? Going all out to freak out the squares? Getting free stuff from property owners? How much more of a rainbow-freak-flag counterculture approved event can you get?
These xenophobic idiots see some kind of nefarious conspiracy to steal their cultural identity every time they hear someone say 'happy holidays' - I just wish they would get it over with, send Bill O'Reilly or Pat Robertson their life savings, go Galt once and for all and leave the rest of us alone.

So, to sum up; Stupid teachers, stupid mom, stupid or lazy newspaper people and stupid, stupid, stupid with bigot-sauce commentors.

Happy Halloween!

happy Halloween

2011-10-30T13:42:00.001-04:00

go easy on the treats, folks!

This will not stand!

2011-10-28T20:16:00.002-04:00

"You won't recognize Canada when I get through with it"
-Stephen Harper

Not content with running roughshod over the wishes of the majority of Canadians and eliminating the long-gun registry, ignoring the majority of wheat farmers and cutting the throat of the Canadian Wheat Board, the Harper conservatives are now starting to tinker with national symbols.

Dam the beaver — use the polar bear as official emblem, Tory saysOTTAWA—A Conservative senator says it’s time Canada was symbolized by something more majestic than a buck-toothed rodent.
Senator Nicole Eaton wants the polar bear to replace the beaver as an official emblem of Canada.
She says the polar bear is Canada’s “most majestic and splendid mammal,” and a powerful symbol in the lives of native peoples in the North.
She believes the furry, white carnivore’s “strength, courage, resourcefulness and dignity” is an appropriate symbol for modern-day Canada.
By contrast, she derides the lowly beaver as a “19th century has-been,” a “dentally defective rat,” a “toothy tyrant” and a nuisance that wreaks havoc on its environment.

I suppose next they will want to change the flag to a circle of 10 white maple leaves on a blue field in the top left corner over a field of red and white stripes, or maybe just bring back the Red Ensign, since they seem to want to burn down anything that has happened since Diefenbaker was prime minister.

Keeping occupied

2011-10-26T18:18:00.000-04:00

Cartoon shamelessly stolen from Alison at Creekside, who got it from LeDevoir.

It appears the Occupy Wall Street movement is starting to crumble a bit around the edges. Some of the reasons are the external ones you might expect - like the Oakland police launching tear gas into an unarmed, nonviolent crowd or the steady drip of arrests and trouble sparked by police agent provocateurs and the constant efforts in the press to insists the protesters don't know what they want or understand what they are protesting about (which is, not to put too fine a point on it, utter bullshit).
Then there are the more practical reasons. The weather is turning colder and the resources that make the protest possible are running low. Simply put, most people cannot afford to spend week after week camping out in Zucotti Park or wherever else is being occupied.
Unlike the Teabaggers -- who just rolled up on their mobility scooters or arrived on Koch-sponsored bus tours, got shouty about keeping the gummint out of their medicare and waved badly spelled signs for an hour or two and then went home to watch FOX News, clean their guns and wait for their next social security cheque--the Wall Street occupiers are mostly people of working age who would rather be working. Some of so-called professional protestors or full-time activists, some are college students, some are returned vets, some are just regular people with nothing left to lose, but most of them would much rather be working a paying job than freezing their butts off and getting threatened with a macing in the park.
No, the main threat to the occupy movement at this point seems to be the movement itself. You can only live in the parks and public squares for so long without bathrooms. The democratic nature of the movement can only be hijacked so many times by malcontents, purity trolls, single-issue hostage-takers and anarchists before the organization starts to pull itself apart. And don't lets get started on the drummers. As in any bottom-up movement, the center cannot hold indefinitely and as in any liberal movement where everyone's opinion is given equal time and consideration from the moderate to the most radical, cohesion has limited lifespan before groups start to splinter.
I think the movement is making their point, but would be better off to push hard while they still have momentum in the short term for some kind of concession in Washington that would let them declare victory and go home before attrition and cold weather whittle down their numbers or the powers that be decide that the short term PR problems a violent sweep by riot cops would bring is a lesser evil than the PR nightmare of Occupy Wall Street carrying on through Christmas.
One possible move the occupiers around the country should consider is a collective march on Washington or Wall Street in the style of the Bonus Army. You think the 1% are worried now, wait and see the panic when a million or so people from around the country converge on a single power center in numbers that would overwhelm any possible police response

both need braaaaaaains

2011-10-25T21:39:00.002-04:00

There is a rare seasonly-themed event this week that I would love to attend, You don't often see seasonally themed events for political wonks, but this one promises to be a classic
Daniel Drezner, a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University is speaking about his latest book at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo tonight. His latest book being Theories of International Politcs and Zombies.
I haven't read it (yet) but thanks to my extensive study of political science and repeated views of The Walking Dead, I have learned to tell the two apart. The trick is that one is a staggering, putrid, rotten, mindless creature that destroys anything it can touch and has a seemingly insatiable appetite for human flesh, the other is a zombie.
Leave your jokes about the UN, the G20, the Commonwealth, the conservative base, the GOP leadership race and the undead in the comments.

In other news, the sun set in the west today and is widely expected to rise in the east tomorrow...

2011-10-24T16:38:00.001-04:00

I'm shocked, just shocked that Christie Blatchford said something stupid, mean-spirited and offensive about not-police people who work hard to help people in need.That hasn't happened since her last column.

I smell Nobel prize!

2011-10-24T08:22:00.000-04:00

Dear Nobel prize panel,
Never mind handing out prizes for curing cancer or ending war, a solution has been found for the greatest modern plague known to the western world: idiot trolls on internet comment threads.
While this blog has largely been free of such dumbassery, such people have long since ruined the comment threads at any major media outlet from the Globe&Mail to Youtube (possibly the stupidest, most ill-informed and downright hateful commenters anywhere outside of the right-wing echo chamber blogs coughsmalldeadanimalscough)
All hail the wonder that is OUTKUBE!

your truly,
Rev.Paperboy

P.S. Sorry for not writing to you in Swedish or Norwegian, but since you usually give the literature prize to someone writing in English, I figure you must all be fluent.

Viva the usual suspects!

2011-10-23T18:34:00.002-04:00

92 years old and he is still fighting for the 99%. His machine "surrounds hate and forces it to surrender." FSM bless Pete Seeger and his fellow travellers!

the birth of the tea party movement

2011-10-23T12:29:00.001-04:00

Before Archie Bunker made bigotry just another endearing trait of old white guys, like flatulence or Republicanism, there was Joe.

While Archie Bunker was eventually redeemed and learned to think past his prejudices and was, in reality, a very clever move by Norman Lear to subvert conservative bigotry, "Joe" was a little uh, darker. The sad part is, today's Tea Party Conservative thinks of Joe as a hero and seem to view the movie as a documentary. And FSM knows, today's so-called centerists like David Brooks and the Sunday morning talks show types love to punch the dirty hippies.

Friday blues!

2011-10-21T16:36:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty sure this is one of the signs of the apocalypse

2011-10-20T17:14:00.002-04:00

Holy Shhhhhhhhhatner!

Don't know if I got the job, but it was a swell interview

2011-10-19T23:01:00.002-04:00

Stay klassy Flyers fans

2011-10-13T16:50:00.001-04:00

Ah the city of brotherly love. We knew Philly sports fans hated Santa Claus, but who would have imagined that they would boo an anti-cancer campaign?

Hipster music fail

2011-10-09T12:02:00.000-04:00

So I'm watching Saturday Night Live for the first time in ages and Ben Stiller, whom I generally enjoy, is doing an admirable job as host and I'm enjoying the Zoolander gags and Weekend Update is pretty good and then the musical guest comes on. A band called Foster the People. And I'm thinking, meh, a bunch of skinny white dudes in sorta asymetrical haircuts that look like they have very carefully cultivated the suburban casual milqtoast nerd-chic look. Guitar, bass, a couple of eighties-sounding keyboards, in fact they have a very retro-new wave kinda sound, very dense wash of echo-y repetitive riffs with incomprehensible lyrics sung in a slightly over-theatrical way. Not my cup of tea, but hey, I'm an old fart now and maybe this is what the kids are into when they aren't playing Xbox and wondering if we really have always been at war with Afghanistan. The band has a certain angsty, Human League, Radiohead kinda charm in a pretentious way. Then I notice the horn section is mic'ed and that they appear to be miming a keyboard line, hmmmmmm. Then I hear it, that high pitched honking whine of a soprano or maybe alto sax. The camera pans back and there he is, the biggest selling instrumental artist of the modern era, which is to say of all time - Kenneth Bruce Gorelick.
No, he has not been added as an ironical sampled aside to give the band ironical hipster cred, he is there, on stage blowing a smooth jazz solo that immediately makes me wonder if I have enough scented candles in the house? why do I suddenly want a mayonaise and wonderbread sandwich and a glass of luke-warm near-beer? Is my favorite colour taupe or beige? which floor of this office tower the accounting department is on and hey, how did I get in this elevator any way?
What the hell is this? Was Chuck Mangione all booked up? This stuff makes Ray Coniff and look edgy and hardcore.
That whirring sound I can hear is probably John Coltrane spinning in his grave.
Foster the People - the stench of boring suckitude is upon you!
Repent, and do an album of Sly and the Family Stone covers with Bootsy Collins before it is too late for you to be saved!

Election Predictions

2011-10-06T20:29:00.000-04:00

The polls close in a about 40 minutes. I'm betting on a slim Liberal majority or minority and a surge for the NDP.

My two bets in the office pool:

Libs 56
PC 30
NDP 21

OR if Tim Hudak's hateful campaign of wrong-head libertarianism, xenophobia and homophobia, backed up by as much help as the Harper cabinet could throw his way resonates with the remaining Rob Ford fans in the 905 belt

Libs 50
PC 37
NDP 20

Either way, I think we can expect another four years of Premier Dad, which, while he isn't my first choice either locally or provincially, won't be that bad. At least not when one considers the Mini-Mike Harris alternative we thought we were facing at the start of the campaign.

Credit where credit is due dept.-- the National Toast has a good graphic on which industries give how much to which parties.

saving summer in a jar

2011-10-04T14:07:00.000-04:00

We took my visiting in-laws to the farmers market last week and bought a bushel of sweet red peppers. My mother-in-law couldn't figure what the heck I was going to do with them all or how we could eat a whole bushel before they spoiled. Fortunately, I had a clever plan.

wash them

roast them

give the peppers as much heat as the grill will muster and turn often until they get black on the outside, then take a sharp knife and scrape off the blacken outer skin (some people pop them into a paper bag straight off the fire to make this easier) scrap off the pips and cut the peppers into strips. Try not to eat too many. They will be candy sweet at this point, so that is harder than it sounds. About a quarter of ours magically vanished before the final step.

sterilize the jars and lids, pack the peppers in with a couple of cloves of garlic and enough olive oil to top up the jar. Put the filled jars in boiling water for about five or ten minutes, then remove and tighten the lids. As they cool, they will seal

Viola, summer in a jar.

Dick

2011-10-02T17:55:00.000-04:00

Poor, poor Dick Cheney. He feels he has been grievously wronged and is waiting for an apology. How dare the uppity Keyan Muslim socialist usurper suggest that President Cheney and his fatuous meatpuppet Dubya (who is either too drunk to be allowed in public by his keepers or may actually have enough brains to keep his fool mouth shut since leaving office) overreacted to the events of Sept. 11, 2001!
Just because Dick Cheney and his pals murdered a couple of hundred thousand people in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, a country that the United States continues to occupy and will for the foreseeable future. Just because Dick Cheney and his pals embraced torture, made people disappear into secret prisons, practiced assassination, suspended habeas corpus and generally wiped their asses with the Constitution all in the name of security,
Just because Dick Cheney and his pals played on the fears of the traumatized American public to empty the U.S. treasury for the enrichment of their friends in the oil and security industries.
Just because Dick Cheney and his pals, for their own political advantage, engendered a climate of fear and elevated the domestic security forces to the point where every tiny one horse town now has have its own SWAT team and armoured car, police feel free to mace peaceful protesters and taser children, and fighter jets are scrambled because someone swarthy spend a few too many minutes in the airplane's toilet or happens to mutter to themselves in a language other than american.
Just because Dick Cheney and his pals shrieked "traitor" and evoked the holy martyrs of 9/11 (the most important, specialest and utterly innocent people to have died at any point in history, not like those sneaky dirty throngs of African kids who starve to death every day or those terrorist Palestinian kids whose schools and homes the Israelis keep blowing up) any time anyone even expressed the mildest of doubts about anything the administration did from tapping everyone's phone to cutting taxes for millionaires.
Just because of all the blood Dick Cheney spilled, the treasure he squandered and stole and the myriad horrors he ordered inflicted, Barack Obama had the unmitigated gall to say the Cheney administration overreacted to 9/11 and now Dick Cheney is waiting for an apology.
As far as I'm concerned he should get one, just as soon as he personally apologizes, face to face, one at a time to every single person left alive in Iraq. Just as soon as he apologizes to Valerie Plame and about 300 million other americans - I imagine the guy he shot in the face would at least like to hear an "oops, my bad" - for the various ways he has screwed them and made their country a worse place.
After he gets done making all those apologies, then I think Obama should apologize to Cheney and clarify his remarks......... preferrably while testifying at Cheney's trial at The Hague.

Truth will out eventually

2011-09-29T23:03:00.000-04:00

They've tried sandbagging the parliamentary committees involved, they've tried smearing the witnesses, they've tried wrapping themselves in the flag and "our brave men and women in uniform" - they've even tried shutting down Parliament. But the government's complicity in and attempts to cover- up the torture of detainees in Afghanistan is not going to go away.

Sad, but true

2011-09-23T15:58:00.000-04:00

What's good for the goose is apparently criminal defamation to the gander

2011-09-13T16:01:00.003-04:00

Apparently it is okay for neofascist dingbats to smear the reputation of a respected academic, trade unionist and blogger by spreading lies about him being a supporter of the Taliban, but if you say mean things about a police spies and agent provocatuers, well....

Activist charged with criminal defamation over posting about undercover officers
Police officers linked to last year’s G20 summit say a Kitchener activist defamed two undercover police officers in comments he made on a local university-based website.
Dan Kellar, 29, was recently charged with two counts of defamatory libel by officers in the OPP anti-rackets squad as he left his Kitchener home on a bicycle.
He was also charged with counsel to assault one of the officers.
Police allege he published comments likely to injure the reputation of the officers by exposing them to hatred, contempt or ridicule, or that were designed to insult the officers.
Kellar and his lawyer, Davin Charney, say the charges are an attempt to stifle dissent.
“Dissent is now a criminal activity,’’ said Kellar, a member of Anti-War at Laurier (AW@L), which calls itself “a community-based radical direct-action group committed to solidarity and anti-oppressive organizing.’’
Criminal defamation is a rarely used section of the criminal code, Charney said.
“It gives police the ability to criminalize and charge people who are criticizing the police,’’ he said.
Sgt. Pierre Chamberland, a communications spokesperson for the OPP, acknowledged the charge of criminal defamation isn’t commonly laid.
“It’s not a charge I hear used every day,’’ he said. “However, I suspect people will need to understand they own the words they post publicly.’’

Click the headline and read the whole thing. The police spies who infiltrated the activist group were outed at some other site months ago. These charges have been laid simply because Dan Kellar said something rude about the undercover cops involved. He invited people to "spit in their footsteps and scoff at their existence" and I guess the big, brave infiltrators got their feeling hurt, because that statement drew a "cousel to assault" charge. Does that mean that if I scoff at the existence of these people I am guilty of assault? I guess they better lock up all the right-wingnut bloggers who told us that the police never use agent provocateurs or infiltrate non-violent groups.

Oh, and that respected academic, trade unionist, blogger and bon vivant, the inimitable Dr. Dawg has more

the terrorists won

2011-09-11T20:46:00.001-04:00

Apparently all it takes is an airline passenger eating a dodgy burrito before the flight or a couple joining the mile-high club to make NORAD shit its pants. Given what it costs to scramble an F-16 and have it fly from Denver to New York, al-Quaida could probably bankrupt the United States by slipping some Ex-Lax into the coffee urn at the Starbucks at O'Hare Airport every couple of weeks.

Enter early and often!

2011-08-29T19:30:00.000-04:00

The Toronto Library Worker's Union is sponsoring a contest to show how much people love the library after braying philistine Doug "Tweedledum" Ford suggested close a bunch of them or even selling them off to the private sector because he wasn't sure who this Margaret Atwood person was and anyways the money would be better spent on luring a new NFL franchise to town or some such crap. The first prize in the contest is "quality time" with Margaret Atwood or Michael Ondaatje or one of several other authors.
Now, the Toronto Star tells us that a conservative group has started a similar contest. Entrants have to write an essay or make a video explaining why lower taxes would be good for Toronto. First prize is a lunch date with Doug Ford or Sun typist and failed political candidate Sue Ann Levy. While a quick look at the Mayor's brother tells you that he knows his food, I'm not sure if hot wings and barley sammiches at the Etobicoke Hooters will be to everyone's taste. Mind you, I suppose it would be a step up from whatever Sue Ann managed to catch and kill on the way to work that morning. (if you think I'm linking to either of these dingbats, forget it. I'd sooner canoodle with Crusty Blatchford.) The contest is here.
I would encourage all of you to enter. I'm going to suggest to them lower taxes would be better for Toronto because then there wouldn't be enough money for the government to spend on baton charges against crowds singing O Canada or sending police to harrass and jail people for peacefully protesting or kettling and arresting people who happen to live near where a peaceful demonstration took place. Not only that but lower taxes in Toronto would also mean less money to provide services and shelters for homeless people, so the government could just take the cheaper option of giving them busfare from downtown out to North York and Etobicoke to panhandle where the people with money live. These suggestions may not win me that first prize lunch , but you never know.
I'm guessing second prize is two lunch dates.

Attention Inigo Montoya

2011-08-26T20:06:00.000-04:00

Sorry to hear about your father, but as a matter of fact, I have seen a six fingered man

RIP Jack Layton

2011-08-22T10:02:00.009-04:00

Dear Friends,

Tens of thousands of Canadians have written to me in recent weeks to wish me well. I want to thank each and every one of you for your thoughtful, inspiring and often beautiful notes, cards and gifts. Your spirit and love have lit up my home, my spirit, and my determination.

Unfortunately my treatment has not worked out as I hoped. So I am giving this letter to my partner Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue.

I recommend that Hull-Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel continue her work as our interim leader until a permanent successor is elected.

I recommend the party hold a leadership vote as early as possible in the New Year, on approximately the same timelines as in 2003, so that our new leader has ample time to reconsolidate our team, renew our party and our program, and move forward towards the next election.

A few additional thoughts:

To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope. Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer.

To the members of my party: we’ve done remarkable things together in the past eight years. It has been a privilege to lead the New Democratic Party and I am most grateful for your confidence, your support, and the endless hours of volunteer commitment you have devoted to our cause. There will be those who will try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and determination to our work. Remember our proud history of social justice, universal health care, public pensions and making sure no one is left behind. Let’s continue to move forward. Let’s demonstrate in everything we do in the four years before us that we are ready to serve our beloved Canada as its next government.

To the members of our parliamentary caucus: I have been privileged to work with each and every one of you. Our caucus meetings were always the highlight of my week. It has been my role to ask a great deal from you. And now I am going to do so again. Canadians will be closely watching you in the months to come. Colleagues, I know you will make the tens of thousands of members of our party proud of you by demonstrating the same seamless teamwork and solidarity that has earned us the confidence of millions of Canadians in the recent election.

To my fellow Quebecers: On May 2nd, you made an historic decision. You decided that the way to replace Canada’s Conservative federal government with something better was by working together in partnership with progressive-minded Canadians across the country. You made the right decision then; it is still the right decision today; and it will be the right decision right through to the next election, when we will succeed, together. You have elected a superb team of New Democrats to Parliament. They are going to be doing remarkable things in the years to come to make this country better for us all.

To young Canadians: All my life I have worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the future.

And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

All my very best,
Jack Layton

"Courage my friends, it's not too late to build a better world"
-Tommy Douglas

"Canadian politics just got a little smaller, colder and dumber."

-Lindsay Stewart

Jack Layton was a man ahead of his time, he will be missed. Canadian politics just got a whole lot less hopeful.

Meanwhile, some of those on the right show what a class act they are and have always been

Mammoliti will protect our precious bodily fluids

2011-08-15T12:57:00.001-04:00

Toronto city councillor George "Giorgio" Mammoliti (he changed his name in 2002 from English to Italian to better reflect his ~~desire to suck up to immigrant voters in his ward~~ Italian heritage) has apparently finally made the full journey from populist leftist to ~~card-carrying member of Monster Raving Looney Party~~ conservative firebrand. How short is the collective memory of Torontonians? Apparently just as short as Mammoliti's own. With all his recent ranting about Communist ~~flouridation contaminating our precious bodily fluids~~ infiltration of his facebook page and Toronto City Council, and record as a ~~self-agrandizing~~ right-wing ~~sideshow clown~~ firebrand on council, it is worth looking at his slow gradual ~~descent into lunacy~~ shift in politics.
George started out as a landscaper for the Toronto Public Housing Authority, became active in his union and eventually became president of his CUPE local. From there he rode the Bob Rae wave into government at Queen's Park as an NDP MPP. At Queen's Park, he frequently embarrassed his government with his tirades against legitimizing same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples. When the Rae government crashed and burned in 1995 - largely due to the constant refusal of the business community to accept the legitimacy of the NDP government and a huge backlash among public sector union members -- the backbone of the Ontario NDP at the time -- over cost-saving efforts that violated union contracts, Mammoliti moved on to municipal politics. He switched his loyalty to the Liberal Party and ran and won in the byelection to replace the city councillor who had replaced him as MPP.
On council his accomplishments have been many - he is chiefly know for his efforts to bring an NHL team to North York, establish a red light district on Toronto Island, erect a "historic" flagpole in his ward and launching a lawsuit against fellow "right-wing firebrand" Rob Ford after Ford called him "Gino-boy" and clashing repeatedly with Ford over his office budget. He declared his candidacy for mayor and even had his son poised to run against Ford's brother until the two decided that the city needed to have only one right-wing firebrand running for mayor. Since the election he has been Ford's most steadfast defender on council, calling all those who questioned the city government's efforts to slash programs and spending "communists" -- ~~a bit rich for someone who has never worked in the private sector and suckled at the public teat his entire adult life~~ brave words from a warrior who is apparently surrounded by bolsheviks.
Mammoliti is not ~~smart enough to know when he has become a walking punchline~~ backing down:

From Friday's Mop & Pail

Even after wide criticism of his anti-Communist rants, Mr. Mammoliti is holding firm to his view that a red scourge is prevalent among Canada’s left.

“There’s an underground element that has filtered into a major party in this country,” he said of the NDP. “I’m dead serious about this.”

He said six or seven communists sit on City Council with a long-term plot of installing “a system of government where government takes over all private property and controls the thoughts and views of people.”

In the 1980s, Mr. Mammoliti served as a leader for the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Later, he served as an MPP for the NDP, where he became something of a pariah for opposing same-sex benefits. He said he learned how to “smell communists” during his stint with Canada’s left.

“I know some of my views are outside the box,” he said. “But if people hear councillors in hallways talking about Fidel Castro and what a hero he was, they would be just as concerned.”

Well, they say in a democracy, people get the government they deserve. Congratulations Torontonians, you must be so proud!

Bonus: Councillor Mammoliti reveals communist plot!

Somebody get Mike Wallace to look into this

2011-08-11T15:57:00.001-04:00

We eat a lot of instant ramen noodles here at the Woodshed. I wish to the FSM they would stop calling these little packets of instant noodles "ramen" since they bear little or no resemblance to the wonderful steaming bowls of marvellous broth piled high with pork and vegetables and fresh-made noodles that I miss so much from Japan.

While shopping the other day, a thought occured to me. These noodles always come with a little packet of powdered soup mix and there are various flavours. The beef, while it contains no actual meat, is supposed to taste like the meat of a cow. The chicken is flavoured to taste like like broth made from boiling pieces and bones of chicken, the pork tastes like pork, the shrimp tastes like shrimp, the vegetable tastes like broth made from vegetables. Simple, right?

So exactly how do you explain this?

Could it be?

Anarchy in the U.K.

2011-08-09T19:18:00.001-04:00

Some thoughts and links on the riots across England:

Not everyone in London is either a rioting, firebomb-throwing yob looter or an authoritarian "send-in-the-army" wannabe aristocrat. Some of them are good community minded people. Let hope these people get as much credit as they deserve.
Sometimes you find insightful analysis in the most unlikely places.
Not everyone was terribly surprised by this turn of events, indeed the causes have been evident for some time.
A blogger's-eye view from the city as it burns and some thoughts on why from Red Penny. This bit in particular caught my eye:

"Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news. In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."
Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere ‘’’

Everyone will quite rightfully decry the violence, looting and mayhem washing over the U.K., and they are right to be shocked. But anyone who is surprised that there is suddenly social unrest in a developed country in which the disparities in wealth distribution and opportunities have been steadily growing while youth culture has become centered around consumerism, heavy binge drinking and enforced idleness among vast swathes the underclass, where the moral authority of the police has been steadily eroded by the constant drip of corruption, racism, brutality and abuse of power, where the wealthy political class has coddled the upper middle class and thrown the rest of the population to the dogs --- anyone who is surprised simply hasn't been paying attention.

crossposted to the Galloping Beaver

Sometimes they just make this too easy

2011-08-09T16:42:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, the Toronto Sun asked readers to suggest three "quick fix" ideas for things that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford could do right away to make Toronto a better city. Well, they asked...

I think the fastest way for Rob Ford to improve the city of Toronto would be for him to:

1. Move to Calgary.

2. Take his idiot brother with him.

3. Before he leaves, send Giorgio Mammoliti on a five year fact-finding mission to the South Pole.

By the way your worship, how's that promise not to cut services working out for ya?

Pompous and wrong as always

2011-08-09T08:00:00.003-04:00

Shorter Conrad Black: A gentleman such as oneself is apt to miss the comforts of the fairer sex when unjustly incarcerated by one's inferiors and one's good lady wife declines to pay a conjugal visit citing the discomforts of the unfashionable accomodations of the Bastille's prefabricated structure reserved for such assignations. In such circumstances, one's earthly desires must be satiated in the mind's eye as it soars over these dingy walls on the wings of imagination. An indispensible aid in just such periods of need are the images gracing the covers of the very latest volumes by those mischevious coquettes of conservatism, Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. Lo, as my co-incarcerated brethern in the yard might brutishly put it: Verily, would I tap tap that!

Sure, he may have been thrown out of the House of Lords for his various crimes, just as he was thrown out of Upper Canada College for stealing exams as a boy, but Lord Tubby of Fleet Street continues to demonstrate that as King of the Douchebags, he is still one of the world's true aristocrats.

And you know how I feel about aristocrats...

Help Japan and support your local bookstore

2011-08-08T17:43:00.001-04:00

2:46 aka #Quakebook has finally hit the shelves in bookstores around the world, and is selling well.
All the proceeds go to the Japan Red Cross for earthquake relief work - which four months after the massive quake and tsunami is still going on. So far Our Man in Abiko's project has raised more than $40,000 for the Japan Red Cross.
Sure you could get it as an ebook for free, if you were the kind of douchebag who'd steal the coins out of a blind beggar's cup, but you could redeem yourself for getting a free download by making a nice fat donation to the Red Cross or other earthquake charity of your choice.
Go buy it now.

America's new national anthem

2011-08-07T14:10:00.000-04:00

Not sure how the pictures connect with the music, but I look forward to hearing this played before sporting events.

Best newspaper movies of all time

2011-08-05T17:32:00.000-04:00

A discussion around the copy desk today- what are the best newspaper/media movies?

A short list in no particular order:

1. All the President's Men. Woodstien and Bernward eat Nixon's lunch. A movie (and book) that inspired a thousand journalism careers. Best part - its all true.
2. Citizen Kane. Often cited as the greatest movie ever made. "Dear Wheeler, You provide the prose poems, I"ll provide the war."
3. Ace in the Hole. Kirk Douglas as the worst of the dark side of the press in Billy Wilder's other great noir. This one still stands up so well, it could have been made last week. A remake would be oscar bait for whoever got the lead."I can handle big news and little news. And if there's no news I'll go out and bite a dog."
4.Meet John Doe. Hobo ex-ballplayer Gary Cooper and spunky girl reporter vs. depression-era fascists. Like Glenn Beck if he were a good guy.
5.A Face in the Crowd. Mayberry Noir. Most would see this as a cautionary tale of hubris and abuse of power, too many talk radio hosts coughGlennBeckcoughRushLimbaughcough saw it as a career blueprint.
6. His Girl Friday. I want to be Cary Grant when I grow up.
7.The Front Page. Same movie remade by Billy Wilder. Apparently Jack Lemon wanted to be Ros Russell when he grew up. Walter Matthau plays the Cary Grant role - possibly the oddest casting ever.
8.Deadline U.S.A. - Humphrey Bogart as a crusading newspaper editor, 'nuff said.
9.Broadcast News - Albert Brooks has one of my favorite monologues in any movie ever.
10. The Paper - not a great film, but it does capture newsroom politics, newspaper rivalries and the adrenaline rush of getting the scoop.

Honorable mention: Why Rock the Boat - the great Canadian newspaper movie. Made in the 70's for about a half-million dollars, set in Montreal in the 40's. I've never seen it, but it comes highly recommended from the rest of the ink-stained wretches around the desk.
(You Tube links to come later)
Add you own additions in the comments

stihl bisy

2011-08-01T23:14:00.000-04:00

But not so busy that I can"t remind you to read David Climenhaga on why Canadians need to stand on guard for thee against Rupert Murdoch.

Sun Papers tire of knocking collective heads against bottom of barrel, decide to get rid of barrel and start digging

2011-07-13T17:02:00.000-04:00

One wonders what the politically correct straw was that broke the reactionary, knuckle-dragging, often bigoted, always pandering-to-the-basest-instinct-of-the-mob camel's back? Does this mean, per Blatchford, that the Sun papers are now officially not "real newspapers?" (stop snickering, no matter what you think of them in terms of their "truthiness" or ridiculous politics the Sun papers are still newspapers or a sort, or at least most of them used to be.) One also wonders what will become of the vicious boshshevik radical fifth columnist Ontario Press Council with 27 of the province's 37 member daily papers withdrawing.

Enough with the uniform fetish already

2011-07-01T10:04:00.000-04:00

"Wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross" indeed.
Didn't thousands of brave Canadians die in World War Two just so we could avoid exactly this kind of creeping militarism and fascist-style soldier worship? It really is just a matter of time before Stephen Harper appears in a fancy uniform with lots of gold braid and a big sash, isn't it?
Watch for the big parade of military vehicles and the air force flyover on Parliament Hill next year.
Mandatory pledges of allegiance in school and participation in "young pioneers" youth programs are probably not far behind.
Oh, and on a slightly different theme, Bill Blair can once again bite me. The media should not apologize to the police for publishing the tragic story of Constable Styles and his last words to the police dispatcher, at least not until Bill Blair and far too many of his officers go around and personally apologize to the thousand or so people they arrested or otherwise brutalized for no good reason during the G20.

One for all parents everywhere

2011-06-27T13:21:00.000-04:00

Bisy Backson

2011-06-25T03:53:00.000-04:00

Having upped stakes and relocated the pulpit--if not yet the entire family--to the Royal City and having started a new job as a night watchman at a place that makes a heckuva buggy whip, I've been too busy to write anything here even when I've had an Internet connection, but that doesn't mean I haven't been paying attention.

Poor, poor Lady Barbarella -- c'est tres triste, non?

Yes, as a matter of fact I am gloating, just like every other evil liberal journalist in the country, if not the English-speaking world. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I think I can live with it.
I will say this:

Nice to see the universe shitting on the right people for a change
"Her hair uncharacteristically dishevelled, Amiel stumbled on her snakeskin pumps as she was taken away." is my new favorite poem. The use of "snakeskin pump" in this context is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. It approaches haiku.
"model prisoner" indeed

Such schadenfreude-laden fripperies aside, I have little to say. Canadian politics? Well, as much as the recent election was entertaining in a "wow, that mushroom cloud sure is pretty"-"We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when" kind of way, with a Harper majority, the NDP have become the political equivalent of the Toronto Maple Leafs Stanley Cup Parade Planning Committee. My approach at this low ebb is that of Mr. Elvis Costello.

More when I have time, reason, and something more constructive to say than

the new media is the new message

2011-05-29T15:39:00.000-04:00

I'll be hosting one of my occasional Maple Syrup Editions of Virtually Speaking tonight, discussing the work of one of Canada's most famous thinkers, Marshall McLuhan, with another of our country's great, if, somewhat lesser-known, scholars and opinionmakers, University of Toronto professor Dr. Brent Wood, whose "insights into McLuhan have a great deal of validity." ( I think he used to teach a course). We will be focusing on McLuhan, but as herr Dr. Prof. Wood is one of my oldest co-conspirators, I suspect our conversation is apt to be fairly broad. He's also run for office under the Green Party banner and so we may just touch on some Canadian political stuff as well -- I know, I know you're shocked to find gambling here at Rick's hear I might want to publicly discuss Canadian politics, but I think I'm to the point now where I can do so with a minimum of obscene language, blind rage and frustrated sobbing.

As I am starting a new job and will be working Sunday nights for the foreseeable future, this is likely to be the last Maple Syrup Edition of Virtually Speaking for little while.

For those new to the whole thing, you can always tune into Virtually Speaking via the little box on the sidebar.

Virtually Speaking is a live program of in-depth, intelligent conversations with well informed opinion makers in media, policy, politics, science, etc. Produced before a digitally present studio audience in Second Life and Webcast at BlogTalkRadio. Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Subscribe free on iTunes | Calendar |Video |Weekly Updates @ FDL @DKos|Facebook
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Most weeks, the VS Sunday panel draws from Avedon Carol, Chicago Dyke, Cliff Schecter, CS Kendrick, Culture of Truth, David Dayen, digby, Eve Gittleson, Joan McCarter, Marcy Wheeler, Stuart Zechman and Susie Madrak. From time to time, the make-up of the panel shifts. Also, every 5 weeks or so, one of our regular panelists invites a guest to join them.

Sunday, May 29 | 9 pm eastern | Virtually Speaking Sundays: Maple Syrup Edition |Canadian journalist Kevin Wood and Brent Wood | Marshall McLuhan would be 100 this year: Is the global village getting the right message? Listen HERE live and later on Blog Talk Radio.

Tuesday, May 31 | 9 pm eastern | Virtually Speaking Susie | Susie Madrak | | Activist-journalists and citizen journalists stop by to dish about current events and the impact on working or wanting-to-work people. Watch this space for details. Listen HERE live and later on Blog Talk Radio.

Thursday, June 2 | 8 pm eastern | Virtually Speaking A-Z | Stuart Zechman and Culture of Truth | This week in liberalism…. an ongoing conversation/rant/exploration. Culture of Truth in for Jay Ackroyd. Listen HERE live on Blog Talk Radio. Beginning Friday, June 3 listen here.

Thursday, June 2 | 10 am eastern | Digby (in for Jay) and Howie Klein discuss how to make activism ‘work.‘ | Virtually Speaking w/ Jay Ackroyd | Listen HERE live and later on Blog Talk Radio.

Coming up:

June 5 Joan McCarter and Eve Gittelson

June 9 Peter Moskos In Defense of Flogging

June 11 Dr. Martin Hoffert and Alan Boyle| The case for public investment in a clean energy revolution

June 12 Susie Madrak, John Amato, Dave Neiwert

June 23 Dan Ellsberg and Glenn Greenwald | WikiLeaks, security and the preservation of democracy

We have Internet Relay Chat (IRC) so you can be part of the virtual studio audience (aka chat room), sharing comments and questions while listening to Virtually Speaking live on BlogTalkRadio. Logs are shared with the show hosts and guests.

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Huzzah!

2011-05-20T11:38:00.000-04:00

I am once again temporarily in the employ of a great Metropolitan newspaper and shall be moving to fortified compound in the tri-city area forthwith!

Excelsior!

2011-05-20T00:43:00.001-04:00

What could go wrong?

2011-05-18T11:30:00.000-04:00

From the same brilliant commonsense school of "thought" that gave us a high school dropout as Minister of Education in Ontario, the same braintrust that appoint a creationist quack as minister of Science, the Harper government has topped itself and appointed John Baird aka Shouty McAngry aka Screech O'Pointy aka Old Yeller as our top diplomat. This is sure to restore our reputation on the world stage.

After all Baird is nothing if not diplomatic

and committed to honesty and democracy

in fact, he has a national reputation for calm, quiet efficiency

Yes, Canada is "back" on the world stage. Unfortunately, it appears we are going to be the annoying opening comedian that comes on before the featured performers.

Election images

2011-05-03T21:57:00.000-04:00

Aislin, for my money, is still one of the most eloquent political and social pundits in this country in either language.

It just happened here

2011-05-03T12:09:00.001-04:00

To paraphrase Sinclair Lewis: When fascism comes to Canada, it will come wrapped in a flag and carrying a hockey stick.

Coach Harper won his majority last night thanks to smears, lies, obfuscation, vote suppression and dirty tricks on his part, vote splitting on the part of his opposition and a staggering display of selfish bourgeois Babbittry on the part of a good many Canadians. In any democracy, we get the government we deserve.

There is good news and bad news in last night's election result: The NDP won 102 seats and will form the official opposition, an opposition that will -- with 60 newly minted MPs many of whom never expected to get elected - be as hapless as it will be irrelevant. The Conservatives won only 39.6 percent of the popular vote, but 167 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons - they can do whatever they want with no real restraint on their actions. Harper has made his contempt for parliament abundantly clear already, so don't expect the opposition to be anything but a noisy decoration in Ottawa now that he has his majority and carte blanche.

The sun will still rise and set and the earth will still turn, though I for one expect a user fee to be levied for that sometime soon, so that the country can be run more like a business.

On the bright side, Toronto will probably get a new mayor in the next year or two after Rob Ford is appointed to the Senate and joins the cabinet as the Minister of Commonsense Gettin'er Done Tax-cutting or some such post.
On the bright side, Elizabeth May won a seat in Parliament - the first time the Green Party has ever elected a member to the house of commons. I watched here victory speech last night - she is looking forward to working in Parliament to make big changes! She also plans to ride her unicorn that eats carbon emissions and shits ice cream to work every morning. At least we can be sure that the Greens will be part of the next leaders debate, after which they will cease to exist once the per-vote party subsidy is eliminated.

No, I'm afraid there is no amount of polishing that is going to turn this turd into a diamond. In the words of Hunter S. Thompson "Big darkness, soon come."
There will be no sudden declaration of martial law or dramatic day when CPC stormtroopers surround Stornaway or round up dissidents in the night - there won't need to be. That nice, soft-spoken, Christian economist and hockey dad who just wants to protect us from the bad guys doesn't work that way. There will just be a steady drip of manufactured small crises that lead to privatization, deregulation, and "temporary" security measures, until we get back to the good old days of the robber barons.

George Orwell described a distopian future in 1984 describing it through the mouth of one character thusly: If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.

Naturally, this has been adjusted to fit Canadian content regulations.

a song for election day

2011-05-02T00:14:00.000-04:00

"I've got my spine, I've got my orange crush"

...actually the song is about the use of agent orange in Vietnam, but...well, make up your own metaphor, I'm not sure how this one is going to pan out. But I do like that line.

where better to spend election eve?

2011-05-01T14:16:00.001-04:00

FSM willing and the skype doesn't crash, Scott Tribe will be my guest tonight to talk Canadian politics on Virtually Speaking Sunday: Maple Syrup Edition at 8 pm EDT/5 pm PDT You can listen live here or click on the VSS player on the sidebar
If you can't make it tonight or you want to check our prediction against reality later on, the show will be archived here.
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The assault on democracy

2011-05-01T08:30:00.042-04:00

Read this excellent summary by Lawrence Martin and then tell me we can afford to give Stephen Harper another term as ~~president~~ prime minister.
Have a look at the regional polling numbers, the Conservatives are the choice of the majority in only Alberta and narrowly in the Prairies. They are at about 40% in Ontario and BC, but a distant fourth place in Quebec. Do the right thing tomorrow and vote for the candidate in your riding that has the best chance to beat the conservative. Local polling numbers can be seen here until midnight.
And no, I don't think the title is overstating things. All parties have their good and bad points but there is a difference between them -- so stop telling me that "both sides do it."
Both sides don't try to suppress the vote.
Both sides don't have crowds that shout down journalists when they ask questions.
Both sides don't throw people out of rallies for what might be on their facebook page.
Both sides don't want to cut corporate taxes while cutting programs for the poor.
Both sides don't fire the nuclear watchdog for doing her job.
Both sides don't pander to the religious right.
Both sides don't prorogue parliament.
Both sides haven't been found in contempt of parliament.
Both sides don't engage in specious personal smears and intimidation.
Both sides don't cancel the court challenges program.
Both sides aren't afraid to speak to the press or answer unscripted questions from voters.
Both sides don't issue manuals to their MPs on how to obstruct the work of parliamentary committees.
Both sides don't question the patriotism of those who disagree with them.
Both sides don't villify immigrants and expatriates as somehow being "less Canadian"

Think about which side you want to be on.

The next Conservative leader of Canada

2011-04-30T22:35:00.001-04:00

A cheep shot, but too funny not to share - if you have Flash, click and go play it now.
Pointy McShouty's Flying Circus aka Angry Bairds

SUN gives Jack a happy ending

2011-04-30T20:39:00.001-04:00

Much is being made by the usual suspects of this clumsy smear job on Layton by the Toronto Sun.
Give that story a very careful, very close reading and realize it is built entirely on a single unnamed source, contains no evidence of anything and is built largely on innuendo.
Layton was never charged or even arrested and there is not even any direct accusation in the story that he did anything he should not have done. He openly admits that he went to get a massage at the apparently fully-licenced massage establishment. Something lots of people do every day. There is nothing sleazy about getting a massage. The only suggestion of anything untoward in the story is the unidentified, retired Toronto cop claiming that the establishment in question was thought to be a bawdy house by the Toronto police (who, of course, have never been wrong about anything or abused their powers for political ends, ever, especially back then).
And with the incident having occurred 16 years ago, it seems awfully convenient that the SUN would, wholly by coincidence, choose to run with the story two days before the election. Given what we know about the overlap in CPC strategists and SUN employees, what are the odds the Conservative Party of Canada will somehow be found to have been involved in the release of this information if someone wants to pursue it hard enough?
How's that for innuendo?
You know what the difference is?
What the SUN would like you to believe happened - that Proletarian Jack had his means of production seized - is a bit skeevy, but if his wife doesn't care, then why should we? It is ancient history and has no bearing on how he would govern.
What I have speculated about is recent, sinister, unethical, unprincipled, corrupt, possibly even criminal and certainly indicative of the kind of sleazy politics of character assassination the CPC has been engaging in for years. And it is more likely to be true.
I don't say any of this as any particular fan of Jack Layton. I'm fairly agnostic about the NDP in the general scheme of things. I like them better than the Conservatives, but I don't think they are going to singlehandedly usher in some kind of golden age where we all gather round singing The Internationale, nor do I think they will start nationalizing the banks and sending anyone who isn't a union member to re-education camps or anything like that.
But this kind of malicious smear campaign based on smirking innuendo should piss off anyone who values the truth, and I think that includes most Canadians. I apologize for the puns, but this kind of thing rubs Canadians the wrong way and the backlash might just be enough to turn a few close seats and give the NDP the hand it needs to give the country a happy ending.

Who's fault will it be?

2011-04-28T22:24:00.003-04:00

So the Globe and Mail has endorsed Harper, admitting they value money over democracy. While their competition is definitely anti-Harper, they haven't made any endorsement just yet (as of the time this was originally written, see update below) and we are constantly told, by both conservatives and the NDP, that the Toronto Star is an unofficial wing of the Liberal Party. It is a foregone conclusion that the National Post will endorse Harper, grudgingly since they feel he really isn't conservative enough. At Maclean's Andrew Coyne, a conservative but a rock-solid believer in the democratic process and parliamentary process, has decided to hold his nose and vote for the Liberals. CTV is gave Harper a chance to speak to the nation right after the big hockey game this week and has bent over backwards to argue that "both sides do it" and given the CPC fairly favourable coverage on the whole.
Pierre Karl Peladeau did his best Claude Raines impersonation earlier this week, declaring he was "shocked" to find out there was ~~gambling going on at Rick's Cafe American~~ a CPC strategist feeding his Sun newspaper chain false stories, a strategist that turned out also to be an advisor to SUN-TV, which is run by Harper's former spinmeister.
Given all this, I can't wait to see which "obviously biased"media organization the panic-stricken right wing in Canada decides is the latter-day Pravda responsible for the meteoric rise of the Jack Layton and the NDP. I'm sure it will be someone else's fault. The Liberals steady rightward creep won't be blamed and the Conservative creepy mantra of "steady majority or CHAOS!" and refusal to even speak to anyone but true believers, let alone cooperate and compromise with other parties in the House of Commons certainly won't even be acknowledged. No, someone must be blamed, but who?

What about this big orange fella in Quebec?

Having said all that, I am not predicting Prime Minister Jack Layton will soon be giving the throne speech. I'm not against that happening, but I think the numbers in Ontario are still good enough for the Conservatives that Liberal/NDP vote-splitting will allow them to squeak through with between 140 and 156 seats. Your projections may vary, most do. But I would rather be pleasantly surprised than horribly disappointed, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Update: The Toronto Star decides to live up to it nickname among conservatives - the Red Star - and endorses Layton and the NDP. I wonder if this is the final nail in the coffin for the Liberals for a few years? It depends how the next few years go - a polarized parliament of NDP vs. Conservatives with the Liberals and BQ holding the balance of power could end up driving voters back to the middle in the long run. If the Liberals can stay true to their basic left-leaning centerist principles, they could rebuild. If they decide to cave to the business-driven right-wing of the party and support the Conservatives, they will evaporate in a short span of time as the hard corporatists join the Conservatives and the progressive/leftish side jumps ship for the NDP.

the King's speech

2011-04-22T17:01:00.002-04:00

Let us be clear, Stephen Harper is the front runner in this election. The last thing a front runner wants is to lose control of the agenda or to get put on the defensive or to make a gaffe. So the smart thing for him to do has been to carefully control his public appearances to avoid any unfortunate incidents where he is forced to answer tough questions. Hence the Potemkin rallies with carefully vetted crowds. Hence the "only five questions a day" refusal to speak with reporters. But with the number of scandals continuing to mount - former aide Bruce Carson illegally lobbying to score some cash for his escort girlfriend, the return of the Helena Guerges circus, Bev Oda's Not-gate and now Dimitri Soudas being found out as an influence peddler - Stephen Harper's silence was finally starting to become an issue.
Canadians, the Conservative focus groups undoubted discovered, were starting to balk at the idea that we should give Stephen Harper a political blank cheque without him making some effort to explain why he deserves it.
So last night Stephen Harper finally deigned to speak to the Canadian people via an interview with Peter Mansbridge - an interview very carefully stagemanaged to try to make him look like a regular guy. He stands in a hockey rink in Newfoundland in his quilted Canada jacket, tieless, doing his best to look like a minor hockey coach instead of someone who has never really had a job outside of politics. (A hockey rink? My first thought was that the Globe and Mail's John Doyle is righter than he knows: Harper doesn't just keep his hair in the fridge, the CPC keeps him in cold storage at all times!)
The interview itself is telling - if you read between the lines and look at the way Harper answers or doesn't answer the questions. He goes out of his way to try to look like a reasonable guy who is beset by unreasonable opponents who are conspiring (coalition!) in diabolical ways to seize power for their own sinister ends (tax increases! Separatists in power! reopening the constitution!). To someone looking at Canadian politics for the first time, someone who has no idea of his track record, he might even pull it off.
But notice how many times Mansbridge, who is hardly a confrontational interviewer, calls bullshit on Slick Stevie. Notice how often Harper says something about his opponents and Mansbridge responds with "but that isn't what they've said."
Notice how Harper refuses, several times, to admit that any form of coalition is valid and that the party with the most seats doesn't necessarily get to govern if they can't win the confidence of the House of Commons. He keeps trying to argue that it is somehow a vague and nebulous notion that constitutional scholars disagree about and that "regular Canadians" would never accept.
It isn't. They don't. We have. Stephen Harper is just plain lying.
He tries to make it sound as if his government was brought down over the budget. It wasn't.
He tries to make it sound like he doesn't know why we are having an election, when he pretty much engineered it through his own brinksmanship on parliamentary privledge. He gave the opposition the choice of either letting him walk all over the notion of the government being accountable to the House of Commons or forcing an election while they trailed him by enough in the polls that he might get a majority.
And thanks to a divided oppostion, he very well might get his majority. Notice how he doesn't really say why he needs a majority other than to talk about "stability" and "unnecessary elections"-odd given that he has forced the last two. Notice also that he won't really say what he will do with a majority that he hasn't been able to do with a minority.
At the end of the interview Mansbridge asks: "Why should Canadians trust you with their vote on May 2?"
Harper replies, "I say look at our record, look at the direction the country is going. What other country would you want to be living in right now?"
I agree. Look at his record. Look at the direction the country is going. Ask yourself what other country Stephen Harper would rather be living in right now.
Me, I'd rather be living in a country where the government doesn't fire the head of the nuclear regulatory agency for doing her job. I'd rather be living in a country that is willing to investigate credible accusation of complicity with torture. I'd rather be living in a country where the prime minister doesn't suspend parliament every time he gets his tail caught in a crack. I'd rather be living in a country that spends a billion dollars on helping the poor instead of dispensing political pork and encouraging police thuggery as part of an international dog-and-pony show. I'd rather be living in a country where the government wasn't providing instruction manuals to its members on how to disrupt parliamentary committees.
I'd rather live in a country where decisions are based on solid census data and scientific fact, not one where we spend a fortune building new prisons for criminals who don't exist outside of the imagination of fearmongering politicians.
I'd like to live in the tolerant, economic and socially progressive Canada I grew up in, not in a country run by a control-freak micromanager hell-bent on turning it into a laboratory for Randites, frat boys, authoritarians, religious zealots and ignorant yahoos.

I'd like to think that is what most Canadians want and why Stephen Harper won't get his majority.
I'd like to think that, but then Willy Loman posted this video and reminded me why our country is in trouble to begin with.

Dear Universe, next time I expect you to at least buy me dinner first

2011-04-20T15:13:00.001-04:00

This why I'm glad Canada has reasonably restrictive gun laws and doesn't have the cowboy shoot'em up culture of our southern neighbour.
I just got off the phone with a very patient and overworked gentleman from the Employment Insurance office. Apparently, despite having worked what sometimes felt like 25 hours a day since October, my claim for unemployment benefits has been denied. Normally, one needs to have worked between 490 and 700 hours to claim employment insurance benefits.
I started work on Oct. 20 editing a community paper on a salary as a replacement for the regular editor who was off on maternity leave. My last day of work at the paper was March 25. During my time there I regularly worked plenty of extra hours, wanting to produce the best paper I could and wanting to get a good reference when my contract was through. The day before deadline it wasn't unusual for me to work from 9am until midnight, sometimes later, to get everything ready for production day, another day that was rarely less than ten hours long. I worked a few nights a week and nearly every weekend covering junior hockey games or other community events - that being the nature of the beast. The kids got used to hearing the expression "Dad's gotta get the paper out" or "Dad's got stuff to cover tonight" -- it goes with the territory. As the man said "this is the business we have chosen."
But, because it is a salaried job, only 40 hours a week are counted. There is no such thing as paid overtime. I defy you to show me a community newspaper editor (among many other salaried employees) who works only 40 hours a week. Again, it goes with the territory, this is the business we have chosen.
It turns out I "officially" worked 904 hours, so collecting employment insurance should be a given, right? Ahhhhhhh, but since I have been working outside the country for last 14 years, I am considered to be new to the workforce in Canada and that means I need - are you ready for this? - 910 hours of work to qualify.
Seriously?
Seriously.
I lived in Texas, I think I'd be in a pick-up truck full of firearms right now.

Lennon circa 1965 would have dropped him like a bad habit

2011-04-20T13:01:00.000-04:00

Seriously, I hope John Lennon's ghost lays a first-class haunting on Stephen Harper.

Hard to watch

2011-04-13T12:28:00.000-04:00

Footage shot in Minamisanriku, a town of about 20,000 more or less erased by the March 11 tsunami. So far only about half of the residents have been found alive. My in-laws live about 30 km inland from here.

It sorta puts stories about Donald Trump running for president, Charlie Sheen and royal wedding in perspective, doesn't it?

In which it is revealed that I am now a best-selling author and a new Spiritual Leader of the Moment(tm) is crowned

2011-04-12T16:53:00.001-04:00

Our Man in Abiko, who laboured at the same Great Metropolitan Newspaper that I did for many years, though at a different time than I, is someone I have known slightly for some time now. I came across his eponymous blog looking for other expat bloggers in Tokyo and we discovered out mutual employment history rather by accident.

He has been a supporter of the Woodshed for several years now and even posted some of my Sunday sermons way back when. On a personal level, Our Man was very supportive and encouraging when I was transitioning from "Staff Writer"to "layabout expat" and then to "former expat."

Most recently, Our Man is the man behind 2:46, best known by its Twitter hashtag #Quakebook. He has successfully herded the cats together and created a work of art and altruism. Nobody is making a single shekel off this book, except the Red Cross. He won't even release his real name in connection with it, although as an aspiring novelist the publicity would certainly help him. He is not the only person responsible for #Quakebook - many have laboured to edit, assemble, lay out, proof and otherwise process and promote the work gathered from writers - including me - whose brief pieces make up the book, but the whole thing started with Our Man and His Idea.

For services above and beyond the call of duty, for service over self-interest and for holding down the Abiko bureau in time of crisis, the Woodshed salutes Our Man in Abiko and proclaims him our Spiritual Leader of the Moment.

In other breaking news, the aformentioned Quakebook put together by Our Man and his team, to which I contributed in my small way, is now a bona fide best seller.

I had faith that the Twitter-germinated #Quakebook would do reasonably well, but in its first day of release it has already zoomed to #7 #6 on the Amazon non-fiction charts. I realize that I am merely riding the coattails of the established heavy hitters like William Gibson and Yoko Ono and the authorial young guns like Barry Eisler and Jacob Adelstein, who have already made their best-seller bones, but my name is there in the table of contents and my piece is mentioned in the editorial descriptions for the book listing.
As of yesterday, the ebook was available for Kindle. You can get free apps for your smartphones and computers to enable you to read it without laying out for a Kindle Reader. Amazon is donating its services to host and distribute the book on Kindle, so 100% of your money is going to the Red Cross to help people in Japan in the wake of the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck at 2:46 p.m. on March 11.

Go. Buy. Now. Help Japan.

#quakebook featuring Scala & Kolacny Brothers and Kings of Leon from Quakebook on Vimeo.

Update: My Virtually Speaking Sunday:Maple Syrup Edition interview with Our Man in Abiko can be found here.

I can't keep giving these ideas away for free

2011-04-07T17:51:00.001-04:00

Or should I assume that my campaign consultant fee is in the mail? See end of third bullet point. What took you so long?

I'll try to find better pictures later, but for now, via @ShirleeEngle

Mop & Pail spots emperor walking streets naked

2011-04-06T14:45:00.005-04:00

That bastion of Marxism and vanguard of the glorious revolution of the proletariat, The Globe and Mail, today brings us a story so shocking, a truth so revealing that it if absorbed by the general populace, will shake our economic and political firmament for years to come.

Corporate tax cuts don't spur growth,

analysis reveals as election pledges fly

KAREN HOWLETT

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Canadian companies have added tens of billions of dollars to their stockpiles of cash at a time when tax cuts are supposed to be encouraging them to plow more money into their businesses.

Well, suck me dry and call me "Dusty!" You mean to tell me that supply-side economics - the notion that if you give tax breaks to rich people and corporations they will use it to create more wealth for all - is bullshit? That what really happens when you give rich people and corporations a tax break is that they pocket the money? No! That's, that's...unpossible!

Jim Flaherty, the Harper government’s Finance Minister, acknowledged in a telephone interview that corporate tax cuts are a tough sell when companies are still hoarding cash. But over the long term, he said, his “comfort zone” comes from the fact that business leaders and economists have widely endorsed tax cuts as a job creation tool.

“Most importantly,” he said, “it’s a confidence builder in Canada, and it’s a way of branding Canada.”

Ah yes, branding. You know, where they take a red hot piece of metal and burn the owner's mark into the hindquarters of a bull that has had its balls cut off and is being fattened for slaughter. So cutting taxes on the business sector simply results in the business sector having more money and the government having less to maintain roads, pay firefighters and fund education and health care. Well, I never. Will wonders never cease? Next thing you know some smart cookie is going to be telling us that boosting military spending and cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy somehow leads to higher deficits or some other crazy notion.

Harper speaks!

2011-04-04T19:19:00.001-04:00

Highminded and objective? Maybe not. Fair and accurate? You betcha!

Virtually Speaking Sundays: Maple Syrup Edition

2011-04-03T16:10:00.000-04:00

VIRTUALLY SPEAKING SUNDAY APRIL 3
A Counterpoint to the Sunday Morning Talking Heads

@4pm pacific|7pm eastern - DAN ELLSBERG & GLENN GREENWALD: WikiLeaks, the abuse of Bradley Manning and the future of civil liberties in the U.S. Listen here

@5pm pacific|8pm eastern - Maple Syrup Edition with Kevin Wood aka RevPaperboy, Dr.Dawg and @OurManinAbiko on the coming General Election in Canada and #Quakebook, a Twitter spawned response to Japan post quake and tsunami.

Listen live here
Beginning Tuesday, listen to the Maple Syrup Edition here

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
VIRTUALLY SPEAKING SUSIE with Susie Madrak
MONDAY April 4 - 6pm pacific|9pm eastern

The topic is Libya and the long haul. Susie's guest is writer, student, poet, musician, and political activist Rafael Noboa y Rivera. A decorated combat veteran of the Iraq War, Noboa y Rivera is currently completing studies in journalism at Ohio University’s Scripps School of Journalism. Recovering journalist and class warrior Susie Madrak explores the impact of current events on the daily lives of working class people.

Listen here, live and later
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
THURSDAY DOUBLE HEADER APRIL 7 - 5pm pacific | 8pm eastern to 7pm pacific|10pm eastern

VIRTUALLY SPEAKING A-Z JAY ACKROYD and STUART ZECHMAN
Ongoing conversation about U.S. movement liberalism (as opposed to 3rd Way or centrist liberalism) in both an historical and current context.

Listen here @ 5 pm pacific
Beginning April 8 Listen here
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@6pm slt - VIRTUALLY SPEAKING WITH JAY ACKROYD and guest economist WARREN MOSLER: Can Taxes and Bonds Finance Government Spending? Modern Monetary Theory says no.

Listen here

Visit Virtually Speaking at: http://virtuallyspeaking.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

election notebook

2011-04-03T13:04:00.001-04:00

Some random thoughts on the election:

Stephen Harper, who not so long ago touted himself as the champion of "open and accountable" government, will only answer five questions a day on the campaign trail, and two of them have to be in French and one from "local" media. So the people from the Globe, the Star, CBC, NatPost, Sun, CTV, Global, CP, Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald, Vancouver Province et al have paid $10,000 to sit through spin session and Potempkin rallies and ask one or two questions for the whole campaign? I have a question: Are you fucking kidding me? Dammit Janet has a great post on just how bad things have gotten and Dr. Dawg hands out the white feathers
The great debate debate rolls on over who gets to be included in the big blather off and whether it is fair to leave the Green Party or NDP or Bloc Quebecois or Liberals out. Harper has no interest in a debate, there is no advantage to had for him in taking part unless Ignatieff suddenly snaps and starts gibbering in Russian at the podium. Strategically, I can understand him not wanting to risk the exposure to a zinger or risk the cameras catching him with a bit of baby meat stuck in his fangs. I do think he has a moral responsibility to publicly debate the other leaders since that is how democracy is supposed to work re: free marketplace of ideas and all that, but then this is guy whose government fell over his unwillingness to reveal basic information about government policy that he is required by law to share with Parliament, so living up to his moral responsibilities isn't exactly his strong suit.
Further to the debate debate, the Liberals are really passing up a golden opportunity at the moment. Harper has dithered over whether he will debate Ignatieff one on one, or whether he will take part in a full leaders' with or without Liz May and was actually asked whether he was "chicken" in a press conference Sunday (kudos to CBC's Terry Milewski for using up one of the two or three questions he will get to ask, though after the "chicken" question, I suspect it will be a hot day in Iqaluit before he gets called on again. The Liberals should have someone in a chicken costume at every single public appearance Harper makes from now until a debate is held.
In a bit of pure pandering to the Rob Ford suburban voters, Harper has promised to increase the government subsidy for kids to play minor hockey and little league aka the child fitness tax credit from $500 to $1000 and to add a further $500 tax credit for adult fitness, just as soon as the budget is balanced (in other words, never). I'm sure all those urban poor who can't afford to feed their families will be delighted to know that they can get money back on their taxes if they join the gym.
As happy as I am to see Jack Layton do the right thing and finally bring down the government instead of making a deal with the Conservatives to let them stay in power if they promise not to kick the poor, elderly and constitution too hard, I fear this may mean the NDP takes a shellacking as people vote strategically to dump Harper by backing the Liberals. Though, having said that, the NDP does stand to make some gains in Saskatchewan and in Edmonton where they ran second to the Conservatives due to strategic voting.
Does anyone outside of the hard-core Conserva-borg base really think coalition governments are a terrible thing? Let's face it, any minority government is a de facto coalition between the government and the opposition parties for as long as the government is willing to court the oppostion or as long as the opposition is willing to go along with the government. The only difference being that in an official coalition, the minority partner usually gets a place at the cabinet table. No one, except Harper, has ever proposed forming a coalition with the Bloc Quebecois.
The latest Conservative canard about ending per-vote subsidies deserves to be broadly, publically debunked on the front page of every newspaper and on every radio and television show. It ought to be shouted from the rooftops that having the taxpayers foot the bill for election campaigns means that taxpayers call the shots, not the fatcats. Doing away with the subsidies and allowing bigger individual, corporate and union donations means that politicians will be for sale to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder is not going to be ordinary Canadians.
For all those who have been paying attention to the ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan, keep in mind that Stephen Harper fired Linda Keene as the head of the Canadian nuclear regulatory agency because she was concerned that an emergency system to provide power to the reactor cooling system at the aging Chalk River reactor was not connected and was not operational. The problems in Japan all stem from the fact that the cooling systems did not have power after the earthquake because the emergency generators could not be used.
I think I am becoming even more addicted to the razor-sharp Kady O'Malley than I was before the election, if that is possible.