Lovely sentiments, indeed… were it not for the pesky little fact that 94% of funding flowing through the Enabling Accessibly Fund has been directed to projects located in Conservative ridings.

Apparently, the vast preponderance of disabled people in Canada just happen to live in areas of the country that voted for Stephen Harper. Imagine that… what a strange coincidence!

Representative John Shadegg (R–AZ) shamelessly uses someone’s baby as a prop during the healthcare debate in Congress this past weekend.

Word is that “Maddy” also wants Target gift cards for her 2nd birthday…

Just for the hell of it…

Contemptible though it may be regarded by some trendy critics, I really miss this neo-vernacular, “progressive” or “art rock” style of music.

Seeing as Prince Charles and his haggard consort have descended on our humble burg in recent days, this seems like an appropriate documentary to share.

George S. Stuart reads from his marvelous historical monologue 400 Years of English History about the namesakes of the Prince of Wales.

I would love to see the entire DVD of this lecture series as it’s always immensely delightful to see history brought back to life in such a seductively charming, humorous, and vibrantly immediate way.

From the esteemed travel writer’s website: Rick Steves sees the current prohibition on marijuana as a misguided policy causing more harm to our society than good — much like the Prohibition against alcohol did in the 1930s. In these recent articles and interviews, Rick explains why he believes that, assuming a society measures the effectiveness of its drug policy in harm reduction rather than people locked up, America would be better off decriminalizing marijuana.

Might I suggest that this yet another popular (albeit somewhat contentious) issue the Liberals should be actively promoting as part of whatever the hell their platform might be in some future election… Aside from the moral justification and sensible pragmatism of such a policy shift, if governments are anxiously looking to tap into lucrative new sources of tax revenue in order to reduce the national debt and curtail their annual revenue shortfall, this would be a superlatively logical place to begin prospecting.

Another Republican chickenhawk shows his true colours…

The Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitas managed to get former GOP Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo to abruptly walk off The Ed Show mid-interview by alluding to the fact that Tancredo, an enthusiastic supporter of the Vietnam War, nonetheless successfully evaded service at the time by citing mental illness as an excuse. “I did not get a deferment because I was too depressed to fight a war I supported in Vietnam. I’m a veteran,” said Moulitas.

The Chronicle Herald, the Ottawa Citizen and journalism students from Ottawa’s Algonquin College have crunched the numbers of the government’s economic “Action Plan” and unsurprisingly find that Conservative ridings received more than half of the $8.5 billion announced under the Building Canada infrastructure stimulus program.

However, aside from the wild disparity between certain ridings (as illustrated in the RMR video), generally speaking, it doesn’t seem there’s really much of a story here. As noted in the article, “The riding that received the most money — a whopping $247 million — is Liberal Ken Dryden’s York Centre, which benefits from a third of the largest single infrastructure project in the country, the $697-million York Subway Extension.”

Are wingnuts simply incapable of telling the truth? Glad to see Rachel Maddow call out Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and her good pals at Fox News for outrageously inflating the number of angry white teabaggers at her “house call” yesterday and for making demonstrably false statements about people not being bussed in to the event by astroturf outfits such as the laughably named “FreedomWorks” and “Americans for Prosperity”…

Update: Speaking of flagrant right-wing lies, World Nut Daily wasted no time in cooking up a pack of them in connection with the Fort Hood shooting.

It’s hard to believe the WND site has over 8 million visitors a month…

There’s something joyously affirmative about this choreographed prison exercise from the Philippines.

It would be interesting to see the background effort that went into coordinating the performance.

p.s. I can’t listen to Bohemian Rhapsody without thinking somewhat fondly about pointlessly “cruising” around with my friends back in the day…

Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the U.S. bank sector bailout (TARP) discussing how the elite financial echelon has been rescued from their own folly while those workers at the bottom tier of the economy have been mercilessly thrown under the bus…

“The way I think of it is: they say something like ‘Give me your money, investors and I’m going to Las Vegas and put it all on red 22. And if red 22 comes in — Woo! We are RICH! If red 22 doesn’t come in, don’t worry because the taxpayers will pay you back the money you invested.”

Interesting to see Sir Harold Evans popping up here … More about him in due course.