Irony is not only dead, but its corpse had been desecrated

The young girl has a lovely voice, yes, but seeing Stephen Harper sing this song is like watching David Duke sing "We Shall Overcome." Someone who was disappointed we didn't get to play in the Iraq sandbox and is destroying our fiscal security to buy unnecessary stealth fighter jets should not be singing peace anthems. It is not merely distasteful,  it is hour-long-shower-scrub-with-a-wire-brush disgusting. Maybe this is his energy plan, to hook John Lennon's coffin up to a turbine and provide free electricity to the entire American continent from the resultant spinning.

He says he has his own lyrics for the song - I'll bet. Something along the lines of "Imagine there's no Liberals..." no doubt.

Personally, I'd have thought he'd be more into a different Lennon tune from a year or two earlier, though again he'd have his own lyrics... "You say you want a coalition..." or perhaps "Can't buy me Love."

Crossposted from the Woodshed

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This week on Virtually Speaking

Coming up this week on Virtually Speaking:

• Stuart Zechman | Jay Ackroyd on VS A-Z. Ongoing rants and explorations of  liberalism. This week: the Disinformation Regime|Listen live here, on Thursday, March 31 @ 8pm edt|5pm pdt | Listen here after midnight Friday, April 1.

• Evolutionary Biologist PZ Myers on Virtually Speaking w/Jay Ackroyd:  Expect current developments in science, secular society and squids. Listen live here, beginning Thursday, March 31, March 31 @ 9pm edt|6pm pdt

Also, you may have missed these excellent programs live, but you can still get them as podcasts:

• Avedon Carol and Culture of Truth on VS Sundays: a counterpoint to the Sunday morning talking heads. (What they're really saying when they're saying what they're saying):   Listen here, on or after Sunday, March 27 @ 9pm edt|6pm pdt

• Caltech astrophysicist George Djorgovski, this week on VS Science with Cosmic Log's Alan Boyle and Space Studies Institute's Robin Snelson. They'll discuss topics ranging from black holes and dark energy to the use of Second Life for science, and the future of virtual worlds. Listen here, beginning Tuesday, March 29.

• PageOne blogger Mike Rogers comes to VS Susie to talk with Susie Madrak about closeted Republicans and why he outed them. Listen here, on or after Monday, March 28 @ 9pm edt|6pm pdt

And of course, stay tuned for the big show on Sunday as Virtually Speaking Sundays:Maple Syrup Edition returns with Kevin Wood and John Baglow aka Dr. Dawg getting down and dirty to talk about the Canadian election - we will be using all the dirty words: Coalition, contempt, separatist, tax increase, Senate reform, proportional representation, sweater vest festishes and all the other assorted perversions that accompany a good discussion of Canadian politics. There will also be a feature interview with Our Man in Abiko about the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis and the Twitter-spawned publishing sensation that is #quakebook.

We will be on Sunday from 5 pm Pacific/8 pm Eastern but you might want to tune in a little early for the opening band - Glenn Greenwald (yes, that Glenn Greenwald) will be talking with Daniel Ellsberg  aka The Most Dangerous Man in America about Wikileaks and the torture of Bradley Manning beginning at 4 pm Pacific/7 pm Eastern. Listen to them Sunday night or later here.

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Inspiration . . .

AKA Dinner For One. Ya gotta love black velvet paintings . . .

At the going down of the sun ...

With condolences and respect to the family and friends of Corporal Yannick Scherrer, 1^er Battalion, Royal 22^e Régiment.

Killed due to enemy action.

Je me souviens





Relay via sat

So exquisitely tacky . . .

Elvis Presley Illuminated Guitar Collector Plate Collection

you say impeachment, I say contempt of Parliament

Let's call the whole thing off!

Apparently there are those who interpret Parliamentary law as saying that Stephen Harper is now barred from holding office due to having been found in contempt of Parliament. I'm not sure this is the case since the confidence vote was held before acceptance of the committee report finding the government in contempt could be voted on by the House of Commons. Still, a such a finding even at the committee level is significant. Certainly, the report would have been confirmed by the House, although I suspect the Conservative-dominated Senate would have sent it back to the house.
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Syria becomes serious . . .

OL' BASHAR'S BASHING his citizens, who are fed up with some 40 years of single-party (the Ba'ath party) corruption and police state. According to The Guardian's Katherine Marsh, in Damascus, they're killing people. That's Bashar, below. He's used to causing pain.

Last night there were reports that at least 23 people had been killed, some of them in Damascus, hitherto unaffected; the reports could not be independently verified. Amnesty International put the death toll around Deraa in the past week at 55 at least.

This may not cool down. There's an interesting Syrian site, ALL4SYRIA. Whoever runs it has a number of articles worthy of your attention. One, "Syria’s coming revolution?" makes the observation that

By taking to the streets, even in fairly small numbers, Syrians have crossed a ‘red line’ with their regime.

The revolution that was sparked in Tunisia has given birth to a new pan Arab-movement, a “neo-Arabism”, which privileges freedom and democratic participation of the people over ideology, sectarianism and the interest of dictators.

As we witness a rebirth of a revolutionary neo-Arabism that has infected millions from Morocco to Bahrain, we cannot ignore the birth-place of the original pan Arab movement of the past century – Syria.

• • •

A forty year old red line has been crossed and there is no turning back.

After all, they might spend the cash on pitchforks and torches

via Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars we learn that the northern wingnuts of Minnesota will not be outdone by the dairyland wingnuts of Wisconsin. Wis. Gov. Scott Walker is trying to crush unions and take away the constitutional right of working people to freely associate - hah! what a piker! a mere robber baron wannabe! Minnesota Republicans want to make it illegal for anyone on public assistance to have more than $20 cash!

On March 15, Angel Buechner of the Welfare Rights Committee testified  in front of the House Health and Human Services Reform Committee on  House File 171. Buechner told committee members, “We would like to  address the provision that makes it illegal for MFIP [one of Minnesota’s  welfare programs] families to withdraw cash from the cash portion of  the MFIP grant - and in fact, appears to make it illegal for MFIP  families to have any type of money at all in their pockets. How do you  expect people to take care of business like paying bills such as lights,  gas, water, trash and phone?”
House File 171 would make it so that families on MFIP - and disabled  single adults on General Assistance and Minnesota Supplemental Aid -  could not have their cash grants in cash or put into a checking account.  Rather, they could only use a state-issued debit card at special terminals in certain businesses that are set up to accept the card.

Which is a actually a partial surrender to all those Cadillac-driving welfare queens in Minnesota - the original bill would have barred those on assistance from getting any cash at all.
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
But remember, trying to get millionaires to pay an extra 2% in income taxes is Marxist class warfare by jealous communists who hate successful people who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. You know, scrappy entrepreneurs like Paris Hilton and all those hedge fund managers on Wall Street who earn every cent of their million-dollar taxpayer-funded bonuses.
I'm guessing the next step will be Oklahoma bringing back indentured servitude and debtor's prisons or Missouri passing the "Modest Proposal Act" requiring all families on public assistance to sell their children to the nearest rendering plant or perhaps the kindly burghers of Indiana will finally pass the "Work will make you Free" Act to provide a final solution to the poverty problem.

(crossposted, as usual, from The Woodshed)

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Keep calm and carry on

When my smart phone chimed at 3 a.m. a week ago Friday in Ontario, bringing news of a massive eathquake in Japan, I woke Hiromi. She muttered something about calling her parents in Miyagi in the morning, and went back to sleep. We’d spoken to her dad via video Skype only a few hours ago. It could wait.

Morning came, and with TV images of cars washing under a bridge like ice floes on a spring river, fishing boats perched atop buildings, entire villages reduced to mud-covered rubble. We called and called to no avail.

We knew Oji-san would have been at home in Wakayanagi, far enough inland to be safe from the deadly waves, but Oba-san was supposed to go into Sendai to attend a lecture that afternoon.

The barrage of calls from family and friends began almost at once with my parents offering to cut short their southern vacation. No need, we told them, there’s nothing to be done but wait.

I went to work long enough to fill in my boss and was sent home to wait. Hour after hour, we watched the news channels hideous pageant of the damned, like rabbits on the highway at night, unable to look away from the oncoming headlights of doom. But for us that doom would never arrive, only constantly approach. All we could do was wait, chained by distance, helpless to act.

Dozens called and emailed to express concern, sympathy, horror and support. Was there anything they could do? Did we need anything? No, there was nothing. Only to wait.

Hours of anxiety stretched into days. The kids were fed at intervals and otherwise left in the care of Nintendo and Walt Disney. I cooked, monitored the news and answered the phone while Hiromi sat glued to NHK’s Internet feed and kept up the hourly ritual of dialing through to a recording in Japan telling us our call could not be put through. Appetitie and sleep became a distant memory. I’d give in to nervous exhaustion and medicinal vodka and doze fitfully for a few hours, rising to find her still maintaining her vigil the while the 24-hour cable news drumbeat of despair rolled on.

I stumbled through work, so preoccupied I could barely string a coherent sentence together. Wednesday came and went without contact, the constant worry and not-knowing like a trapped rat trying to gnaw its way out of your terrified soul. We did our best to stay composed, knowing that the least breach of the emotional dam would mean a flood of panic.

Returning from the office early Thurday, I sat down to try to work and noticed the cold grey lemon of my father-in-law’s Skype icon had turned to bright, friendly green. His computer was back online. They had electricity. I hollered to Hiromi and she dashed to the phone.

We called, and at long last, they answered.

The waiting was over.

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The PM, the conman, the blonde hooker and the Colonel

While I've been a bit distracted this week with personal matters , I have been paying some attention to the non-Japan related news. Really, there seems to be no depth to which Stephen Harper will not sink. With the revelation that one of his former close advisors did time for fraud and is currently involved in a dubious lobbying effort to enrich his 20-something escort fiance, and the looming likelihood that his government will be found in contempt of Parliament, Stephen Harper is feeling a bit cornered. It is  doubtful that he will win his precious majority if an election is called this spring and so he has tried telling voters that the disaster in Japan was sufficient reason to delay a vote.
When we didn't buy that, he stepped up his campaign of parliamentary obstructionism (dropping over 1,000 pages of documents 15 minutes before the committee session ended, for example) to try to avoid having his government and ministers found in contempt of Parliament. Tune in next week when he tells us that us that the government being found in contempt of Parliament is an example of how Michael Ignatieff hates democracy and is just some Johnny-come-lately who is playing games with the economy and is the son of Russian aristocrats not a "real immigrant"and besides LIBYA! FREEDOM! Democracy! Whisky! Sexy! We are at War! Don't switch horses in midstream! 
And if that doesn't work, expect him to try proroguing the house again, just to "save it from itself" and delay the budget so that he can "focus on the economy and the war."

Now, having said all that, let me clarify a few things: While Stephen Harper is a lying, power-grabbing, egomaniac and he may or may not be doing it for the wrong reasons, I think he is doing the right thing on Libya.
Yes, mark the day on the calendar -- I agree with Stephen Harper on something.
I think the moral choice with regards to Libya is at this stage is intervention by the international community. Libya is not Iraq, it is not Vietnam, it is not Bahrain. The closest comparison I can think of is Spain in the 1930s. There is a brutal, corrupt, autocratic ruler. There is a viable democratic opposition engaged in a popular revolution that has shown it has the hearts and minds of the population behind it. The regime in this case is being propped up by superior military firepower. The loyalists in the Libyan armed forces are mostly mercenaries and those who have profited from their affiliation with the regime. There have been numerous defections from the military by those troops and commanders who have refused to attack their own people.
As it would have been in Spain, the moral thing to do here is to side with the people against an autocrat that would crush them and murder those who dare to dissent.
The right thing to do is to freeze all of the Colonel's assets abroad, deny him jet fuel, artillery shells and other munitions.
The right thing to do is level the playing field by arming the people in Benghazi and Tobruk and elsewhere to allow them to defend themselves.
The right thing to do is to prevent the Colonel from bombing his own people or turning his tanks and artillery on the people who seek to be free from his corrupt and brutal regime.
It isn't a matter of sending troops into a quagmire, it isn't a matter of sticking our nose in where it isn't wanted.
It is a matter of dropping a few bombs and firing a few missiles to avoid a genocide and another generation of oppressive, autocratic rule in Libya, by a man who has supported terrorism in numerous forms (the Lockerbie bombing, arming the IRA, etc etc)
Just because Stephen Harper supports it doesn't make it a bad idea.

No-Fly?

No foolin'.

Duct tape and lies . . .

Stevie gets to strap on a .45 . . .

AND HEAD TO FRANCE for the big palaver about how to build a no-fly zone. According to a CTV report, Mike Blanchfield at The Canadian Press states

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada will send CF-18 fighter jets to help enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, despite Moammar Gadhafi's ceasefire declaration.

Canada's six war planes will join an international effort authorized by the United Nations Security Council on Thursday night.

"If Col. Gadhafi does not comply with this Security Council resolution, Canadian armed forces working with other like-minded nations will enforce this resolution," Harper said.

The jets were to leave Canadian Forces Base Bagotville in Quebec as early as Friday afternoon for an air base in Italy. About 150 support staff will be joining them.

There's something righteous about enforcing resolutions that chuffs the scolding fundamentalist psyche. Consider that the French and the Brits have way more than enough 3+ generation fighters to run the show out of Egypt, they've even got enough AWAC capability to manage the show, so they'll get along just fine without our 6 F-18's. But it's good to keep up our deployment skills, even if our presence is really only required for the self-desired Stevie display.

But where's Verkuktastan?

RETHINKING SCHOOLS has a fine little game about all that North African geography which has been in the news as of late. Go visit and play: drag and drop Kyrgyzstan where it should be.

Purple Haze . . .

THE CREATOR OF "OWSLEY PURPLE", Owsley Stanley (born Augustus Owsley Stanley III), has died, age 76. According to David Pescovitz at boingboing,

Augustus Owsley Stanley III, AKA the "Bear," died in a car crash in his adopted home of Queensland, Australia today. He was 76. Between 1965 and 1967, Stanley homebrewed more than one million doses of LSD in the San Francisco Bay Area fueling a revolution in consciousness, music, art, and the counterculture. The recipe came from a copy of the Journal of Organic Chemistry he found in the UC Berkeley library. The Grateful Dead's first sound engineer, Stanley also pioneered several technologies for live sound.

According to Wikipedia, Owsley traveled with funny people:

In September 1965, Stanley became the primary LSD supplier to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters; by this point Sandoz LSD was hard to come by and "Owsley Acid" had become the new standard. He was featured (most prominently his freak-out at the Muir Beach Acid Test in November 1965) in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a book detailing the history of Kesey and the Merry Pranksters by Tom Wolfe. Stanley attended the Watts Acid Test on February 12, 1966 with his new apprentice Tim Scully and provided the LSD.

Reach out and touch someone . . .

THE TELEGRAPH has a book review by Toby Harnden of an account of the British trials in Afghanistan, "Dead Men Risen". This column is about the snipers.

Operating from a remote patrol base in Helmand, two British snipers were responsible for killing 75 Taliban fighters in just 40 days. In one remarkable feat of marksmanship, two insurgents were dispatched with a single bullet.

Apparently, the twofer is known as a "Quigley".

The Waiting

It has been, in the sense of the old Chinese curse, an interesting weekend.
The earthquake and tsunami that struck north-eastern Japan on Friday and the subsequent nuclear crisis are frightening events that hit very, very close to home for me and mine.
As many of you know, I spent many years in Japan and Mrs. Rev. Paperboy is a Japanese national. Furthermore, Sendai is pretty much her hometown and her parents live in a nearby village in Miyagi Prefecture, well inland from the city. Neither of us has had much sleep since Friday and we still have not received any word about her parents.
We are grateful for the outpouring of concern among friends and family and we thank you for your emails, phone calls, tweets, visits and other expressions of support. Pardon us if we don't respond swiftly or at all for the moment, we appreciate your kindness.
But we are still waiting.
At the moment there is still no electricity or telephone service in the affected area and we are still trying constantly to get through via telephone and email to our family there. Meanwhile, we are doing our best to keep calm and carry on.

The best thing you can do to help us right now is give money to the Red Cross (click the link or  text the word ASIA to 30333 to make a one-time donation of $5) or go out and give blood.

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Before and after . . .

ABC NEWS FROM OZ has a report organized by Andrew Kesper, that shows Google satellite pics, with a slider to see the before-and-after. Wow.

Perspectives . . .

IMGUR is an interesting ad-hoc collection of pictures. "Monstrous Discrepancies" is worthy of attention.

Sun News gots ICBMs !

David Akin wants to know what we think of the new Sun News theme and on-air graphics.

Well, let's see ... there's kind of a storyline to it, isn't there ...
An ICBM smashes into the centre of Canada and Sun News rises up out of the ashes like a .... giant 70's gyro disco ball ... which then splits the country in half, leaving the provinces to float in a grey limbo.

Did I get that right? I'm not too good with media subliminal messaging.