Raging Grannies

I'm on dial-up here, so can't see this. I'm taking it on trust. Lemme know what you think.

No Prorogue! UPDATE

When I joined the No Prorogue Facebook group late this morning, there were about 105,000 members. Just now, at 4:52 p.m. EST, there were 112,372!

One of the commenters said it's growing by 1,000 members an hour!

In related news, even Andrew Coyne is impressed and backs off, sorta, from his shitty little column of a couple of days ago, calling Canadians apathetic.

MORE UPPITY-DATE: It's more like 1,500 an hour. Just about 2 hours later, count stands at 115,129. Wow.

EVEN MORE: At about 10:20, pushing 119,000. Also a poll at CBC asking what we want them to ask politicians. I was torn between 1 and 5, but in the spirit of the day, went with 5.

AND EVEN MORE: Now (11:10 p.m. EST) nearing 120,000. And I liked this comment

Erik Snyder I don't know of any governmental body making such a big deal about the Olympics since, well...1937.

OK, well, I'm kinda into a Leni Riefenstahl mood.

Going Really Rogue.

Omigawd. It looks like the Republicans, the GOP, have a real rogue on their hands.

And he's the party chairman.

Republican congressional leaders say they did not know that their party chairman, Michael S. Steele, was publishing a book until it was released this week, and they had no input in drafting what Steele is promoting as the blueprint Republicans should follow to win back power.

The release of Steele's book, "Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda," surprised Republican congressional leaders, some of whom first learned of the book by watching Steele's television appearances this week, three top GOP congressional aides said Friday. [...]

Steele's book, which has been in the works for about a year, is separate from his role as party chairman, an RNC spokesman said. Steele has hired an outside public relations firm to help him schedule his media interviews and promotional tour.
The chairman has been under fire for a series of controversial statements he has made on his book tour. Republican congressional leaders were so angered by Steele's statements - including telling Fox News Channel on Monday that he did not think the GOP could win back their congressional majorities in 2010 - that their top aides pleaded with Steele's handlers to "get him to stop."

From here.

Oh, look. It appears that teabaggers inside the GOP have received their talking points - and marching orders. More, much more here.

That other collateral damage.

Last Monday there was a discussion on Radio-Canada regarding Michelle Lang's presence on a mission which turned deadly. The journalist Michèle Ouimet - who has reported three times from Afghanistan - opined that Lang's assignment did not obligate her to travel on recce.

Perhaps Lang hoped her commitment to getting the story would encourage members of the Armed Forces to entrust her with information which might allow her to do justice to the extreme conditions that besiege them in Kandahar province. And to write scrupulously researched articles about circumstances observed in close proximity with an integrity that others such as Stephanie Nolen have demonstrated.

Critically injured in the explosion that killed Lang and four Canadian Armed Forces personnel was Bushra Amjad Saeed, a DFAIT political officer working for the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team. Was she directed by her superiors to monitor information shared between Lang and the troops?

The fatal December 30th recce mission was a routine sortie in a LAV III. Ouimet has traveled with Canadian troops inside one of these armoured vehicles; she said that from her vantage position all she could observe were soldiers doing their jobs.

Lang's specialty was health issues; in volunteering for this dangerous assignment she may have hoped to deepen our knowledge of the range of sacrifices required of soldiers.

Saeed's role on that mission only makes sense when one takes into consideration how Stevie Spiteful and his ReformaTory bullies urgently needed to control every shred of information about Afghanistan.

Unlike Lang, Saeed did not have a choice about her presence in that LAV III. Following what has become for the Conservative minority government a shameful exposure of their loathsome tactics, Lawrence Cannon may have told his staff to keep a lid on reports from Afghanistan. No matter what the collateral damage.

No Prorogue!

The online effort to give Stevie the Skeert the virtual and actual finger now has a website (I just added it to our blogroll too) in addition to the (in)famous Facebook group. Which *sigh* I just signed up with Facebook to join.

Until now I haven't seen the point of Facebook. But if the numbers joining this group is getting the MSM's knickers in knots, I'm all for it.

By the way, the No Prorogue site has a blog and look who's already posted there -- our pal, pale.

ADDED: And from Dr. Dawg we learn that CFRA is running a prorogue poll.

Next MASSIVE speaking gig: Teabaggers Convention

From The Guardian:

Next month in Nashville, Tenn., the first-ever national tea-party convention will take place. The tea-party movement is getting to be like the Politburo of the 1920s. Too many factions each claiming to know the true path. I can't keep up. However, this part is clear enough: Dave Weigel of the Windy is reporting that our old friend S.P. is speaking there - and being paid as much as perhaps $100,000 for her appearance. [...]

Weigel notes that she's skipping the higher-profile and usually very important meeting of the Conservative Political Action Committee, or C-PAC. All GOP prez hopefuls are supposed to speak at C-PAC functions. The catch, however, is the one you might already have guessed: C-PAC doesn't pay honoraria.

Since this event is political and not part of her book promotion tour, it's unlikely the publishing company would pay for a ghost speechwriter, as it presumably did for other events. And in the past, Palin relied on her government staff to plagiarize write one for her.

I wonder if $arah will recycle the speech she presented in Hong Kong? For sure, somewhere in the speech she will mention "death panels" - $arah has gotten a lot of traction with rightwingnuts by using that one.

In other Palin family related news, Bristol started her own PR company.

That Tillman Thing.

Some facts, as reported here:

Court heard Tillman was supposed to be at a board meeting Aug. 6, 2008, but he was encouraged to go home by staff who thought he was "acting in an unusual manner."

Tillman joined the teen and his children at home. The girl bent over as she fed one of the kids, said Crown prosecutor Bill Burge. "When she stood up, the accused put his hands on her hips with his fingers in her belt loops and he pulled the rear end of the complainant into himself," said Burge. "While in that position there was physical contact that was clearly of a sexual nature. This occurred without the consent of the complainant and she told the accused, 'No."'

In my experience with legal issues regarding sexual assault, the significant element that would distinguish this action from something that could be dismissed as an unsollicited expression of affection is the position of the victim and the fact her assailant had an erection. That's likely why the police investigated, and charges were laid.

We don't know what other evidence the prosecutor would have presented at trial, because Tillman copped the plea (and a very good one, from his vantage point). He claimed he didn't want the girl to be subjected to the hardship of testifying and for his family to be exposed to the stress of constant media coverage.

Would his lawyer have tried to destroy the credibility of the complainant/victim, a common defense tactics with regard to sexual assault charges, to win his case? Perhaps merely floating that notion convinced the prosecutor that justice would not have been well served to let Tillman's lawyer use verbal and psychological assault on her in court. Particularly as one of the volatile elements of this case is that the complainant is a member of Regina's Aboriginal community, I've been told.

This case may be difficult to sort out for those who are not familiar with the horrendous history of patriarchal privilege that men of European ancestry have wielded against Aboriginal and Métis women and girls.

Those who get information beyond that published in media accounts of the Pickton trial, the murder of Aboriginal women in Winnipeg, and women who have disappeared along the "Highway of Tears" know that the judicial system is often weighed in favour of those charged with such crimes.

Tillman was treated with kid gloves. The drugs he took may have had the effect of reducing his inhibitions but they did not make him behave in a manner contrary to his impulses - or his values.

People convicted of sex offences are often required to submit a DNA sample to a national database. However, because Tillman's privacy and security concerns outweigh the public interest in having such a sample, there will be no such order, Hinds said.

Doesn't that seem like a good example of the privilege that being male and holding a powerful job with a football team will get you?

Dogs Rule!

And you thought the silly season was over.

Cats are "nasty, stinking creatures," says Mark David of Warrensburg, Mo. And dogs? They're noisy, disruptive and "lick you and themselves," counters Sanford Reikes of Louisville, Ky.

Clearly, there are dog people and there are cat people. But it's not much of a contest: 74 percent of people like dogs a lot, and only 41 percent like cats a lot.

Cats win the dislike vote handily, according to an Associated Press-Petside.com poll. Fifteen percent of the adults questioned said they disliked cats a lot while the number who said they disliked dogs a lot was just 2 percent.

The Economist Spanks Spiteful Steve

Fun read. Here's a taste:

Canadian ministers, it seems, are a bunch of Gerald Fords. Like the American president, who could not walk and chew gum at the same time, they cannot, apparently, cope with Parliament’s deliberations while dealing with the country’s economic troubles and the challenge of hosting the Winter Olympic games. This was the argument put forward by the spokesman for Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister, after his boss on December 30th abruptly suspended, or “prorogued”, Canada’s Parliament until March 3rd.

It gets even better.