Rich Sanchez is not amused by Fox News

This may well be the most pissed off I've ever seen a newscaster on camera, and not without reason.

be careful what you wish for...

Chuck Jones might not approve, but as someone who spent an inordinate amount of his childhood wondering where I could get an Acme catalogue and what roadrunner actually tasted like, this is pure gold. The funny, courtesy of the Eternal Gaijin.

Weekend uke blogging

the original

My best guess is that Ms. Turner is somewhere north of 45 in this video, as it would be after the release of here 1984 mega hit album Private Dancer, which featured this song, the proper video of which is here. She appeared with Beyonce last year.

the cover - Danielle may not be able to rock the high heels like Tina, but check her out without those glasses!

and what is Tina Turner doing nowadays you ask - well, she toured last year. We should all look and sound so good at 68.

long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror

We are constantly told that the soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are the greatest, bravest, most honorable, competent and professional humans the western world has ever produced. No dares to say a word against them for fear of sounding like they are not supporting the troops, which is, as we all know, worse than eating babies.
Such notions are, of course, bullshit. Pulling on a uniform does not make anyone a saint. It doesn't mark them as smarter or braver or more honorable than anyone else. Soldiers are people, just like anyone else. Most of the people in uniform "over there" are young and I suspect alternately scared to death or bored out of their minds and definitely desensitized to violence. Which is how you get incidents like these:

The U.S. Marines Corp: The few, the proud, the unspeakably stupid.

The Canadian Armed Forces: There's no life like it.

cough, cough, oink, cough

My seven-year-old daughter has brought the new swine flu home from school. I expect we will all be oinking and rolling in mud by the weekend. Ah, the joys of parenthood.

Update: The daughter seems to have weathered the storm, but my son came down with a fever on Saturday afternoon and went from healthy to obviously sick in the space of about an hour.

final update: All cured now. Thanks for all the good wishes.

Half the population is a "fringe group?"

I sorta thought this was being well covered elsewhere, but the more I think about it, the more it pisses me off, so I wanted to put my oar in.

Long story short for those not paying attention: The Stephen Harper government eliminated the federally-funded court challenges program that for years has provided money for people and group initiating test cases to challenge federal laws and policies that violate their constitutional rights to equal treatment. Quoth the prime ministerial douchebag the other day ""Instead of subsidizing court challenges, as the previous government was doing, subsidizing lawyers to bring forth court challenges by left-wing fringe groups ..."

Those left-wing fringe groups have included people insisting on equal rights for women, the disabled, gays and lesbians, the aged, first nations, francophones living outside Quebec --- you know, people who aren't pudgy, middle-aged, anglophone, white guys from Calgary.

As a pudgy, anglophone white guy who is newly middle-aged (Hey, at least I'm not from Calgary - not that there is anything wrong with that) I feel a special responsibility to be pissed off by remarks like this. Just because Steve and his fellow ReformAllianceConservative party members are a bunch of ignorant nitwits, doesn't mean all of us middle aged white guys are assholes. It's bad enough that Steverino has ruined paunch-hiding sweater vests and ten-dollar haircuts for us for all time, but this considerably more serious.

The court challenges program was a vital part of Canadian democracy. It ensured that anyone and everyone could fight for their rights in court, not just rich people who could afford lawyers. To argue that anyone who wants to fight for their rights in court is somehow part of the "left wing fringe" is offensive crap to start with. When you add to that the notion that the principle users of the program have been women--half the population--and marginalized groups such as homosexuals and native Canadians, it becomes extremely offensive crap. The idea that women, or anyone else, who want to be treated equally under federal law are somehow a "left-wing fringe group" shows contempt for women, the law, the constitution and pretty much anyone with a brain in their head. Equal treatment should not be a left-right issue, it is a matter of human rights. If Stephen Harper wants to argue that conservatives don't care about human rights or equality, well okay, be my guest -- that sounds like a real vote-getter that can only enhance your reputation as total douchebag champion of conservative family values.

Now, as I said, I'm late to the party on this one, but Alison over at Creekside, one of my fellow ink-stained wretches on the good ship Galloping Beaver, was quick to pick up the rope and start hauling on the sail first set by Antonia Zerbisias, a bunch of others have started hauling too. That sail seems to have caught the wind and the ship is gathering speed.

So screw you Stephen Harper, this is one fringe group I can happily support.

Muffy the billionaire sez...

Save the Status Quo!

(this message brought to you by Billionaires for Wealthcare and No Blood for Hubris)

"Million" "Moran" March

They can't read the health care bill, they can't behave in public meetings - hell, they can't even count - but they sure are angry. And ignorant. And racist.

The 9/12 movement - typical conservatives: A day late and a clue short.

Please America, don't let these modern-day know-nothings bully the rest of you into going along with their pig-ignorant me-firstism. Let them know that elections have consequences and that they lost the election by a huge margin. Most of these geezers will be dead of old age and apoplexy in ten or twenty years anyways if meth addiction, gun accidents and other forms of fatal stupidity don't get them first.

These are the same people who bought into Nixon's "Silent Majority" bullshit and were taught to hate anyone smarter than themselves and obey anyone richer than they were. The same bloodthirsty reactionaries who cheered for the Chicago cops at the Democratic convention in 1968 and for the Ohio Nation Guard at Kent State a couple of years later. The same people who thought that William Calley deserved a medal instead of a court martial. The same people who thought Woodward and Bernstien should have been jailed for treason. The same idiots who still think Bill Clinton lying about getting a blowjob was more important than Iran-Contra. These are the same square-headed, gas-guzzler driving, aerosol-cheeze-eating, rainforest-chopping, gun-hording, smug, "I'm-all-right-Jack" asses who shout "get a job" at homeless people and "If you don't like it here, why don't you move to Russia" at anti-war and human-rights demonstrators.

Well, here's a news flash Mr. and Mrs. Silent Majority: The popular, legitimately nominated candidate of one of America's two main political parties won the election in a legitimate fashion by a sizable margin. He might not be the person you voted for, he may even be a different color than you and think differently from you, but he is still the President, just like the last guy was. It's funny you're getting all upset about government spending now that someone wants to spend the money on getting poor people decent medical care instead of blowing up foreigners for no good reason. You don't like it --too damn bad. "America, love it or leave it" If you chickenshit, hardhearted, crewcut facists don't like it in the land of the free and the home of the brave, why don't you move to Shutthefuckupistan?

Doesn't sound so good when the shoe is on the other foot does it? But you'll notice, despite the amped up feelings on both sides, virtually no one on the left side of the divide is calling the people on the right traitors or questioning their patriotism or issuing "conservative hunting licences" or saying they should all be put to death. A lot of us on the left would love to see George Bush and Dick Cheney and the rest of their junta in jail for war crimes, but I don't recall seeing any of them burned or hung in effigy. I didn't see any guns at the anti-war rallies. We may have called Bush a Nazi, but he was killing tens of thousands of people and wiping his ass with the constitution at the time - actions which the conservative movement mostly applauded I might add - while Obama's great crime is trying to save the U.S. economy from meltdown and fix it so everyone, rich or poor, can go to the doctor if they are sick.

That isn't socialism any more than having a tax-funded fire department or public school system or public roads are socialism. You want to know what socialism is? Having the government build sports stadiums at taxpayer expense. It starts down the road to facism when they do it so that private companies run by their cronies can use the stadium to make a profit. But I digress.

So the LaRouchers, the Glenn Beck fans, the Klansmen, the Paulites, the white pride militiamen, the conservative bloggers, the freepers, the CPAC creeps and the Ayn Rand fan club got together and had they little jambouree in Washington. Good for them. If Osama Bin Laden had crashed a 747 on their little shriekfest and killed them all, the average IQ in the United States would have gone up ten or fifteen points, but it still would have been a tragic waste of human life.

This something the screamers on the right don't get. No one really wishes you ill, no one wants to hurt you and you aren't going to sent to a re-education camp or have homosexuality "shoved down your throat" or be made to pay more taxes unless you are already pretty well off. We just wish you would stop shouting nonsense while grown ups are talking and stop getting in the way while we are trying to clean up your mess.

If you'd calm down and turn off Rush and Beck and Fox News for a couple of weeks and read a book or two about history and politics that were not published by Regnery or recommended by National Review, if you went out and listened to some people who weren't exactly like you, you might even realize that your country could be a pretty wonderful place for everyone in it if you'd pitch in and help out a bit and stop trying to screw people to get a little more crap you don't really need - started thinking more about how you're playing the game and whether you're really having any fun than what the score is and winning at any cost.

Everyone in the United States, no matter how ignorant or bugfuck nuts, has the right to voice their opinion and demonstrate and if nothing else, this outpouring of crazy should at least galvanize the Sensible Majority(tm) to turn off hate radio and change the channel when Glenn Beck comes on. But that isn't enough. Agreeing to disagree is fine between reasonable people on issues that are not life and death. But going along to get along is not working with the militant conservatives. If you give them an inch, they will take your yard, put a chemical waste dump in it and then refuse you health insurance when the chemicals cause cancer and won't let you sue the chemical producers because that would be liberal nazi socialism or something and capitalism rools USA! USA! USA! Blar-har-har-har! --- This cancer on the body politic must be confronted before it poisons public discourse for another few generations. These guys invariably lie or just plain don't know what the hell they are talking about -- they need to be called on their shit constantly.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but everyone is also entitled to tell you that your opinion is stupid, meanspirited and totally uniformed and should be ignored if not ridiculed. To put it in terms the teabaggers understand, I bring you one of the most iconic photos of our internet age, the guy I like to think of as Teabagger Zero:

(hat tip to Red Tory, and JJ)

P.S. Austin Cline says a lot of this in a much more eloquent and organized fashion over at the General's

The obligatory Japanese election post

Okay, this post is late and for that I apologize, but I've been busy down at the Ministry of Truth office rewriting the translations of what all the conservative movers and shakers think of the Japanese election. The consesus is that they are against it.

Doom and gloom is widely predicted by the right and less than 24 hours after the centerist Democratic Party of Japan signed a coalition with the leftish Social Democratic Party and the quasi-populist centerist/conservative People's New Party, headlines in the conservative press were announcing that cracks were already appearing in the tripartate alliance.

On the left, there is a bit more diversity of opinion. Some want to know when the bread and circuses will be arriving and others, realizing the economic fix the country is in, are being a bit more pragmatic and scaling back their expectations.

The new cabinet will be sworn in next week, so let's get cracking.

First, you need to know some things:
Japanese political history 101

Japanese media 101

Some decent political blogging on Japanese politics can be found at Tobais Harris' Observing Japan

Why the Liberal Democratic Party lost
As the old saw goes, the Liberal Democratic Party is neither, but that not really relevant here. The party lost the election for a variety of reasons

1. The economy sucks
2. Prime Minister Taro Aso brought a George W. Bush sort of eloquence to public speaking and was widely considered a bit of an embarrassment
3. The economy really sucks
4. People were sick and tired of the LDP after more than 50 years of them running the country. People have been sick and tired of the LDP for many years, but its never made much difference until now. Why? See reasons 1 thru 3.
5. The economy suuuuuuucks
6. The last elected Prime Minister in Japan was the very popular Junichro Koizumi, who was re-elected in a landslide snap election in 2005. Japan has had three unelected prime ministers since then.
7.Could it have been this kind of populist approach?

Education, Science and Technology Minister Ryu Shionoya also figuratively rose from the dead in a proportional representation bloc after losing in his single-seat constituency.
Shionoya said one cause of the LDP's defeat was "the people's lack of understanding of politics."
"I think the details of our policies haven't been conveyed to the public. I wonder how much ordinary citizens understand these things, including law-related points," he said.
"People need to make decisions based not solely on the lure of immediate gains. They need to think about what kind of society to build in the future," he said.
-Sept. 2 Daily Yomiuri

Mind you, that kind of elitism is rampant in Japan, but especially among the upper echelons of the LDP.
Japan is, in some ways still a feudal country at heart. People still go into the family business and follow in dad's footsteps professionally to much larger extent than in the west and parents still run their children's lives to a ripe old age.
And the aristocracy still rules. The vast majority of Diet members are graduates of one of about four elite universities - they go into the executive ranks of corporate Japan or the civil service and come out at age 50 to enter politics. That or they take over the seat from dear old dad, or granddad or uncle. Dynastic politics - children of politicians running for their parents and often grandparents old seat - is very common in Japan at all levels. Most of Taro Aso's Cabinet have a Cabinet Minister in their family tree somewhere and a full third of the LDP's elected Diet members in the last parliament were people who had effectively inherited their seats from family members.

Aso's paternal grandfather was prime minister and so was his father-in-law. His father ran a massive mining and cement company and his sister married into the Imperial family.

But the LDP hasn't cornered the market bluebloods either - the new prime minister Yukio Hatoyama is also a blueblood whose family has been called Japan's answer to the Kennedy clan.

Will the DPJ be any different?

Yes, at first. But while some of the old guard of the DPJ are the more centerist holdovers from the old Japan Socialist Party, a lot more of them are former LDP members or rookies whose main complaint about the old regime, aside from a few foreign and security policy points, is that it has denied them their turn at the trough. Power corrupts and we will eventually see the DPJ members getting their snouts in and the same cycle of corruption repeating.

What cycle is that? Well, the reason the LDP stayed in power for more than 50 years is that they managed to fulfill a vital role in post war Japan. It goes like this: To survive, a political party needs to get votes. To get those votes its needs money to campaign and money to reward areas that support it.

The LDP spent tax money like a drunken sailor on public works projects across the country - something very much needed to rebuild and modernize the nation in the 50s,but by the 70s, the government was building six-lane highways to nowhere, multi-million dollar bridges to tiny islands and spending tons of money on "anti-erosion" work - pouring concrete along the coast.

This brings jobs and money to rural areas and get the party votes. The construction industry in Japan is very much dominated by the Yakuza, so the contract bidding for all these projects were and still are, usually fixed. Companies collude to share the work and keep the price high, it's the Japanese way - the companies make money, the mob makes money and what the taxpayers don't know won't hurt them.

The mobsters then take their cut and launder it by donating it to the ultrarightist organizations they very often control, which in turn donate a slice of the cash to right wing politicians in the LDP and "spends" the rest at mob front businesses . The LDP also gets fat contributions from the construction companies and virtually anyone doing business with the government, which is just about everyone. The longer they stayed in power, the longer the reach of their fundraising tentacles. Whether the DPJ can or will step into the LDP's shoes in this cycle in the long run is an open question - I think they will try, but won't be as successful at it - but in the short run, the machine has been jammed by the change in government.

The LDP also promulgated a policy of agricultural self-sufficiency - the idea that Japan should be growing its own food, no matter the cost. This meant lots and lots of farm subsidies, which meant lots and lots of rural votes. And when you control the drawing of electoral districts, you can make sure that the rural votes you control count more heavily than those cast by big-city liberals and communists. It is reckoned that the vote of a farmer in out of the way Fukushima or Akita carries nearly three times the weight of a vote cast in Tokyo or Osaka, where the constituencies have far more voters.

Globalization of the economy has begun to put paid to that pillar of strength too, as Japan has been forced, grudgingly, to open up its agricultural markets to cheap food from China and the rest of Asia, a trend that will continue. The DPJ is offering a new and possibly more lucrative subsidy system to farmers in an attempt to bleed off some of the LDP's strength and has been somewhat successful, although voters in the countryside are still more likely to back the LDP than those in the city.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

The biggest change promised by the DPJ and the one least likely to be noticed aboard is their promise to move Japan toward "politician-centered government" -- I know anywhere else that would sound a tad redundant and ridiculous, but here's the dirty little secret about Japanese democracy -- its really the bureaucracy that runs the country. For the last 50 years it has been the deputy ministers and and other senior bureaucrats that have made all of the real domestic policy decisions, to the extent the average Japanese probably wouldn't get the joke underlying "Yes, Minister" and would feel that the domineering civil servant played by Nigel Hawthorne is a bit of a pushover if anything. The DPJ has promised to replace a lot of the senior civil servants with elected political appointees. I'm not sure how well this will work out -- there is a lot to be said for having competent professionals running government departments rather than amateurs -- but it is good to see the bureaucracy challenged and the will of the people's elected officials take the precedence over bureaucratic precedent.

The DPJ have also promised to take a new look at Japan's alliance with the US with an eye toward being less subservient - not a task given the nature of the relationship over the last 50 years. This change will probably amount to the Japanese government waiting a decent interval before saying "how high, sir?" when America says "jump"ns on security matters, but even that would be a stunning display of spine. One of the junior coalition partners, the SDP, favors kicking the Yankees out of Okinawa. Luckily, they are already accustomed to disappointment.

Much has also been made about the likelihood of the DPJ bringing Japan closer to China. While this would be a good thing and may happen, I sincerely doubt that they will ever be best pals. Too many Chinese remember or have been taught what Japan did to China in the 30s and 40s and too many Japanese forget or have not been taught the same.

The real change that is liable to come about will be in security policy. The DPJ gives every appearence of taking Article 9 seriously and the SDP definitely does, so the likelihood of things like Japan's ridiculous "participation" in the Iraq occupation being repeated are considerably lower than under the closet militant nationalist in the LDP. I would expect the current mission by the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force to refuel other nation's warships in the waters off Pakistan that are supposed to be on some kind of blockade of Afghanistan will not continue past next year.

What does the future hold?

Mostly, financial turmoil for the government as they try to live up to their promises of a generous baby bonus (about $250 a month per kid) amohanng other pledges of government largess for the common citizenry and some serious ructions as they try to wean the construction industry off the government teat u end the collusive practices in bidding on government contracts. I'm not convince either of these coming to pass as I think that over time, the DPJ will come more and more to resemble the LDP of old and get stuck in at the trough. However, if they do manage to face down the bureaucracy and put the decision making power in the hands of elected officials, that will be it enough to earn them at least a second, if not a third term.

The LDP faces an interesting future. No one wants to lead the party right now and given the nature of Japanese consensus-based decision making, I won't be surprised to see a few members, or even entire factions of the party, cross the aisle. The LDP needs a strong leader to keep the various diverse faction united in opposition, but anyone coming forward to lead the y party now is unlikely to be around for the next election in four years, so the list of people willing to be leader of the opposition but never prime minister gets pretty short indeed.

The only caveat to this is the chance (about even odds) that the DPJ melts down on its own due to scandal or simple ineptitude as a party with no governing experience, and is forced to call a quick election. If that happens this year or next, the LDP could slither back into power. If the DPJ get three years at the helm without having to switch leaders more than once, they have a good chance at a second term if the economy revives and the North Koreans don't invade.

If nothing else, the entire exercise has taught the Japanese voter one thing - that they can change the party in power, that democracy does exist here, at least to some extent.

weekend uke blogging - the beatles edition

With all the hype surrounding the rereleased remastered remixed albums and the video game and all, you might be sick of the Beatles this week. Too damn bad. Everyone is still talking about them for a very good reason - because their songs sound great on ukulele, that's why


the (sort of) original (lets just say the late 70s were an odd time)


the cover (with very funky bass and scat singing!)




the original



the cover (with clarinet and bystanders)

Well played, Mr. Wilson

You have to hand it to the Republicans, they know how to play the press and work the rubes.
Obama gives a major speech to Congress in which he lays out what he want to see in a health care bill and how important it is that U.S. fix its health care system right now - important stuff, no doubt about it, and it was a stirring speech full of appeals to America's lofty ideals and all that kind of inspirational speechifying for which Obama is rightfully known. But what are the press, and therefore the rest of us, going to be talking about for the next week or two?

It won't be health care.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted out "You lie" when Obama said that the new health care program wouldn't cover illegal aliens, so for the next two weeks all the talk on cable news and Sunday political chat shows will be about the "incivility" of politics and how both sides are rude, crude and obnoxious, how it is unheard of for congressmen to heckle the president when he is making a speech, how this shows that Obama doesn't rattle in the face of hecklers, how this shows the Republicans are losing their cool, how it shows that Obama doesn't command the respect that he should as president, how angry the right is, how angry Americans are about illegal aliens, how much influence Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh have, whether this shows that Obama will win on health care, whether it shows that the Republicans will win on health care -- in other words, the mainstream public discourse will be about everything but healthcare.

Just like the public discourse for the last two months has been about the angry shouting crazy people showing up to the town hall meetings with guns and pictures of Obama as Hitler. Did we spend the summer talking about health care? No, not really, most of the coverage of the issue was about how terrible it was to call Obama a Nazi and what is socialism really? And who are these angry shouting people who say crazy shit like "keep the government away from my medicare" --- simply put, the angry, shouting, crazy gun-wavers suck up all the attention and the actual issues go unexamined.

Yes, intelligent and thoughtful people see through this misdirection and look at the issue of health care reform, but as history shows, the electorate is not entirely made up of intelligent and thoughtful people. A large proportion of the electorate are ignorant rubes who will now be saying to themselves "gee, maybe Obama is a liar" or "Wow, Joe Wilson's a douchebag for heckling the president, but its just because so many people are angry about all the free stuff we give to illegal immigrants."

Yes, people will be calling Joe Wilson a douche bag for a few days and his name will now be followed with the phrase "that guy who heckled Obama" for the rest of his political career. So what? He's a Republican congressman from South Carolina -- did anyone think he wasn't a douchebag before he opened his mouth? He heckled Obama -- that will definitely hurt his chances of getting elected in the northeast and California, but in South Carolina,where the people who are going to vote for a white Republican douche bag already think that Obama is a Kenyan Islamofascist hippie communist blackamoor who wants to ban NASCAR and the Bible and take away everybody's guns, it's pure gold.

Well played Republicans, well played Joe Wilson. But you're still a bunch of douche bags

updatery: Wilson's various websites are still down, I suspect from before the speech even started, in anticipation of the backlash.
Meanwhile, the good folk at Whisky Fire are entirely correct when they say of Joe Wilson: I Think You're an Asshole, And I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Act Like an Asshole, But You're Still an Asshole, Asshole

Cue the sound of screeching brakes

So, I'm doing my usual morning news surf finding the usual stuff - war, famine, disease and politics and I notice this story about a memorial for Walter Cronkite at the Lincoln Center: Obama spoke and called for journalists to do a better job. Bill Clinton talked about Walter offering to take him sailing during the media feeding frenzy of the Lewinsky scandal. Katie Couric and Tom Browkaw, neither of whom should be considered qualified to carry Cronkite's lunch for him on an assignment, both paid tribute as did moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, professional curmudgeon Andy Rooney, CBS honcho Les Moonves, CBS News president Sean McManus, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart...waitaminute! Mickey Hart?

There were other light moments. Mickey Hart, the former Dead drummer and Cronkite's late-in-life pal who provided entertainment, along with Jimmy Buffett and Wynton Marsalis, invoked a musical discussion he had with Cronkite after one of the band's concerts. "Mickey," Cronkite asked, "how will we know when we have the groove?"

Well suck me dry and call me "Dusty" - I never would have seen that coming! It's kind of like finding out your minister used to be a roadie for the Stones or your dad gave guitar lessons to Jimi Hendrix. Walter always did ask the right questions. Check him out about 2 minutes into this little video.

Dick Cheney - soft on terrorists?

From that filthy British commie-pinko sensationalist rag The Times:

Dick Cheney, the former US Vice President, nearly destroyed Britain's efforts to bring the airline bomb plotters to justice, police and intelligence experts said today.
By ordering the early arrest of Rashid Rauf, the bombers' link man in Pakistan, Washington forced British police to detain the suspects in the UK before all the evidence had been gathered, it was claimed.
Yesterday three British Muslims - Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Tanvir Hussain and Assad Sarwar - were finally convicted of plotting to blow up seven transatlantic airliners in mid-air in a co-ordinated attack intended to surpass the horror of 9/11. But the plotters were arrested before they had bought the airline tickets that would have been the ultimate proof of their intentions. Police fear that several key figures of the plot have remained free.

So Dick jumped the gun and had the Pakistanis arrest the "mastermind" before the British could gather all the info and evidence they needed -- But we are safer now with this terrorist mastermind in custody, right?

Mr Clarke added that the airline bomb plot trial had brought home the extent to which the myriad of terrorist cells and plots in Britain were connected and aided and kept in touch through key figures such as Mr Rauf, who was also in contact with the 7/7 bombers on London transport, the failed 21/7 London bombers, and the fertiliser bomb plotters picked up by Operation Crevice.
Mr Rauf's fate is unclear. After his arrest, he managed to escape from Pakistani custody under suspicious circumstances. Late last year the Americans reported that they had killed him, along with several other key al-Qaeda figures, in a barrage of Hellfire missiles fired from a Predator drone at a bungalow in Pakistan's tribal territories on its border with Afghanistan.
Mr Rauf's DNA was never retrieved from the bombing however, leaving open the possibilities that he is either still on the run or is secretly in custody and under interrogation.

"oh yeah, well you health care reformers can just bite me"

Conservatives and Republicans continue to sink to new lows in the U.S. health care reform debate with GOP chair Michael Steele heckling the audience - now we know what it takes to get thrown out, you have to ask a Republican a difficult question, the young lady involved is lucky she didn't get tasered. Meanwhile, one anti-reform protester gave health care reform the finger, but not in quite the way you might think.

Uke dreamin'

The original

Zal Yanovsky, from last week's Lovin' Spoonful video, started out in California with fellow canuck Denny Doherty and Cass Elliot in a band called the Mugwups. Denny and Cass later met John and Michelle Phillips and formed the Mamas and the Papas. Pierre Elliot Trudeau later dated Michelle Phillips --thus returning the circle of musical trivia to Canada

The cover

This guy is an English teacher from Hawaii who lives in Yokohama who really should be doing uke videos for a living - bonus points for having his son play the flute on this one, too.

Deja view

Dear frothing-at-the-piehole-wingnuts,

I see that you are worried about President Barack Hussien Obamullah Lenin X giving a speech to the nation's schoolchildren in which he is expected to urge them to study hard and do their homework murder their parents in their sleep. Where were you the last time this happened?

Why don't you guys just stop stepping on the garden rakes for a while and sit this one out?

Sincerely

Rev.Paperboy

P.S. Also, and, yeah that too

mapping the seven deadly sins

A must see over at Wired -- A team at Kansas State has compiled data-maps of the incidence per-capita of the seven deadly sins. Florida FTW!

No jury would ever convict me

I suppose it runs in the family-- like father, like son and all that. If there is one thing drilled into my head as a child it was that you didn't act up when out in public. Nothing pissed off my father more than other people's kids carrying on noisily in a restaurant, hollering or crying or wandering table to table. It wasn't the kids he'd be ticked off at as much as the parents who didn't do anything about their children's obnoxious behaviour. My brother and I were usually pretty well-behaved in public and as a result got to go to some fairly swanky places with my mom and dad.
I am the same way with my kids. From the earliest ages, they have been taken into restaurants and museums and other "grown up" sorts of places and have always been well-behaved, to the extent that I have had strangers come up and compliment us on their table manners, maturity etc etc. (I know, I know, but like the man said "no brag, just the truth").
I have often been guilty of shooting the parents of misbehaving kids dirty looks and muttering "can't they shut that kid up?" to myself. I've even told small kids wandering table to table in restaurants that they should go back and sit with mommy and daddy, usually in a nice way. My own kids, now 7 and 9, will look at hollering, food-flinging four and five year olds in family restaurants with absolute horror and amazement, as if someone had come into the place with something from the zoo.
Only once have I ever had to deal with my kids chucking a wobbly in public and it was dealt with quickly and with a minimum of inconvenience to our fellow diners. My overtired, overstimulated, underfed son, then seven, once decided to cry in the middle of a restaurant because I wouldn't take him to the attatched karoke parlor at the end of a very busy kid-centered day. I told him to stop carrying on or we would leave, despite having already ordered dinner. He wouldn't quit, so out the door we went, leaving my wife and daughter with money to pay the bill. He hadn't done it before and hasn't since.
If your toddler is throwing a howling tantrum, do not walk away from them as if they were someone else's kid. If they are acting up, deal with the problem or take them home. I understand youthful exuberence and I understand that you don't like to impose boundaries on Junior and that you have your own parenting style or that maybe you're just sick and tired of dealing with your little (Hell's ) Angel. Tough luck, it's a basic social contract/civil society principle - supervise your own brats and don't let them annoy others. Please.

Having said all that, rest assured that if I see you in the Walmart with your crying two-year-old following you up and down the aisles, you will first have my sympathy. If the kid won't stop crying and you do nothing about it, you'll have my scorn. But if some grouchy old man decides to slap your toddler around to get it to shut up, you will not only have my enthusiastic support, I will even help you dispose of what is left of the presumptious old bastard's body.

Directing a wayward child back to its parents is acceptable. Even delivering a verbal scolding to a kid that is seriously out of line is, in some cases, justifiable, but unless you are pulling them out of the path of a speeding car or breaking up a fight, YOU DO NOT LAY HANDS ON OTHER PEOPLE'S KIDS. EVER.

Nevermind for a moment that slapping a two-year-old to get it to stop crying is like trying to put out a fire with a bucket of gasoline, you just don't physically interfere with other people's kids, let alone presume to strike them. You can argue the pro and cons of physical discipline and corporal punishment until the cows come home and reasonable people can perhaps disagree about whether parents should spank their kids, but when it comes to complete strangers slapping other people's kids, I think we can all agree its a very, very bad idea.

If I had been present at the Stone Mountain Walmart, the police would have been taking me away in handcuffs, not child-slapper Roger Stephens. He would be counting himself lucky to be leaving in an ambulance instead of a hearse.

It's funny, sad, funny, because it's true

(hat tip to Chet at the Vanity Press)

Where do I sign up?

I've never been a big fan of Michael Ignatieff, but I do need a job that would let me move back to Canada...

Ignatieff’s big problem
Susan Riley, Canwest
Published: Tuesday, September 01, 2009

One thing Michael Ignatieff needs, if he is ever to succeed, is a quick and savage response team - twitchy, obsessive partisans with no personal lives, no particular need for sleep and a pathological loathing of Conservatives.

Lets see..."twitchy, obsessive partisan" ?

Well, "twitchy" might be a little strong, but check.

"No personal life" ?

Aside from the family (and blogging), mostly check.

"No particular need for sleep"?

Checkerooni and pass the espresso.

"a pathological loathing of Conservatives"?

Double check in spades.

Are they offering dental coverage? How about a few bucks for moving expenses? Can I write off coffee, whisky and bile as business expenses? Will I need to wear a tie or is business casual okay for around the office? Look, I know $40,000 a year isn't much, but that's all I can afford to pay until I get a second job. When can I start?