Lhasa de Sela, 1972-2010

We don't tend to do obits and memorials here at DJ!.

But those who had the privilege to hear Lhasa de Sela in concert, who listened to her weave her enchanting songs that she delivered in her husky contralto with stories about her family and her sisters are bereft today. She died on January 1st at her home in Montréal.




Our colleague brebis noire is looking for an interview Lhasa gave and that was published in an Eastern Township newspaper a few years ago. I hope that she'll post it at her blogsite.



Lhasa was mysterious and wild. She loved music and her family. We will miss her.

Update: The aforementioned interview with Lhasa can be read at The black ewe - go read it now.

The Great American Nightmare.

It's the subsistence level conditions of millions of US citizens who are unemployed and cannot find jobs, surviving on food stamps.

About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay. [...]

Members of this straitened group range from displaced strivers to weathered men who sleep in shelters and barter cigarettes. Some draw on savings or sporadic under-the-table jobs. Some move in with relatives. Some get noncash help, like subsidized apartments. While some go without cash incomes only briefly before securing jobs or aid, others rely on food stamps alone for many months.

The surge in this precarious way of life has been so swift that few policy makers have noticed. But it attests to the growing role of food stamps within the safety net. One in eight Americans now receives food stamps, including one in four children.

The "Great American Nightmare" is found in the pig-headed ignorance and vile malevolence of rightwing politicians like Congressman John Linder, a Republican and member of the House panel on welfare policy.

“We’re at risk of creating an entire class of people, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government.” Mr. Linder added: “You don’t improve the economy by paying people to sit around and not work. You improve the economy by lowering taxes” so small businesses will create more jobs.

What small businesses? Those left struggling in the current US economy aren't the ones who would benefit from lowered taxes. The beneficiaries might be Big Businesses who have registered lobbyists living in Washington DC, ensuring that donations to current elected officials' P.A.C.s get them what they want. Meanwhile, the companies that once provided the US working class with employment opportunities have moved their jobs off-shore to places like China and south-east Asia so they can maintain their profit margins.

Conservative Family Values

Today's blogpost from C.C. Nice family you got there ... as well as C_WTF's link in the comments to the manly perorations of Blogging ReformaTory Barrel Gut says it all.

Wonder if Barrel Gut has daughters and whether he has exercised his Droit du seigneur yet. After all, a ReformaTory patriarch has to ensure all the womenfolk under his thumb know what their purpose for living happens to be.

The Un-Laid and the Un-Aborted

My co-blogger is boggled by the inclusion of $arah Palin on somebody's list of best communicators of the year. Me, I was incredulous, so clicked her linky.

Oy. Number two on the list is college football player and darling of the Religious Reich Right Tim Tebow

You all remember how we lefties/feminazis got slammed by the RR for supposedly wanting $arah to abort her last child, the special needs kid.

Well, Tebow is revered by the RR precisely because his mom did not abort him.

Tebow was born on August 14, 1987 in the Philippines to Bob and Pam Tebow, who were serving as Christian missionaries at the time. While pregnant Pam suffered a life-threatening infection with a pathogenic amoeba. Because of the drugs used to rouse her from a coma and to treat her dysentery, the fetus experienced a severe placental abruption. Doctors expected a stillbirth and recommended an abortion to protect her life. She carried Timothy to term, and both survived.

All of the Tebow children were homeschooled by their mother, who worked to instill the family’s Christian beliefs along the way. In 1996, legislation was passed in Florida allowing homeschooled students to compete in local high school sporting events. The law specifies that homeschooled students may participate on the team of the local school in the school district in which they live.The Tebows lived in Jacksonville, Florida, and Tim played linebacker and tight end at the local Trinity Christian Academy for one season.

Tebow recently made Lifeshite's list of good news stories of 2009, for, dig this, confirming that he's a virgin and that he's saving it for marriage.

And there's going to be much more glurge about this non-laid, non-aborted jock.

When football fans watch the Super Bowl next year, they may see a pro-life ad from Focus on the Family focusing on the mother of potential future NFL star Tim Tebow. Tebow is the Heisman Trophy winner and University of Florida star quarterback whose mother decided not to abort him in a crisis pregnancy.

You got that, feminazis? Not only is abortion NEVER medically necessary, abortion kills future star athletes.

More Sarah Word Salad.

Still boggled by the presence of Palin on the "10 Best Communicators of 2009" list, I found this doozy of a sound bite, in the transcripts culled here.

O'REILLY: Do you believe that you are smart enough, incisive enough, intellectual enough to handle the most powerful job in the world?

PALIN: I believe that I am because I have common sense. And I have, I believe, the values that are reflective of so many other American values. And I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the kind of a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite Ivy League education and a fact resume that's based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles. Americans could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership. I'm not saying that has to be me.

Oooo-kay. Moving right along, I notice that Captain Chesley Sullenberger, who averted a crash by landing his Airbus A320 on the Hudson River last year without loss of life, is #1 on the Best Communicators list.

How strange. Someone who prevented a MASSIVE plane crash and someone who is a MAMMOTH train wreck, on the same list.

All shrieeekkk!!! - no substance.

"Dr" Melissa Clouthier - neither medical doctor nor physician but someone with a chiropractic degree from a US institution - leads with her blogpost headline:

Pregnancy Center Burned: Domestic Abortion-Rights Terrorists Suspected?

When you read the mostly cut'n'paste text, nothing in the reported facts supports Clouthier's claim.

From the original story at Lifeshite:

[...]whoever started the fire vandalized televisions, VCRs and other equipment before setting the blaze in the back of the building[...]

That suggests someone with a specific gripe against that particular CPC. Or perhaps the arson is a cover for some crooked insurance claim - since The Fetus©™ fetishists opened the door to wild, unfounded accusations.

It's not as though operators of US-based CPCs are known for rigorously upholding ethical standards. Their flim-flam techniques have been well-documented.

Update: Go read what JJ's investigative skills dug up: How anti-choice propaganda works.

Arson and Abortion

I'll see your fake pregnancy clinic arson (completely unwarrantedly attributed to some unknown pro-choicer), and raise you two vandal attacks on California synagogues.

Vandals have hit two Sacramento synagogues -- including one that had previously been destroyed by arsonists and rebuilt.

But what does that have to do with abortion, you ask?

The [Kenesset Israel Torah] Center reopened in 2006 after being destroyed by arson in 1999. Two brothers, Benjamin and James Williams were convicted in that attack as well as fires at two other synagogues and an abortion clinic.

Oooh. Quelle surprise. Anti-choice and anti-semitic. Probably with a couple of white sheets in their trunk. All purpose haters, those people.

And paranoid too.

And this is where I draw the line.

It must be that I'm one of those pacifist Canadians, still living (in my heart and mind) in that Canada that Jonathan Kay says we're best rid of, thanks to the ReformaTories.

I would not wish an untimely death upon the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

This US guy would, and explains the reasons why. He also has some astute observations about Sarah Palin.

Though Rob Kall pulls back from his punch with this conclusion:

The thing is, my wish is probably moot. Limbaugh surely has great health coverage and will, unlike the tens of millions he'd withold insurance from, get the best health care available.

And what about that pesky little thing called karma?

One could reflect on whether the judicious application of the Christian Golden Rule - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." - might satisfy the goddess Kali.

Hoping for better things in 2010 - Partie Deux

As my co-blogger said yesterday, 2009 was a regressive year, defined by the election and rule of a minority ReformaTory government and their leader Stevie Spiteful.

Thus I'm posting one of the best weapons that was developed against the odious Con jobs, the YouTube Culture en péril. Artful humour, always good to deflect the toxic ideology of fundamentalist so-con theocrats.




One of the joyous highlights of last year was this lipdub that a group of Communications students at l'Université du Québec à Montréal produced in early September; it went viral on YouTube.





I gotta feeling that 2010 will be better than last year - surely we've reached the tipping point for the crap that ReformaTories can foist on the Canadian public. One gotta have hope.