My favorite Christmas story

This song always brings a tear to my eye.

Merry Christmas - peace on earth and goodwill toward all mankind, even conservatives.

Radio woodshed is on the air

At least for Xmas day anyways. Tune your browser to http://janefinch.serverroom.us:4930/listen.pls  

or try 

http://janefinch.serverroom.us.4930/index.html 

and click "listen" in the bar at the top of the page and enjoy the best of seasonal podcasts and music -seasonal and otherwise- from a dramatization of "A Christmas Carol" from 9 in the morning on the East Coast of North America straight through to holiday storytime starting around 7 pm EST featuring stories from Dylan Thomas, Stuart Mclean's Vinyl Cafe,O. Henry, Paul Auster, Tom Waits, Dr. Seuss, Steve Martin, David Sedaris and others and lots of music. And no cursing or punk/heavy metal/free jazz during prime time, I promise.

Stay tuned for more in the new year, there could be a weekly show/podcast coming.

Truer words were never written in any paper called "The Sun"

And lest the cheesy new age music and the daily affirmation self-help Stuart Smally video imagery lead you to think the writer, Frank Church, was some touchy-feely fancy pants, think again. He reported from the front lines in the American Civil War, so he'd been around and seen some things. Charles Bronson played him in the movie

Christmas wishes

"What Christmas means to me"

From Paul Simon and Steve Martin

An early Christmas present

You have been good this year, right? 'Cause just like Dick Cheney, Santa sees you when you're sleeping and he know when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good, so you better smarten up while there is still time.

This may take minute to load up and the whole thing is about a half hour long, so get yourself a beverage while it loads and enjoy the radio piece that launched David Sedaris' career.

Santaland Diaries - David Sedaris

Ho-ho-ho=no-no-no
The stupidest thing I've heard this week, is this story about an Australian company telling its Santas not to say Ho-ho-ho as it might be offensive to women and frightening to childern. WTF? And before you say it, this is not political correctness or anything like it, this is just plain old fashioned dumbassery. Maybe the Santas down under should switch to a good old yuletide Vincent Price-style "Mwahahahah" instead?

Merry Christmas, but the War isn't over

With the election of Barack Obama, we've been told that U.S. troops will be leaving Iraq soon. That doesn't mean the war is over just yet. Merry Christmas to the troops and keep your heads down and come home soon.

God, rest ye merry gentlemen

This ad from the UK is not really safe for work, or kids, or prudes, but it is seasonal and very, very funny. Remember, 'tis better to give than to receive. Usually.

h/t tip to the wanton fiends of Jackson Street Books.

Boot to the head

Protestors deliver some shoes and some street theatre in front of the White House. Get those packages in the mail people!

Progress

Gee, its nice to see some kind of progress in Iraq. Under Saddam, throwing shoes at the leader would have gotten you killed. Now it only gets you beaten half to death. Mind you, under Saddam Hussien, throwing shoes at George Bush probably would have gotten you a cabinet post or at least some kind of public commendation.

Anti-Bush insurgency in its last throws

To paraphrase Arlo Guthrie: If one person does it, they'll think he's crazy and ignore him. If two people do it, they'll think you're both fruitckes and won't pay attention to either of you. But if 50 people-- can you imagine 50 people a day boxing up shoes and sending them to the White House? -- if 50 people a day do it, they may think it's an organization. And if 500 people a day do it - send a pair of smelly, raggedy-ass old shoes to George W. Bush -- then friends they may think it's a movement. And that's what it is: The Give Bush the Boot Anti-Massacre Movement. And all you have to do to join it is send your old shoes to:

President George W. Bush

1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Washington D.C.

USA 20500

George W. Bush looks into the sole of Iraq

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28223089#28223089

"This is your farewell kiss, you dog!" shouted Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned Cairo-based TV station. "This is from the widows, the orphans and those were killed in Iraq."

Many will decry this lack of respect for the office of the presidency or the lack of professionalism on the part of the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at the man who invaded and destroyed a country for no good reason except that he could. Those people are wrong. Bush has already so defiled the office the presidency that it can't really sink much lower and sometimes even the most professional and objective observer must put their humanity ahead of their professional ethics. I'm sure al-Zeidi is now a national hero in Iraq and I'm almost equally sure he won't see the light of day or his family anytime soon.

Frankly, I think Bush is lucky it wasn't a grenade, or at least a bottle or brick. To be honest I'd like to see Bush pelted with shoes everywhere he goes for the next decade. I'd like to see about 4,200 pair of empty combat boots dumped on the White House lawn. I think people from around the world should mail him their oldest, smelliest, most dogshit-encrusted sneakers both en masse and for the rest of his miserable life so that he never, ever forgets.

Update: While Dubya doesn't understand "what his beef was" and doesn't think the sentiments he expressed so forcefully are representative of Iraqi society as a whole, al-Zeidi has become a folk hero overnight across the Middle East. It turns out his experience and outlook are not so different from the average Iraqi. He hates the United States and Iran, and not without very good reasons.

The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin has a good roundup of the coverage.

I guess the RCMP now has a '00' section

This outrageous ruling just gave the mounties the licence to kill anyone who loses their temper, no questions asked. It's funny no one ever dies of hysteria when the cops aren't involved. I have family friends who are in the RCMP - I don't think of them as killers, but these four don't pause for an instant to try to calm the man, they just kill him. 

Watch the whole video -- I insist-- and remember that the man had been there for TEN HOURS without getting any help to find his way out of the customs section and into the arrivals lobby. Watch it all, and tell me that the officers involved acted in a reasonable way and that the man deserved to die. Tell me they had any reason to fear for their lives or were defending themselves. Because if you can tell me that, you are watching a different video than I am.

The four horsemen arrive at 6:12, at 6:40 they taser Robert Dziekanski for the first time, by about 9:30 he seems to be dead, and the Mounties never even try artificial resuscitation, in fact they don't even seem to be in any rush to try to get medical help for the man they have just murdered. 

 

I hope someday the 4 officers, the crown attorney and the judge involved all in their turn travel to some far off foreign land like China or Uruguay or, oh, I dunno, maybe even Poland, on a holiday or a business trip. I hope they get lost in the airport. I hope that what with the jet lag, and the lack of sleep and the confusion and frustration and the fact that nobody speaks English that they just flat out lose it after a few hours and throw down their suitcases and start shouting. And I hope it doesn't cost them their lives, because these fuckers should live with this poor bastard's needless death haunting their consciences every waking moment for a long, long, painful time.

RNC Morans

How many of these pictures of misspelled signs from various Republican and conservative rallies, hate-fests and box lunch socials do we need to see before they admit the truthiness of John Stuart Mills dictum that "not all conservatives are stupid, but all stupid people are conservatives" ?

Shamelessly stolen from the Buffalo Pundit

Political Art

There are some brilliant editorial cartoonists out there and some great and not so great political comic strips, but political art is a whole 'nother ball game. There are great works of high seriousness like Picasso's Guernica and there are others that are more about the politics than the art.

Then there is the brilliant, sharp, brilliant, funny, brilliant and subversive (did I mention brilliant?) work of Zina Saunders

Meet the Gnu Boss

Apparently the Liberal Party of Canada, a party with which I long identified and which I long supported, has decided that the best thing for Canada is to keep Steven Harper in office for as long as possible and then replace him with someone who has almost exactly the same opinions, but wears red neckties and is twice as smart.
Not content to wait for January and keep the coalition together, defeat the government and be appointed to form a coalition government with the icky NDP, the Liberals started reading Conservative Party Press releases and accepting them as fact. One little bump in the road and they panic.
Splendid. I guess that was the revolution that wasn't. Fuck you very much Liberal Party for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory once again. In the last election 62% of the country voted against the Conservatives, so in answer to this you have decided that running even further to the right is the sensible option. Michael Ignatieff, for all his very impressive academic credentials supported the Iraq war until 2007.
In other news, when and if I ever move back to what used to be Canada, I will either be moving to Westmount in the Republic of Quebec and starting my own Anglo separatist party, Le Bloc Maudit Bloke, or to Vancouver Island in the People's Republic of Pacifica and opening a "Yo-Yo" frozen yohgurt stand/Yoga fitness centre/legal marijuana distribution centre.

Blindfolds, not Bailouts

First against the wall when the revolution comes: AIG executives.

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., the insurer whose bonuses and perks are under fire from U.S. lawmakers, offered cash awards to another 38 executives in a retention program with payments of as much as $4 million.

The incentives range from $92,500 to $4 million for employees earning salaries between $160,000 and $1 million, Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy said in a letter dated Dec. 5 to Representative Elijah Cummings. The New York-based insurer had previously disclosed that 130 managers would get the awards and that one executive would get $3 million.

“I remain concerned, as do many American taxpayers, that these retention payments are simply bonuses by another name,” Cummings said in letter responding to Liddy. AIG, which received a U.S. rescue package of more than $152 billion, has been criticized for saying it will eliminate bonuses for senior executives while still planning to hand out “cash awards” that double or triple the salaries of some managers. The payments are designed to keep top employees at AIG while Liddy seeks to sell units and pay back the federal government, which owns 79.9 percent of AIG.

...AIG’s managers have overseen a record $37.6 billion in net losses so far this year. Cummings has called for Liddy’s resignation and said AIG should provide names of those getting retention pay and explain why the awards are needed. Firms accepting taxpayer money shouldn’t enrich employees, he said..

Yeah, because when the senior management of the company steers the firm in losses of nearly $40 billion and forces the firm to seek a $150 billion bailout from the government, the last thing you want them to do is jump ship and work for someone else.
While I understand the importance of propping up all those struggling Porshe dealerships, caviar importers and executive country club operators that provide much needed greenskeeping and caddying jobs in these dark economic times, frankly I'd have a lot more respect for these people if they just drove up to Fort Knox in a convoy of trucks with masks and guns and cleaned the place out like honest thieves.

CNN Dec. 5

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A record 1.35 million homes were in foreclosure in the third quarter, driving the foreclosure rate up to 2.97%, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Friday.

That's a 76% increase from a year ago, according to the group's National Delinquency Survey.At the same time, the number of homeowners falling behind on their mortgages rose to a record 6.99%, up from 5.59% a year ago, the association said. This means that one in 10 borrowers in America are either delinquent or in foreclosure

What would Woody Guthrie say?

"Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home."

-Woody Guthrie
The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd

Since no one is using it, maybe we could rent out the building 

It might make a good homeless shelter this winter.

"Canada suffered its biggest monthly job losses last month since the recession of 1982 as 70,600 positions disappeared. Ontario's manufacturing sector is taking a direct blow from collapsing demand in the U.S., claiming about half of the November job losses. Unemployment crept up to 6.3 per cent, still near historical lows but also half a percentage point above the beginning of year.

And the U.S. is far from the only weight on Canada's job picture. The services side of the economy, which is more isolated from U.S. demand, also shed 38,000 jobs in the month – a sign that the sources of Canada's economic weakness are not just the United States, but also a deceleration in consumer spending, business investment and the housing market, economists said."

If only there was some sort of central authority that could organize a communal effort to help these people thrown out of work and perhaps help to steer our economy by making some rules to guide business and keep them from getting into trouble. We could all pitch in some money and they could figure out the best way to spend it to fix these sorts of problems. We could get everyone to vote in their own area to pick people, send them all to meet, talk it over and decide what to do. Canadians are smart enough to survive killer winters, if we some really smart people together, I'm sure they can figure something out.

Gee, didn't we used to have something like that based in a big, old building in Ottawa? I seem to remember something like that being mentioned in high school civics class, or maybe it was ancient history.

h/t to the Vanity Press, where this started as a comment.

Meanwhile, Jim Dandy Goodness takes something I said, and makes it all about the pussy.

And courtesy of  Willy Loman:  Ed Broadbent speaks, you listen

Vive la revolution de sirop d'erable!

All praise to Skdadl for coining the phrase "Maple Syrup Revolution" to describe the current likely change in government from a party whose main priority is evidently to stick to the opposition to a coalition of parties whose main priority is to start bailing the economic lifeboat in which the nation finds itself. Across the northern blogosphere, the troops are rallied - I particularly recommend these posts by Boris at the Galloping Beaver and Dr. Dawg's disembowling of Ol' Dead Eyes "no fair, I'M the Prime Minister, I'M supposed to be the boss" video presentation on Wednesday night and most of the recent posts on Far and Wide and the excellent "Blogging if Necessary, but not Necessarily Blogging."
I'd also suggest you look at the text of Stephen Dion's remarks from Wednesday night instead of listening to the conservatives babble about "treason." In addition to tackling the economic mess Canada finds itself in, the Coalition could also fix a number of other problems.

I think Maple Syrup Revolution fits just about right: The coalition is poised to flatten Harper like a pancake and eat him for breakfast -- and it's just so freakin' sweet.

Vive la revolution!