That’s some magic spell

Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that. You can’t explain why the tide goes in.”  - Bill O’Reilly, while declaring that such unexplained, magical events are the basis for his belief in an invisible sky monster.
                           
O’Reilly isn’t alone in his avoidance of reality in favour of grasping at sorcery to spoon feed him answers to everything.

Pope Benedict has asked Catholic priests to do a better job preparing people for marriage, saying that no one has an automatic right to wed.

But a bunch of old guys who have never been married are the best people to decide who is fit to marry, and who isn’t.

Because they have their magic book, their spells, and a direct line of communication with the invisible sky monster.  You know, the one who uses magic to make tides go in and tides go out.

That’s some spell they cast over people like O’Reilly who trip over themselves to bow at the feet of these old bachelors in their wizard robes.  Despite ongoing reports of child rape committed by the men in funny clothes, some people still hand the most important decisions of their lives over to them.

How can any sane person believe that leaders of a group which claims to have taken vows of celibacy and has no experience of the day to day struggles that married couples face trust such out of touch people to decide whether or not they should marry?

How can they even consider the words of people who preach celibacy as a virtue but rape and shelter rapists in their own group?

That is far more difficult to explain that why tides go in and tides go out.

We are an amazing species, capable of manipulating our environment, able to do long-term planning, capable of spatial/time thinking.  We wake up each day knowing we are free to make choices and decisions that will shape our day, our future, yet some of us cheerily hand over this freedom to those old guys in dresses who can’t even follow their own doctrines and laws.

I’ve heard many people try to excuse religion by saying that it gives people strength.  I don’t agree.  It allows them to avoid making difficult decisions.  It stops them from learning how strong and capable they are by facing challenges without a belief in magic.  It helps them avoid consequences to their actions.

Religion belittles what we are by giving credit for our strengths to some myth handed down through generations by ancestors who did not have the tools and understanding to explain the world around them and came up instead with explanations based on magical beings and supernatural events.

Now we can explain how tides go in and tides go out, but some of us choose not to.  We can also decide on our own whether we are fit to marry.  Some societies have fought dearly for that freedom, yet some people still choose to consider the dictates of the old, unmarried pretenders who claim to have some special, magically conveyed wisdom that the rest of us lack.

Benny the Rat does say one thing that carries some truth -

On Friday, Benedict said that public officials must set a good moral example for society.

He was referring obliquely to Premier Silvio Berlusconi and his escapades, feeling the spirit of the ghost bird no doubt inspiring him as to what is moral for a married man, but really, before looking to what married men do what their dicks, he should look to his own group of sorcerers and lecture them on setting good examples.

You know, little things like don’t go around raping kids, and don’t help members of your group cover up such rapes.   

"I wish my country were a little better."

So do I.  So does any Canadian who sees: the growing divide between rich and poor; the undermining of what once were independent oversight agencies put in place to protect public interests; the biggest deficit our country has ever had; decline in education; aboriginal rights still sorely trounced; growing reports of police brutality; access to information increasingly denied; failure to address poverty; a Parliament that ignores policy for politics; a Parliament that engages in vicious, personal attacks rather than intelligent debate; a country being fed the propaganda of fear more and more; a paranoid government that constantly seeks ways to invade our privacy and limit our right to protest...

It's a good thing for a leader to point out his or her country could use some improvement, and quite another to bash it as harper did for the entertainment of American businessmen, stating as fact that "Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it," and that "(i)n terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance." 

The title of this blog is a quote by Ignatieff, inserted into harper's latest attack ads in which stevie is trying to say that Ignatieff does not support his country.

The latest harper attack ads (but remember, these can't possibly be election ads because stevie says he's not in election mode) are nothing more than a worn out ensemble of the same old garbage harper has been saying for the past two years.

But lying sociopath that harper and his idiot servants are, they really missfire with this latest batch of immature nose-thumbing.

I want a leader who aspires to making our country better than it is.  I want a Prime Minister who can publicly acknowledge that not all is perfect and that change is needed, sometimes unpopular measures as well.

Most reasonalbe Canadians know that tax money is needed to provide services, security, government, education health care, and most know that if you cut taxes, some of those things will have to be cut.  Honestly addressing the reality of taxes despite how unpopular that topic may be is showing respect for voters.

The harper attacks ads tell us more about harper than about Ignatieff, Layton, or Duceppe.  Not only do they show stevie to be unimaginative and prone to adolescent taunts, they show he has little grasp of what a leader should be by attacking some of those very qualities in other leaders.

Something else I think really fails the CPC in these ads: the graphics.  Ignatieff actually looks pretty good - warm, friendly, human.  And the very bizarre choice of background, the hazy images heavily toned in red...I can only specualte as to why stevie approved that - supposed to represent hell-fire?  It sure isn't Liberal red, but maybe that's what they were aiming for.  It's more of a burgundy which is pleasant to the eye.

And predictably, not a thing from harper in any of the ads on what he will do to make Canada better.

Headline from the twilight zone

CRTC may ease ban on broadcasting false or misleading news

Really.  You see a title like that and you just have to read on, thinking it must surely be an extremely poorly worded title.  What "independent public organization that regulates and supervises the Canadian broadcasting and telecommunications systems" would not fight to enforce nothing but the most reliable news delivered with absolute journalistic integrity?

We would assume that being an independent, public organization, such an agency would want to make sure it shields itself from corporate and political influence.  The public needs to be protected from the constant barrage of paid for ads full of false and misleading statements meant to sell us ideas or goods that we would never consider embracing should we be told the truths behind them.

Unfortunately, the title to this article is not misleading.

Current regulations contain a blanket prohibition on broadcasting “any false or misleading news.”  The (CRTC) wants to considerably narrow the scope of that prohibition.  It is proposing a ban on the broadcast of “any news that the licensee knows is false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.”
 
Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor specializing in communications issues, says the proposed prohibition is far too limited.  “If we're setting a high standard that you've got to actually endanger someone's life, health or safety, frankly almost anything that's false or misleading that's obviously outside of that fairly narrow scope would be fair game,” Geist said in an interview.  For instance, he said false news that caused financial harm would not be covered by the more limited prohibition.

Nor would such a limited prohibition prevent intentionally false news that could ruin someone's career, family life, or reputation.  It would not protect companies under attack by ones intent on destroying their public image.

It would create a new battleground for vicious attacks against political opponents, special interest groups, minorities, or anyone that gets in the way of people with enough money and power to buy or bully their way on the airwaves.

That the new rules would disallow lies which endanger lives, health, and safety of the public is no protection at all since it is often difficult to prove in a court of law that certain words provoked a certain outcome.  The same violent rhetoric can be repeated over and over, working its influence on those so full of anger and frustration they only need a small nudge to act, but as we have seen in the recent Arizona killings, the rhetorical trigger was pulled at a safe enough distance in the eyes of the law that those who promote violence and hatred through their lies can continue to do so without personal repercussions.

Orwell's Bastard has a link where you can reach a site and tell CRTC what you think of this dangerous change.  As OB says, they may not listen, but we should voice our opposition anyway. 

Can't even remember her original name

On December 23, 2010, The Evil Puppy moved in.  On December 25th, she decided my christmas tree had to come down all at once.  Probably because she has no soul.  On December 26th, she figured I should toss out my favourite boots.

The Evil Puppy thinks that two hours of unbroken sleep is too much for me.

She thinks the plants have too much soil in the pots, and she thinks I probably get bored at work and need to pick up shredded toys when I get home.  The Evil Puppy thinks the rescue cats should be un-rescued.

Worst of all, The Evil Puppy seems to know she's cute as hell.

Saturday nite ode to Stupidity

Censoring Dire Straits?  Mark fucking Twain?

Mentarch gets it right.  We should demand the bible be censored, in that case.  Slavery, incest, genocide, child rape...

Uncensored Dire Straits - 

Meet the creepy cuckoo bird.

Oh...you already know him.

The cuckoo bird places one of its eggs in the nest of another bird species.  The egg hatches and the chick takes over, tricking the mother into feeding it even when the chick outsizes her and runs her ragged.  The cuckoo chick will also push out all of the mother's own eggs so that it doesn't have to compete with anyone else and gets everything  - food, shelter, protection for itself alone.

Judged by human standards, the cuckoo is not a nice bird.  It wants it all and doesn't give a damn who gets hurt.

Steve reminds me of the cuckoo bird.  Dons a blue sweater vest to try and trick us into thinking he's warm and fuzzy, cuddles stunned looking kittens in photos that only make him look creepy, steals policy ideas from other parties, plagiarizes speeches, engages in photo-op after photo-op in an attempt to suck off some of the goodwill reserved for the main subject of the photo, commandeers the ideas and efforts of others, such as red shirt day, usurps parliamentary and traditional roles as when he gos ahead of the GG to take the military salute due that office...

He hopes the things that Canadians warm to will rub off on the superficial image he presents, tricking us into warming to him.

Most of us are smarter than the mother birds of other species that the cuckoo seeks to trick, and this latest nauseating attempt to steal what isn't his in a bid to pretend he is oh so wonderful won't work either.

In fact, it may bring him trouble.

Eight days ago, in Welland, Ont., Stephen Harper made an apparently innocuous announcement that’s a harbinger of much more to come: He unveiled the creation of the Prime Minister’s Volunteer Awards to recognize 17 people each year from non-profit organizations across Canada.

The GG already has volunteer awards, and they are non-partisan awards.  With Baird co-ordinating this new PR stunt, you can bet the list of volunteers given awards will face an entirely different set of criteria.  It's marketing, folks.

But this is the Harper government, controlling all as none before it, eager to find political advantage in everything the government does. Thus it’s a logical extension of this controlling urge to want the Prime Minister to be associated with the awards and the honours in the minds of the recipients. And so it’s logical, with this objective in mind, to have Mr. Baird, the über-partisan cabinet minister, provide guidance for the internal review.

It’s creepy, if you think about it, that any prime minister would even think about meddling with the non-partisan honours and awards system just so he and his office (and party) might be more closely associated with it.

Creepy indeed.  And sleezy. 

Shocked but not surprised

As U.S. Democrat Rep. Gabrielle Giffords lies in critical condition with a gun shot wound -  delivered at close range - to her head, and six others, including a 9 year old girl are dead, we can hardly claim to be surprised that such a horror occurred.

(Pima County Sheriff Clarence) Dupnik did not state a motive for the assassination attempt against the Democratic congresswoman. But he suggested that "vitriolic rhetoric" in political debates could have deadly consequences.

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government, the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this county is getting to be outrageous."

Vitriolic rhetoric does stir up the crazies, even more so when it is given sanction by political figures.

Readers may remember this little bit of American conservative eliminationism, from Sarah Palin’s PAC site. She invited Americans to “take aim” at twenty members of Congress who had supported Barack Obama’s health care legislation.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was one of three incumbents targeted in Arizona.

Dr. Dawg refers to this, and accompanying text   -

image thanks to Orwell’s Bastard

When high profile political figures use words like “take aim,” graphics showing someone in the cross hairs of a rifle, or blithely recommend the assassination of people who are inconvenient (we all remember Flanagan’s statement that Assange should be assassinated), then such rhetoric gives murder for politics and ideology a certain legitimacy in the minds of some. 

They aren’t murderers, they are freedom fighters!  They are defenders of democracy!  They are protecting their country from those who would destroy it!  They are, taking a stand!  They will go down in history as heroes!

In their own sick minds, that is.

Gun imagery used in politics - targeting a political opponent in the cross hairs, for example, makes for a more dangerous environment especially when there is such a push for the right for everyone, regardless of mental state of mind, to carry a fire arm in a country where guns are just the coolest thing evah and so linked to what it is to be a true, red blooded male.

(Jared Lee Loughner’s) rambling videos had already caused him trouble at school, scaring his community college into suspending him in September.  In early October, he agreed to withdraw from school.  By November, Loughner had bought a Glock, purchased legally from a Sportsman's Warehouse in Tucson, the Associated Press and Washington Post reported.

A nutcase suspended for scaring his college manages to legally acquire a semi-automatic weapon a month later and uses it to kill nine people when he shows up armed at a function where issues have already incited violence.

Giffords, 40, is a moderate Democrat who narrowly won re-election in November against a tea party candidate who sought to throw her from office over her support of the health care law. Anger over her position became violent at times, with her Tucson office vandalized after the House passed the overhaul last March and someone showing up at a recent gathering with a weapon.

You politicians want to reduce crime?  Curb your own vitriolic rhetoric and toughen up gun laws.

I hardly think giving Loughner - if he is found guilty - a very tough sentence will deter other crazies who think they are on some kind of heroic mission to enlighten us all to their madness.

Change you can believe in!!!!!!!!!!!!

The issues remain the same, but look!  What a difference a few words make (emphasis mine)-

A new phrase has insinuated itself into Conservative talking points -- it tripped lightly from the lips of new junior finance minister Ted Menzies this week -- and will no doubt soon be adopted by the larger political culture: job creators.  As in: goodbye corporate fat cats, hello job creators.


Levant...has helped popularize the argument that oil-sands petroleum is ethically superior to petroleum produced by countries such as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran – all nations that also sell crude to the U.S. market or Asian markets. It’s an attempt to beat back efforts by U.S. politicians and activists who want a boycott of Canada’s oil sands owing to its greenhouse-gas-heavy extraction methods and ensuing environmental damage. - hence, ethical oil.

Think of the money the government saves.  No action needed, just re-label problems as benefits.

The sacrificial lamb has a name.

Michelle D'Auray, public servant.

The Harper government claims a senior bureaucrat gave it the go-ahead to avoid rules governing the look and feel of its Economic Action Plan website.

Right.  Like I said before, harper & Co. can't get rid of all public servants.  They need a few to kick around and blame for their own stupidity and corrupt actions.

Of course harper and Hang-'em-high family man Vic have nothing to back that claim.  In fact, the paper-trail clearly shows that the TB public servant team leader advised against it.

As current president of TB, Stockie Day is trying to justify Toews and harper's actions, claiming Michelle D'Auray, secretary to TB recommended that the exemption be granted.

But guess what?

Day’s office and the Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to requests to produce the d’Auray document.

This blame the public servant is just the latest in harper's half-assed attempt to brush away criticism over violating very clear TB rules that forbid using federal government sites and resources for partisan purposes.   Earlier on, in committee, they tried to say things like the use of Google Map hampered their ability to maintain a common look and feel.

Wow.  Odd how inserting a Google Map function can throw off an entire design, create a new one, and add in a youtube clip of harper playing the piano.

Some people may not think that this particular abuse of tax dollars, and politicizing what is supposed to be a non-partisan public service is no big deal, but it is far from an isolated incident.  We've been paying for many such CPC/harper promotions, and our federal public service has been used as harper's personal marketing team since he took power: oversized checks carrying the CPC logo, public service websites linking to that tiresome piano playing video, unrelated sites linking to federal budgets, the economic action plan, harper's photo popping up all over the place, public servants used to push the economic action plan ad signs, partisan statements on public service sites...

Where is the clout to enforce accountability on politicians who brazenly thumb their noses at the public while stealing their money to do so?

Every time we do nothing more than shake our heads and say, well, it sucks, but that's politics, we give these corrupt actions our stamp of approval through our simple silence.

For all the griping about taxes, you would think more Canadians would be royally miffed at having any political party dip into our pockets to pay for their own marketing needs - and using those tax dollars to misrepresent their deeds, as well.

Pete Postlethwaite

Pete Postlethwaite
7 February 1946 – 2 January 2011        

I think Flaherty shops here

As PZ Myers points out, this article appeared as a front page headline on the Wall Street Journal and offers no criticism or reservations. h/t Pharyngula

Why are we there again?

Afghan President Hamid Karzai refused to remove a former warlord from atop the energy and water ministry despite U.S. pressure to oust the minister because Washington considered him corrupt and ineffective. Secret diplomatic records showed the minister -- privately termed "the worst" by U.S. officials -- kept his perch at an agency that controls $2 billion in U.S. and allied projects.

The refusal to remove the official despite threats to end U.S. aid highlights how little influence the U.S. has over the Afghan leader on pressing issues such as corruption.

"How little influence the U.S. has..."

As Karzai and his corrupt personal appointees laugh in our faces and take our money, we keep sending our troops to face death and keep this scum in power.  But somehow, it's all for the women and children, right?  We'll bring all our soldiers home in 2014 and Karzai will run a democracy that will be fair to all, right?   

Happy New Year

I hope the new year brings renewed energy and happiness to all of you fine folks out there.