Grandinite

Via SDA comes this New Yorker cover, as presented by the New Editor, reporting:

Washington (Rooters) — President Bush’s Press Secretary Dana Perino today denounced a January 2007 cover for The New Yorker magazine which depicted George Bush as the Roman Emperor Nero.

A visibly angry Perino called the depiction of Bush “an ugly reminder of the often-repeated stereotype of the US as an empire and the president as an unaccountable tyrant who wears a toga, uses decorative leaves in his hair, and plays the harp. In fact, the president hasn’t worn a toga since his senior year in college,” said Perino.

FT.com: Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned

The US government is on a “burning platform” of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.

David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”.

Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.

Related:

Mr. Walker: Transforming Government to Meet The Demands of The 21st Century (we’re f*cked, pdf)

Strike the Root: USA is a Republic, not an Empire

Chalmers Johnson: USA a Republic in Name, Democracy in Practice (domestically) and an Empire abroad.

Chalmers Johnson (Again): What, then, do we make of the USA’s 700 Military bases?

Michael Hudson (economist): USA not an Empire, it’s a SUPER-Empire on the economic front, will collapse due to impossibility of paying debt (audio).

Michael Hudson, economist (again): How the USA Suckers other nations into paying for its wars (pdf)

Watch a city council meeting get turbulent when someone takes the reference to a ‘black hole’ the wrong way.

FoxNews

The more I research it, the more I find that the words ‘Strong and Free’ are more Canadian than they are American. The more I look into this, the more I think David Taras doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he says:

‘Those are words that ring in the American national anthem, on American licence plates, in the American Declaration of Independence.’

In researching this, some synchronocity brought up THIS post by IP, which follows along a similar vein.

When we object to the words ’strong and free’ on the basis that they are too American, we are objecting to a construct of what we think is American. America, most likely, hijacked the words ’strong and free’, splashed on some stars, stripes and eagles, and thought it looked good. That’s what empires do - they put everything into a pot and make symbolic stew. I dare you to find me some American paraphenalia that combines eagles, stars and stripes with the words ’strong and free’ that predates our national anthem.

It’s actually quite sad how we think the words ’strong and free’ are too American. It speaks to people’s ignorage, not only of Americans, but of our history as well. Yes. Ignorage - blind anger arising from ignorance.

The words come right out of our National Anthem, fer fackssakes. The words “Glorious and free” were excerpted from the Canadian national anthem, and adopted by Manitoba as the provincial motto. Likewise, Alberta’s ‘fortis et liber’ is a latin translation of the lyrics in the Canadian National anthem.

In the ‘go it alone’ licence plate attitude theme, we have Quebec’s ‘Je me souviens’ - I remember - which also happens to be the province’s motto.

As for Taras’ assertion that the words ’strong and free’ are in the American anthem, he might be thinking of ‘land of the free’ in the Star-Spangled Banner. At best, he has one word accounted for. He could have found the Declaration of Independence online and through the magic of “CTRL+F” found out that the words “strong and free’ are nowhere to be found in the document. Hell, even the word ’strong’ isn’t in the document. Taras could have looked at a latin list of state mottoes and found that neither ’strong’ nor ‘free’, neither ‘fortis’ or ‘liber’ are anywhere to be found in any US state motto. Finally, Taras could have clicked through the license plates of the USA to see how most of the plates follow the formula:

The X State.

PA is the Keystone, NY is the Empire, Utah is the Silver state, etc., etc.

Alternatively, Taras could have done a qualitative assessment of the linkage between the words ’strong and free’ and the images they evoke by using an image search engine.

Further research would have shown that the current licence plate (Wild Rose Country) has more in common with Montana (Big Sky Country), Marlboro (Marlboro Country) and Iowa (which also has the wild rose as its official flower).

Yes. Taras could have done that, but he didn’t. Instead of doing some actual research, he evoked his gut-level reaction, one that speaks from a knee-jerk anti-American bias and ignorance.

Think for yourself. Strong and free is distinctly Canadian and Albertan. Objecting to it on the basis of anti-American stance is just an objection to the bald eagles, stars and stripes WE as Canadians associate with it, which constitutes a false construct of reality. In other words - objecting to the words ’strong and free’ as ‘too American’ is delusional and ignorant.

If you really want to object to American cultural hegemony, then object to the hijacking of our identity by Americans who use the words ’strong and free’ in conjunction with the bald eagle.

Have some frickin’ pride Alberta, and do some research before calling these distinctly Canadian words ‘American’.

http://www.strongandfreeemblem.com/

I’ve been reading up on Iran tonight, and amongst the mess and the rhetoric, it appears that it’s all chatter. I’m betting that the DebkaFile argument for secret talks is the likely scenario, and that the headlines regarding missile tests, sanctions and resolutions are simply distractions. Happy reading.

Trackback sent to: LMB

Ron Paul asks: Where does the US get off launching sanctions against Iran? Didn’t we do that against Iraq? (video, transcript)

US Shipments to Iran have Expanded Tenfold Under Bush

Flashback to May: ‘Bush Planning to Attack Iran This August’

Newsweek: Iranian ‘Missile Test’ Could be the tipping point, war to follow from the momentum of military scheduling.

DebkaFile: Secret talks easing tensions, Missile ‘test’ actually a response to war games.

Ahmadinejad: US Threats & Psyops Driving Oil Prices Higher

Iran will ‘Burn Tel Aviv, Sink US Ships and Block Oil Shipments’ if Attacked

LINK

Satire alert. But oh, so true.

In comparison to the 500 dead ducks, this story is receiving little play in the media. I’m getting a handful of results for this story. Granted, not all the details are in yet, but the contrast shows how jaded we’ve become when it comes to human fatalities in the tarsands.

Alberta oilsands worker dies in fatal collision

Don’t mind me. Just having fun with snowclones.

NYMAG:

We have no doubt that “I drink your milkshake,” the volcanically dramatic, mind-bendingly cool line with which Daniel Plainview devastates his enemy in There Will Be Blood’s final sequence, will soon enter the pop-culture catchphrase lexicon, nestling alongside such former lazy-writer tropes as “I see dead people,” “Say hello to my little friend,” “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” and all the rest. Personally, we would like to see a federal law passed preventing this from happening.

Wiki: snowclone

A snowclone is a type of cliché and phrasal template originally defined as “a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different jokey variants by lazy journalists and writers.”

Thus:

I X your Y. I X it up.

I drink your X. I drink it up.

In short, you link to Your Top 5 blog posts of all time, discuss them briefly, and then you tag 5 others to do the same.

You can rank them any way you want - by the number of comments, or by the number of hits, or just by your own personal judgment.

This accomplishes a few things.

1. It shows you where you’ve enabled discussion in the blogosphere.
2. It allows others to see what’s made your blog successful.
3. It fosters the debate on how we ought to rank a blog’s popularity (by comments, clicks, incoming links or subjective evaluation).
4. It introduces new readers to your blog.
5. It summarizes your blog.

Here are my top five blog entries of all time, ranked rather subjectively:

1. Flame Suck! Believe it or not, people google the term flames and suck quite a bit.

2. Hate Telus? Vent Here Many people hate Telus and are willing to expound on their bad experiences.

3. The Diesel KLR 650 Motorbike A long time ago, I blogged a military contract for diesel-powered Kawasaki dirtbikes. The manufacturers emailed me back. I simply posted the email, with a picture. You can read more about this bike HERE.

4. The Great Canadian Blog Survey. My second meme. I challenged 1000 bloggers and readers to complete a 25-question survey on blogging. Then I wrote a paper on the subject.

5. Grandinite’s 40 Most Annoying Canadians. A list of all the Canadians who annoy me the most. It got me some press.

So, there you have it. If you blog this, be sure to post a comment or a trackback.

Tagged:

1. Daveberta
2. AGRDT
3. Werner
4. Civitatensis
5. Last, but not least - Ivan.

I was gonna go, but sometimes life just gets in the way. Next year, man. Next year. This is the second year in a row I have failed to attend.

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/04/coachella-sat-1.html

http://www.daylife.com/gallery/08P77j407k54U