I know what Stevie doesn't want anyone to know...

So does the Chief of Defence Staff.

H/T James

Bullsh_t . . . .

For lack of a better term, the post title says it all.

(Speaking of gas, Dave.)

The Toronto Star reports from Copenhagen:

U.S. cuts deal with dairy farmers to lower methane gas emission

December 16, 2009 COPENHAGEN – The United States is counting on cows to help save the planet.

U.S. Secretary Tom Vilsack announced an agreement with the American dairy industry Tuesday to reduce the industry's greenhouse gas emissions 25 per cent by 2020, mostly by convincing farmers to capture the methane from cow manure that otherwise would be released into the atmosphere. The plan requires more farmers to buy an anaerobic digester, which essentially converts cow manure into electricity.

"This historic agreement, the first of its kind, will help us achieve the ambitious goal of drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions while benefiting farmers," Vilsack said at the U.N. climate talks. "(The) use of manure technology is a win for everyone."

Leave it to a government official to spread the sh_t around and make it smell like roses.

harperco ought to jump on this one quickly.

His reformaTories have cornered the market on that commodity . . . .


(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

More cover-ups for the higher-ups

My guess would be that, as in most government scandals, the big problem here is not going to be the initial misconduct by some underling, but the subsequent bullshittery by the government in trying to hush the whole thing up.

Obviously, at some stage someone in the chain of command figured out a mistake had been made in handing over prisoners to the Afghans, and obviously they reported it to someone higher up who was eventually told it was not a problem, when it very much was a problem. The question is: Who was the amoral idiot who decided it wasn't a problem to hand prisoners over to be tortured, and how high up in the government ranks are they? Given the steps being taken to squelch this investigation, I think we can assume it was someone fairly senior, possibly Cabinet level.

The government is doing its best to delay things until they can appoint a new commissioner to the Military Police Complaints Tribunal when the current chairman, Peter Tinsley, reaches the end of his term in December. And they will probably manage to succeed and appoint some useful idiot to shut down the inquiry once and for all.

Which will probably lead the whistleblowers to take the case to the public in bigger and better ways. Eventually, even if it has to wait for a change of government, the truth will out, but it isn't going to set anybody free in this case, except in the sense that they will be free from being tied down to a government job anymore.

The enemy of my religious dogma is my friend

Or, it's difficult to accept that a Roman Catholic would actually accept anything stated by the church of Henry VIII.

Geez, SUZANNE, the truth is, if you really wanted to be a man, with all the privileges your religion grants that gender, you could be. It is, after all, a choice. All you have to do is change and become one.

It's that easy.

There are some days when "Christians" really make me want to piss on their shoes.

More, and better, at Montreal Simon.

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....

Don't step in that. It'll stick to your shoe.

Never has so much horse shit been cobbled together on one page by someone who has no clue what they're actually talking about.

She's unqualified. Anti woman. A "right-wing man in a skirt and fetching up-do." Feminists went apoplectic when Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was chosen as Senator John McCain's running mate. The same feminists who keep saying we must have more women in politics suddenly changed their minds. We need more women--just not that kind of woman.

That's just the start and it get progressively worse from there.

Ultimately, feminism -- in its current manifestation as a hodge-podge of left-wing positions on abortion, gender quotas and family law -- has become a brittle, insecure ideology. Nothing highlights this better than the animus feminists reserve for a woman like Sarah Palin.

Not just feminists, Andrea. Anyone who recognizes abuse of authority, those of us who abhor censorship, anybody who expects an elected representative to actually represent those who sent them to their office.

In short, Andrea, you're trying to camouflage what Palin really is - another incompetent, narrow-minded, religion-driven, fundamentalist right-wing freak. You're trying to use the "feminist" argument because you can't defend her on her record, which quite frankly, sucks.

But if you need your little strawman addressed, I'll hand you over to Jane who quite ably, (and far too politely, in my view), leaves your ridiculous diatribe in a smoking heap on the ground.

Take it away Jane.

Always wanted a pony? General Natynczyk will give you a pony.

The Harper government and the senior leadership of the Canadian Forces have been roundly criticized in the past for failing to communicate the truth about conditions in Afghanistan. Boris pointed out that when the senior leadership of government downplay the indicators which suggest that serious problems exist, it is intellectual dishonesty and done with a clear intent to hide the truth from the public.

There was some speculation that, as Rick Hillier stepped down and General Walter Natynczyk took over as Chief of Defence Staff, that there might be a chance to provide unsanitized information surrounding the Afghanistan mission. Well, the speculation is over and it looks like the same Harper standard is to be maintained as General Natynczyk took the opportunity to blow sunshine up everybody's ass in the face of data which makes his statement worth nothing. (Emphasis mine)

The new head of Canada's military has completed a five-day visit to Afghanistan and offered a uniquely cheerful assessment of the security situation that contrasts sharply with the grim data.

The upbeat prognosis from Canada's new chief of defence staff that the violence is holding steady in Kandahar province this year flies in the face of independent analysis documenting a 77 per cent surge in Taliban attacks.

That increased violence was underscored Sunday in a pair of devastating insurgent strikes.

Nine U.S. soldiers were reported killed as militants launched a fiery assault on a remote outpost, and 24 Afghans died in a separate suicide blast on a police checkpoint in the province next to Kandahar.

The comparatively sunny estimation from Gen. Walter Natynczyk after his tour of Afghanistan was also at odds with the increasingly bleak portrait being painted by Canada's allies.

The Pentagon has cited a 40 per cent increase in insurgent attacks in eastern areas of Afghanistan where U.S. forces operate, and notes that it is now losing more soldiers here than in Iraq.

Anyone else want to weigh in?

Britain's defence secretary calls Afghanistan a generational struggle that will require a foreign troop presence for many years.

Local businesspeople say they're increasingly discouraged about the security situation in their city, and fear that economic gains made after 2001 are being wiped away.

As Ottawa continues to be a font of "good news" Afghanistan is spinning into oblivion. Natynczyk has plenty of experience in Afghanistan so he would be fully aware of how things are actually going. That makes this even more curious.

"We're generally along the same lines as we have been the past few years," Natynczyk told a news conference at Kandahar Airfield.

"Looking at the statistics, we're just a slight notch - indeed an insignificant notch - above where we were last year."

Yeah?! I wonder if Natynczyk was in the right country because everyone else in Afghanistan is seeing something completely different.

According to a prominent security firm that compiles insurgent incidents reported by NATO and local security forces, that insignificant notch is actually a 77 per cent increase in attacks from 2007.

Statistician Sami Kovanen at Vigilant Strategic Services Afghanistan says the number of assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, suicide strikes, mine explosions, and mortar assaults by pro-Taliban insurgents through July 6 was 532 incidents this year, compared to only 300 last year.

That coincides with what the United Nations is reporting.

So what do Canadian defence officials have to say when they are shown the numbers? (Hang on to your ass, this gets really good.)

They note that the economy has grown since 2001, far more children are going to school, and human rights have expanded exponentially since the days of the Taliban.

But when asked about security, their optimism appears based on anecdotal evidence; some locals have tipped them off about the location of a roadside bomb, they've seen a traffic jam - a sure sign of activity in Kandahar city, a bazaar has reopened and there are new businesses.

Rrrriiiight! A bazaar opens and a traffic jam happens therefore the economy is expanding. And as for talking to the locals, perhaps those Canadian defence officials should have done a little more of that to see how their observations stacked up.

A well-known Kandahar businessman offers some anecdotal evidence of his own.

"I don't see businesses opening," says the restaurateur, shaking his head when asked if things are getting better in the city.

"All I see are businesses closing."

And as for the exponential increase in human rights, Canadian defence officials and the new Chief of Defence Staff should talk to a few of the organizations that have compiled statistics which tell a completely different story.

From Womankind Worldwide:

Seven years after the US and the UK ‘freed’ Afghan women from the oppressive Taliban regime, our report proves that life is just as bad for most, and worse in some cases. Maternal mortality rates ? one in six women dies in childbirth ? are the highest in the world alongside Sierra Leone. Afghanistan is the only country in the world with a higher suicide rate among women than men.

You can read the juicy details in this (pdf) report. Terri Judd of the Independent read it and reported under the title Women's lives are worse than ever:

The statistics in the report from Womankind, Afghan Women and Girls Seven Years On, make shocking reading. Violent attacks against females, usually domestic, are at epidemic proportions with 87 per cent of females complaining of such abuse – half of it sexual. More than 60 per cent of marriages are forced.

A more recent report from the New England Journal of Medicine this past May paints the same picture: An increase in self-immolation among women because nothing in their lives is improving.

Then this from Canada's new CDS:

The defence chief says he's encouraged that the Taliban no longer even bother trying to muster up forces for conventional battlefield fights because they are crushed every time.

"They are not 10 feet tall," Natynczyk said of the enemy.

"They know that if they take us on directly, they'll either lose or they'll have to flee."

Now there's a dangerous metric. One would expect a full general to be a little more careful tossing that kind of statement around.

The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese never won one major engagement in head-to-head combat with US forces. Not one. Shall we discuss the results?

Mushrooms. Natynczyk is feeding the mushrooms.

It's called J4G

A new abstinence-only magazine targeting teens with some of the same old bullshit.

Information on Plan B starts out accurately enough but then morphs into the lies told by the religious fundie crowd. They then make the now thoroughly debunked abortion-breast cancer link.

And if you've screwed up and, well, you know, done the deed... NO PROBLEM! Just declare your Second Virginity.

Pregnant from a rape? No problem. The worst is over. Have the baby. Anyway, you probably brought it on yourself for not dressing in accordance with the instructions on page three. Once you've given birth, declare your Second Virginity.

Herpes. Of course it's a problem but in quoting the statistics from the US Centers for Disease Control they conveniently left out the fact that the incidence of Genital Herpes has been declining over the past decade.

The overarching message for teens: If you have sex before marriage you will -
- get pregnant
- contract a sexually transmitted infection
- not have great sex after marriage

Unless you declare a Second Virginity.

The information on contraception is... let's see here... complete bullshit! Get this. The writers of this crap report that even sexual sterilization doesn't work. No statistics or studies - just that it doesn't work.

Let's just say that it works better than abstinence-only education.


H/T Jezebel

David Frum crawls out of the hole...

Six more weeks of Republican bullshit follows.

Yes, Barbara's little boy just can't hold back. His latest lament? Young people, especially non-white young people don't seem to understand that voting Republican is good for them, even if it's really only good for "not them".

Maybe that's because the prime constituency of today's Republican party is a bunch of fat, balding, older white males of dubiously acquired wealth who believe they are entitled to bang the younger members of their staff on the office desk.

Young people react to the success or failure of the first politicians they know. The twentysomethings of the 1980s, for example, associated the Democratic Party with the malaise of Jimmy Carter — and the GOP with the triumphs of Ronald Reagan. Today's Republican Party is associated with a wave of disappointments and embarrassments: Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, congressional corruption scandals, the mortgage crisis.

Disappointments and embarrassments?! Who the fuck is this clown trying to have on?

Those weren't disappointments and embarrassments. Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick! Those were deliberate misappropriations of the truth, mammoth failures of government, premeditated intent to defraud taxpayers and a nod to the button-down hucksters and thieves operating a blatant Ponzi-scheme out in the open. You could call them demonstrations of incompetence, collusion, self-enrichment by the wealthy, cronyism, unchecked greed, ad infinitum, but disappointments and embarrassments? It was a wave alright. And it was filled with great honkin' pieces of nasty deadheads just below the surface. By the way, who wrote the "Axis of Evil" line?

The Republican Party has become increasingly identified with conservative Christianity.

No shit? Frum might want to talk to Karl Rove about that. Perhaps it's because the loudest and most repugnant of the Christian conservative movement identifies strongly with the Republican party.

Younger Americans are becoming more secular and more permissive.

He could have said, "more realistic and more tolerant of the entire social fabric" but, in an attempt to demonstrate a social ill, he couldn't resist in banging them over the head with the fact that they don't identify with the Christian conservative movement. It also demonstrates that Frum suffers from a cognitive disconnect. This... sudden rise of secularism and permissiveness would be shocking if it had just suddenly happened. Frum is conveniently avoiding the fact that this has being happening for a lot longer than he's willing to admit.

Republicans took a beating on the Social Security issue in 2005. But the issue is not going away. And Barack Obama's solution — taxing more income for Social Security — is neither workable nor popular. Personal accounts offer hope for personal wealth to a generation that is increasingly anxious about its economic future. With a relatively small subsidy — $300 per year for workers earning less than $40,000 — a revived Republican personal account plan could guarantee that every American worker would retire a millionaire, even if they never earn more in their lives than minimum wage.

Can you say, Voodoo Economics? Try. Because that's what Frum is offering here. By the way, being a millionaire doesn't mean much if your retirement dollar is only worth 12 percent of the dollars you stored away in the Bank of Bush. Sadly, No! slices and dices it for you.

President Bush's attempts to woo Hispanics via lax immigration policies disastrously backfired, alienating white Republicans without achieving gains among Hispanics.

No... there's still about 20 percent of the population who think Bush is magnificent. Some of them aren't fat, balding older white males.

But we can talk to young blacks and Hispanics as young people, who share economic interests with an entire generation of overtaxed young workers, regardless of race.

Except that you'd be lying to them and they already have that figured out.

Present a sunnier face on social issues. We need to make clear that we defend the family not to impose our values on others, but in order to give the next generation of America's children a fair chance in life.

By imposing their values on others. More Leave It To Beaver!!! No more wardrobe malfunctions. Just boxes and boxes of crunchy wholesome goodness. Led by... the Christian conservative movement. Of course, rather than living with the imposed so-called values of the Republican party everyone could just follow the example they provide.

Children who grow up without their fathers are more likely to go to jail, drop out of school and create fatherless families of their own.

Leap, Frum, leap!! David takes out his junior sociology kit and does what he said he wouldn't do - impose conservative values on others. Never mind that a lot of those familial relationships were abusive - towards women and children - and the children growing up without their fathers under the same roof are safer.

A majority of America's poor children would be lifted out of poverty if their mothers married their fathers.

Need I point out the direction Frum took here? Blame, blame, blame. It's the mothers' fault. OK, let's put this another way. If the mothers were able to effect an education and income which would provide financial security without having to submit themselves to a relationship with an undesirable "father", children would be lifted out of poverty. Of course that would require a lot more effort on the part of government to assure equality. You know, something like an equal rights amendment to the US Constitution. Then you couldn't impose conservative values on everyone.

On abortion, too, it is important that Americans understand that the end of Roe v. Wade does not mean a national abortion ban. Ending Roe means that individual states recover the power to make their own decisions on abortion. We as Republicans need to make it very clear: If California and New York vote to retain abortion rights after Roe, national Republicans won't interfere.

Hidden agenda. The goal of the Republican party is to end the federal force of an entrenched decision. This would leave states, (run by fat, balding, older white males), free to subjugate women in any way they saw fit. Unless they get their secretary pregnant and then they'll ship her off to an "abortion-state" to have the problem dealt with.

Re-emphasize the environment. The voting data suggest that young voters might care less about the environment in reality than they think or say they do. Nevertheless, environmental concern is the price of admission to any kind of discussion with the young.

Even. If. You. Don't. Mean. It. I know!! Let's harness the emanations of this gas-bag. That should provide power enough for a small city.

Above all, results matter. Republicans must avoid the temptation to forget Iraq and the war on terror. As the Iraq situation improves in the months ahead, as the USA continues to enjoy greater security from terrorism, we need to argue the case that it was our policies that delivered these results.

Having described Iraq as a disappointment and embarrassment Frum now flips onto his head to tell us how much of a success it is. Nevermind that the population of "terrorists" has been expanded by the actions of the Republicans, the world is anything but secure, thanks to Bush/Cheney and those motherhood aspects of life which were considered to be the secure domain of Americans are now lodged in China, India and Europe.

Note to Frum: You're not writing for a moron anymore.

If he was such a great leader, the ads wouldn't be necessary

Terry O'Reilly has one of the most outstanding programs on CBC radio. Entitled The Age of Persuasion, he exposes the sordid underbelly of the advertising/marketing world. And O'Reilly is fully qualified to tell us about how we've been manipulated, psychoanalyzed and misled by the captains of free-enterprize because, as he readily points out, he's been there. He's lived in the marketing world and his program provides us with a view of marketing most of us would never see. Best of all though is that O'Reilly goes to the headwaters. He explains where modern advertising originated and how it got to where it is today. He explains "the countless ways marketers permeate your life, from media, art, and language, to politics, religion, and fashion".

When the Harperites unveiled their latest political advertising scam I immediately thought about one of Terry O'Reilly's recent programs. In fact, I thought about the underlying theme in many of O'Reilly's programs: marketing has nothing to do with whether a product is a requirement in your life, or whether it's useful to you, or even if it even does anything; marketing is about convincing you that you want it.

So, I was taken back to Terry O'Reilly's program on political "attack" ads: There's Never a Marques of Queensbury Around When You Need One. It's worth listening to all 27 minutes of the broadcast.

Terry explores the long history of “attack ads” and political dirty tricks, and shows how changing media have changed the nature of election campaigns, from a discussion of issues to an assessment of personalities.

Major campaign ads are assembled by hand-picked “dream teams” comprised of many of the greatest creative minds in the business. Yet somehow these campaigns invariably descend into a paint-by-numbers litany of personal attacks and stratospheric promises.

To voters they’re a blight, but to broadcasters, they’re manna from heaven: prompting hefty airtime buys from warring parties, and fueling news and political panel shows (who respond in kind: giving free airtime to the more incendiary ads.)

Throughout the program, that same underlying theme remains. The product (in this case a politician) may be completely and utterly useless, but the marketer is there to get your mind off that possibility in an attempt to get you thinking something completely different. To persuade you, by bombarding your senses, that you want what the marketer is offering.

And our own Wingnuterer has provided a pictorial which echoes Terry O'Reilly's message.

Because nothing says "delicious" like an intelligent endangered species

Coming soon to a dinner plate near me, the latest bit of Japanese "research" on whales. They really are conducting whaling as research. They are killing humpbacks to determine if they taste better baked, fried, stewed in a curry or done up as "whale nuggets" -- all in the name of science.
Click here for more on how you can enjoy tasty endangered species! Coming soon, Panda sushi with California Condor eggs fried on a fire of teak harvested from the rainforest.

cross posted from the Woodshed