Who's the carpetbagger?

Given the latest batch of attack ads approved by the senior members of the Prime Minister's Office, one would wonder why, given the thrust of those ads, they allow one of their own, a born and raised American, to meander unfettered through the op-ed pages of Canadian newspapers depositing easily refutable bovine scat.

Tom Flanagan, Harper confidant, unrepentant aboriginal assimilationist and cheerleader of a free-market system from which he has remained insulated by lodging himself in academic institutions throughout his adult life comes out with another whopper of Reform Party bile.

Flanagan, the neo-human-rights activist*, suggests the solution to irrational prejudice and discrimination is to let the free-market sort it out. This, he opines, is much better than human rights commissions and tribunals which he describes as suffering from "blowback".

Both federal and provincial commissions are suffering blowback from their unsuccessful attempts to muzzle media gadflies Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant.

Excuse me, but that is not what happened. The federal and provincial human rights tribunals rejected the attempt to muzzle by claimants. For a much more accurate and truthful picture of things, you must go here.

And the free-market observer's solution to the falsehood he initially presents?

There is discrimination in the private sector, but it is self-liquidating over time because of the costs it imposes on discriminators. Governmental discrimination, in contrast, perpetuates itself because it is backed by state coercion.

Very cute. Except that the examples of private sector discrimination he provides took government intervention to eliminate. Normally, a larger government imposing rule over a smaller one and the greater whole (nation) exposing the regional discriminatory behaviour of a smaller constituency (state or province). The free market does little to sort itself out if it can get away with a discriminatory behaviour and still turn a profit. And Flanagan, in the examples he provides, fails to acknowledge that the free-marketeers' discriminatory behaviour of the past, (which had to be beaten out of them with legislation), was rooted in practices which, once made illegal, chewed into their bottom-line: African slavery in the U.S. and imported cheap oriental labour in Canada. Once the free-marketeers were denied access to those free and cheap pools of labour they treated those they could no longer indenture as a pestilence to be eradicated.

Flanagan knows this, lest he has forgotten some of his own written works.

The point here, however, is to shine a little light on the hypocrisy. As the frat boys in the PM's office bounce around like a bunch of primates at the San Diego Zoo flinging feces at anything that presents the slightest threat to their comfort and weak grip on power, they have among them a worse example than their current target, Michael Ignatieff.

They have Tom Flanagan and he can't seem to shut up.

Flanagan's public biography is short and lacking any substantial detail. Whether this is deliberate or not on Flanagan's part it fits with the model assumed by both Canadian reform-conservatives and US movement-conservatives. While Flanagan may have no particular reason, his fellow travellers do: they would have you believe they have always been great men destined for positions of power. They would like less of their past revealed because it would underscore parts of their lives which would ring negative in a world of valence politics.

The truth is, Flanagan's personal history weaves through a significant era of US and Canadian politics and his positioning in academic institutions on either side of the Canada-US border at particular times tells a story in itself.

Flanagan was raised in Illinois in a politically conservative upper-middle class family. As he was coming out of high-school the US was entering a phase of its existence which can only be described as tumultuous. Flanagan would have been subject to the US Selective Service System after his 18th birthday. Except that, like Dick Cheney, neither volunteering for US military service nor being available for conscripted duty was in Flanagan's cards.

As US involvement in Viet Nam expanded and the US Army started demanding more troops, the young men of the priviledged conservative white community found ways to avoid military service altogether. Educational deferments bought a minimum of 4 years of time - if one's parents could afford to keep their progeny in college, and Flanagan was a product of the social and economic caste that flocked to the universities as a means to avoid donning a uniform.

As the US draft cycled up and Viet Nam became the war of the less priviledged, Selective Service regulations were changing. As Flanagan's educational deferment would have expired his recent marriage would have made that deferment permanent, until Lyndon Johnson issued an Executive Order rescinding exemptions for married men.

And then, if the stories are to be believed, another American, E. Burke Inlow, recruited Flanagan to the University of Calgary. And then Flanagan, a year after the draft age in the US was expanded to include married males to age 35, was on the other side of the US border.

When Flanagan came to Canada he admits to knowing nothing of the place. Yet here he was, just as the Viet Nam war was at full heat, the same place US draft-dodgers and deserters found safe haven.

Coincidence?

It depends on whether you believe in coincidences.

And now he is manipulating our politics. An American conservative who imported his political beliefs and training.

And the shit-flinging primates in Harper's office have the unmitigated gall to call any other person a carpet-bagger.

* Sarcasm, for those who didn't catch it.

Describing the fanatical mind

You simply don't let a written line of this level of magnificence go unrecognized.

The expression “humanist theocracy” (or “atheocracy”, as SUZANNE so nitwittedly puts it) is a contradiction that would only make sense to someone whose logic circuits were rotten with syphilis or fried by religious fanaticism.

Well done, JJ!! Just before I snorted coffee out of my nose, I was thinking about how it's time I got a new keyboard.

Chalk River, medical isotope shortages and a government running on borrowed fumes

It should be interesting to see how this plays out... the second time around.

The first time it gave the Harperites an excuse to interfere with Canada's nuclear regulator, and not in a small way.

From Harper standing in Parliament announcing that the Chalk River reactor was "safe", simply because he said so, to the exposure of a manufactured crisis, the ultimate aim of the last very same event was to remove the regulatory requirements and, ultimately, reduce the level of safety in one of the world's oldest nuclear reactors.

In the six weeks it took the media to dig into the story and come up with facts not tainted by the Harper spin factory something else became obvious. The Harper government was hell-bent to serve their big-business buddies and fire Linda Keen.

Now they have their own hack in place, a cold reactor and the flow of molybdenum-99 (the medical isotope around which all of this is spinning) halted.

Let's see what the Harperites do now.

Kenguru

IMHO, for people in wheelchairs, this is a real boon.

For wheelchair users who would like to get about town without assistance, this could be exactly what you are looking for. You enter the Kenguru on an automatically lowering ramp, which comes down as the back door opens at the press of the key.

Made in Hungary, the Kenguru is a small vehicle that drivers can roll into without leaving their wheelchairs.

Designed by Zsolt Varga, Kenguru is small, stylish and cheerful vehicle whose contours are similar to those of a Smart car. But the resemblance stops there. Made to hold one passenger in a manual wheelchair, the Kenguru doesn't have doors or seats. To get in, the driver opens the extra large back hatch and rolls inside while remaining seated in his wheelchair, which automatically locks into place inside the car. A joystick instead of a steering wheel means that drivers with limited arm mobility can comfortably control the vehicle.

The Intelligence Olympics

From my cherished friend, Helmut, with thanks —

I heard it first from a Jordanian and spread it to the IDF DMI and the Egyptians. When I told it in Syria I said it was about the Mossad.

Long ago and Far Away ----

The Olympic Committee decided to hold a special series of games to know which was the world's best inelligence service.

A lot of countries sent teams often from both their military and "civilian" services. Each team was composed of a captain and two sergeants. They all assembled on the island of Cyprus (no idea why). There were various events and they eventually came to the ultimate and most heavily weighted event which was to be a kind of treasure hunt.

They all went up into the mountains in the western part of the island where there are a series of parallel ridges covered in pines and separated by deep terrain compartments. They assembled in front of a wood line. In front of the teams there were several UN referees in white coveralls with blue helmets and a stack of cages in each of which there was a white rabbit. The head UN boffin held up a rabbit and said that it would be released into the woods behind him and that after 15 minutes the first team chosen at random would go in after it. The team that came back with a live rabbit in the shortest time would win the event.

The rabbit went in. 15 minutes passed and the KGB team went in after it. They could be heard thrashing about and eventually emerged with the rabbit in 35 minutes.

The next team was the French DGSE. They came back with the rabbit in 10 minutes. (The rabbit looked strangely content).

Next was the turn of the Mossad. They were back in in 13 minutes loudly proclaiming that they were "the best."

The CIA never found the rabbit.

Finally, it was the turn of the Syrian Mukhabarat (the secret police). A half hour passed, 45 minutes, then an hour. The UN people went in to find them. They went down one steep slope into the valley bottom, then up another rugged incline to the top of the ridge. From the height, they could see the three Syrians who were at the bottom standing in a sandy road. They had captured a large animal. The UN men crept down, hiding the while in the bushes until they were close enough to see and hear.

The Syrians had found a Nazarene donkey. (The kind with a cross marked in the fur of its back). One of the Sergeants had a grip on the head while the other sergeant beat the beast's hindquarters with a stick.

The captain was whispering to it, "Confess, confess, we KNOW you are a rabbit..."

The Gay Agenda

Graphic pillaged from The Hand Mirror , where it was remarked that "Convincing people to mind their own business might be harder than taking over the world and making it fabulous."

Happy International Day Against Homophobia !

Onward Christian soldiers

Just when you think that what you know about the George W. Bush administration's depravity, rank hypocracy and sadististic bullying masquerading as patriotic piety has hit the bottom of the barrel, someone comes along and points out that there is a whole other barrel underneath this one. Apparently Donald Rumsfeld, not content to have things like prayer meetings going on at the Pentagon and a chief of Special Forces who make Gen. Jack T. Ripper look like the moderate wing of the GOP/military axis, took it upon himself to make special title pages for the regular top secret briefing he delivered to the president and handful of others. Pages with heroic, glamorous images of America's Heroic Glamorous Defenders of Heroic Freedom Heroically Defending Freedom in Glamorous ways, overlaid with stirring passages from, yep - you guessed it - the Bible.
(Image shamelessly lifted from Jesus' General)

See them all here

Keep in mind that this was not an attempt to play to the religious rubes out there in the hinterlands or a pose adopted to curry favor with the evangelistic electorate. These covers were for super-secret executive level only reports that were circulated only to the most senior people.
One wonders what the "Prince of Peace" would make of that. One also wonders why none of these pictures were included with suitable biblical quotes:

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth

Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me.

Suffer the little children to come unto me

If you are American, write your president, your congressman, your senator, your newspaper and demand that the people responsible for starting this hideous human meatgrinder on false pretenses for their own selfish reasons be brought to trial.

Gratitude to fellow Fez enthusiast Atta J. Turk, this is all crossposted from the Woodshed.

Bullies in Blue

Who will protect us from those that are supposed to "serve and protect" us? I suppose that the woman should be grateful she wasn't tasered. It is nice to see that there are a few honest people in the system willing to do the right thing. Too bad more of them aren't cops. I fear that the bad cops who abuse their authority are giving the job such a bad name it will soon start to drive out the good ones.

This a good example of the kind of "circle the wagons" mentality that seems to exist whenever anyone questions or criticizes the cops. In a story with an otherwise happy ending in which a community drew together to make a statement against racism and the authorities eventually did the right thing, the police union just can't admit that maybe, just maybe, a couple of their members might have acted a bit hastily.

Last week (York Regional Police Chief Armand) La Barge announced at a press conference that he was recommending to the Newmarket Crown attorney that charges be withdrawn, something only the crown can do.
La Barge went even further, criticizing the thoroughness of the initial investigation that resulted in the charges, saying it was "hasty."
This sparked an angry response from York Regional Police Association president John Miskiw, who called La Barge's comments a "slap in the face" to the two officers.
Additionally, Miskiw maintains the officers did the right thing in laying the charges and La Barge was wrong in recommending they be withdrawn.

Those would be these charges and as the Star story quoted above reveals they have been dropped. It's pretty clear officers involved didn't do much of an investigation, but simply took the school principal at his word and arrested the kid that won the fight. That would be the same school principal who wanted the student in question expelled from not only his school, but from every school in the York Region and who clearly either didn't do much investigating or is a major league dumbass.

Crossposted from The Woodshed

Spinning Caesar's murder

THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT is a site worthy of your perusal. One bon-bon is "Spinning Caesar's murder", a book review by Mary Beard, who is a mavin on the era. The review is about the final book in a series on Republican Rome by T. P. Wiseman, "Remembering the Roman People Essays on Late-Republican politics and literature". Oxford University Press. £55 (US $110). 978 0 19 923976 4

This little chunk made me recall Dallas in November, for some reason:

The watching senators, several hundred of them, were at first stunned by the attack. But, as soon as Brutus turned away from the body to address them, they regained their wits and took to their heels. In their flight from the Senate house, they must have almost bumped into the thousands of people who were just at that moment pouring out of a gladiatorial show in a nearby theatre. Hearing rumours of the murder, this crowd too panicked and ran home, shouting “Bolt the doors, bolt the doors”. Meanwhile Lepidus, a leading Caesarian loyalist, left the Forum to rally the troops stationed in the city, just missing the blood-stained assassins who turned up there to proclaim their success – closely followed by three loyal slaves carrying Caesar’s body home on a litter, with such difficulty (you really need four people to carry a litter) that his wounded arms trailed over the sides. It was two days before the Senate dared to meet again, and perhaps another two before Caesar’s body was cremated on a bonfire in the Forum.

The Muldoon and the Oliphant

"The time has come," the Oliphant said,
"To talk of many things:
Of envelopes stuffed with wads of cash
And if they came with strings--
Perhaps you only beat the rap
Because the pigs were schwings*."

"But wait a bit," the Muldoon cried,
"Before we have our chat;
I have complaints to make," he said,
"Regarding Steve the Fat."
"No Hurry," said the Oliphant,
"There's always time for that...

But was that 'pasta' money used
To give Joe Clark the axe?
Is turning noodles into LAVs
A job for party hacks?
Did you stash that $300,000
To avoid a fulsome tax?"

"O weep for me," the Muldoon said:
"For all of it is lies."
With sobs and tears he socked away
His 2 million dollar prize,
And held his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

* "After years of investigating Mulroney, the RCMP never found out about his job with Schreiber or the now infamous cash payments. However, the Mounties did chauffeur Mulroney to the hotel at Mirabel Airport where he picked up the first batch of thousand dollar bills."
We still had to fork over $2.1-mil.

Kady is live-blogging the Oliphant Inquiry.

With apologies to Lewis Carroll from Creekside

The shine seems to be wearing off...

Who would say such a thing about the Stephen Harper party?

They are not good at reaching out. They are not good at broadening the tent. They are not good at getting beyond the bristling, mean way they view everyone who is an opponent. Even after their victories - they are in power, remember - the Conservatives of the Stephen Harper party, still radiate the sullenness of a party denied, a party - even though it is in power, is making the big calls, setting the agenda - nursing a sense of injury that they haven't been fully acknowledged, fully appreciated for the wonderful folks they are.

Can they not at least understand that it is precisely this attitude, more than any other factor, that has kept them frozen in the polls near the low 30s - that has denied them any measurable, sustained growth - from the moment of their first victory?

It comes mainly from the edgy, mean spirit that predominates in how they choose to present themselves. We saw it in the attempts to cut public financing for political parties last December. Any chance to kneecap their opponents and Mr. Harper's men start to salivate. It was surely present in the blitz of attack ads on Mr. Dion, which were unnecessary, and mean. Whatever those ads did to undermine the already weak Stéphane Dion is debatable. What is not debatable is how much they underlined the Conservatives', and Mr. Harper's, mean streak. There is some quality of the Conservative Party that gives the impression that they are always just about to have a temper tantrum.

Rex Murphy, that's who.

Funny... Murphy used to think Harper and his pack of rabid animals was the neatest thing since sliced bread.

But, like a kid who is completely enthralled by the bright, shiney, toy electric train when he first opened the box, Murphy has become tired and fed up with the fact that it's the same thing, going around in a circle, and he can't seem to find any track that will fit to make it bigger and better.

The Harper party will always be like the little toy train on a circular track: capable of very little and simply repeating its route.

Many of us had that figured out ages ago, Rex. We've known that Harper and his reformers were no different than the nasty southern US Republicans on which they modelled themselves. We knew it before they ever gained power.

What took you so long?

"Change is Good!" * . . . .

* To quote an old MickeyD's ad campaign.

That's why it's so exciting to see the "change" Mr. Obama has already instituted:

To play off of our friend Alison and Mike's blog posts, and per Glenn Greenwald in Salon today:

Can anyone deny what the NYT and Post are pointing out today? This is what happened this week alone in the realm of Obama's approach to "national security" and civil liberties:

Monday - Obama administration's letter to Britian threatening to cut off intelligence-sharing if British courts reveal the details of how we tortured British resident Binyam Mohamed;

Tuesday - Promoted to military commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChyrstal, who was deeply involved in some of the worst abuses of the Bush era;

Wednesday - Announced he was reversing himself and would try to conceal photographic evidence showing widespread detainee abuse -- despite the rulings from two separate courts (four federal judges unanimously) that the law compels their disclosure;

Friday - Unveiled his plan to preserve a modified system of military commissions for trying Guantanamo detainees, rather than using our extant-judicial processes for doing so.

It's not the fault of civil libertarians that Obama did all of those things, just in this week alone. These are the very policies -- along with things like the claimed power to abduct and imprison people indefinitely with no charges of any kind and the use of the "state secrets privilege" to deny torture and spying victims a day in court -- that caused such extreme anger and criticisms toward the Bush presidency.

Gee, isn't it great that we have this new President south of the 49th and everything is going to "change" for the better?

Sure it is . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

All new North American Competitiveness Council - now with "spiritual vision"

We have yet another new contender in David Emerson's "Project North America" sweepstakes.:

The Standing Commission on North American Prosperity or "N.A. 2050" for short :

"A united effort of distinguished individuals from Mexico, Canada and the USA to provide sound economic and social policy guidance to the political leaders of the three countries for the prosperity of all peoples of North America.

In the aftermath of NAFTA and the SSP initiatives, a vacuum presently exists in developing a vision for North American prosperity. The lack of such a vision jeopardizes previous achievements in building strong economic ties across North America made during the past 15 years.

The Commission will be composed of up to 200 members from the 3 countries. The Commission will be governed by a Board of Trustees of 10 members per country and an Executive Committee of 2 members per country.
The Commission will meet 3 times a year and will provide "A North American Prosperity" White paper to the leaders of the three countries upon conclusion of each session.
Membership on the Commission is by invitation only.

Gosh that sounds familiar.
Former President of Mexico Vicente Fox addressed the inaugural summit this week. A former Coca-Cola executive whose grandfather hails from Cincinatti, Fox was president of Mexico from 2000-2006 and signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership with Bush and Paul Martin in March 2005. From his May 12 keynote address to the N.A.2050 summit :

"If we are together‚ the U.S.‚ Mexico and Canada‚ no doubt we’ll be number one – the number one economy‚ the number one market‚ the number one consumer market – in the world. My dream is that we will not have a border."

This must be what got the Canadian deep integrationists all jacked up last week. Canada is falling behind, oh noes!
Canada was represented at the summit by World Bank financier Dr. Peter Appleton, a Canadian who has gone south to become president of the U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce, sponsor of N.A. 2050 :

"If ever there was a match in theory that was made in heaven, it is North America. Canada and Mexico both have the oil supply and the United States needs resources. Why can't we work together? Ronald Regan took down the Berlin wall and we've spent the last 10 years putting one up. Where's the logic in that? How is that fair?"

Um, yeah.
Of course no deep integration project is complete without the guiding presence of Robert "I am a North American" Pastor to provide that vision thing :

"The European Union called on all people to unite. North America didn't do anything like that with NAFTA. We didn't have a spiritual vision past anything other than a business contract."

Yeah, bring on that "made in heaven" North American spiritual vision.
Inaugural dinner - $1000US a plate.
.
Cross-posted from Creekside

The more things change ...

Give it a moment...

It'll come to you.

h/t Mike

Welcome Aboard . . . .

TGB welcomes intrepid BC Rail investigator BC Mary to the blogroll.

Got a question on the intricacies of the Legislature Raids of late 2003? Go here.

"All Aboard," Mary . . . .

Heh!

Indeed.

And... what Cathie points out.

One tangible point: It does little to instill confidence in the workings of the Harper government when his people are able to get attack ads out faster than infrastructure money.

In 2012...

This little nugget, which will have passed into the conservative memory hole, and which will be forever maintained by our madame industrieaux at DAMMIT JANET! should be regurgitated just in time to put the boots to Alaska's Iditarod Barbie when she announces her run for the US presidency.

You know she's going to do it. She's too stupid not to.

By the way, Ms Palin, journalism is an arts degree. Oceanography is a science degree. And yes, there is a difference.

Just because

For some reason I just felt compelled to share this. No particular reason... just because. Perhaps though it's because some mindless Harper worshiper once wrote in the comments section of this blog the words, Art is a hobby.



And would point out to running man, who will be reminded here as often as I see fit, that the reason he is able to admire a Shelby Mustang and dismiss a Model T is soley because of art. Unless the stupid sonofabitch really believes that the modern internal combustion engine is really that much different from the original.

Someone's Happy 'Bout the Results in BC . . . .

Per The Tyee:

Campbell and cabinet win third term
By Monte Paulsen May 12, 2009 11:08 pm

VANCOUVER – Premier Gordon Campbell and his entire B.C. Liberal Party cabinet have been re-elected, giving the Vancouver native who led the centre-right party from opposition to government an historic third term in office.

The Liberals had won 45 seats to the NDP’s 32 as of 11 p.m., with an additional eight ridings remaining too close to call. Among those re-elected were John van Dongen, the solicitor general who resigned in the wake of several speeding tickets, John Les, the former solicitor general who resigned over suspicious land deal, and Attorney General Wally Oppal, who ducked questions about the BC Rail sale controversy throughout the campaign.

Campbell bound triumphantly up the stairs of the gleaming new Vancouver Convention Centre – itself a controversial legacy of his party’s profligate spending in advance of the 2010 Winter Games – and pressed through an adoring crowd waiting in a glass-walled conference room.

Well, I guess Iggy's happy . . . .


(Normally, photo images are included in my posts. I could not bring myself to post one of gordo. Sorry.)

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Why is Dick Cheney on TV and not in prison?

It is interesting to see Cheney running to get in front of the cameras and claim that "torture worked". It doesn't. And even if it did, torture is immoral, illegal and uncivilized - whether it works or not is irrelevant. Arguing about whether or not torture works is like arguing about whether you can get rich making kiddie porn or whether eating live babies cures cancer (or helps wins majority governments).