The fine folks at The Society Of St. Vincent De Paul are holding an unbelievable raffle. In fact, this is, without a doubt, the best collection of raffle prizes I’ve ever seen in one place. […]
Now today, I’m going to give an opportunity to all the bloggers out there: Link this post, so we can help sell some more of these raffle tickets for charity, and then email me to let me know you’ve done so, and you may win a raffle ticket yourself.
Done!
I remember when they did this over Climategate.
The CBC has truly lost its collective mind over the WikiLeaks release of the Afghan war logs. Despite denials from the families involved, despite denials from military officials and readily available eyewitness accounts, CBC continues to pretend that perhaps, just maybe the government is lying and four Canadian soldiers were killed by an American bomb…
Christie Blatchford , via Mark Collins;
This mess is not a WikiLeaks problem, nor a Canadian military problem, nor a Canadian government problem. It is a problem with the Canadian media – Ottawa-centric, conspiracy-embracing, unquestioning and unskeptical so long as the information seems damaging to the government, too quick to publish and, of course, absolutely without a shred of accountability. Shame on us.
Indeed.
I have an extremely heavy work/travel schedule in the coming month, so blogging here at SDA will be a little slower than usual (starting today). The guest bloggers are, as always, invited to stop by if the mood strikes.
Until my lottery ticket investments pay off, the bills must get paid. Thanks for your patience, and have a safe and happy long weekend.
Several years ago Kate wrote an essay in the National Post suggesting that a good famine would cure our whiny nation, and teach us to be “grateful for what we have, accept our own burdens, and mourn quietly for what we lose.” Her prescription might have been half tongue-in-cheek, but when you watch Clara Cannucciari, the 94-year-old star of tonight’s video from the online series Great Depression Cooking, it’s hard not to think that the proposed cure would indeed pay such dividends. Growing up during the Great Depression, when a lot of food ingredients were unavailable or beyond reach financially, the young Clara and her parents and siblings had to make do with whatever was available; to this day she takes pleasure in preparing simple meals, using whatever ingredients are tastiest and cheapest. Tonight, using a recipe from chapter three (“It’s a Hot Meal, Stop Complaining“) of her new cookbook, the commonsensical, good-natured, self-reliant, and adorable Clara Cannucciari demonstrates how to prepare and cook The Poorman’s Meal. Is it any good? Well, why don’t you ask her grandson and his friends!
The comments are open for Reader Tips
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall says his government is willing to fund clinical trials of a controversial treatment for multiple sclerosis, calling the “liberation” procedure an “avenue of hope” for patients stricken with the debilitating disease.
“We know there’s not unanimity amongst the various groups out there about this particular treatment,” he said Tuesday, “but we know anecdotally, and to some extent empirically, that there’s reason for hope here.”
Saskatchewan, with the highest rate of MS in the Canada, should be a leader in researching the possible treatment, Wall said. About 3,500 of the province’s residents have the disease.
Indeed in this country, there are two groups of people. In fact, some would call these groups the haves and the have-nots. This is an not inaccurate way of describing it, but those that would might have the two switched. Canadians form two groups: those that receive from the government and those that pay to the government. Those who form — or are constituent to — organizations dependent on government policy (and spending) are firmly against the changes to the census. Those on the other side are largely ambivalent because they are the large, unorganized and unsubsidized net taxpaying masses.
The conservative/libertarian Fraser Institute think tank’s motto is “if it matters, measure it.” The untruth of the inverse of this statement is at the centre of why this government should follow through. “If you measure it, it matters” is the motto of those net tax-receiving organizations who only matter if they can make their case. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has tried the ideological argument against these groups for years. But ideology is by its nature debatable; removing the framework of debate is his shortcut to victory.
There is one positive aspect to this controversy – millions of Canadians are now fully informed that, contrary to threats by census takers, refusing to fill out the long form census carries no actual penalty.
I suspect many of us will find that information useful.
h/t Maz2
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Columbia Journalism Review, December 2009 – When the [Climategate] e-mails first leaked, however, reporters and bloggers on both sides of the debate expressed reservations about the legality and ethicality of publishing information acquired illegally.
New York Times, July 2010 – Below are a selection of the reports from a six-year archive of classified military documents published by WikiLeaks…
(Update: Video no longer available)
Jon Stewart: “Andrew Breitbart may be the most honest person in this entire story”
(Via Daily Caller, where you can watch the video from the US, or link through to Comedy Central.)
Related – “We must stop the white man and his Uncle Toms from stealing our elections.”
…government regulations are requiring that their headquarters on the beach be made handicapped-accessible, even though the only people who ever use the two-story building are the lifeguards.
h/t EBD
The song “Mercury Blues” (“I’m gonna buy me a Mercury / and cruise it up and down the road“) has been covered by a lot of artists over the years. David Lindley’s up-tempo, slide guitar-heavy 1981 release was probably the most famous version until country music star Alan Jackson’s big 1993 hit was used by the Ford Motor Company to advertise its pickup trucks. Tonight’s featured amusement en route to the Tips is a recording of the original version of the song – with its original title – by the artist who wrote it: From 1948, here’s K.C. Douglas performing Mercury Boogie.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.
Three of them, I want. The Fifty Ugliest Cars of the Past 50 Years.
I’m going to quote the whole thing;
Afghanistan was politically oversold because it was not Iraq. It was useful in order to establish the narrative of a “good war” in contrast to the ‘bad wars’ of GWB. The price for doing this was to pervert its true value while while the centers of enemy gravity were simply defined out of policy existence. Eventually they would have to take back their shoddy goods. To weasel out from under their extravagant promises.
What we are watching is a changing of the narrative. The “good war” is about to become “a failure of bad intentions made worse by the blunders of George W. Bush”. Well it was never the former nor the latter; worst of all it was never what it was said to be: one battlefield in a global war whose existence is too inconvenient to be recognized.
The Wikileaks episode, considered in the context of the last 9 years, suggests that the media and the political elite are almost totally dishonest. Their economics is a lie; their global warming a lie; their military ’strategy’ another lie; and even their accounts of the lies are lies. Personally I think [Wikileaks founder Julian Assange], far from being a revolutionary outsider, is just another operative in the backroom. But that’s not news. The really significant thing is that things don’t work the same way any more. That apart from being total liars they are now total bankrupts. The global financial crisis, the discrediting of “global warming” and the crisis in the media are really reminders that the old magic is losing its power.
Your credit is good, but we need cash.
Maybe someone had the idea that mega-exposes like the Washington Post’s Secret America and the Wikileaks dump of classified would bring back the golden years of 1973. When everybody wanted to be Woodward or Bernstein. Maybe Assange thinks that Hollywood will soon get a top matinee idol to play him in the new version of ‘All the President’s Men’. Maybe. But I wouldn’t take out a big loan to attend J-school just yet. The sparkle isn’t there any more; and the movie that is really going to bill is ‘Sunset Boulevard’. There is a curious flatness in the public response to these earth-shaking revelations. It’s the dog that didn’t bark in the night.
h/t Maz2
Looks like Obama picked the wrong Presidency to quit smoking.
The White House responded swiftly and sharply to publication Sunday evening of more than 91,000 secret documents painting a bleak picture of the Afghanistan war, calling the leak “irresponsible” and saying that the source – the whistleblower website WikiLeaks — “opposes U.S. policy in Afghanistan.”
The NYT has published a selection of the files, redacted “to conceal suspects’ identities, or because they might put people in danger or reveal key tactical military capabilities” – a courtesy I don’t believe the Bush administration was ever afforded.
Watch for lots more at the Drudgereport as this story begins to erupt. I’ll update this post with more, when warranted.
Update: Or not. It seems there’s lots here to be underwhelmed about.
ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance. I suspect that’s the case even for someone who reads only a third of the articles on Afghanistan in his local newspaper.
I haven’t gone through them myself, but I do know the news of Pakistan’s divided loyalties left me profoundly unshaken.
The Daily Caller has released the contents of a Journolist thread involving Sarah Palin’s uterus that took place between August 30th and September 1st, 2008. Now, let me be clear: most people involved in that particular thread thought that believing this nonsense was crazy – and even many of the ones who didn’t still thought that such a discussion was beyond the pale, for a variety of reasons. We will let those people pass on by, with only a cheerful suggestion that they never, ever take a Trig Troofer seriously in public again if they wish to avoid being raked over the coals for their silence to date. I think that’s fair: don’t you?
But then there are the crazy people.
Paul Waldman
Aug 30, 2008, 4:04pm
If the date on this photo from the Anchorage Daily News web site is correct, she is absolutely, positively, not seven months pregnant. Some of the pictures are doubtful, but this could barely be clearer:
http://www.adn.com/2008/03/09/v-gallery/339576/baby-news-strikes-a-chord-030908.htmlI assume that this is the Paul Waldman who is a Senior Correspondent of The American Prospect?
William A. Jacobson; “Of all the banter, perhaps the most important big picture item is that the discussion frequently centered on whether the story was worth running. This is the type of coordination and groupthink which has generated the criticism of the Journolist.”
Sarah Palin’s response.
…goes horribly wrong
“Areas in black represent regions with no data.“
Related!
Tonight’s selection, the next weekly installment of Songs About Cities – songs that don’t just mention a city, but are about the titled city, and in praise of it – extols the virtues of a city that has the softest grass, sunshine that touches the soul, and women – the prettiest you’ve ever seen – who treat you right and wear their dresses “country tight.” Surprisingly, it still only has a population of about 50,000 people. From July of 1967, here are The Everly Brothers singing the praises of the earthly paradise known as Bowling Green, Kentucky.
The comments are open for Reader Tips.
Via Brutally Honest
Palin’s speech had been remarkably effective. This troubled members of Journolist. On Sept. 8, 2008, five days after Palin’s national debut, some members of the group discussed producing coordinated propaganda designed to wound Palin and boost Obama.
[…]
While other members of the group debated whether to coordinate a pro-Obama message – or, more precisely, whether to concede that such a message was being coordinated — Todd Gitlin of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism had already made up his mind.
[…]
“Repeat after me:
“McCain lies about his maverick status. Routinely, cavalierly, cynically. Palin lies about her maverick status. Ditto, ditto, ditto. McCain has a wretched temperament. McCain is a warmonger. Palin belongs to a crackpot church and feels warmly about a crackpot party that trashes America.
“These people are cynical. These people are taking you for a ride. These people are fakes. These people love Bush.
“Again. And again. Vary the details. There are plenty. Somebody on the ‘list posted a strong list of McCain lies earlier today. Hammer it. Philosophize, as Nietzsche said, with a hammer.
“I don’t know about any of you, but I’m not waiting for any coordination. Get on with it!”
Find an anti-Semite.
Director Oliver Stone belittled the Holocaust during a shocking interview with the Sunday Times today, claiming that America’s focus on the Jewish massacre was a product of the “Jewish domination of the media.”
The director also defended Hitler and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and railed against the “powerful lobby” of Jews in America.
Stone said that his upcoming Showtime documentary series “Secret History of America,” seeks to put Hitler and Communist dictator Joseph Stalin “in context.”
I can’t believe people even bother arguing this anymore.
Via
