New Album Debut!

[Moved up to hang out here for a bit -- newer infantile snark below. And updated to include wicked, kickass video.]

After many months of work, I am really proud to announce the release of a new album of 13 original songs. I'd like to thank CC, my bloggospherian friends, our readers and commenters for support, encouragement, mockery and hijinks. CC liked this song so...



Here's the skinny. The songs are only available, for the time being, through Bandcamp. To celebrate the release, the first four songs are available as free downloads in the format of your choice (yes CC, that includes Ogg Vorbis, nerd) the individual tracks are available on a 'pay-what-you-will' basis with a 50 cent minimum. The whole album, 13 new songs plus 4 bonus tracks, is also 'pay-what-you-will' with a minimum of 5 Canadian dollars. Shaken is licenced under the Creative Commons with an attribution non-commercial licence. That means you have permission to make copies of the songs, you can share copies of the songs and you can even cut them into pieces, twirl them about and use them in derivative works provided I am credited. What you can't do is turn around and sell copies without my permission. And if you would like to have a copy of Shaken but don't have Paypal, drop me a line and I'll get a download code to you. Cheers! Thanks! Enjoy!

The BT Rollers

Having a quick scan of the Blogging Tory front page reveals that the usual suspects continue to sparkle like turnips.

All Bets Are Off!

skdadl over at clan pogge relates the sad tale of retarded boy and his big mouth. The utterly unremarkable Agriculture Minister of Canada's Brand Spankin' New North Star Ultra-Government has debagged the cat. The otherwise deservedly unheard of Gerry Ritz has had himself a wee snit. It seems that in the rush to repair things unbroken by fucking them up for no good reason, Gerry was rebuffed by the Canadian Wheat Board chair Ken Ritter. Ritter sent Ritz packing and refused further talks on barley, citing a lack of common ground. In other words, he didn't want to sit in a room with one of Stevie's destructive goobers and watch his efforts be put asunder.

Minister Ritz' responded with the quote of the year, "When we come back with a majority, then all bets are off."



Thanks for making that clear Gerry. It should be noted that Gerry hails from a sleepy little town called Delisle, famous spawning ground for intellectual roadkill and the home the Canadian right's most hawtest bigot (and she's like got a bike which is so wicked).

Let's not forget these words any time soon:

"When we come back with a majority, then all bets are off."

I'm sure L'il Evil Stevie will be so not impressed by this policy disclosure that he'll poop in one of Stockie's wet suits. L'il Evil doesn't like his agenda being exposed and waggled about for all the world to see. After all, what's the point of having a malicious and destructive master plan when some manure huffer with chromosomal damage let's one slip in public. The halls of the Pictures of Stevie, er, Parliament will no doubt ring with the squeals of the minister as Stevie and his pet bully boy Baird paddle his fanny. Conservatives understand that discipline comes from the business end of a paddle. They's funny that way.



Somebody won't be a happy L'il fella...
"When we come back with a majority, then all bets are off."

Yeah Gerry, that's what I thought you said.

(miniStevie pic swipe from Treehugger)

Start Your Day

With a fast food seizure! I watched the whole thing. How far can you get?

Proving Iran Is The Bad Guy.

Step 1. Republican fact finding occurs.



Step 2. Sandra Buckler receives her official copy.



Step 3. Send MacKay overseas to deliver the "package".



Step 4. Wait for the likes of Werner and Patrick to chime in with their considered analysis and blind support.



Step 5. The rest of the he-man brown-folk haters club join the chorus. Success, manufactured truth.

Bless You Pastor Swank

Crazy people at Renew America are trying to poison the minds of the world with their oogus-boogus denial of rationality. Hey, what could make more sense than religion when it comes to explaining things? Hmmm.

"There are no permanent victories in politics," a defender of Intelligent Design said. "You do not get paradigm shifts overnight. Whether the ultimate victory is today or it's tomorrow or it's two years from now, people demand that they get open discussion of this issue."

Which is short for, it don't matter how many times or how clearly their claptrap is debunked, disproven and dismissed, they will keep coming back, time and time again. They are the intellectual equivalent of cockroaches. Sure you pay the exterminator to spray but eventually...

This was in response to the Ohio Board of Education voting 11 to 4 to "toss out a mandate that 10th grade biology classes include critical analysis of evolution and an accompanying model lesson plan," according to the New York Times' Jodi Rudoren.

Congratulations Ohio, round on both ends and retarded through and through. Let's just toss biology out of the sciences because it just can't account for people as utterly fucking bewildered as Grant Swank surviving among the fittest.

The whole matter is still in flux and will continue to be. The reason? Because there are intelligent persons who know that Charles Darwin's theory is full of holes. Large holes. Extra large holes.

Holes. Large holes. Swank holes. And they are in flux. Yes, intelligent people who know about holes. I gather Pastor Swank would fancy himself as one of those, both intelligent and a knower of holes. He must grow weary fighting agianst all of that wild speculation, amassed over decades and decades of careful study and findings by those pesky scientists. It must tax poor Grant as he puckers his lips, straining over one of the holes that he knows. I'm sure at the end of the day he's positively Haggard.

I believe, first of all, evolution is a crock.

And a crock is a kind of pot, that over time slowly makes food out of plant and animal parts. But food doesn't just occur. Food needs to be selected and prepared and dare I say, designed. Praise the crock, blessed be the crock.

It takes a lot of faith to believe that I came from an ameba. A lot of faith!

A lot of faith indeed. An amoeba, why how could a little single celled being produce something as massively complex and sophisticated as a mostly hairless ape that has developed both verbal and symbolic language? It would be like imagining that there were some tadpole like being in the issue of a man that would flow forth from the sin of copulation and fill the womb. And perhaps even more than one of these writhing beings, propelled by their tails would find one, invisibly small, single cell among the countless trillions of cells in a woman's body and somehow this wriggling thing would not only find but penetrate this singular, microbial egg cell. And in so doing, it would set in motion a process that caused the woman's cell to combine with the man's cell and to divide and to multiply not once but repeatedly, exponentially. Causing somehow, a viable human baby to come from the improbable union of one minute cell from one body with a cell from another body. You see how ridiculous that sounds. Poppy he cocks, poppy. Why the only sane explanation is an old man that lives in the sky.

So evolution should be taught in Faith Class, otherwise known in parochial schools as Religion Class.

Yes and Jesusology should be moved from faith to science. After all, Jesus is all true, right? So being true, Jesus isn't a theory, Jesus is a fact. And where are facts taught? That's right in science class. Fuckery, we had it all backwards this whole time, silly post-enlightenment types. In this fast paced, modern world, we can't be slowing our kids down with silly theories. No more theory of gravity. Put that notion out of your heads, we are bound to the earth because god in all of his magnificence is pushing down on our heads. Otherwise we'd be floating about and interfering with the birds. Like they say, if god wanted us to fly he'd have given us enormous bladders and an organ that vents hydrogen.

It's a crazy world we live in. Crazier every day. But one of the craziest notions that ever came down the pike is evolution. Who in his right mind would ever believe that the complicated homo sapien derived from a speck? That's getting the larger from the smaller.

Crazy I tells ya, crazy. Why, that kind of craziness is to imagine, in your gin & sin soaked liberal fantasies, that anything would react to its environment and change or adapt over millions of years and billions of generations. Lunacy. Why if that were the case then, gosh, if you cut open a woman there'd be no trace of the rib bone that Adam gave up for Eve's creation. And Christians have cut open a lot of women, mostly witches I assure you, and they do indeed have ribs. Case closed.

When I was in school, we were taught that one of the fundamental postulates is that one cannot get the greater from the smaller. Yet that is what evolution is all about — greater from the smaller. Now that's a crock.

A crock. A full on Proctor Silex, glass lidded crock. Why if we were single celled organisms, that would mean we'd come from something smaller or something. Everyone knows that there is no such thing as symbiosis, no two things can unite to dwell in intimacy and interdependence. No two things that are not the same can be combined in harmony. Else something greater would have come from the smaller. Why that would require the blasphemy of adaptation. That would mean that simple things were capable of learning and adapting and we all know that is not the case. You (and I mean you men) were shaped from mud and your chattel were sprung from our own rib by the handiwork of god. Anything else is a crock, obviously.

Evolution is furthermore an insult to the intelligent brain.

Pastor Swank knows about insults to the intelligent mind. And holes. Whereas this is a balm to the intelligent mind!

That's why the world is crazy when the so-called intelligentsia defend this notion called "evolution." The PhDs do that. The professors do that. The textbook writers and so forth do that. They all get in their clique and stroke one another with this Alice from Wonderland fancy that we all came from a speck.

Craaaaazzyyyy! Tens, nay, hundreds of thousands of sober academics, soldiering away in labs, pouring carefully over the millions of articles, extracts and findings and countless experiments. Hah. How could you possibly imagine that they'd know anything? None of their mad fantasies are even in the bible! Why it is like some drug fueled mind fever and they are trying to infect our precious babies with it. Imagine, these crazed professionals dedicate their entire lives to the rigorous study of biology and their crazy evolution ideas and what have they to show for it? Nothing! Well, except medicine and a few other things but nothing!

Then they throw in the Big Bang Whatever. This complicated universe and planet Earth just blew into place. There's another nuthouse one for you.

Yes. That part is true. Whenever I speak to someone about biological evolution, they immediately start in on quantum physics. Every fucking time. Hah. The earth just blew into place, accreting from the particulate debris of some vast series of cosmic events. How could that make any sense when we all know that Mr. Invisible just wished it all into existence in a week. Crazy nuthousers.

So, back to Faith Class, evolution and Darwin and the boys need to be put in Faith Class. It takes as much faith to believe in evolution as it does in angels and demons and an invisible God. It takes as much faith to believe in Darwin's spin as it does to believe that Jesus fed thousands with a kid's lunch.

So, so much faith. Really. I mean just look at the common sense right there in that paragraph. Jesus fed thousands with a loaf and a fish, which is true and proved because it is in the bible and god wrote that to make sure it was true and because he's god he can do anything. And we all know like he said before that you can't get the greater from the smaller, because that is crazy talk.

Now at least Religion Class is up front about its basic postulate. It starts with faith. Religion Class makes no bones about it. The instructor starts with telling pupils that they have to believe.

You have to believe. You have to. Believe. What could be more clear. You have to believe. So you believe. Therefore it is true.You don't need any of that silly proof to inform your faith like those crazy cuckoo evolutionofascists.

So Christians, for example, say they have faith there is a God of the Bible, angels, demons, heaven, hell, afterlife, saving grace, judgment, and so forth.

Yeah. Not that crazy fairy tale stuff of observation, data and careful study. Good, solid, factual stuff like angels and demons and the mystery of grace and all of it proved by belief, and so forth.

They don't try to prove it. In fact, Christians say that finally all that can't be proven for if mortal could prove it, mortal would be God.

No. They don't try to prove it. If they could prove it, they would have to be god. And they aren't god, which proves that god is what they are not, therefore it is all true.

So unabashedly Christians start with faith and say that if you don't want to have the faith, that's your choice. You have the decision-making powers to cancel out faith for non-faith and that is your right as a free will being.

Yes. If you don't want to believe, that's your choice and we will consign you to an eternal damnation of hellfire and suffering at the hands of the king of the demons who rules in the pits of an abyss called hell and that's the devil. And nothing proves that there is an all knowing, all powerful and all loving, benevolent god like the first of his angels rebelling behind his back. What says omnipotent better than almost losing the keys to all of creation? And because god loves us all so much, if we don't constantly remind him of our faith, he'll commit us to eternal torment. Now that, ladies and gents, is real love.

But when it comes to evolution, the adherents make us hold to that nonsense as a fact. They press it upon us as evangelists of Darwin. And of course it's not a fact any more than fairy tales are facts. Evolution is a theory, and an exceptionally wide-eyed foolish one at that. Nevertheless, it is a mere theory as much as tapioca pudding causes Milky Ways is a theory.

Fuck yeah. Fucking evangelists. Everybody knows that nobody is more sinister and spins more lies than a freaking evangelist. What? Oh...heh heh, never mind that last part. Maybe if we called them evomangelists, yeah, the liars. I tell you folks, how can you trust a theory? A theory isn't a fact, a theory is a fairy tale. And who knows fairy tales better than someone that actually believes in invisbile beings, angels and demons, spirits and monsters and magical realms where we dwell in eternity?

So evolution should be taught in Faith Class if it's going to be put upon the students in public schools. It does not certainly belong in science class. It's not a science. It's not a proven fact. Now of course if there is a chapter in science class about theories, then evolution can be presented as a theory as much as Alice in Wonderland can be presented as a theory. But nothing more than a theory.

I think old Pastor Swank is totally right here. No theories in science class. Theoretical physics, cancelled. Theory of relativity, verbotten. That word theory, why it stands for all manner of devilry. They even snuck it into the scientific method. If you look real careful like, it's hiding right there in the first part of it, hypothesis...thesis...theory! Fuckers. That tears it. No more of that scientific method in the science class room neither.

Yes, the world is crazy. And getting crazier still.

Boy. You can sure say that again Pastor Swank. Here you are, a man of the cloth arguing against faith and fairy tales. Because your faith in invisible realms and magical, supernatural beings is somehow different? When it comes to chosing a flavour of crazy, this ape seems a far better bet to me:

Isotope Shortage Solved!

Conservative Cronies, getting things dumb for Canada!

True Patriot Portraits #1

With iridescent blue plumage SUZANNE shares her wisdom and charm.

Just in time for Xmas!

Oh mah gawd! From the department of too stupid to exist without mama's nurturing enablers comes the greatest work of scholarship that a young man can pay strangers to perform. Dear lawd it's true, the day of retarded reckoning has arrived! Spongehead Loadpants done finished his book!

The scientists over at Sadly, No! have procured a copy of the masterpiece and are attempting to ingest the contents. We hope their insurance is paid in full.

Because retarded isn't stupid enough.

I first read of this comically stupid move at the Galloping Beaver when Dave cited Saskboy pointing at this Wired article. Got that?

Anyway, hardware manufacturer Western Digital has decided that their business model is now one that requires them to make very large, one-way hard drives that won't let you move your files. Who doesn't want that feature, eh?

Western Digital's 1TB MyBook external hard drives won't share media files over network connections

Because gawd knows you have to have at least a terrabyte of storage, because those files ain't going anywhere. Here's the list of files you aren't allowed to move around, you fucking pirate criminal bastards.



As Wired points out, the only file types that are guarded by this data black-hole are video and audio files. I guess nobody bothered to tell Western Digital that books are often available in "text" files of varying types. With luck they'll upgrade their DRM (Demonic Robot Master) to lock out Word docs, RTF files and certainly those dastardly pdf files that can house more than one kind of information at a time. If the science wizards at Western Digital really up their game, they'll soon realize that all digital information is encoded in zeros and ones. If they upgrade their drives to never share files that are encoded in zeros and ones, well that should keep the MPAA happy.

Gosh, in a decent universe, you'd be able to buy Western Digital stock at a huge discount for the next while. I wonder if anyone's told the shareholders about this marketing plan. Idiots. That's the kind of bright, technologically advanced future we can expect if we allow the government to pass the suspected hyper restrictive copyright law that Jim Prentice is getting ready to throw at us. Isn't that an innovation!

*Disclosure: Image of not useful drive copied without permission from Wired's article, long list of file extensions not supported by expensive paperweight, stolen outright from the companies own promotional literature.

Flaherty, rump melon of the week.

Hypocrite, fink and all around dumb-ass Jim Flaherty's head continues to bob in the lap of deceit. This would be our New Conservative New Government's New Minister of New Finance, champion of the unfettered free market, pressuring retailers to fix their prices to suit his political advantage. Golly gosh, he cries, all of those naughty business people are making hay while the sun shines. The dollar has jumped and prices didn't plummet, so this minister of the government that believes in the self correcting magnificence of the free market is suddenly pressuring retailers. What a freaking douchebag.

To make things even better, the slimy wretch uses Harry Potter to make his point. Why, shouldn't a gawd fearing, conswervative, lick spittle like Flaherty be denouncing the wicked and depraved books? They are, after all, turning the kiddies into devil worshipping witches'n'wizards and let's not forget teh gay. I do declare, Mr. Flaherty, how could you betray the real women of New Canada by helping to unleash the gay making might of Dumbledore on the unsuspecting populace? Have you no shame, sir? Next you know, all the poor impressionable boy folk will be working away on their laptops and bookmarking Dust My Big O'l Broomstick.

Of course, since Flaherty is a con, both by art and affiliation, he fucks things up. His pissing and moaning about retailers, especially in the publishing sector, is flat out wrong. Prices are set by the publishers as much as a year in advance. That being noted, some retailers are actually cutting their prices and thus their margins without the market interference of Jimmy's little crusade. But he wouldn't know that, he is just a simple con on the job.

The following is from the Globe & Mail:

"Mr. Flaherty might want to work on his shopping skills, because the book is available to Ottawa consumers for less than the U.S. price he quoted.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is selling for $23.69 (Canadian) at Costco in Ottawa, or $22.50 at Amazon.ca, before a $3.95 shipping charge.

Diane Brisebois, president of the Retail Council of Canada, said it was "very unfortunate" the minister didn't bother to look for a better price at home.
She noted that Mr. Flaherty himself had implored consumers to hunt for the best prices as a way of keeping retailers competitive.

"He should take his own advice and shop around," Ms. Brisebois said in an interview. "There's an Ottawa independent bookseller who will sell you the book at the U.S. price. He could have just walked down from his office and supported a Canadian business and, more importantly, an independent retailer.

Collected Works, an Ottawa bookstore which is now giving customers the choice of buying books at the U.S. or Canadian sticker price, sells the latest Harry Potter book for $29.95, just 21 cents more than the Washington, D.C. price Mr. Flaherty quoted."

Jim Flaherty, making things happen. Stupid things.

Radio Free Dumbass

The ABC News blog, The Blotter lets us know that George Bush's highly trained experts in all things broken have been handing broadcast airtime to terrorists. Just a hop, skip and Jesus away from reality. Is there anything these fools can do right? From the article by Justin Rood,

"Al Hurra television, the U.S. government's $63 million-a-year effort at public diplomacy broadcasting in the Middle East, is run by executives and officials who cannot speak Arabic, according to a senior official who oversees the program.
That might explain why critics say the service has recently been caught broadcasting terrorist messages, including an hour-long tirade on the importance of anti-Jewish violence, among other questionable pieces."

The sad part of this is that I'm not even a little bit surprised. Given the Bush regime's penchant for hiring ideologically and religiously loyal dimwits, regardless of qualifications, this is business as usual. The man in charge, Joaquin Blaya has been an executive at Spanish language broadcasters and founded a series of professional tennis tournaments in Latin America. I'm sure Mr. Blaya did very well in that market, being of Latin extraction and all. His News Director, Larry Register is likely going to take the fall and a well deserved tumble that will be. From a piece on NPR,

"...Larry Register, who doesn't speak Arabic, has given voice to terrorists, airing a lengthy live broadcast of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah, a live interview with Hamas leader Ismail Haniya and yet another with an al-Qaida operative."

The Blotter piece continues to inform us that,

"...the network's news division also had no assignment desk, he said. That left decision making over al Hurra's content in the hands of its reporters and producers, who are, according to Blaya, hastily-hired Arabic speaking journalists with insufficient understanding of Western Journalistic practices or the network's pro-Western mission."

Well , not that al Hurra has much of anything to do with journalism in the first place, it is at best a propaganda organ of the American government. Still, a complete absence of oversight is the hallmark of the Bush team's strategy in everything else, so why should a very expensive, new satellite channel be any different?

Source Watch fills in some details,

"The Hill reported in July 2004 that nearly half of the Voice of America's staff signed a petition complaining that the Broadcasting Board of Governors launched "new services in the Middle East with no editorial accountability" while cutting back VoA programs in the region. One VoA editor called the new Middle East networks - Radio Sawa, Al Hurra and Radio Farda - "expensive and ill advised." The VoA petition claims the new networks "provide inadequate news coverage and do not operate under VoA's charter, which guarantees balanced reporting."

Even the established American propaganda machine sneers at this new effort. Good job Mr. President! Have a pretzel. Sometimes I wish I could take a time machine into the future, just to hear the historians laughing at this chapter of American history. What a sick shame that so much blood has been spilled by Chimpasaurus Tex and his hand picked gang of retardoholics. Is it 2009 yet?

Tip of the lid to the ever amazing Crooks & Liars.

No vacation for me this year.

CTV is reporting that Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon is set to launch a home grown no-fly list on June 18. This strikes me as yet another application of Conservative brown lipstick to appease Big Steve's bosses down south. This is another step toward integration of security with the failed American no-fly list that hasn't actually prevented any terror and has made America one of the world's most annoying stops for travellers.

In typical right wing fashion this list has been created in secret, "Transport Canada officials wouldn't say how many people will be included on the list when it's launched." I'm sure they won't tell us how this list was compiled, who is on the list or why. I don't doubt that the wingnuts in blogging tory land will hail this as a marvelous new step in making them safe from having to fly with the dastardly swarthy folk they so fear. Funny that this sort of bullshit will likely be praised as a vital safety and security landmark, yet these are the same boobs that whine about the terrible imposition on their freedoms when they are required to register their firearms.

This new set of restrictions on free movement will require that, "...anyone who looks 12 years of age or older will have to show government-issued identification to board a plane." Well thanks for the full month of notice. Anyone with travel plans and kids might want to reconsider unless they have some suitable identification for little Johnny and Betty. Who gets to determine the apparent age of those kids? And what qualifies as government issued i.d., I'm guessing either a drivers licence or a passport, neither of which I possess. Which pretty much squashes my plans to visit family out west this summer.

I want to know how this list was generated, how closely it mirrors the ridiculous American no-fly list and who will be empowered to administer the list. I certainly don't trust Stockwell fucking Day and the incompetent newCanadian newGovernment to keep the secret list non-political. This new regulation called Passenger Protect (or PeePee for short) needs to be scrutinized by our elected members. This sort of sweeping rule will inconvenience thousands of people and have a direct impact on the tourism industry. But fear not, should you be stopped at the gate because your name is similar to some suspected somebody, you can contact the laughably named "office of reconsideration". Mr. Orwell, your work here is done.

Update:

Valid i.d. will be either a drivers licence or passport, in the absence of such a traveller may submit two pieces of non-picture, government issued i.d. providing one carries the full name, date of birth and gender of the individual. I wonder how many 12 year olds that "appear" to be teens have more than a birth certificate as identification.

Dick in a can.

I came across this gem via The Poor Man. Ladies and gents, I give you Dick Cheney's ride, the Deathstream:


Photo: Mark Silva/The Chicago Tribune

"Airstream’s appeal seems to have few limits, and indeed a powerful world traveler recently provided proof of its persistent appeal. On a trip to Asia in February, Vice President Dick Cheney traveled in an Airstream — inside an airplane.
Mark Silva, chief of the Washington bureau of The Chicago Tribune, accompanied the vice president as the press corps’ pool print reporter. The group flew on a huge gray C-17 cargo plane that the Air Force calls the Spirit of Strom Thurmond, in honor of the late senator. Mr. Silva said that when he boarded he noted the familiar outline of the Airstream roof inside the vast fuselage."

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, shoot a lawyer in the head. Dick Cheney's, Even My Friends Aren't SafeTour just keeps rolling along.

Shoe, Foot, Other.

In an opinion piece sure to make a Bushie's head explode, Terry Jones speaks to issues of prisoner treatment. The piece ran in The Guardian. Oh, and that would be Terry Jones, Python.

"For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.
It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Of course they'd probably find it even harder to breathe - especially with a bag over their head - but at least they wouldn't be humiliated."

The entire article is definitely worth a read. Go on, we'll wait. That is, unless you're Bill O'Reilly. If you're Bill O'Reilly, you are far too busy screaming at a distinguished veteran of the armed forces. Retired Colonel Ann Wright has a conscience and she speaks her mind. She served 16 years in active service and 13 more years in the reserves.

She went on to serve her country working in the State Department from 1987 to 2003. In March of 2003, she resigned her position with the State Department on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. She retired in protest for four reasons:

"I disagree with the Administration's policies on Iraq
I disagree with the Administration's lack of effort in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
I disagree with the Administration's lack of policy on North Korea
I disagree with the Administration's policies on Unnecessary Curtailment of Rights in America"

Since retiring, she has become a peace activist. O'Reilly gave her a lukewarm introduction and then tried to lead her along a rhetorical garden path toward the evils of Iran. Bill was on his high hobby horse, humping the horrible* treatment of the British captives being held in Tehran. She spoke her mind, that all sides of conflict, including America, should treat all prisoners justly and with dignity. That's when the O'Reilly leapt onto the hood of the station wagon, tore off the aerial and disabled the windshield wipers. Bellowing and gesticulating, the O'Reilly climbed off the hood of the car onto a branch, from which he pelted the vehicle with feces. Then he cut off her mic.

It is a performance of fair and balancedness for the ages, starring Bill O'Reilly as a scurrilous baboon. Ann Wright has served her country for nearly three decades. Bill O'Reilly has only ever served himself. I can only imagine the heights of outrage, the blandishments and agonies the right would have celebrated had a liberal teevee host behaved in such a manner with a hawkish retired officer. This was a clear case of a conservative hawking up a phlegm ball and spitting at a veteran.

As our good friend Snoop Dogg says, "Fuck Bill O'Reilly."

* that be aliteration.

Swift Boat Jason at the Helm

There's an old political story about a candidate in a tough race. The candidate is looking for dirt on his opponent and there doesn't seem to be any. He tells an aide:

"Ask him if he still beats his wife."
"But, that isn't true!"
"I don't care. I just want to see the bastard deny it."

It is the sort of cheap and dirty stunt that people have come to expect of the political class. Young Jason Cherniak has taken this important lesson to heart.

"Find the middle ground
Let's face it. People cheat in politics. It's not a good thing. It shouldn't happen. But it does. The rumour around TO (Let me be very clear; I am not suggesting that the rumour is true. I am only stating that it is out there.) is that Olivia Chow won because NDP supporters from across the city voted early and often at different polling stations in Trinity-Spadina."

Oh you have been so very clear Mr. Cherniak. You aren't saying the rumour is true. You don't know if it is true. You have no proof that it is true. And really, you don't care if the rumour is true. Because this has nothing at all to do with truth. This is smear politics. A hit piece of the nastiest sort. Congratulations Jason, you have just promoted yourself to the rank of Swift Boat Commander. And that would be a rank in the rankest sense of the word.

"I don't know if it's true, but just the rumour led the federal Liberals to fight for a new rule that voters must show ID before receiving their ballot. If nothing else, such rules at least ensure that people can have confidence in the democratic process."

Show us your papers, old man. Because only by forcing the voters to produce identification papers can we prevent politicians from cheating. We must act swiftly to save the sanctity of our democracy from rumours of malfeasance. Let's call it the Florida strategy. As a Canadian born, white male, I wouldn't be able to vote. I've never held a drivers licence and I don't currently hold a valid passport. Hell, I still have an old style health card with no picture. Does this ID require a permanent address? No home, no vote. Does the permanent address need to be a street address? Fuck you small towns and rural areas. Just how many people are we willing to disenfranchise to save democracy?


"That has to be part of the context in which people consider the current debate in Quebec over whether a woman who covers her face for religious reasons must show her face before voting. It is extremely important to respect the religion of all Canadians, but it is also extremely important to protect our democratic system from abuse."

Yes. It should be part of the context. I recommend we give rumours all of the due weight and consideration they deserve. And Golly, isn't it important to respect all those religions? Even the ones we don't respect. Lord fucking knows we have to protect all of democracy from the many hundreds and thousands of traditionalist muslim women, sure to swarm the polling stations in silent, spectral procession. And isn't that just the exact same thing as the rumour about the wife of a party leader stuffing the ballot box? The parallels are frightening. Lest we forget, "...NDP supporters from across the city voted early and often at different polling stations in Trinity-Spadina." Let's just smear a great swath of people for the sake of democracy. Harper could use a boy like Jason. But that's just a rumour.

"The question should not be whether Muslim women need to show their faces when, for religious reasons, they would prefer not to. The question should be how you can respect the religious freedom of women who make such a choice, without allowing people to take advantage of that respect and cheat."

Right. The question shouldn't be, should muslim women be forced to choose between their franchise and their faith. The question should be how can you respect their religious freedom when they're going to use it to cheat. Like Olivia Chow.


"I think a compromise position is fairly obvious. Have the woman show her face to another woman who can compare her face to the picture on her driver's licence. Unless I am wrong about the religious rule here, that would solve both problems at the same time."

And if we play our cards right, we can angle for national identification cards. Maybe even with those groovy rfid chips. That would be awesome. You could use them for all sorts of travel within the country, to get into government office buildings, open bank accounts and all kinds of things. Why there's no way to scam anything then. We'd know where you went and what you did all the time. And since it wouldn't be voluntary, nobody would have an excuse not to have one. And then the NDP couldn't steal ridings, damn you Olivia Chow and your rumoured duplicity.



"At its best, politics is about compromise. Let's bring down the volume of the debate and discuss it rationally."

I'm willing to stipulate that Jason is indeed compromised. But really, this cry for civility is worthy of a Blogging Tory. Let's bring down the volume and rationally discuss the spread of rumour and innuendo as serious cause for legislation. What a prat. Predictably he take a few smacks in the head for his efforts in the comments section, Gazeteer's is particularly good. So Jason insists on having the last squirm:



"UPDATE
I'm sorry if you read this and don't like me reporting the rumour about Trinity-Spadina, but it IS a real rumour. It is not the same as accusing her of having relations with sheep, because that is not a real rumour that is circulating in Toronto. Further, I am not demanding that she deny it."

But it IS a real rumour. Yeah. It isn't like one of those made up rumours. Gosh you guys, come on. And further, ( a word that always adds gravity to a statement)he isn't even demanding a denial. How fuckingly magnanimous. 'Cos that would be embarrassing. Best just to leave that rumour out there uncontested.

You know, I really want to give Stephane Dion a chance. I want to believe that the Liberal party has put the excesses and sins of it's past in the past. I want to think that the political shenanigans have been sent out to pasture with the old guard. But when a creature like Jason Cherniak seems to represent the new guard and future of the Liberals, I worry. A quick look at Cherniak's page leaves no doubt that he is intent on making himself a political fixture, an ideological commode if you will. His posts are bordered with self love and clippings. He fancies himself a rising star. If he is the future of the Liberals, then I'll be keeping my voting options open. Provided I'm allowed to vote in his version of our democracy.



"One of my points in this post is that if you demand Identification from all voters, then you will no longer need to deal with rumours like this."

What. A. Fucking. Idiot.

One of my points in this post is that if you demand laws to protect yourself from rumours, you're a fool. Cherniak is too blinded by his own notions of cleverness to think things through. He is a spoiled, pretentious twerp with no grasp of how most people in this nation live. He furiously pats himself on the back and spouts this kind of crap, expecting to be taken seriously. Jason Cherniak, spreading rumours to protect us from rumours. Perhaps he should take a moment away from the mirror and examine a quote from LBJ:

"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." - Lyndon Johnson

The only way a fool like Cherniak might examine the implications of the legislation he promotes is if it were written on his mirror in lipstick.

Worst Site of All Time!

I have found the crappiest website in creation. Behold the stupefying, flaccid world of John Gibson! Kind of has the air and ambiance of an empty lot, vacant, like the host. Slapdash, like his reasoning, the site is not only weak, it's embarrassing. I mean who in their right mind puts up a self-promotional website that sucks this bad?

This guy is a media professional? From December 2005 to date, there are five posts. The owner of the site contributes one post to that pool. Excluding the titles of the posts, the "content" runs to a staggering 518 words (seriously, he gives a word count). There are a whopping total of 13 comments on the site. 12 of those are long lists of links to pharmaceutical products. Comment 13 is quite a nice letter from Jesus, which gently deflates the "War on Christmas", which Gibson was hyping.

Speaking of the hype, Gibson's book "The War on Christmas" is available via a link to Amazon from his site. You can buy it new for $18.21 or if you don't mind a used copy, the best price is $0.01. Worth every penny. Well, the whole penny. Or a penny you found.

Could there be a crappier site in the wankersphere? I find it hard to imagine. You'd have to plan to make a site fail worse than this. And check the trend in his traffic. Cheney couldn't lose relevance faster than this guy. Fucking astonishing.

Hutto update: Harper accepts child imprisonment.

Update on the case of young Kevin, held in the T. Don Hutto Family Concentration Camp, down in sunny Texas. The ACLU has filed suit on behalf of Kevin, his father Majid and mother Masomeh as well as nine other detained children. The official Canadian response has been a cowardly failure to speak or to act, a disgrace to this nation.

Quoted in the CTV article Stephen Harper says, "his government isn't "in a position to dictate what happens in other jurisdictions."

What the sweet fuck is that supposed to mean? Canada's government isn't being asked to dictate, but it is certainly expected that it will advocate. Harper is nothing but a sad marionette and he refuses to pull back on the masters string. This abject failure to intercede on the behalf of a Canadian born child, imprisoned in conditions that fail to meet basic minimum standards, is a blight on this nation. We are not a nation that sanctions the organized state abuse of children. We are not a nation that refuses to address human rights issues in any nation.

Stephen Harper is a lying sack of crap. The Canadian government routinely comments on all manner of human rights abuses around the world. If Kevin and his family were named Stewart or Theberge or Bernstein, I suspect Mr. Harper would have rather more to say. I'm relatively sure that if China or Venezuela or Turkey were to imprison a Canadian child and his refugee parents, Mr. Harper would be far less reticent. I'm not used to being ashamed of Canada and I don't much like it.

Stephen Harper, not my Prime Minister.

PARDON THE INTERRUPTION (by CC): I don't want to step on PSA's toes on this post, but I wanted to point out that, when it suits him, PMSH has no problem whatsoever "dictating what happens in other jurisdictions":

[Huseyin] Celil's imprisonment has caused friction between Canada and China -- a nation whose human rights record has been publicly questioned by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, among others.

In fact, Harper pointedly spoke about Celil with Chinese President Hu Jintao while in Vietnam, where the two leaders were among 21 gathered for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit last November.

Harper also referred to Celil while en route to that conference.

"When a Canadian citizen is taken from a third country and imprisoned in China, this is a serious concern to this country," he said.

More recently, unnamed Canadian officials this week took to the media to slam Canadian diplomats for their failure to attend the hearing, and there were reports that Harper himself was upset at the handling of the case, The Globe reports.

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay's spokesman, Dan Dugas, told The Globe that MacKay had personally called the Canadian embassy in Beijing.

"The Chinese government is not co-operating with the Canadian mission in China and we aren't going to stop asking them for what's happening with Mr. Celil," said Dugas. He would not comment directly on claims Harper was angered that no official was in the court.

"I can tell you he is not happy either," Dugas said, referring to MacKay. "He's asking for answers. He wants to know what is being done and what the next steps are going to be."

I'd ask Canada's wankers to discuss the double standard here, but I'm guessing they're all a bit tied up explaining how Scooter Libby is nothing at all like Bill Clinton. Or something like that.

turds in place of a rose

at 86 years of age, helen thomas is a living legend. bane of presidents and other fools, she has been in the front row of the white house briefing room since kennedy's presidency. with the redesign of the media room, it appears that helen is going to lose her seat to cable. considering what passes for journalism these days, i suppose it's only fitting that the front row adds some fluffers and light weights to the ranks. gannon is gone but he's not forgotten.

fox and cnn are campaigning to move up front, feeling that the extra leg room will burnish their prestige. after all, ad sales indicate that they have what has come to represent gravitas, revenue. under a regime that has pounded words like tradition and values into a meaningless paste, you can't be too surprised. helen thomas has been in the front row not simply because of seniority but because of merit. the deference and respect she is accorded by her peers and by successive administrations has been well earned. she isn't just the beloved senior scribe, she's the last true voice of the fourth estate in the room.

helen thomas has never shied away from asking the difficult questions and pursuing press secretaries for answers. in a time of war, with an administration mired in corruption, profiteering, war crimes and torture while staging a full scale assault on the constitution, her leadership is more important than ever. she is the last wolf in room full of sheep. in a recent press event, tony snow and a few others of the self-congratulatory set whined about the bloggers, those wannabe pretenders. david gregory, he of the occasional spine, and a few others puffed up their chests to demean emerging media. as i'm sure the old farts of the news rooms sneared at radio and then at television.

what they are failing to grasp is that, like helen thomas, the blogs are willing to ask the more challenging questions and fight for answers. sure, the blogosphere is a partisan pit of delusions, agendas and basement dwellers but i defy the traditional media to best the coverage that the plame, libby, shooter affair has received at firedog lake. hell, during the libby trial the firedogs were in the courthouse with full accreditation, live blogging the proceedings. they have become a principal source for the very same mainstream media that poo-poos the blogs.

granted, few blogs have the skills and expertise amassed at firedog lake. but then, how many papers, beyond the big nationals, can arrange full-time analysis by a team of former prosecutors, defense attorneys, psychologists and lay experts? to be sure, blogs are generally partisan. two words: fox news. at a recent press event starring president swagger britches, the white house press played patty cake until one brave soul asked a legitimate question and followed up. he was given the bush treatment, mockery and snot. how did the noble beltway fawns react? they chuckled along with his imperial shrubness. the questions died of neglect. the modern press, exposed as access whoring shills by the testimony of russert in the libby trial, have betrayed the example of courage set by helen thomas. they have failed their profession and most notably their public duty, to demand answers from the political establishment.

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my output will be limited over the next week as i have picked up a gig scripting a music video. more on that later.

out of this world...or pick your own cliche

found this gallery of nasa space station art from the 1970s. this stuff fascinates me and the artwork is just stunning. have a good week infidels.