There's a reason they call him Dick, not Richard

Darth Cheney speaks and the stench of brimstone is overwhelming. I watched this live and if the interview had been 5 minutes longer, I'd be shopping for a new television set today.

Groovin' on a Sunday afternoon & the Glorious People's Cinema Project

Yup, that's me - in the cartoon world of Second Life. As some of you already know, I do an internet radio show built around a weekly Second Life dance party know as "Groovin' on a Sunday Afternoon." You can join us "in-world" at the Red Zeppelin, headquarters of the Second Life Marxist-Lennonist Party (Groucho and John Factions United) or just click on the radio over there at the right to listen in on Sundays from 5:30 PST (8:30 EST). I know a few of you have been listening in, and I hope you've been enjoying it. Before the groovin' began, I started hosting Sunday night get-togethers on Second Life to watch movies on YouTube, which we still do starting from about 8 PST. But I figured, why leave you non-SL types out when it comes to the movies? So if you don't want to join us in SL, just tune in the music on the Internet via Radio Woodshed and join us on YouTube when the time comes.  

No good deed goes unpunished

Yeah, this should be entertaining when and if it gets to court.
The short version of events is this: Sudanese Abousfian Abdelrazik fled civil war in his home country and was granted refugee status in Canada in 1990. He became a citizen in 1995. Six years ago he flew to Sudan to visit his ailing mother and was arrested at the request of the CSIS and U.S. security services who suspected him of links to Al-Qaida, imprisoned and tortured and abandoned by the Canadian government. As with Mahr Arar, it appears that they had the wrong man. Neither the Sudanese or our own RCMP have been able to build any kind of case against the man, but for the last six years he's been living in the exercise room of the Canadian embassy in Sudan because his Canadian passport has expired and the government refused to give him a new one until he bought a plane ticket home. He cannot legally work in Sudan and because he is still on a terrorist watch list, anyone who gives him money is considered to have aided a terrorist. 115 Canadians -- many of them bloggers -- have thumbed their nose at the government and ponied up the cash to fly their fellow citizen home.

Canada used to occupy the high ground on issues of human rights. Not anymore.

If the government had any shame at all, this would not have been necessary. But of course if the government and CSIS had any shame at all it would never have happened in the first place.

What next, will lawyers start making sense?

Change you can believe in

The Woodshed is now an affiliate of the Canadian Progressive Bloggers after long being a supporter. That means that we now have the nifty "Recommend this post" button down below. Go ahead and click it and vote to give the posting in question greater prominence on the `prog blogs' site. I will be editing the blogroll over the weekend too, so if you have any sites you'd like to recommend a link to, leave them in the comments.

A couple of messages from one of the neighbours

Billy Bob Neck speaks for the heartland of America.

Big darkness, soon come

About 1,500 people live in this shantytown, huddling in tents and makeshift shelters built of scrap lumber and plastic tarps, cooking meagre meals over communal fires less than a mile away from wealthy property owners who are barricaded in walled compounds protected by a private army of a hired security guards. The police, who have become increasingly violent in recent years, cruise the shantytown hoping to keep a lid on drugs, gangs and violence and to make sure the have-nots don't wander off to trouble the haves. The shantytown is growing by about 50 residents a week. It's not in some distant underdeveloped third world hellhole -- it's Sacramento, California.


The divide between rich and poor grew faster in the last 35 years than at any point in recorded economic history, certainly since the 1920s and probably since the industrial revolution - but we don't have the facts and figures for that. But we do know a lot of homes have been lost to foreclosure, a lot of people have lost their jobs (more than a million jobs lost this year so far) and the market crash has wiped out a lot of middle class portfolios intended to as retirement savings. People are ending up on the street while abandoned homes are left to rot. In Georgia alone, 1 in 8 mortgages are in foreclosure or 90 days past due in payments.

How bad is it? According to Consumer Reports, pretty bad:

The number of U.S. homeowners with mortgages whose homes are worth less than their loans is 8.3 million, according to an analysis by First American CoreLogic that was reported on by CNN. The number means that about 20 percent of mortgages are underwater.
Eight percent of all mortgages are delinquent, and 6,600 homes go into foreclosure each day, says the Center for Responsible Lending; foreclosures could total 8.1 million by 2012. Some banks suspended foreclosures, but the moratoriums are set to expire this month.

And while all this is going on, all we seem to hear about is Rush Limbaugh's takeover of the Republican party, whose economic policy at this point in time is damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead on tax cuts for the wealthy. I keep hearing the same old upper middle class spoiled white man's refrain: "I got mine Jack. If you make me pay another couple of percent in tax on the money I make over a quarter million dollars, me and the other five percent of Americans priviledged enough to be making the big money are gonna take out ball and move to Galt's Gultch."

More factual fun from the esteemed R.Porrofatto in comments at the Alicublog post linked above:

The total tax rate (including all federal, state and local taxes) for the top 80% of the country is essentially flat. According to the Tax Foundation, here is the effective total tax rate in the U.S. by income quintile:

Highest income quintile: 35%

Second-highest income quintile: 31%

Middle-income quintile: 28%

Second-lowest income quintile: 23%

Lowest income quintile: 13%

More fun:

- The average tax rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its lowest level in at least 18 years.[IRS]

- The top 1% of wage earners have more wealth than the entire lowest 95% of wage-earners.

- The top 1 percent of households saw income gains of over 45% in the last eight years. The bottm 90% saw gains of less than 4%. Since 1976, average income of the top 1% grew by 232%, average income of bottom 90% grew by 10% [IRS]

- The share of the nation's income flowing to the top 1 percent has increased sharply, rising from 15.8 percent in 2002 to 22.1 percent of all adjusted gross income for 2006. Not since 1928, just before the Great Depression, has the top 1 percent held such a large share of the nation's income[IRS]

- The 400 U.S. taxpayers with the highest incomes pay income taxes worth only 18 percent of their income on average, compared to 25 percent for the typical American. Because of reduced capital gains taxes, the top 400 taxpayers cumulatively saved $10 billion between 1995 and 2005. [CBPP]

- The campaign to repeal the federal estate tax was financed by 18 of the richest
families in America-including 23 billionaires-who spent nearly $500 million on it.

According to a recent study 1 in 50 American kids experiences homelessness at some point. The study is based on figures from 2005 and 2006 - anyone want to bet that the situation has improved during the current crisis? I didn't think so.

In Japan, all of the senior excutives of these bank and financial institutions that are failing would have resigned in ignominous shame by now and several would have probably had the decency to hang themselves. Meanwhile at AIG et al, it's bonuses all around while the U.S. taxpayer is left holding the bag.

I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again: The only surefire investments right now are in pitchforks, torches, tar and feathers.
Other Recommended Reading.

Creativity

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

Want to know what building stuff in Second Life is like? Watch this.

h/t to Shini

Look, just buy the damn thing already!

Audio by Caleb Bullen of the Black Tie Martini Club, video by Shinigami Kayo of Shini' s World. Album by a whole bunch of folks, assembled by yours truly. So go to iTunes or Amazon and buy it already!

two girls, four strings

The end of an comedic era and a new SLOTM

"Oh, somewhere in this favored land Alberta,

the sun is shiningwhere the crooks are not too bright;

the band is the moronic miscreants are playing somewhere,

and somewhere hearts are light boneheads fight

And somewhere men are laughing drunks are driving,

and somewhere children shout beef jerky thieves are unperturbed

But there is no joy in Mudville  It could be in Ponoka

- mighty Casey Constable Enns has stuck out been transferred"

Despite the taser troopers now being rightfully pilloried in the press and blogosphere, The Woodshed salutes our newest Spiritual Leader of the Moment: The Mountie behind the what has been the most reliable nonpolitical entertainment on the internets the past few years - RCMP Constable Douglas Enns, late of the Ponoka, Alberta RCMP detachment and author of the best written, funniest small town police blotter ever (and I speak as someone who covered cops in small towns for small newspapers for way too many years). For those looking for a primer on snark as it is writ, look no further than back issues of the Ponoka News. Literature and Ponoka's loss is law enforcement and St. Albert's gain. 

with a special tip of the Smoky-the-Bear Stetson to Cowboys for Social Responsibility for bring the good Constable's work to us for these last few years.

Apparently somebody is reading this stuff after all


While I always appreciate getting a link, if this is CNN's idea of making up for all those appearances by Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck, there better be a whole lotta links coming and a cheque in the mail.

That was then, this is now


Stephen "Mucho Macho" Harper in 2006:

"Your work is about more than just defending Canada's national interests. Your work is also about demonstrating an international leadership role for our country."
Harper told the troops they have the support of the Canadian people and government on what he called the country's most challenging deployment since Korea.
"There will be some who want to cut and run, but cutting and running is not my way and it's not the Canadian way," he said, to a round of applause.

and from the same month, back in Ottawa:

A debate on whether Canadian troops should be in Afghanistan would put the troops in danger, and any attempt to pull them back would be a betrayal, says Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Harper, speaking after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, stressed that the previous Liberal government committed the troops to their Afghan mission, which has proved deadly in recent weeks, and that the Conservatives will honour the commitment.
"I'm saying that Canadians don't cut and run at the first sign of trouble," he told reporters. "That's the nature of this country, and when we send troops into the field, I expect Canadians to support those troops." He repeatedly rejected the idea of a debate and said his government will not make decisions based on opinion polls.
"I understand the frustrations," he said. "Perhaps the previous government should have had a vote on the deployment, but that was not their decision. The decision was taken and we can't change our opinion when the troops are in danger."
He did not say why a debate in Canada would put soldiers at risk in Afghanistan, but he stressed it is "a very dangerous mission. "It's not the intention of this government to question the particular commitment when our troops are in danger," he said. "Such a debate or such a lack of strength by any of the political parties in Canada will merely weaken the resolve of our troops and will even put our troops in even more danger."

Nietzschean ubermench that he fancies himself, he even thought that the occasional dead soldier was a good thing for the military, since anything that didn't kill them all, only made them stronger - though to be fair, Harper's attitude in this regard is hardly limited to the Canadian military.

"I can tell you [the Afghan mission] has certainly engaged our military. It's, I think, made them a better military notwithstanding -- and maybe in some way because of -- the casualties."

But what is this? What light through yonder seive-like cranium breaks?
Stephen "Bring'em Home" Harper March 1, 2009:

Canada PM says West won't beat Afghan insurgency
Associated Press
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Western forces alone won't defeat the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and that the U.S. must have a viable exit plan before asking other countries to do more there.
OTTAWA—Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Western forces alone won't defeat the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and that the U.S. must have a viable exit plan before asking other countries to do more there.
"Frankly, we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency," Harper said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN. "My reading of Afghanistan history is that's it's probably had an insurgency forever of some kind."
Canadian and other NATO troops have made some gains against the insurgents over the years but those gains are not irreversible and the overall success has been modest, Harper said.
"What has to happen in Afghanistan is we have to have an Afghan government that is capable of managing that insurgency," he said. If a foreign power is perceived as the source of authority, "it will always have a significant degree of opposition," he said.

You might have thought of that 100 or so lives ago, Steverino. You are finally conceding that our prescence there was pointless all along, just as the Americans are preparing to double their numbers there and possibly try for something other than a stalemate. Well timed sir!

I guess that now that you've abandoned the sunken costs argument ("we can't ever leave or our soldiers will have died in vain") we can expect the knuckle-draggers at SDA and the kill'em-all-and-let-God-sort'em-out caucus of the Blogging Tories to follow in lockstep and tell us about how they've been against the war all along and what Wanda Watkins can do with her grief. Someone should have stapled this to the PM's forehead a year ago. I guess you don't support the troops after all. Or could it be that those who have been saying the best way to support them is to bring them home were right after all?

As usual, Dr. Dawg says it better.

What's the most important part of a coal mine?

Note to Obama: Hire a fact-checker

In his state of the union speech just now, President Obama referred to the automobile being an American invention. Sigh. Though it will be fun to watch the wingnuts try to decide whether its more important to claim the invention of the car for America or criticize Obama.

"It's a thin line between clever and stupid"

I'll confess I don't read the entire Washington Post every day. In fact, I usually only scan the front of their web page for the headlines, read the pieces that interest me, maybe check the occasional column or editorial. Since, however, my newspaper carries their Sunday "Outlook" - albeit a few days late - I always get to read their main weekly opinion "think piece section.
Sometimes it's a good read, sometimes not and while it has slowly become more conservative over the last half-dozen years, this week had a piece that really made me think very, very hard--"Yes, We're Out of Power. But I'm Still Starstruck" by S. E. Cupp. Not having previously heard of the author, I really couldn't decide on the merits of the article itself whether it was a staggering work of brilliant satire, an inside joke, life imitating McSweeny's or just what the hell it was, but read some of these bon mots and see what you think:

See, in my world, stars don't come any bigger than Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Mitt Romney and Mike Pence (if there were a congressional version of Teen Beat, the Indiana congressman would be on its cover every month). Michael Steele, Mike Huckabee and John Boehner are the Jonas Brothers of conservative celebrity.

You see my confusion - that last comparison will mean different things to different people. On the surface, I suspect conservatives will see comparing Steele, Huckabee and Boehner to the very popular teen idol popstars as an endorsement of their star quality, their charisma and penchant for success. All of which ignores the truth that lies only nanometers below that surface - the Jonas Brothers are a trio of talentless pretty boys assembled in a Disney PR laboratory to appeal to a group of very unsophisticated, uncritical consumers - preteen girls. They, and others like them, are the personification of all that is wrong with America. (Now, I know dear reader,　you are dying to ask "who does he mean 'they'? Is he talking about the pop stars or the politicians?" To which I can only answer "Yes.")

Obviously, something like "And doesn't everyone want to have "Breakfast with Phyllis Schlafly"? Just me?" can never be anything but ironic, but just how deep is the irony intended to penetrate? And what are we to make of this vision of hell:

"I'm also looking forward to drinking boxed wine with such friends and colleagues as Tucker Carlson, Stephen Baldwin and Andrew Breitbart during the forced socialization of conference happy hours...And, yes, I just totally name-dropped."

The article ends with same kind of awkwardness that one might experience upon walking into the men's room and seeing Ann Coulter emerging from a stall.

And let's not forget the thrill of the unplanned and unexpected. The environment at conferences like CPAC is ripe spectacle -- the hilarity of an inebriated speaker, the hysteria over a surprise guest, or an awkward moment between you and that woman you met last year whose name you've completely forgotten.
Last year a disheveled-looking man sat on a street corner near the hotel all four days, pan-handling. He held a cardboard sign that read, "Bush is Bi." I'm not sure what he meant by that -- I have a feeling he didn't know, either -- but I really hope he'll be there again. Who needs star power when you have memories like that?

Having checked out Ms.Cupp's website, I'm still undecided - she's either the nee plus ultra example of the "sassy young conservative sex bomb pundit" right down to the librarian glasses and the guns-and-nascar fetish or she's mining the same territory as Stephen Colbert but in a much more subtle and undercover way.

Great moments in prime ministerial portraiture

A Creative Revolution has the photo of the week, if not the month, or possibly the year.

I am a radical Marxist-Lennonist

Radio Woodshed, broadcasting live from the Red Zeppelin, high in the skies of Second Life. Sundays from 8 pm EST/5 pm PST.  'Nuff said?

Question of the day

Could God make a burrito so huge that even he couldn't eat it?

Hitchens bitchslapped

One thing it can't do is give Christopher Hitchens any common sense or sufficient intestinal fortitude to at least back up his stupid posing and provocative behaviour. The short version of events is that Hitchens, while out on the town in Beruit, decided to deface a poster for what amounts to the Syrian Nazi Party, after being warned that these were not people to mess with. As luck would have it, a party goon happened to catch him in the act and there was an altercation. Hitchens being Hitchens is trying to make it sound like he heroically took a beating from cowardly evil thugs for bravely daring to stand up for freedom, but there appears to be another side to the the story.

"Even the one impressive detail first reported about the fight via Hitchens’ supporters–that he got stomped in the middle of the night, in a dark empty Beirut backalley, after getting famously drunk in a bar, fighting alone against a gang of Syran fascists–was an inversion of the truth, a very sad slapstick truth. In reality, Hitchens was stomped in broad daylight in a “posh shopping district” by a lone Syrian twerp fighting against Hitchens and two friends after they set him off."

Now, the other side of the story is based on this account on one of the least reliable dingbat wingnut sites, so take the details with an ocean-full of salt, but from the sounds of things, there was no brave standing-up-to-facism moment here, more like Hitchens' ego writing cheques his ass couldn't begin to cash.

Bring on the trials
Unless it wants to become an isolated international pariah with which no other nation will sign agreements of any kind, the United States had better collect its excrement into a single place and start prosecuting people for torture. It has a legal obligation under several international treaties to do so and unless it plans to repudiate its treaty obligations, and thus invalidate all international treaties it has signed, it must fulfil those obligations.
I am not a lawyer, but Glenn Greenwald is.

The U.S. really has bound itself to a treaty called the Convention Against Torture, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994. When there are credible allegations that government officials have participated or been complicit in torture, that Convention really does compel all signatories -- in language as clear as can be devised -- to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution" (Art. 7(1)). And the treaty explicitly bars the standard excuses that America's political class is currently offering for refusing to investigate and prosecute: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture" (Art. 2 (2-3)).