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Month: August 2008

Words from a President

It may even be possible that President Medvedev wrote these on his own:

A heavy decision weighed on my shoulders. Taking into account the freely expressed views of the Ossetian and Abkhazian peoples, and based on the principles of the United Nations charter and other documents of international law, I signed a decree on the Russian Federation’s recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. I sincerely hope that the Georgian people, to whom we feel historic friendship and sympathy, will one day have leaders they deserve, who care about their country and who develop mutually respectful relations with all the peoples in the Caucasus. Russia is ready to support the achievement of such a goal.

Open letter to the world from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev

The western media is full of “New Cold War” talk over the rapidly escalating level of rhetoric between Russia and Nato.  Which is a shame, I hate to credit Ronald Reagan with anything, but even he could see the value in an end to the ongoing MAD games that were going on between Russia/USSR and the USA/Nato.  Here we are at the end of another 8 year reign of a Conservative and the world is in Flames, almost literally.  The incurious and aggressive politics of the Bush administration have led the world right back towards a possible return to ongoing (and very real) fears of a nuclear war (of some form) in our lifetime.  Something I had hoped had died in the middle of the Clinton Administration.  The madmen of the past, it seems, given the reigns cannot help themselves.

US Politics are Sexy: Foetus Freedom Forever!

Remember these guys?
Remember these guys?


The US election continues to turn on a wheel that maddens me and confuses me all at once.  Faced with a choice between a young black guy who (for all intents and purposes) represents little change from the status quo and an Old White Guy who represents more of the same, they choose more of the same.  The reasons behind this are fairly clear (crazy as they are) and not the least of which is “Invisible Men”

The folks I’ve posted here are nice people, and I’ve held them up for some ridicule, but only because of their motivations, not their goals.  Their goals (though I disagree with them) appear moral on their face:  “Saving Babies.”

Cute Baby
Cute Baby

Who can honestly argue that babies shouldn’t be saved, babies are so cute, right?  They come from their mom and need all the care and comfort in the world just to survive and represent the hope for the future, right?

So there we have the sensible and secular motivation to save babies, they are cute, they have potential and represent the ongoing future of humanity.

That is almost never the face presented by the anti-abortion folks, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one protest that used that kind of sane reasoning it’s always the same: “Abortion is Murder, Let’s Pray”

The folks at the DNC are no different.  Wrapping yourself in a selpuchure and walking out to say that this or that is moral or immoral because this book written by mushroom addicts in the early centuries says so is kind of crazy.  They want to be a political force (and they are) but they want to do so by imposing their belief structure on the world as a whole.  They believe that they are moral and upright and that their morals and uprightness are how the reat of us should behave.  It’s that imposition that annoys the same about the behavior of extremely liberal people, the extremely liberal or lassiez-faire types would allow everyone to behave as they may (within reason) and of course let anarchy reign (in the markets, etc).  Both ends of the spectrum, both axioms of ethos, life.

As we (in the north) watch the elections in the south; we should remember these folks, and how often they team up to do their “best” to impose their beliefs on all of us.

Food News: Rats for Dinner in Cambodia (by Choice)

Cambodians are beatnig rising food prices the old fashioned way, choosing alternative food sources.

As inflation pushes the price of beef beyond the reach of the poor, increased demand for rat meat has pushed up rodent prices. A kilogram of rat meat now costs 5,000 riel (69p) compared with 1,200 riel last year. Spicy field rat dishes with garlic are increasingly on the menu as beef costs 20,000 riel a kilo.

I think that some of our more bizarre foodstuffs must have come from such famines of choice, can you imagine how humans ended up eating crab over cat (at least Europeans)?  Lobster seems like an odd choice over, say, rabbit.  The spice mentioned in the article must cover up any gamey residue in the meat.  If you raise them on the right foods, I bet it could be somewhat tasty, especially after a few generations of selective breeding to breed out the aggression and breed in plumpness.

Rat Soup, yum.

Twitter Updates for 2008-08-25

  • didn’t sleep well, woke up depressed because I dreamed I lost 1000 bucks (rent money). Still not feeling okay. #
  • Had I been drinking, my keyboard would be ruined: http://tinyurl.com/5hbpxk #
  • Started work at 7:30 this morning to get a jump on status updates and new tickets. #
  • On Stella: “I like paying $5 a glass for an import that tastes identical to Budweiser.” #
  • Damn, can’t host my own incoming mail at home. Shoot. #
  • @KVL Not for nothing, but did something bad happen over the weekend that prompted this fervor for Home inventory? #
  • Neat Blog about discarded tech: http://deadmeatmarketing.blogspot.com/ #
  • BTW The soup I made on Saturday, Transcendental #

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Ed Robertson is okay

After Stephen Page’s problems with the Law, I thought that we might have been heading for more bad news from the ‘Ladies.  It looks like everything is okay for Ed, having survived and walked away from a plane crash.

Canadian Politics are Embarrassing: Dion is playing to lose

“What is a car pool?” he asked organizers, who enlightened him. “Oh, that’s good. I’m never alone in my car.”

Stephan Dion, stumped by the concept.  This IS 2008, the concept has been around for about 40 years.  Where has Celine been living all this time?

As I’ve said before Celine Dion is going to drag the Liberal party down in the next election; when he ‘blasts’ the Tories for cutting arts funding he says this:

“He (Harper) seems to not understand that we need to be stimulating those programs. We must encourage different arts and culture,” Dion told reporters at the We Are Many (WAM) festival in Diefenbaker Park. “The link between culture and the environment is the way of the future. We are entering a knowledge economy based on innovation and artists are those who bring the creativity and creation.”

Please, someone, get him a few Bill Hicks tapes or Bill Connolly or something, anything.  Teach him to breathe fire, get angry, dig deep and find righteous indignation!  Celine Dion is pretty much a dead weight and until someone can smack him around and make him into a firebrand for Liberal values, he’s going to lead the Party into irrelevance.

The Prime Minister’s Office has signalled that Canadians will likely be going to the polls this fall unless Liberal Leader Stephane Dion agrees in the next couple of weeks to support the Conservative government’s agenda

A telling statement.

Fox has escaped fines in the past

Fox has escaped fines in the past, but when the dreaded f word appears so often in a segment, hmmm…

On another bent, look at that crowd.  All over the place, scruffy, dirty. No one is going to listen to the rabble, get on message get it together and march for ONE reason at a time.  The Squares don’t listen when you should 10 different things at them, all together all of ya, ONE TOPIC AT ONCE.