So Long, For Now

Well, I’m just winding things down here and will be relocating to Vancouver in the next couple of days, but may not be back online for a bit, just so you don’t think I’ve dropped off the planet if there’s no posting for a while.

Worst Persons in the World

From last night’s Countdown. This is an especially good one.

Update: Rachel Maddow discusses the recently passed Hate Crimes legislation with Matthew Shepard’s Mother.

First 100 Days: Best & Worst

Edited from recent forum, “Obama @ 100: A Progress Report from The Nation.”

Specter Vision

It’s a somewhat good thing one supposes that Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter switched parties the other day to avoid certain defeat in the next primary battle at the hands of the far right-wing Club for Growth, but it’s also more than a little funny to reflect on his words delivered in response to the defection of Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont from the Republican Party in 2001:

“I intend to propose a rule change which would preclude a future reoccurrence of a senator’s change in parties in mid-session, organizing with the opposition…”

Why People Watch NASCAR®

Need I say more?

Weight a Minute…

It’s great that the Liberal Party is finally getting with the program when it comes to OMOV but allow me to challenge this notion that votes should be “weighted” so that urban ridings with more members don’t get more influence than rural ridings. Can someone please explain this concept to me, because I’m not entirely clear on why the vote of someone in a rural riding should necessarily count more than one in an urban (or suburban) riding? I’m sure there must be some intractable electoral logic at work here, but it’s not immediately apparent to me.

And another thing, I’d naïvely thought for many years that OMOV stood for “one-member-one-vote” or does it stand for “one-man-one-vote” as stated by Mr. Ignatieff in the Hill Times the other day? Yes, it’s a small quibble perhaps, but for a “public intellectual” and noted author who, one presumes, chooses his words with great care, one might expect… oh, I don’t know — more care perhaps.

Michael Ignatieff Asks…

What steps are being taken to protect Canadians against swine flu outbreak?

The Liberal leader is apparently so concerned that “foreign governments are fully aware of the measures our government is taking to protect Canadians” that he posts a self-serving video (in two languages!) asking a quite perfectly legitimate question, but then doesn’t bother to provide the answer that would, in fact, make people “fully aware” of the steps the government is taking…

Now, I know I’ve nattered on about the totally asinine format of these videos before, but this instance seems to be a particularly outstanding example of cynical opportunism and pointless delivery.

Shoot to Thrill

If wishes were horses, etc. Bit of an imaginative stretch to suggest that anyone was actually “calling for murder” isn’t it?

What a Hoot

Michele “Crazy Eyes” Bachmann, the gift that keeps on giving…

By the way, it should go without saying, but Bachmann is completely full of shit. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was passed by a Republican controlled Congress and signed into law on June 17, 1930 by Republican President Hoover, not FDR as Bachmann asserts here.

Lawton Smalls Unbound

Serendipity strikes again… but you’ll have to go here and then follow the link from there to this catastrophically horrific place, in order to truly appreciate what I mean. The wonders of the Intertubes, my friends.

Now the notion of so-called “conservatives” yearning to fully unleash their deep reservoir of inner batshit craziness is nothing entirely new… goodness knows, some of the more unhinged and/or unemployed members of the Bloggin’ Tories do it as a routine matter of course each and every day, but what’s somewhat novel here is the stirring call to arms — a rebel yell, one might say to the Confederacy of Dunces that sadly abounds in this great land — expressing profound displeasure with the nefarious malefactors presumably behind Stephen Harper that are somehow forcing the poor dear against his will to create the impression the CPC “needs to tiptoe around and not offend anyone by showing their actual support of Conservative ideas.”

But don’t let me possibly misquote or unfairly mischaracterize the harebrained fulminations of the indefatigably witless “Hunter” in such a cavalier way. Here she is in her own inimitable words:

What is the party doing to advance Conservative issues? Heck, what is the party doing to highlight PM Harper and the Minister’s [sic]?

If a lowly blogger can get more video posted in support of the Conservatives then [sic] the party itself can, a disconnect has occurred. Why can’t the “war room” post some video? What the heck are they doing at headquarters? Check out the Minister’s [sic] profiles, boring, boring, boring! No life, no personal touch, no comments from the Minister’s [sic], the whole site sucks. […]

All I hear from the party lately is requests for donations.

It’s like the CPC is walking on egg shells afraid to offend anyone encase [sic] the voters realize that they actually elected the Conservatives. It’s like just because the Conservatives are in power, the Conservative party can’t broadcast any good things that are being done.

Wow. Life is just so remarkably unfair sometimes, isn’t it?

Why can’t there be a steady, relentless, 24/7, completely unremitting stream of uncritical propaganda issuing from the Dear Leader’s office hailing his non-stop litany of great achievements and lauding his unwavering support of unspecified “Conservative ideas” like say: the $40 billion deficit spending budget; or the 12% increase in government spending overall; or the proposed multi-billion dollar bail-out of the automakers; the failed investment of blood and treasure in Afghanistan; the cutbacks to food safety inspections that resulted in the deaths of numerous people; the endless waffling on registration of long guns that needlessly perpetuated a bad system; the repeal of the GST that resulted in savings of many cents on the cost of chocolate bar at the expense of several billions to the Treasury; the inability to implement a sustainable housing policy; the daycare-through-the-door program that lobbed a couple of hundred bucks a month into the pockets of those who didn’t need/want it (before being clawed back in most cases); the continuing, miserable demise of the manufacturing sector; the campaign to demonize everyone not supportive of the government as a “terrorist supporter” or “Taliban hugger” or worse… a treasonous backstabber; the billions of dollars that quite secretly went to prop up the banks and capitalize them even as they made billions of dollars in profit; the ludicrous farce of “arctic sovereignty” and ridiculous slush boats that never materialized; the cutting of oversight for transfers of federal healthcare money to the provinces; the millions of dollars wasted on other useless defense contracts for refueling ships that had to be scrapped because they were poorly devised in the first place and then surprisingly didn’t come up to snuff; the tens of millions of dollars needlessly squandered on the promotion of food-based ethanol subsidies at the behest of lobbyists in the PMO; the countless millions spent on corporate welfare for pork-barrel projects to buck up the electoral fortunes of Conservative MPs; the selective gutting of cultural programs for purely political reasons; the half-baked “transparency” and “accountability” promises that resulted in nothing more than an uninformative day-book of appointments; the clamp down on the release of private information; the attempted bribing of a morbidly ill MP to buy his vote; the partisan guidelines for rigging how parliamentary committees should be run; the farcical lawsuits waged against opposing political parties; the clever maneuvering of funds to top up the election war-chest of the Conservative Party; the laundering of campaign funds to circumvent Elections Canada regulations; the stonewalling of requests for information and shutting down of public access to that program; the cow-towing to zany, fundamentalist Judeo-Christian lobbyists; the pandering to different ethnic groups even though their sometimes kooky theologies are inherently opposed to mainstream secular values; the callous abandonment of Canadian citizens abroad; the egregious income-trust flip-flop that wiped out billions of dollars of investors’ savings; tacit endorsement of torture and extrajudicial procedures of rendition; fiscal asphyxiation of the independent parliamentary budget officer; the muzzling of scientific reports stating that promotion of ethanol was a dubious solution to climate change; the attempted wholesale re-branding of the Canadian government; the silencing of MPs… blah, blah, blah.

Morevover, when will the Conservatives “update Laureen’s page so we see what she is doing”?

Indeed. I know the lack of this vital information has been a serious shortfall in my life over the past few years…

Unintentional comedy update: You cannot make up this stuff, so I won’t bother, but simply relate it to you verbatim from the horse’s ass Hunter’s mouth:

HA, this post obviously got the lefty trolls excited! Poor things the liberal darkness has invaded their minds and eaten away any last ruminant of brains they might have had left.

Alas and alack for that final “ruminant of brains”…

The poor trolls actually get upset that I call them trolls or lefties, they seem to think that they have some sort of positive relationship over here. They are trying to climb out of the dark, into the conservative light, they just keep bumping into each other in the liberal darkness, and get confused about where the true light is for Canada and their children.

Ah yes, the “conservative light” that involves profound illiteracy, stupendous ignorance, and relentless suppression of free speech. Perhaps no better illustration of why we often mock winguts and regard them with tremendous contempt could be provided than the foregoing drivel.