Sick Puppies…

Or should that be sick poppy? George Bush (#41, not to be confused with #43, the gibbering idiot that he sired… the one with misplaced delusions of grandeur and kooky, evangelical aspirations), speaking at Texas A&M last week to celebrate the anniversary of his now obscure, laughably feeble “thousand points of light” initiative (think about that for a second… what is 330 million divided by a thousand?*), took the opportunity (when not apologizing for his “ass e-mail” promoting the event), to lash out at the vituperative incivility of left-wing pundits like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. Which, naturally prompted the following responses from the aforementioned far-left loons:

Shouldn’t GHWB just be spending his sunset time at Walker’s Point… Oh, I dunno; fishing, painting, or perhaps writing thrilling adventure novels? I mean, good grief — next to his son, this addlepated old man was one of the dumbest presidents in the history of the United States of America. A nice enough fellow perhaps (you know, when not targeting people for assassination and such)… but otherwise, thick as a fucking brick.

*A drop in the bucket. Although, technically speaking, it works out to 330,000, which is about the population of Lexington, Kentucky. Woo-hoo!

True Blue

A brief excerpt from Ruby’s (aka “Harper Girl”) fringe show wherein she expresses her heartfelt adoration for the Dear Leader as opposed to all his potential leadership rivals as only a true blue groupie, Kool-Aid® drinker or run of the mill Bloggin’ Tory, possibly could.

The rather sad fact of the matter is that there are no potential leadership rivals on the right — it s a fairly thin bench when you think about it…

So, while Harper may well be in a state of absolutely brilliant ascendancy at the moment, it’s only by virtue of a relatively ineffectual opposition and a complete lack of any kind of serious challenge from within his own party comprised as it is of fossilized wrecks, bland technocrats, insufferable hacks, purblind ideologues, and thoroughly mediocre half-wits.

Chopra on Net Neutrality

Here’s Aneesh Chopra, the Obama administration’s “technology czar” (as Glenn Beck would likely style him — although it should be noted that he’s been confirmed by Congress) — on the issue of net neutrality, affirming the present U.S. government’s commitment to ensure a level playing field when it comes to access and usage of America’s Internet infrastructure.

So where does the Harper government stand on this issue and what are they doing to provide similar high-level assurance that corporate interests won’t ruthlessly co-opt Internet bandwidth to give undue preference to commercial interests over those of private citizens, fledgling entrepreneurs, and others seeking parity on the web?

It may seem like kind of a sleeper issue, but maybe the Liberals should wake up to the reality of the fact that such issues are actually of great concern to many Canadians, especially those who work remotely or who depend on free and fair access to the Internet for their livelihood.

As a somewhat related aside, I’ve frequently stated that I will vote for ANY party that seriously commits to the total and complete elimination of SPAM in an effective manner (and I really don’t care what the rest of their policy platform consists of) as this is, in my opinion, an insidious, exploitative, and criminal activity that erodes productivity and does nothing but harm across the board.

By the way, the complete interview on C-SPAN’s The Communicators program can be viewed here. It’s actually quite interesting.

Making Sense of Afghanistan

An impossible task, of course, but this fascinating exchange between CNN’s Fareed Zakaria and noted author/war correspondent Tom Ricks analyzing one specific battle in detail sheds a great deal of light on the problem as a whole.

I know some people have difficulties with Zakaria for various reasons (a “shameless apologist for globalization” I believe one commenter here dismissively called him in the past), but I happen to find him one of the more reliably thoughtful and deeply insightful commenters on television at the moment. Certainly a refreshing change from the usual bunch of “shrieking midgets” (to borrow Garrison Keillor’s immortal expression) populating talk radio and cable news.