Friday Uke Blogging

Brought to you by Mood Rings, available at your local gas station counter.

just because

Crisis,What Crisis

Sorry, not much logic in this song. Remember when she admitted that she didn't know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was? Obviously a perfect choice for Obama to name to the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

Viva Woody Guthrie

Tear the Fascists Down - Woody...

Not as sorry as he's going to be

Keddy says he's sorry for referring to unemployed as 'no-good
bastards'
By Alison Auld (CP)
HALIFAX, N.S. — A Nova Scotia Conservative MP who stunned the opposition and advocates for the homeless after referring to the unemployed in Halifax as "no-good bastards" apologized Tuesday for the comments.
In a statement, Gerald Keddy said he did not mean to offend Nova Scotians who are out of work.

I guess it takes one to know one, Mr. Keddy, but people who are soon to live in glass houses might want to watch it with the stone throwing. I'm sure we will hear about this one again come election time and I bet I know who those "no-good bastards" will be voting against.

Why I do my best to ignore Rosie Dimanno - example number fortyleven

Because apparently the reason all those Afghans the Canadian Forces captured were turned over to the Afghans to be tortured is that I, and people like me, said disparaging and oh-so-unfair things about Rick Hillier shooting his mouth off and the U.S. Armed Forces. It was because of us nervous nellies with our namby-pamby attitude toward torture and our complete dominance of the conduct of Canada's New Government that the government dared not stand up to the Afghans or hand prisoners over to the Americans who would have simply fed them cake and ice cream and kept them in air-conditioned luxury at Baghram Air Base and not tortured them at all.
I say "apparently" because that is the way Canada's favorite commonsense fiesty gal reporter (a pose I tire of very quickly since being a female and a journalist have not been mutually exclusive, or even unusual, for several decades) reports it in her latest column.

She seems to think that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was "just a few bad apples" and that not handing over prisoners to the Americans was just the result of knee-jerk anti-Americanism.
She contends that Canada "chose" the Afghans (who live there) over the Americans as front line allies, despite knowing they were medieval barbarians who would torture prisoners as soon as look at them. Not like the Americans.

Of course, she could be right or she could be wrong, totally misinformed, just plain full of it and more interested in attacking people on the antiwar side than making any sense. But it's Rosie DiManno, so what are the odds?

Great minds think alike?

Ladies & Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen

Flying Spagetti Monster bless the National Film Board of Canada.

Dick Cheney - diplomat

I suppose Cheney would have advised Obama to grab the emperor by the lapels, tell him to remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki and go tend his goldfish?

From The National ToastPost

Former vice-president Dick Cheney is attacking Barack Obama again, this time for the U.S. President’s bow to the Japanese Emperor.
(snip)
Cheney told POLITICO.com, “There is no reason for an American president to bow to anyone. Our friends and allies don’t expect it, and our enemies see it as a sign of weakness.”

Would someone please take the stick out of Dick Cheney's ass and wallop him upside the head with it? Bowing to people when you meet and when you part is a sign of respect and courtesy in Japan, just like shaking hands in the West. It is such an ingrained habit here that I've seen people do it when they say hello and goodbye on the telelphone. Gee Dick, I wonder where all that anti-American sentiment around the world comes from? It couldn't possibly be from arrogant corporate plutocrats like you who fail to demonstrate any respect or common courtesy for other people, could it? Imagine the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth if a world leader refused to shake the offered hand of the U.S. president?
Treating others with courtesy, consideration and generousity -- even forgiveness or forebearence where appropriate -- is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of strength and confidence. Blowing your stack at every perceived slight, real or imagined, and behaving like a petulant meglomaniac is the classic trait of every two-bit tyrant and petty dictator in history. Hardly surprising the rest of the world heaved a sigh of relief when Dick Cheney and his band of chest-thumping hicks left the White House.

Sell a few Michelangelos and feed Africa this year

I think most reasonable people, where ever they are on the political spectrum, would agree that hunger and poverty are objectively bad things and the fact that one in six people on this planet does not get enough to eat is pretty awful, especially when we in the wealthy developed world look at the plenty that surrounds us.

So when I saw this story about the UN food conference in Rome, it perturbed me. As usual, all the diplomats sitting at the banquet table agree that hunger in the poorer nations is a terrible thing and "somebody ought to do something about it" - at least, they all agree until coughing up some money to irrigate fields in Africa or start fish farms in South East Asia or build better dykes in Bangladesh is discussed and then suddenly everyone is full of excuses.

But then I read a little further and got really ticked off.

"Despite endorsing the strategy in the first hours of Monday's meeting, the 192 participating countries did not commit to the $44 billion a year for agricultural aid that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says will be necessary in the coming decades.
Soon after the delegates approved the declaration, Pope Benedict took the floor to decry "opulence and waste" in a world where the "tragedy" of hunger has been steadily worsening. Benedict's speech marked the first time a pontiff attended such a gathering since Pope John Paul II took part in a 1996 food summit.
The pontiff, lending his moral authority as head of the world's 1 billion Catholics, also called for access to international markets for products coming from the poorest countries, which he said are often relegated to the sidelines."

The Pope, who insists that every sperm is sacred and his flock must keep having lots and lots of Catholic babies, who lives in a golden palace full of priceless art in his own nation-state in the middle of Rome with his own private army and bank (estimated to have at least $10 billion invested in foreign corporations), who presides over a global organization that brings in an estimated $50 to $100 million a year in donations alone, who made sure that the Church spent millions defending pedophiles in the U.S. and elsewhere and who wears simply fabulous hats, is decrying "opulence and waste."

Yeah, right.

Sure, the Catholic Church is one of the world's largest charitable organizations and Catholic charities do a lot of good work, but how many of "Peter's Pence" get spent on running a parallel religious school system where there is already a perfectly good public school system? How much of that money is going to the pay for the Monsignor's Cadillac? What is the ratio of bibles to bags of rice that are getting shipped to starving nations? How much is getting spent on making women feel bad about seeking an abortion or using birth control? How many lives, how many man-hours of labour, skull-sweat and angst have been dedicated to appeasing an invisible sky-daddy instead of helping humans in the here and now?

I'm not saying the Catholic Church (or any other church for that matter) doesn't do good works -- it does provide some vital services in some pretty grim places around the world. But for God's self-proclaimed spokesman on Earth to sit in the lap of luxury and start railing about "opulence and waste" is just a bit rich.

Columbus, go home

the General shows us someone who knows how to best handle the teabagger/minutemen xenophobic dingbats, with mockery.

Vacation time

Gone to Hawaii to hunt the wild ukulele and hang out on the beach, see you next week

Weekend uke blogging - turning Japanese edition

the original


the covers

Non-uke cover, but check out the voice on this woman!

I bet the Leafs could have him in the second round

Sure, his fundamentals need a little work, and he's no pretty boy, but this kid is big, strong, tough, dangerous and wild at heart. He's aggressive in the corners, has the killer instinct needed in today's NHL -- he'll really maul the other team.

Pre-emptive halloween uke blogging

The best religions have great hats

"National Toast" or "So Long and Thanks for all the Fishwrap"

It looks like curtains for the Canada's most right wing national rag. As much as I bleed ink and hate the thought of another newspaper closing down, I will not shed a tear for the National Post - I only hope the courts refuse to allow the Aspers to tie this anchor around the collective neck of their other newspapers, which like most other papers have enough financial trouble to deal with already.
The National Post was started by Conrad Black to attack the governing Liberals after Prime Minister Jean Chretien refused to grant Connie a waver and let him become a British aristocrat while remaining a Canadian citizen. The soon-to-be Lord Tubby of Fleet Prisoner No. 90210 Lord Black of Cross Harbour decided that this would not do - mere law was not going this plucky underdog billionaire from achieving the British peerage that every Canadian boy dreams about. Deciding the Globe and Mail was not sufficiently conservative or at his beck and call, Tubby threw some money around, hired the cream of the conservative pundit and columnist crop, and set up the National Post.
It has never made money, nor has it impressed anyone with its editorial brilliance.
Despite the occasional presence of some bright lights, the National Post has been a rag from day one, the print equivalent of the FOX TV news, but without the constant stripper stories or teabag rallies.
Eventually Black gave up, renounced his Canadian citizenship and bought took his seat in the House of Lords and sold the money-burning Reform-Tory organ to the Asper family, long-time Liberal party supporters who under heir-to-the-throne David Asper seem to have converted to the Likud-Republican neoconservatism embraced by movement conservatives in the United States and Canada. The acquistion of the National Post and the former Southam chain from Black, along with their purchase of several specialty TV channels, seems to have been the beginning of the end for the Asper family's CanWest media empire.
Which, given the extent to which the Asper clan seems to like to interfere with editorial policy at their media properties, is just fine by me.
When a news organ with pretentions to respectability starts giving editorial space to hateful, chuckleheaded boobs like Kathy Shaide and "Raphel Alexander" -- well, its time to take Old Yeller out behind the barn and do the decent thing.

Update: Well, the court has ruled that the National Post can take the rest of the former Southam chain of newspapers down with it. This is a shame because some of them, such as the Montreal Gazette, were actually doing okay compared to the rest of the industry. On the bright side, there could be some decent newspapers for sale at fire-sale-on-boxing-day prices for anyone crazy enough to want to take a chance on the newspaper business these days. Otherwise we may as well pucker up and kiss goodbye the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Edmonton Journal, Regina Leader-Post, Vancouver Province, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times-Colonist and the Windsor Star. Which pretty much leaves the country with country with a bunch more cities that just won't have a real daily newspaper anymore.

Everything old is new again

It seems my former arch nemesis from my tenure at the Port Dover Maple Leaf back in last century is still doing what he does best - annoying the hell out of anyone even marginally more progressive than King George III, especially women. I'm sure he will take Antonia's critique to heart - not.
I'm pretty sure this is the same Ian Robinson who was the editor of Maple Leaf's main weekly competitor, the Simcoe Times-- back then he was a right-wing reactionary who delighted in the faux populism of people like Preston Manning and pissing off anyone who's knuckles didn't drag the floor. I seem to recall that when my predessor at the Maple Leaf was more or less run out of town on a rail for suggesting in print that one of the local service clubs' annual blackface minstrel show was an appalling disgrace (this was in the late 80's--the 1980's not the 1880's), Ian was either silent or said something about it being a harmless local tradition.
As long as politics didn't come up, Ian was generally a personable guy when the press gang were out for beers and a lot of us suspected his rabid conservatism was just a contrarian pose. I guess not.
Nice to see that in our ever-changing world, we can still count on some things to stay exactly the same.

Bambi II - Revenge of the hunted!

Sometimes it's okay to reuse free promotional items in your video store, sometimes...not so much.







(stolen without hesitation from the geniuses at "So Fucking Metal")

smart guys on Wall Street

Calvin Trillin meets a guy in a bar who explains why the financial system went kablooey. For what it's worth, this explanation makes as much sense as any I've heard so far.