Some apples do not fall from the tree

Prominent offspring of famous facist+ multiple hookers+ nazi regalia+Fleet street tabloid=Hilarity!

Yes, there are more important things going on in the world. Yes, what people do in the privacy of their own homes is their own business. Still, this is what we in the journalism business call a perfect storm. If only it had been Dick Cheney or George Bush.

Mercy me, such foolish contrarianism
Bound as I am by my decision to abide by Canadian Cynic's civility for truth challenge, I cannot give full play to range of colourful expressions I would like to use to describe Richard Peter Foster's collection of contrarian nonsense and flat out balderdash in the Financial Post recently, nor to describe Ms. McMillian's insistence that apples are oranges based on her own willful misinterpretation of the facts regarding the recent "Earth Hour." (Link goes to CC's critique, I will not send traffic to her site.)

As to Foster's foolishness, well, if you have a million scientists and 1,999,997 of them are climate experts who say global warming is real and man-made and three who are say, Christopher Monckton or Tim Ball or some other charlatan or serial prevaricator bought and paid for by the petroleum industry, I think it is fair to say the science is settled. (Click the links to see a laundry list of the way and places such people have been discredited.) The jury is not out on climate change any more than it is out on whether the earth is flat, to say otherwise is simply false. If you still have any doubts, try any of these links offered here. Note to climate change deniers on the far right: Just because you hate Al Gore doesn't mean he's wrong about climate change.

Foster's statement that "Earth Hour" is somehow facistic leads me to wonder if he has been spending too much time reading Mr. Jonah Goldberg's recent unintentionally comic magnum opus. As has been pointed out elsewhere, how is an event that is strictly voluntary and does not involve appeals to notions of racial or cultural superiority or militant nationalism facistic?
Truly, Foster gives one pause when he erupts with such stupendous statements as this:

"Leo Burnet's chairman, Nigel Marsh, demonstrated his skill both in semantic perversion and moral obfuscation when he declared: "I'm an optimist about climate change. The human race eventually abolished slavery and gave women the vote. We eventually work it out."
Get the implication? "Deny" the dubious science or dangerous politics of anthropogenic climate change and you're the kind of person who would support slavery and keep women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen!"

A simple statement of optimism by Marsh, that people will eventually choose to do the right thing, brings an astounding outburst of defensiveness from Foster that just because he is out to lunch on climate change, doesn't mean he supports slavery or keeping women pregnant, shoeless and chained to stove. I might wonder aloud which part of the political spectrum it was that fought to continue slavery and deny women the vote and equal rights (Hint: not liberals) but that, gentle reader would be a less civil area of discourse.

Suffice to say that a shorter version of Foster's article written in a different time might go something like this:
"Anyone who thinks walking upright is a good idea is a fool. And this whole notion of banding together and sharing the work - nonsense! No one has proved that division of labour and cooperation results in more food and even if it did, what would we do with the extra time? Paint on the cave walls or learn to make fire? Bah, humbug!"

As to the aforementioned proprietress of Small Dead Animals (nope, I will not link to her site. Use Google if you must), I haven't really much to add to CC's analysis -- and by analysis I mean pointing and laughing -- of her contention that Earth Hour was a failure because she urged her regular readers to use as much energy as possible during the hour in question.

Her argument seems to be that because energy use in the set period did not go down, but merely did not increase as much as it does on an average day, she is somehow a winner and people who are in favour of saving energy and using less expensive fossil fuels are somehow losers. That is rather like saying that if you slam on the brakes while going 100 kph and your car doesn't suddenly go in reverse, but instead just slows down, your brakes are broken.

I think that is the kind of dishonesty that CC was talking about when he proposed this challenge.

As for the foolish contrarianism of people who went out of their way to use as much electricity as possible during Earth Hour, there have been numerous suggestions for declaring other days of activism during which you can feel free to "stick it to the Man" by doing the opposite. We here at the Woodshed (by which I mean me) are declaring tomorrow "International multicultural, gay rights, feminist, anti-global warming Don't-pour-hot-sauce-in-your-eyes Day" Do what you feel you must.

Whoops, my bad: I mistakenly identified the author of the piece of tomfoolery in the Finanacial Post as Richard Foster, when in fact the man's name is Peter Foster. Sorry about that. Thanks to Pogge for catching my error. See, this is what you do when you make a mistake, you admit the mistake, correct it and move on. You do not insist that you are right in the face of all available evidence and declare victory. You do not insist that such empirical evidence is a plot by your political opponents. You do not pretend that such a mistake never occurred. Not that I'm accusing anyone...

Things I found when I should have been working on other things

Bad, bad Internet for lighting the grail-shaped beacon of procrastination. Oh, naughty, wicked Internet!

• Via BJ Bjornson over at Northman's Fury  we learn from the CBC's Neil MacDonald that it isn't money that makes the world go around, it's debt
  
• Now, more than ever, it is important for some Democrats to understand that, as Thers puts it so eloquently, their favorite candidate sucks.
  
• the Gazetter shows the further Republicanization  of the Tories Reform Alliance CPAC and how they are all about the spin and catapulting the propaganda - remember, they have become Luntzified.
  
• Canadian Cynic decides that Patrick "Nexus of Assholery" has been given enough rope.
  
• All things considered, I'd rather be in Philidelphia

The other "Orange Revolution"
Cheetos has finally realized who their customers really are and is reaching out to the wingnut-o-sphere. Sadly, No has been there and done that and wiped its orange fingers on conservative shirttails, where one more cheesy stain will scarce be noticed.

Magic Monday
After the Winter Soldier post below, I know I needed some cheering up.

Winter Soldier

In 1776, Thomas Paine, referring to the numerous desertions from the Continental Army encamped at Valley Forge that winter, wrote the famous words:

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

In January 1971, the antiwar veterans group Vietnam Veterans Against War organized several days of hearings in Detroit and asked combat veterans of that war to come forward and talk about the horrible things they had seen and done in Vietnam. The event was called Winter Soldier. The intent was to demonstrate to the American people that events such as the then recently uncovered My Lai massacre were not isolated events, but part of a larger, predictable pattern resulting from U.S. policy and orders from the top. The men talked of prisoners being thrown from helicopters, ears and heads being taken as trophies and wanton and indiscriminate slaughter committed against civilians -- behavior that was not just tacitly condoned, but often encouraged by their commanders. It was this event that led to the Fulbright Senate Committee hearings on the war in April 1971, at which John Kerry, then fresh out of the Navy and active as a leader of the antiwar movement, famously asked "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

About ten days ago (things are slow getting to us on the other side of the Pacific at times, and at other times we are slow to get to things) the Iraq Veterans Against the War organized new Winter Soldier hearings.

You likely didn't see anything about it on MSNBC or CNN and certainly not on FOX -- the talking heads were all too busy discussing whether Barack Obama's speech on race had made white people feel icky--but Amy Goodman from Democracy Now did several days worth of programs on the event, mostly just playing tapes of the testimony offered. KPFA radio also offers an excellent series on the event. Sadly, five years after the start of the Iraq war, most people have been distracted by other shiny objects, like whether Hillary is macho enough or whether Obama is black enough/too black-- last week the Iraq war got just 4 percent of the newshole in the US media.

The stories from the latest Winter Soldier are not as harrowing as those from Vietnam in their details - there are no ears taken or captives thrown from helicopters - but several themes recur, notably the dehumanization, as a matter of policy,　of anyone not wearing the uniform of the United States armed forces. In Vietnam the enemy was "Charlie" and the civilians were "gooks" who could be shot for sport. In Iraq, the local population are all "Hajis" who can be shot for the simple crime of "not knowing how to drive" on the roads of their own cities.

But on a day in the early summer of 2005 in the area of operation of the 42nd Infantry Division, there was a traffic control point shooting. Traffic control point shootings are rather common in Iraq; they happen on a near or daily basis. What happened was, a vehicle was driving very quickly towards a traffic control point. A young machine gunner made the split-second decision that that vehicle was a threat, and in less than a minute put 200 rounds from his .50-caliber machinegun into that vehicle. That day, he killed a mother, a father and two children. The boy was age four, and the daughter was age three.

I was in the briefing that evening when it was briefed to the general. And after the officer in charge briefed it to the general in a very calm manner, Colonel Rochelle of the 42nd Infantry Division, DISCOM Commander, turned in his chair to the entire division-level staff, and he said—and I quote—“If these [expletive] hajis learned to drive, this [expletive] wouldn’t happen."

Others testify of being told to shoot anyone talking on a cell phone within sight of a convoy, to fire on any taxis seen on the roads after a rumor that they were being used by insurgents for transportation, of being encouraged to carry throw-down weapons so that they could justify the shootings of civilians. The most moving testimony was from the mother and father of Jeff Lucey, a 24 year old marine who killed himself less than a year after coming back from driving a truck in Iraq. He suffered severe PTSD but could not get treatment through the military or the Veteran's Administration Hospital, even though his family begged to have him committed on couple of occasions. So much for supporting the troops, I guess.

videos of the Luceys' testimony

There are those who dispute the veracity of the original Winter Soldier testimonies, but they are mainly Nixon enthusiasts and lying political operatives like the widely discredited Swift Boat Veterans For Truth who tried to smear John Kerry. Then there are willfully ignorant twits like this one, who's convinced that the culture war veterans like Michelle Malkin know more about what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan and what happened in Vietnam than the people who were actually there. What do they and White House tenants have to say to the Luceys and tens of thousands like them?

4000 US soldiers have died, about 30,000 have suffered physical wounds and it is estimated that as many as one in four of the hundreds of thousands who have returned suffer from PTSD.
No one knows how many Iraqis have died, but estimates run from about 90,000 to more than 650,000 (as of 2006), Multiply that by who know how much for the number of wounded. The entire population may be considered to have PTSD by now, but there is nothing "post" about their trauma - it is ongoing.

Sunday funnies

I recently discovered Todd Butler through Spider Robinson's podcast.  He's a terrific guitar player and songwriter -- and funny as hell. Check out his other stuff here, I recommend the tune "Conrad" from the album "Idle Canadian" but I can't seem to find it anywhere on line to link to.  I'll post it when I figure out how. In the mean time, he's Todd doing "Bushed"

A little music for the weekend

 Dear metalhead guitar wankers, 

Suck on this:

the horrible interview is by Toni Tennille (as  in the Captain and ...)

In order:
Earl Scruggs Banjo
Glen Duncan Fiddle
Randy Scruggs Acoustic Guitar
Steve Martin Banjo
Vince Gill Telecaster
Marty Stewart Mandolin
Gary Scruggs Harmonica
Albert Lee Red Fender Strat Back To Earl
Schaffer on Piano (Who cares)
Jerry Douglas Dobro Slide
And Harry Stinson on Drums in back.


Steve Martin wrote this, the other banjo players are Tony Trischka and Bela Fleck


Grisman and Garcia

"It's funny, 'cause it's true

It isn't what he says, it's what he means.

Proof once again that Jon Stewart is the best pundit on television. It really is a shame that the pundit class on US television remains so out of touch with reality that it cannot see the forest for the trees. 

Hillary's glass house

But both Democrats are basically the same or so I thought until the last few weeks. I've never had much of a soft spot for Hillary Clinton, she always struck me as being a bit too interested in what was going to advance her career and how things looked rather than how they actually were -- her votes to support military action in Iraq being the obvious example. That said, I still thought she was a smart, capable politician's politician who would do a decent job as president, would do a lot to squelch the rampant sexism that exists in U.S. politics, and would inspire a generation or two of women to succeed and not accept glass ceilings and second-class status.

Having watched her campaign, I'm less keen on her and think she is more likely to be America's Margaret Thatcher. Undoubtedly she would be more than will to go to war to show that "just because she a woman it doesn't mean she isn't tough" much the way George Bush the first invaded Panama to prove he wasn't a wimp.

 "But," I told myself, "at least she wouldn't  be a stooge for the bible thumping bunch"

Well, not to get all conspiracy-theorist on you dear readers, but I was wrong about that too.

She hasn't said much about Obama's former ministers' remarks damning America for its treatment of blacks or McCain's pandering to the worst of the Christian Taliban.  And now I know why.

In which I admit to being evil

In comments, longtime lurker/first time commenter HT accuses me of evil for tempting him/her into clicking the "pro-life" wingnut link. I admit it, I am evil. I DO work in the media after all. 

You will click the links, you will leave comments. Oh yes, you will.

And speaking of barking mad wingnuts...

Meet "Pro-life" a candidate for Governor in Idaho this year, and likely for any public office you care to name for the next 20 years.  I guess you just call him "Pro" for short,  though I expect most people refer to him as "that weird guy, you know, the one who's all 'abortion this' and 'abortion that' and 'abortionists hid my car keys' -- you know, that guy who's crazier than a shithouse rat, the one that keep running for office"

Maybe I should move to the U.S. become a citizen and run for office after changing my name to "Kick George W. Bush in 'Nads"? Waddya think?

Presidential

Go watch the speech or read the transcript.

This is a speech that kids will be learning in grade school in twenty years. It may not be "I have a dream" but it is, as they say, close enough for government work.

Anyone who thinks the "Wright controversy" is an actual issue is an idiot to begin with, but Obama has taken this perceived problem and turned it into an opportunity. He is possibly the most eloquent speaker in U.S. politics since Kennedy, including Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.

Those in the democratic camp who are still splitting hairs and concern trolling about whether Obama is too black or not black enough or not experienced enough need to take a long look at the forest instead of the trees. Those on the Republican side who are still flinging poop and trying to sell the "he's a secret muslim whose crazy radical black preacher hates white people" line of bullshit have just been shown, in a very public way, to be idiots of the first water and quite simply on the wrong side of history.

The Rude Pundit pretty much sums it up. While Sadly, No turns over the rock that is "Free Republic"

I can be as jingoistic as the next guy...

But this is funny.

BTW  the song is by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, not the Arrogant Worms. 

Getting things done to for Canadians, eventually

Only weeks after former Prime Minister Paul Martin went to visit, a deal may be in the works to get a suicidal Canadian woman out of a Mexican jail where she has been held for two years without trial. Responding to hundreds of angry letters and emails Steverino has finally pushed the Timbit trough aside and picked up the phone. There, see Steverino, it wasn't that hard, was it? As an expatriate, I'm glad to see "Canada's New Conservative Government" (tm) is so quick to leap to the defence of citizen jailed in foreign countries without trial on questionable charges.

another one bites the dust
First they came for Tucker Carlson, now John Gibson -- when will it be O'Rielly's turn?

Storytime --In the neighborhood

We are neighbors.

I don't like you and you don't like me, in fact I punched you in the nose a month ago because your dog ripped open my garbage.
Now I'm convinced you've bought a gun and are going to kill me. You deny it, but I don't trust you. I threaten to beat you up if you don't turn over the gun. You claim you don't have one.

"Prove it" I say, "Let me search your house."
You grumble, and when I spend a long time searching your teenage daughter's underwear drawer, you get pissed off. I keep searching.
"I don't have a gun, I haven't kept guns in years" you holler.
"That's it!" I yell. "I'm not searching any more. I know you've got guns, you shot that moose back in '77 when we went hunting together."

Jacques from across the road and his boyfriend Hans and Ivan who lives over on the corner have come over now and are telling me to calm down, that they don't think you have guns and they don't think you'd use them if you did.

"Fuck you guys! That goddamned Biff LaDen kid broke into my house last week and stole my TV and kicked my dog. And he's the same age as your son who left the bag of flaming dog doo on my porch the week before. They're in cahoots. They're probably smoking crack in your basement right now!" I yell.

Jacques tells me to calm down, points out that the whole neighborhood hates the LaDen kid and that even his own parents disowned him and moved away, after I keyed their car and ran over their cat. He suggests letting the cops handle it if I really think you've got a gun. Stupid Frenchman, the cops won't do anything. They're useless.

"I hate the LaDen kid as much as anyone," you say "he kept calling my daughter, my son used to hang out with him, but I told him if I saw him even talking to that little psycho he'd be grounded for life."

"LIAR!" I'm screaming angry now. "I know you've got guns, you can't fool me! Just because I didn't find them doesn't mean you don't have them! I'll get you before you get me!"

That night, I burn your house to the ground.

That guy Tony up the street even gave me a gallon of gas, the suck-up. You die in the fire along with your youngest two kids. Your wife is badly burned, but you used to beat her so she should be glad you're gone. I gave her and your daughter a job in my topless bar. I park my truck in their front yard while they live in a rusty old roach-ridden trailer I rent to them that's parked in what used to be your backyard.

Someone throws eggs at my truck every once in a while, but its not like he's willing to confront me, the coward. I think its probably one of your other sons or nephews. I heard they were talking to that LaDen kid. Stupid punks--they don't scare me. I never did find the guns, but they must be here somewhere. Maybe they were buried in the yard, maybe not. I guess it doesn't really matter. The whole thing is so five years ago.

You know who bugs me these days? That Persian guy, Ahmawhatshisname, the guy who lived behind you that you used to argue with over the fence back when we were friends. Yeah, he pisses me off. I bet he's got a gun.

(with apologies to Terry Jones for stealing his metaphor, it's not plagarism, it's an hommage)

Five years
There will be plenty of articles like this one this week. I hope to see some mass media mea culpas about the role of the press, especially in the United States, in beating the war drums on the neo-cons behalf, but I don't really expect to see any of them admit they were wrong about anything ever. The whole public argument for going to war was specious from the start. No one can prove a negative. You can't prove Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction beyond all doubt, even if you X-ray every inch of it. To people who are convinced something is so, will not be dissuaded it is not so, they will just invent ways the evidence supports their theory.

UPDATE
While he tries to salvage some shred of superiority in the last few paragraphs, this admission by Joe Klein that he was "Stupid, stupid, stupid" to think the Iraq was was a good idea is a fairly abject apology, all thing considered. Who's next ? I'm looking at you Christopher Hitchens

Places to see before I die #943
My standard answer when I am asked why I came to Japan is that "I came for the waters" when they look confused, I add "I was misinformed" -- so it won't surprise you to know that of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, if there is a place I need to have a drink in some day, it's this one. After all, everyone comes to Rick's.

Georgie get your gun

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."
"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

Thanks to all cocaine he did in his younger days, Dubya is blissfully unaware of his personal wartime service, bravely flying fighter jets over the Gulf of Mexico to protect Texas from the Viet Cong, at least when he wasn't too hungover to fly and could be bothered showing up.
And thank God he isn't a reader or consumer of popular culture over the last fifty years or he might have learned from books like Red Badge of Courage, All Quiet on the Western Front, Catch-22 or movies such as Apocalypse Now, Paths of Glory or Platoon that war is not romantic or glorious.

Luckily, Dubya hasn't talked to his own father or any other veteran about the difference between romance and stark terror, between glory and slaughter. Maybe his daddy could tell him about the romance of crashing your fighter plane into the ocean, or maybe John McCain could talk about the glorious times he had in the Hanoi Hilton. And those were fighter pilots, not the guys on the front lines where things explode and shoot back while you are struggling along in the rain and the mud and heat and cold on crappy food and sleeping in shifts in a hole in the ground and shitting in ziploc bags, if you're lucky.

Lucky, because if George and other morons in charge didn't think war and battle was romantic, glorious and the highest pursuit of manly men, we might have fewer wars. Whatever would the military-industrial complex do? How could governments justify spending billions on bullets and bombs and aircraft carriers and nuclear-tipped cruisemissiles while their people went without medical care and schools or in some cases even adequate food? Where would we be if it weren't for pointless conflict and needless bloodshed?

What would we do? Talk to each other? Settle disputes amicably in the United Nations? Share resources? Compromise? Perish the thought!

I'll grant him that being on the front line in a war is probably exciting. I'm lucky enough never to have had the experience, but I'd bet there is nothing like having people shooting at you and IEDs and car bombs going off to really get the heart rate up and the adrenaline flowing. Some people get so excited, they have a hard time calming down, even years later.

I'm sure just about any of the men and women on the front lines in Afghanistan and Greater Clusterfucktopia Iraq would be delighted to switch places with you. In fairness, I suppose we should point out that Bush said what he said about going to Afghanistan, proving that while he's stupid, even he isn't crazy enough to think there is anything good about going to the meatgrinder on the Tigris.

Sadly, No sums it up. If you have a strong stomach, Canadian Cynic has a romantic, exciting photo of the results of George's boundless appetite for adventure, but be warned, its pretty damned romantic -- lets just say that one soldier who won't be holding hands with his sweetheart anytime soon. I bet he'd have loved it if GI George had traded places with him a while back. 

And people in the United States voted this crapulous dimwit into office repeatedly?

UPDATE: Winter soldier is highly unromantic