Florida "Out" Front Again . . . .

Once again our former home state of Florida is "out" front in the news.

Per AlterNet today:

Florida's GOP Governor to Be Outed in Explosive Documentary Released Today
By John Byrne, Raw Story | May 8, 2009

The Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, who is strongly considering a run for Senate, will be outed in a independent film being released today.

The film, Outrage, tracks the outings of prominent gay political figures, such as Crist and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman. It's being produced by Magnolia Pictures and will appear in Landmark Theaters across the country.

"Using some firsthand accounts of former sexual partners, old campaign footage (to occasionally humorous effect) and commentary from gay political media watchdogs, the film makes the case for each man's homosexuality, and presents his lifetime gay rights voting record," according to one reviewer. "In each instance, the disconnect is staggering.

"The usual suspects are all there: Craig, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, former New York mayor Ed Koch, former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, former Rep. Ed Schrock, even dusty McCarthy relic Roy Cohn."

A top Republican leader signaled Wednesday that Crist will likely enter the Senate race for the seat being vacated by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), who is quitting.






Hypocrisy thy name is repuglican . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

BC's Watershed Election

Abdelrazik vs the Government of Canada

Harper's quest to turn Canada into an outpost of apology for the worst crimes of the Bush administration continues today as the Government of Canada v. Abdelrazik shuffles into the Supreme Court - even as the UN states Canada is free to bring Abdelrazik home.

Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon in the House of Commons on Monday :

"Mr. Abdelrazik is on the list established by the United Nations Security Council as an individual with ties to al-Qaeda. Therefore, he is subject to a travel ban and an asset freeze. Our government is taking its obligations seriously and that is why we are not going to issue him a travel document to return home."

Richard Barrett, co-ordinator of the UN's Al-Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Team, which oversees the various United Nations resolutions establishing the blacklist on which Mr. Abdelrazik was placed at the request of Washington in 2006 :

"Canada is free to bring Abousfian Abdelrazik home and doesn't need to ask for permission"

Addressing the Justice Department's argument that "it is geographically impossible for [Mr. Abdelrazik] to travel from Sudan to Canada by air, land or sea without transiting through the sovereign territories (land, airspace or territorial waters) of numerous UN member states which are bound at international law to prevent such transit, " Mr. Barrett stated :

"The overflight states don't come into it and they haven't ever come into it."

Well there goes legal bullshit argument#1 of the Government of Canada vs Abdelrazik, being argued today in the Supreme Court of Canada.
This just leaves Justice Department bullshit legal argument #2 : that Abdelrazik is :

"close to Abu Zubaydah, a former lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, involved in al-Qaeda training and recruitment."

That would be Abu Zubaydah, the half-wit waterboarded 83 times to coerce a false confession linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda in order to justify the invasion of Iraq.
.
For those able to attend, the hearing today is at Supreme Court, West courtroom, 301 Wellington Street, Ottawa at 9:30am.
Wear a suit, bring pitchforks.
.
And thank you, Paul Koring at the G&M, for your ongoing excellent coverage of Abdelrazik's plight.
Update : Dr. Dawg attended Thursday and will have another post up when he gets back Friday night.
.
Cross-posted at Creekside

Someday....

Somewhere, I just want to be sitting across a table and say, "Drifty, order your favorite drink. I'm buying."

Shhh! What's That Sound ? ? ? ?

That sound would be repuglican heads exploding all over the northeastern US.

"Shoot, Martha! Them damn homosexuals are a gittin' married all over the durn place!"

From NPR this am:

Maine Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage

by The Associated Press

NPR.org, May 6, 2009 · Maine Gov. John Baldacci has signed legislation making the state the fifth in the nation to allow same-sex marriage.

Baldacci, a Democrat, signed the bill Wednesday shortly after the state Senate voted 21-13, with one absent, to approve the measure authorizing marriage between any two people rather than between one man and one woman, as state law had allowed. The House had passed the bill Tuesday.

New Hampshire legislators are also poised to send a gay marriage bill to their governor. He has not indicated whether he'll sign it.

If same-sex marriage becomes law in that state, Rhode Island would be the sole holdout in New England.

You may want to invest in some earplugs.

Those exploding head noises are apparently going to get quite annoying.

Snicker.

Chuckle.

Chortle . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Start corrupt...

Stay corrupt.

The Harper party has a new way of counting ballots. (Emphasis mine)

Federal Conservative party president Don Plett rejects criticism that the new system used to determine whether sitting MPs should face a nomination challenge was undemocratic.

Plett said 94,000 ballots were mailed nationally to party members in ridings with an incumbent, asking them whether they wanted a nomination race in their constituency. The mail-out included Calgary West, where lawyer Donna Kennedy-Glans wanted to challenge longtime MP Rob Anders.

Two-thirds approval was required to trigger a battle, while an unreturned ballot was counted as a no under new rules adopted by the Conservative party's national council in March. In the past, if people wanted to challenge a nomination, they generally could after an interview, Plett said.

"I find it very, very strange that somebody would even suggest that that is not democratic," Plett said.

Of course Plett would find that strange, particularly since the two-thirds approval requirement is hoisted out of Robert's Rules of Order and then promptly corrupted to favour the incumbent.

A two-thirds vote means two-thirds of the votes cast, ignoring blanks which should never be counted.

A mail out ballot, not returned in time for the tellers to count it, is considered a blank.

Starting the process in a corrupted manner simply means they'll continue to try it further on up the line, when it has a more direct impact on more than card-carrying Harperites.

Update: Fairness dictates that I point out that the Liberals aren't better than the Harperites on this issue. From comments over at Canadian Cynic we get the word from a Liberal party member.

... we were told that Liberal incumbents would also be protected. Sure, they had to meet some minimal requirements as outlined here but it was anticipated that every incumbent could easily pass the test.

In the case of the Liberal Party it's not just sitting members who are protected, it's everyone who stood in the last election and still wants to be the party nominee.

Sure enough, the Hill Times has the details.

The difference, (and there is one), is that the Conservatives call themselves a "grassroots" party, and that is patently untrue. They're a party of "inners" - if you ain't one of the good ole boys, you ain't gettin' in.

What is more heinous however, is the attempt to demonstrate a democratic process which truly is no such thing. For Plett, or any other Conservative, to suggest that using a two-thirds majority rule and then assigning unreturned ballots (blanks) to any part of the question is not a corrupted process is demonstrably dishonest.

Why not just announce that incumbents would go unchallenged and be done with it? Going through a public exercise in corruption shows just how stupid they actually are.

H/T Accidental Deliberations

SPP : Manufacturing Content

Four collaborating alumni of the Task Force on the Future of North America are duking it out in the pages of the Globe and Mail over how best to hasten North American deep integration. At issue is the inclusion of Mexico, long considered by Team Canada to be a usurper of Canada's rightful pride of place in America's heart.

Team Canada, represented by John Manley and Gordon Giffin : Canada is more special to the US than Mexico.

Team Mexico/US, represented by Andrés Rozental and Robert Pastor : No, you aren't - try harder.

Good thing RevDave is here to guide us safely through the towering clichés and treacherous platitudes.

Incongruity part 2. "The Box"

How does one link the facade of Stephen Harper with an Italian ice cream advertisement?

Easy. Neither of them represent reality.

Inasmuch as the depiction of two people committing a "sin" against Catholic church policy is no more than an attempt grab your attention for another purpose, the public presentation of Harper is an attempt to shift your focus away from the real person.

Harper is depicted by his supporters and handlers as a confident, thoughtful, tough individual: A guy with some kind of beautiful mind who cuts through the crap with frank talk.

Except that, just like the ice cream ad, it's a purpose created illusion.

Leaders with confidence don't micro-manage. Leaders with confidence don't fill ante-rooms with pictures of themselves.

As the right-wing screech machine went into overdrive at the fact that Barack Obama used a teleprompter, they conveniently "forgot" that the hero who was sitting in the cab of their international train-wreck, at a leaders debate during the 2004 presidential election may have been nothing more than a sock-puppet mouthing the words provided by others to questions directed at him.

Teleprompters are nothing new. Most prominent politicians use them when making a speech in order to actually deliver as close to the copy which has been handed out to the audience. Obama, unlike many past politicians, is willing to wave off the copy in front of him and actually tell you what he's thinking.

Not so, Stephen Harper. Harper needs a teleprompter to "stay on message". Everything he does is scripted. The object is to make sure Harper says nothing and does nothing to reveal the true nature of the beast.

Harper is highly paranoid. Confident, thoughtful and tough? Not so much. When Harper lost the 2004 election he vanished - for months. When he finds himself trapped with a difficult question he demonstrates quite clearly that he cannot think on his feet; rather than outwit his opponents he engages in personal attacks and smears. When caught out in an interview, without scripted answers, he utters outrageous statements you could drive a frigate through. (Lest you haven't figured out that his advice on stock market bargains was more than a little out-to-lunch.)

And now we get the real story of Harper from one who was there when "the message" machine failed, via Dr. Dawg.

Have an ice cream cone and go read.

Incongruity part 1

At the risk of making Terry O'Reilly something of a personal hero, (OK... I think the man is brilliant, but that's beside the point), I see something here that may well be a deliberate attempt to create a controversy.

It's an advertisement for ice cream... but until you get past the picture, a rather metro-sexual depiction of a priest hoisting the bare leg of a woman portraying a nun across his naked abdomen, you probably don't care what product the ad is trying to sell. Your interest is in the picture and its unsubtle incongruities.

Priest, nun, sex.... perhaps shock, but to most of us, humour.

Terry O'Reilly would have a blast with this one, because if this plays out the way I think it's going to, the marketing agency that put it together has just taken this lesson, this one and this one, and pulled together either a horrible mistake or, something I suspect, a brilliant maneouvre to get people to focus on their brand.

What actually attracted my attention was the title of JJ's post. There has already been a complaint about the ad and at least one magazine refuses to run it (controversy building), and we all wait with bated breath to see if that screechy right-wing defender of rapist Catholic priests, Bill Donohue, reacts with his usual outrage at someone mocking the trappings of his sometimes religion (full-time political action "charity").

And, the marketer has caught Donohue, (and all those like him), in a trap.

If Donohue ignores the ad on the basis that the marketer is just trying to draw him in for the benefit of an advertising spectacle, he fails in his mission to defend the sanctity of Catholic church icons and symbols. (Portraying sex between a man of the cloth and a virginal nun? Face to face? Wearing their now askew churchy stuff? Blasphemy! When priests have sex it's done differently!!)

If he reacts with his usual hyperbolic eruption he'll have played right into the hands of the advertiser. Antonio Federici, a name one might associate with the fashion industry, will be spotlighted exactly the way the marketer wanted it to be.

You don't have to take my word for it. You simply have to read what the company itself has to say. (When you get there, click on "News".) Antonio Federici ice cream, recently introduced to Britain needs to get the word out:

It will be supported by what is described as a "guerilla opera" campaign, provocative advertising and sampling activity.

What better way to get the word out than have a bunch of howling religious wingnuts do it for them?

So far, it seems to be working. Ice cream anyone?

Failure to learn stereotypes endangers teen bigot

If this kid was any kind of really serious bigot, he'd have looked past the immediate stereotype of asian immigrants as studious bookworms and looked at the older "all those people know kung fu" stereotype or the even older "godless communists for whom human life has no value" stereotype or the even older "all those people are inscrutable opium-peddling crime lords" stereotypes and steered clear. What is our nation coming to when we can't we even educate our bigots in proper racial stereotyping? I blame multiCULTuralism and LIEbrals and OMIGOD there are ChiComs under the bed! It's Mao and Ho Chi Minh! I think Fu Manchu sent them! Run for your lives!AAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!


Huh? Wha...unhhhh..Where am I? What just happened?
Sorry, I think I was possessed by the spirit of Ezra Levant or Kathy Shaide or Miller Freeman or James Phelan or something for a moment there, I hope I didn't get any bile on you. Where was I? Oh yeah, the ignorant teen bigot who got pwned. I first learned of this story a few days ago and I can't say the subsequent release of further information has done much to change my opinion. The young Korean-Canadian boy should get some sort of medal for showing restraint and not hospitalizing the nitwit bully:

"He had heard his white classmate throw an angry racial slur in his direction after an argument during a gym class game of speedball, and now the student was shoving him backward, refusing to retract the smear.
The white student swung first, hitting the 15-year-old with a punch to the mouth.
The 15-year-old heard his father's voice running through his head: Fight only as a last resort, only in self-defence, only if given no choice, and only with the left hand.
His swing was short and compact, a left-handed dart that hit the white student square on the nose.
The nose broke under his fist, igniting a sequence of events - from arrest to suspension to possible expulsion - that has left the Asian student and his family wondering whether they are welcome in this small, rural and mostly white community north of Toronto, one that has been touched by anti-Asian attacks in the past."

And his schoolmates deserve the same for walking out in support when he was suspended over the incident.

On Monday, 400 of his fellow students, wearing black in solidarity and carrying signs of support, walked out of Keswick High School to rally in protest in front of their school.
Organizer Mathew Winch, a Grade 12 student, said the school has fewer than 10 Asian students, but everyone wanted to stand up against bullying and racism. The story even hit the front page of local newspapers.
After the public outcry, the York Regional Police hate crimes unit reopened the case. Although the other student has not been charged, further charges are possible, a spokesman said yesterday.

And grudging kudos to the York School Board for doing the right thing in the end, even if it took them awhile to get around to it and they were backed into a corner by the students of Keswick High School, their parents and the media. Let just hope the local crown prosecutor sees things the same way.

However, aside from the obvious appeal of the "bully-finds-out-the-hard-way-that-Clark-Kent-is-Superman" angle of the story, there was another aspect of it that caught my eye. This family of recent immigrants clearly understand Canada and the essentials of the Canadian ideal better than a few people around Keswick (and a lot of blogging tories).

The day after the fight, an older cousin of their son's antagonist approached him in the school cafeteria and uttered a similar slur, compounding their sense of despair.
"He said, 'You punched my cousin you Chinese fuck,' " the 15-year-old said. That student was overheard by a teacher and suspended.
His father explains that the easiest course would be to move somewhere else and get a fresh start for his son. But he can't do it.
"I don't want to run away. If another Asian kid comes to this school, what happens to him? Will he run into problems? Will they think they can just kick him out? I don't want to set that example," he said.
"Personally, for my kid, I should move. But as a Canadian I cannot move."

How's that for "Canadian" Raphael?

(quoted material taken from the Globe and Mail)

CSIS agents secretly interrogated Abdelrazik

in a Sudanese prison in October of 2003 after he was jailed "at the request of mysterious 'Canadian' authorities", newly released government documents show.

A February 2008 Foreign Affairs briefing note to Maxime Bernier confirms :

"We were not informed of his arrest until November 2003, when Sudanese authorities advised us he was detained at the request of the government of Canada (please see attached memo for more detail)."

Unfortunately we don't know which mysterious Canadian authority because that attached eight page memo obtained by NDP MP Paul Dewar has "every single word, including the page numbers, blacked out."

Not us, says CSIS, insisting CSIS "does not, and has not, arranged for the arrest of Canadian citizens overseas."

So how did you know he was there then? Paul Koring at the G&M reasonably asks - especially as Foreign Affairs claims not to have known he'd been arrested until a month later in November.

Later today Dewar will attempt to force a motion asking for Abdelrazik to be brought before the foreign affairs committee. The motion will fail because the Cons have shown they will go to extraordinary lengths to keep him from coming home, presumably at least in part to protect "mysterious Canadian authorities".

5pm Update : In comments, Skdadl and Frank point out that my link to Koring's G&M article is a rewrite from last night's original, which contained these two now missing additional paragraphs :

"Although the most recently obtained documents confirm another glaring discrepancy in the claims made by various government agencies involved with Mr. Abdelrazik, a review of thousands of pages of document in The Globe's possession shows that not everyone in the Foreign Affairs ministry was unaware of Mr. Abdelrazik's imprisonment.

In an Oct., 16, 2003, e-mail marked “secret,” officials of the intelligence unit of Foreign Affairs note that CSIS agents will pass on details of their then just-completed interrogation of Omar Khadr in Guantanamo and planned to “send two officers to Sudan next week to interview Abdelrazik.” "

Skdadl is reminded of Arar. Yes.

In 2002 at Bagram prison, a 15 year old Omar Khadr was shown photographs of Arar.

On January 2009 at a military commission hearing in Guantanamo Bay: "[FBI]special agent Robert Fuller told Khadr's war-crimes hearing that the young Canadian was not immediately able to name Arar, but did say he looked familiar."

He looked familiar. On such evidence hangs the lives of men.

This is not a drill...

This is operational.

In Spain.

This piece of work was making strategic decisions for the United States

Uh, with all due respect, Nazi Germany never attacked the homeland of the United States.

Former US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice
30 April, 2009

Which could be interpreted as another Rice lie or, as I believe, the response by someone whose depth of education is so lacking that she should never have been permitted through the front doors of the State Department.

Between December 16th and December 25th, 1941, Nazi Germany dispatched five type IX U-boats to the waters off the United States. They took up stations inside US territorial waters. In the months that followed they sat off the east coast of the United States, in places like New York Harbor; Cape May, New Jersey; right off Cape Hatteras and inside Rhode Island Sound.

On the night of January 14th, 1942, the German submarine U-123, inside US territorial waters and watching the headlights of cars on the Rhode Island shore, sank the Panamanian-registered tanker Norness. It was the second ship to have been sunk in what was officially known to the Nazi regime as Paukenschlag - a deliberate and directed attack on the United States intended to cut off their supply of vital oil.

This attack by Nazi Germany on the homeland of the United States resulted in 259 ships lost to German torpedoes. In the six months of Operation Drumroll, the German U-boats sank more tonnage within sight of the US east coast than the Japanese did from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the end of the Battle of Midway.

Rice needs to do some reading. Try Torpedo Junction by Homer H. Hickam, Jr.

Every time the Bushies open their mouths....

Modern Times . . .

You have to see this. American business eats its own. It's a YouTube chunk, "Businessman has meltdown in hotel lobby". If it was BC, the dude would've been tasered medium-rare.

XKCD, again

XKCD proclaims itself to be a "webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language". IMHO, it's delightfully oblique.

"This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It To Surrender"

Happy 90th birthday Pete Seeger!

I've had the privilege of seeing Pete Seeger perform twice and as I've often said, I'm glad he's on our side. Give him five minutes in front of a crowd and he can make them do just about anything he wants. Thankfully, he has always used this power for good. While Woody Guthrie was a rambling, gambling, hard-travelling, hard-drinking guy who collected a handful of wives in his time and whose guitar "killed fascists", his travelling partner, Pete Seeger was a teetotalling Quaker Unitarian pacifist who married a Japanese girl during World War Two and did time briefly for refusing to name names to Joe McCarthy. The insigna on his banjo said "this machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender."
As I reckon these things, he's probably one of the greatest living Americans. Happy Birthday Pete!

For a few videos and other material, you can stop by the Woodshed. For more interviews go here,and knowing all his history, if this latest work of his doesn't bring a tear to your eye, then the problem is with you, not Seeger.

For more music tune into Radio Woodshed, where I'll be playing Pete Seeger stuff all day long.

The rule of law trumps Cheney's yapping

The Obama administration opens the manacles of the US criminal justice system and accomplishes something the Bush administration couldn't do by wiping its feet on the US constitution.

"Without a doubt, this case is a grim reminder of the seriousness of the threat we as a nation still face," Attorney-General Eric Holder said in a statement.

"But it also reflects what we can achieve when we have faith in our criminal justice system and are unwavering in our commitment to the values upon which the nation was founded, and the rule of law."

Ali al-Marri, who was the last remaining "enemy combatant" held on US soil, faces a maximum of 15 years in jail after admitting he conspired to provide material support to al-Qa'ida. He will be sentenced on July 30. It was not clear how much credit he would be given for time already served.

"He asked for his day in court, and he got his day in court with all the constitutional protections," Marri's lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz, said. "It's all he wanted."

And then listen to Rachel Maddow as she underlines the most significant point of Ali al-Marri's criminal prosecution. (Once the obnoxious little ad is over slide forward to minute 7)

As Michael Isikoff points out, the guilty plea of Ali al-Marri opens the doors for other prosecutions, not through the Bush/Cheney manufactured military commissions, but within the criminal justice system; Not with dubious confessions obtained through torture, but from the testimony of eyewitnesses.

While the volume keeps getting cranked up in some quarters demanding that Obama prosecute members of the Bush administration for knowingly and intentionally engaging in illegal acts, (not to mention immoral at a hundred different levels), everyone needs to be aware that it's probably far too early to go wading in that pool.

Obama is no idiot. As the memos continue to be released and the facts continue to accumulate, Obama will continue to hold off until such a time as the evidence is overwhelming, any defence would be ineffective, and screeching remnants of the Bush cargo culture (Limbaugh, Malkin, et al) have so completely impeached themselves that the demand for prosecution of Bush administration principals will suit both the popular need for cleansing and occur in a favourable political climate.

There will be prosecutions. Just, not now. They will happen when the current cheerleaders of those who perpetrated crimes have no audience, and instead of energetically defending their Bush/Cheney heros they are forced to hang their heads and mutter in their own defence, "We didn't know."

One More Reason to Dislike iggy . . . .

If BC Voters need yet another reason to dislike/distrust iggy, check out this morning's "Early Edition" with Rick Cluff at the 2:11:30 mark.* (Requires Real Player, which I took pains to download, but that's a whole 'nuther story.)

If you don't want to bother, here's the verbatim transcript as per moi:

Pluffmaster: "Do you support the BC Liberal's carbon tax idea?"

iggy: "I'm not gonna wade into provincial politics. That's for the BC voter to decide."

Pluffmaster: "Aw, come on. It's just you and me." (chuckling)

iggy: "Look, I don't think it's any secret that a federal Liberal wants Gordon Campbell to win re-election. I think I can go that far, but I won't be drawn further."

'Nuff said, ya'll** ? ? ? ?


*Note to RossK: See, I wasn't listening to the Goodship Watercarrier and his "Illegible Boys" - were you?
**sorry, my Southern roots slipped out.

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

When Condi comes to Calgary

on May 13 to give the keynote speech at The School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, or as they like to call it "The School", will anyone ask her about this quote she gave to students at Stanford :

"The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations, under the Convention Against torture. So that’s — and by the way, I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency. That they had policy authorization subject to the Justice Department’s clearance. That’s what I did….

The United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture. And so, by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture."

Q has the video.

We're doomed

A tip of the hat to my old TESL foxhole buddy Ms. Mays - You're loud, crude and obnoxious and I love you a ton. We miss you over here.

crossposted from the Woodshed