We interupt this blog for an important news bulletin

This just in - MSNBC "pundit" Tucker Carlson is still a dick. In fact, he's an even bigger dick than previously suspected.

In other news, Generalissimo Fransisco Franco is still dead.


Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Global jam session

Watch and then go learn how, no matter how cool you thought this was, it's even cooler than that.

Much of the money raised is going to support centers for Tibetan refugees in India and music and arts programs in South Africa, but even if none of the money was going to charity, this would still be a very, very cool idea.

Special thanks to Jackson Street Books for pointing this out.

A snappy dresser, sure, but infallible?

So Pope Benedict is in Africa and as popes usually do when they visit places suffering from poverty, AIDS and overpopulation, reminded Africans and the rest of the world about the church's position on birth control - specifically condoms in this case, pointing out that they are the devil's balloons and prophylactics make Baby Jesus' Mommy cry etc etc -- then things got really stupid and he claimed that condoms had actually made the AIDS crisis in Africa worse.
Naturally, just about every public health NGO and antiAIDS group in the world has jumped on this with both feet and rightfully taken the pontiff to task. But what about our elected governments? Do they dare to criticize the Vatican? One does:

But XXXXXXXXXX, echoing the reaction of some aid agencies, said it "voices extremely sharp concern over the consequences of [the Pope's comments]."
"While it is not up to us to pass judgment on Church doctrine, we consider that such comments are a threat to public health policies and the duty to protect human life," a foreign ministry spokesman said.

I know, you're thinking it must be Canada's brave science minister ---no way, too many Catholic voters in Quebec and Ontario! The Obama administration? Nope, can't alienate the Catholic vote and the family values crowd. Some heavily Protestant Northern European country? Atheist China? Cuba? Israel? Those godless heathens at the UN? Nope, none of the above.
How about massively Catholic France, where they know from separation of church and state and the people mostly take their theology with a dose of salt.

Pot calling the kettle blonde

GOP catfight! Meghan "my daddy could have been president" McCain vs. Ann "the man" Coulter & Laura "Coulter for Dummies" Ingraham and assorted conservatard bloggers.  McCain calls Coulter "offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time"  -- it's blood off a wolverine's muzzle to Coulter, but Laura Ingram gets all "Oh no, you din't!" and "Do you think that anyone would be talking to you if you weren’t kind of cute and you weren’t the daughter of John McCain?” not stopping to think that "kind of cute and/or the offspring of someone connected" pretty much describes every conservative pudit out there. Hilarity ensues as even stupider (yes, that is possible) bloggers join the fray.

Somebody pop more corn!

Well, I'll be a monkey's (very distant) nephew

Canada's Minister of Science and Technology Gary Goodyear won't say whether he believes in evolution.

"I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate,” Gary Goodyear, the federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

Uh, Gary, no one asked about your religion, they asked about science. I don't care if you're a Christian, a Buddhist, an atheist, a Sihk or a Pastafarian -- if you don't believe in one of the cornerstones of biological science, you shouldn't be the science minister. Its sort of like having a defence minister who believes that the Prime Minister's ability to summon dragons is the reason the Russians and Chinese haven't invaded Canada yet or a finance minister that believes massive tax breaks for the rich will lead to economic prosperity for all.

“I do believe that just because you can't see it under a microscope doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It could mean we don't have a powerful enough microscope yet. So I'm not fussy on this business that we already know everything. … I think we need to recognize that we don't know.”
Asked to clarify if he was talking about the role of a creator, Mr. Goodyear said that the interview was getting off topic.

I agree that we do have to admit there are things we don't know -- but we also have to admit there are things that we do know, like the fact that the earth revolves around the sun, gravity works, light behaves like a wave and a particle, bodies in motion tend to remain in motion while bodies at rest tend to remain at rest and biological entities evolve over time to adapt to their surroundings or die out.

Goodyear was a chiropractor before entering politics. I don't want to criticize chiropractors - they certainly helped me when I telescoped my spine skydiving years ago - but ask an actual physician what he thinks of them sometime. Many in MDs consider the practice a tiny step up from voodoo. I'm not saying his previous occupation or simply being religious disqualifies him from being science minister, but if either of them mean he doesn't believe in verifiable scientific facts, then he belongs in another portfolio. Apparently, he's also more than a bit of dick as well, which I do think should disqualify him from getting elected, but seems to be a requirement to get into the Conservative Party Of Canada.

Update: Apparently Goodyear has "clarified" his remarks:

Jane Taber: So you do believe in evolution. You believe in the theory of evolution. Let’s just get this off the table right now.

Gary Goodyear: We are evolving, every year, every decade. That’s a fact. Whether it’s to the intensity of the sun, whether it’s to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it’s running shoes or high heels, of course, we are evolving to our environment. But that’s not relevant. And that’s why I refused to answer the question. The interview was about our science and tech strategy, which is strong…

The appalling thing here is that if Goodyear really does believe in evolution all he has to do is say so, say "Yes, Darwin was right, man descended from apes" but he won't do that. Either because he really doesn't believe or because he's afraid of pissing off Charles McVety and his merry band of Christian Taliban wannabes. The CPC relies on the knuckledragging religious crazies in the social conservative caucus for votes, money and campaigning and doesn't dare cross them (no pun intended). So apparently in addition to being a bit of a dick, Goodyear is also a bit of a coward.

Weimar Amerika?

Read this thought-provoking little essay by Robert Freeman and you'll find yourself wondering whether this kid has learned all the words to "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" yet.

In other news, Tucker Carlson is still a dick.

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.