Quotulatiousness

August 31, 2010

Commercial hypocrisy, oilsands edition

Filed under: Environment, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:03

Ezra Levant isn’t amused by some US businesses trying to make political statements by slagging Alberta’s oilsands while being less than clean themselves:

Walgreens is the largest pharmacy chain in the U.S.

It’s also corrupt.

For years, they secretly altered their customers’ prescriptions, without their doctor’s knowledge, in a giant insurance scam across 42 states. They targeted Medicaid, the program for low-income Americans. So they were stealing from taxpayers and the poor at the same time. That kind of big thinking is why Walgreens is number one.

Walgreens replaced inexpensive drugs with drugs that were up to four times more costly. Only when an honest pharmacist finally blew the whistle on them were they stopped — and fined a whopping $35 million.

Are you ready to take moral lessons from Walgreens? Because they’ve just announced that they’re switching their trucks to fuel that doesn’t come from Canada’s oilsands — as an ethical statement.

Taking ethical guidance from Walgreens is sort of like taking abstinence lessons from Hugh Hefner.

I’d call for a boycott of Walgreens, but they don’t have any stores in Canada (and, despite their name, they are no relation to Walmart).

But Walgreens isn’t the only moral hypocrite to come out against Canada. So did The Gap, which also owns Banana Republic and Old Navy.

Do yourself a favour: Don’t buy their clothes.

August 25, 2010

QotD: Amnesty International decries human rights situation in . . . Canada?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:34

According to some media reports, Amnesty International’s new secretary general, Salil Shetty, has accused the Canadian government of a “serious worsening” of human rights in Canada. He cited a “shrinking of democratic spaces” in Canada, and organizations that have lost their funding for asking “inconvenient questions.”

“You expect more from Canadians . . . I think there is a growing gap between the values and the track record of Canada historically and the actions of the current government, which is deeply concerning.”

It reads like a Liberal Party press release, doesn’t it?

So what, exactly, has Mr. Shetty so upset about that he’s decided to slam Canada rather than, for instance, Iran?

Why, it’s the fact that Ottawa hasn’t sought the repatriation of young Omar Khadr from his detention in Guantanamo Bay. Which is a rather curious thing to criticize, since “the values and the track record” of the previous Liberal government is entirely consistent with what the Conservatives are currently doing.

Adrian MacNair, “Canada, noted human rights pariah state”, National Post, 2010-08-25

August 14, 2010

Business jargon got you down? Unsuck-it!

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:07

I’ve been known to print off Business Bingo cards for the inevitable business meeting jargon-fest, so I wholly support the notion behind Unsuck-it:

H/T to Xeni Jardin for the link.

August 10, 2010

QotD: The Finnish intelligentsia

Filed under: Education, Europe, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:02

I added a whole bunch of Finnish blogs to my Google Reader list that now stands at a hefty 421 subscriptions. Recalling the news back in the end of the year 2008, the Finnish intelligentsia was ecstatic for . . . well, you know why, but as Hannu Visti points out, they have recently been mysteriously quiet about their high hopes of how America will any day now abandon the free market capitalism and turn into a European-style social democratic welfare state. Now, we wingnuts sure like to laugh at the intelligentsia, but the Finnish intelligentsia has always truly been a class of its own, since as Hannu notes, they have been utterly wrong about literally everything over the past fifty years. Whereas their American colleagues merely hinted at the superiority of socialism and communism and took their marching orders and talking points from them only indirectly, the Finnish intelligentsia was proudly a stooge for the Soviet Union, worshipping its raw and brutal power that had no respect for all those pesky individual rights holding back the better world. And since they never really had any ideas of their own, these days this puppet just switched onto a new master that has his hand deep up its ass to move its grimacing mouth . . . or I don’t know if I should rather say two masters, both incidentally wearing the same colour green.

Ilkka, “Dead souls”, The Fourth Checkraise, 2010-07-23

August 5, 2010

US governments still finding this “free speech” thing annoying

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:52

If you support the notion of free speech, it is most important to support it during elections . . . but not everyone feels this way:

The Associated Press reports that California’s Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) is considering “how to regulate new forms of political activity such as appeals on a voter’s Facebook page or in a text message.

Not whether to regulate these new forms of political speech, but how.

The recommendations apparently include “requiring tweets and texts to link to a website that includes . . . full disclosures, although some people feel the disclosure should be in the text itself no matter how brief . . . .”

To paraphrase Chief Justice John Roberts, this is why we don’t leave our free speech rights in the hands of FPPC bureaucrats. To bureaucrats like those at the FPPC, the Federal Election Commission or their analogues, there seems to be no need to show any evidence that Twitter, Facebook or text messages actually pose any threat to the public. It is enough that they these new forms of low-cost media aren’t currently regulated, but could be. Their primary concern, apparently, is that the regulation of political speech be as comprehensive as possible.

Free speech can be a messy thing — but censorship is worse.

August 3, 2010

Your elected representatives demand tokens of your respect

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:44

You may have elected them (someone had to), but you must show deference and respect at all times:

Sources reported this week that the city council of Elmhurst, Ill., had asked its attorney to research various definitions of “disorderly conduct,” in the course of considering possible changes to rules of decorum in city council meetings. The move was prompted by an incident in June in which a frustrated citizen rolled her eyes and audibly sighed during a meeting, and was promptly ejected from the chamber.

Reportedly, Darlene Helsop had hoped to speak to the finance committee about its plan to hire a state lobbyist, but wasn’t given the opportunity to do so. She sighed and rolled her eyes, to the great irritation of committee chairman Stephen Hipskind. “Making faces behind the mayor’s back is disruptive, in my opinion,” he said, and he ordered Helsop to leave. To their credit, other council members objected and two left, ending the meeting for lack of a quorum. But the council still seems to have asked its attorney to look into the legal ramifications of a rule that would encompass eye-rolling and (presumably) face-making.

So remember, serfs citizens, show respect to your owners leaders . . . or else!

July 22, 2010

Cultivating a taste for parody

Filed under: Books, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:36

The Economist reviews The Oxford Book of Parodies by John Gross:

Writing a parody is hard. In the 1940s, a competition in the New Statesman invited readers to parody Graham Greene. Greene himself entered under a pseudonym and only came second. Get it right, though, and you have a withering form of criticism and an immortal entertainment rolled into one. John Gross’s new anthology of parodies in English (with a few foreign titbits) has samples both high and low of this diverse genre.

[. . .]

Any well-known poem or character is fair game. A.A. Milne’s Christopher Robin is revisited as an ailing pensioner who has retired to Spain (“He peers through a pair of bifocals;/He talks quite a lot to a bear that he’s got/Who is known as El Pu to the locals.”) Ezra Pound wrote a wintry variation on “Sumer is icumen in” (“…skiddeth bus and sloppeth us…”) But why limit oneself to a single writer? Portmanteau parodies let writers do two voices at once, thus “Chaucer” rewrites Sir John Betjeman (“A Mayde ther was, y-clept Joan Hunter Dunn…”) and “Dylan Thomas” redoes “Pride and Prejudice” (“It is night in the smug snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug household of Mr and Mrs Dai Bennet and their simpering daughters — five breast-bobbing man-hungry titivators, innocent as ice-cream, panting for balls and matrimony.”)

[. . .]

Documents, philosophies and schools of thought can be good fodder, too. H.L. Mencken did a “Declaration of Independence in American” (“When things get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are not trying to put nothing over on nobody . . .”)

July 12, 2010

QotD: Silly census fuss

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

[. . .] isn’t it just the slightest bit embarrassing for a government whose leader has trashed libertarians for their ethical myopia to have minions and media partisans present a libertarian pretext for an action that is not literally among the first 200 policy changes that would be implemented by an intelligent libertarian given plenary power?

Colby Cosh, “Census squabble: weak arguments shouldn’t have even worse foundations”, Maclean’s, 2010-07-12

Remixed anti-Libertarian cartoon

Filed under: Government, Humour, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:15

A post at the Mises Economics blog remixes this anti-Libertarian cartoon from leftycartoons.com with equally amusing results:

July 7, 2010

The naked truth about nudity

Filed under: Books, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:37

A review at The Economist strips Philip Carr-Gomm’s A Brief History of Nakedness down to the basics:

When, where and how much you take your clothes off matters a surprising amount. A plunging cleavage is nothing remarkable in the right circumstances. Elsewhere it can get you fired — or stoned to death. Nipples are fine in parks in northern Europe (and many Mediterranean beaches) but not on American television, even when covered with a tassel. Male genitalia are OK in the greatest works of classical sculpture, but not, even when they measure just one millimetre, in children’s books. The female pudendum is strictly for pornographers, gynaecologists and feminists trying to make a point. Given that everyone ran around naked only a few thousand years ago, and that we all look more-or-less similar once unclothed, this is quite puzzling.

[. . .]

Philip Carr-Gomm’s lushly illustrated book takes a long and enthusiastic look at the politics and culture of nakedness. Nudism attracts eccentrics, and their stories, he feels, deserve to be told. But his po-faced treatment of their antics can be unintentionally comic. Mr Carr-Gomm is a self-professed Druid and a practitioner of Wicca (a modern form of paganism that can involve a lot of larking around naked) and enjoys stripping off his clothes during country walks. Halfway through the book many readers will feel they have read quite enough reverential descriptions of naturist and pagan cults in 1930s Britain.

June 28, 2010

Monty’s salute to President Obama at the G20 talks

Filed under: Economics, Government, Humour, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

Monty, in his daily “Financial Briefing” post, has his own G20 protest:

The meeting of the G-20 is the big news, but “big news” in this case means no news, really. The whole point of the conference appears to provide world leaders with an opportunity to frown and look concerned. What other purpose it serves I don’t know. The peaceful hippies seem to be enjoying themselves, though. Toronto cops arrested about 500 yammering idiots, but failed to heed Mayor Daley’s advice to lump them up a little bit before letting them go. (That would be Richard J. Daley, who viewed beating up hippies as vigorous and healthy outdoor exercise, not his pissant kid Richard M. Daley.)

But hey, on the bright side: everyone agreed to “cut debt”! Yay! It’s just that easy, apparently! Monty, a financial-industry gadfly and obscure vulgarian from some trailer park in Jesusland, heckled the gathered august personages by shouting “You incompetent, moronic, cheating, lying, prevaricating, thieving, low-down, whiffle-headed, asshole spendthrift fucksticks!”. He was forcibly removed by security. When reached later for comment from his jail-cell, Monty said that his remarks “[W]ere delivered in the heat of the moment, but do accurately reflect my beliefs.” He also invited President Barack Obama to come to his cell and kiss his ass. President Obama could not be reached for comment.

The arrest count reportedly went over 900, but the most frequent allegations of police brutality were from some of the media people who were arrested. Jesse Rosenfeld, a Guardian reporter, was observed being punched by police while they were handcuffing him. The National Post had two of their photographers arrested, while all the newspapers seemed to have encountered police discouragement to them filming or photographing events after the violence broke out.

The Toronto Star notes that search warrants are for pussies, not real police officers:

John Booth said the officers, who entered through an unlocked door, sidestepped repeated requests to show him a warrant. He said they alternately promised to produce it later, claimed to have showed it to someone else, or simply said no.

“At first I actually said, ‘This isn’t a joke, right?’ Because I honestly couldn’t even understand where this was coming from,” he said. “They understood, as the interaction went on, that it was looking less and less likely that I had anything to do with what they were talking about. They were inadvertently discovering — ‘Oh, okay, thanks for telling us that there’s two apartments,’ like that was so enlightening. Yeah, well, you should’ve known that before you came into my house.”

The Booths say they will not sue. But they have filed a complaint to the province’s police review office in an attempt to hold the planners of the raid accountable; John Booth said he does not blame the junior officers who conducted it.

June 26, 2010

The ungentlemanly art of reporting

Filed under: Media, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:39

Paul Wells looks at the methods employed by now-famous reporter-to-the-generals Michael Hastings:

Hastings is blunt about the fun a reporter on short-term assignment can have when he doesn’t have to worry about the repercussions of what he writes. “My job was basically: Ride the buses and planes with the candidates, have big lunches and dinners on the expense account, get sources drunk and singing, then report back the behind-the-scenes story.”

Then there is this paragraph. The sentence with the bad word is the most interesting to me as it will be to you, but the whole paragraph, with its tensions and contradictions, is worth considering:

   The dance with staffers is a perilous one. You’re probably not going to get much, if any, one-on-one time with the candidate, which means your sources of information are the people who work for him. So you pretend to be friendly and nonthreatening, and over time you “build trust,” which everybody involved knows is an illusion. If the time comes, if your editor calls for it, you’re supposed to fuck them over; and they’ll throw you under a bus without much thought, too. (I should say that personal friendships can actually develop, despite the odds.) For the top campaign officials and operatives, seduction and punishment of reporters is an art. Write this fluff piece now; we’ll give you something good later. No, don’t write it this way, write it that way. We’ll give you something good later.

This deserves to stand as one of the great bits of journalistic self-flagellation and revelation, only a notch below Janet Malcolm’s famous confession that “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.”

H/T to Taylor Empire Airways for the link.

Was the “fake lake” outrage itself fake?

Filed under: Cancon, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:17

Andrew Coyne says we’ve all been faked out of our boots over the “fake lake” issue:

It’s not an “indoor lake,” as the first story I read suggested. It is a reflector pool, about the size of a backyard swimming pool, only no more than two inches deep. There can’t be more than 10 gallons of water in it, tops. It is bordered by a small wooden platform simulating a dock, with Muskoka chairs casually strewn about. There’s a bank of canoes on either side, and a large screen showing some quite breathtaking high-def footage of Canadian lakeland scenes. And that’s it.

It’s not extravagant in the slightest. Modest would be closer to the mark. The government puts the cost at about $57,000, which sounds about right: about what it would cost to finish your basement. Or to be precise, it represents just over two 100,000ths of one per cent of federal spending. All in all it’s rather a pleasant spot, a small oasis of calm and comfort away from the conference churn, and shows every sign of being a hit with the foreign press.

So either we all got hoodwinked over the vast cost and outright fakery, or they’ve brainwashed Andew Coyne!

June 23, 2010

Bunch of “radical extremists”

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:09

Protest groups at the G20? No, the Heritage Minister’s sweeping characterization of the people and organizations opposed to the new copyright bill:

So when Moore warns about radical extremists opposing C-32, who is he speaking of? Who has criticized parts of the bill or called for reforms? A short list of those critical of the digital lock provisions in C-32 would include:

* Liberal MPs
* NDP MPs
* Bloc MPs
* Green Party
* Canadian Consumer Initiative
* Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada
* Canadian Association of University Teachers
* Canadian Federation of Students
* Canadian Library Association
* Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright
* Retail Council of Canada
* Canadian Bookseller Association
* Documentary Organization of Canada

While there are bound to be a few individual “radical extremists” in any organization, these particular groups aren’t known for their bomb-throwing agitator ways.

June 19, 2010

Penn still waiting for that call from Hitler’s booking agent

Filed under: Humour, Liberty, Media, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:57

An amusing interview in Vanity Fair points out that Penn Jillette would even go on Hitler’s talk show:

Is that why you don’t have a problem going on Glenn Beck’s show, because he doesn’t pretend to be objective?

Well, it’s complicated. Tommy Smothers, who’s one of my heroes, got really angry at me about it. We actually had this argument in public, on another show that’s going to be on Showtime this summer called The Green Room With Paul Provenza. Tommy attacked me for being on Glenn Beck, and he ended up saying, and I don’t think this part made it on the air, “If Hitler had a talk show, you’d probably do that too.”

And your retort?

I said yes, I would, and I would tell the truth.

Wow. O.K. then.

I’m not kidding.

Just don’t mention the part about telling the truth to Hitler’s talent bookers, and I’m pretty sure you’ll get a guest slot.

Oh, I won’t say a word. But you know what I mean, right? It does have an effect. I go on Glenn Beck as an atheist and talk about atheism. And I have people come up to me and say, “You know, until I saw you on Glenn Beck, speaking so passionately about atheism, I’d never considered that as a moral decision.” That’s incredibly powerful. These are people watching a hardcore Christian show and being exposed to an atheist point of view.

Your intentions seem genuine, but I can’t help myself, Penn. Every time I hear you’ve been on Glenn Beck, it makes me a little sick.

It makes me sick too! When people come up to me and say they love the show, I feel sick. Because I do disagree with a lot of what he says. But I also feel a little sick whenever people say they saw me on Keith Olbermann.

And yet you continue to do it. You know, there’s an easy way to stop making yourself sick.

But I think it’s important. I may be the only person who goes on Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck and says the exact same shit. I am so much more socially liberal than Olbermann will ever be. You can’t believe how pro gay and pro freedom of speech I am. I’m way out beyond anyone on the Left. And as for fiscal conservatism and small government, I’m so much further to the right than Glenn Beck. Nobody is further left and further right than me. As I’m fond of saying, if you want to find utopia, take a sharp right on money and a sharp left on sex and it’s straight ahead.

And I love Penn’s suggestion for the Obama re-election campaign in 2012 at the end of the article.

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