Chester Brown: Libertarian

I just did not know:

As the Libertarian Party candidate for the Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina in Monday’s vote, Chester Brown didn’t plan on having to promote a new book at the same time.

Brown, renowned in the comic book world for his 2006 graphic biography Louis Riel and other works, is preoccupied with the publication of Paying for It: A Comic-Strip Memoir About Being a John. Graphic in more ways than one, the unvarnished and unapologetic diary of the author’s experiences procuring sex isn’t the sort of baggage most candidates would care to haul around on the hustings.

What odd people these comics artists are.

Brown is an orthodox libertarian, both socially and economically. He not only believes that the authorities have no business in the bedrooms, rec rooms or any other rooms of the nation but also favours smaller government, reduced taxation and the elimination of the welfare state.

Given these views, some have questioned the consistency of his acceptance of public money to write Paying for It and Louis Riel.

“If I ever did get elected, I would oppose the Canada Council, so it certainly seems hypocritical,” he says. “But to me, there’s a difference between giving money and taking money. The government shouldn’t be giving out money, but I have no problem taking it if they are giving it out.”

The Riel book is really good, and of course no library is complete without Ed the Happy Clown. Shame about the bonehead politics, but his head is awfully bony.

Here's an interview about Paying for It.

UPDATE:

The Fact Is, The Facts Is WRONG

The WikiLeaked embarrassments continue:

OTTAWA — A U.S. Embassy official studying at the University of Ottawa apparently experienced first-hand what American officials describe as the “anti-American biases” of Canada’s universities and academics.

The story is told in a diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, which was written in 2009 and released publicly this past week by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

Ooh, what does this anti-Americanism consist of? WEDGIES? SWIRLIES?

During an international human rights law class, the professor would routinely ask students which country was “again noticeably absent” from those that had ratified international human rights treaties, the cable says.

Instead of answering, students in the class reportedly would point at the embassy official to indicate the U.S. as the country in question.

Aww, poor embassy guy was ashamed. Anything else?

The cable said the professor slammed the U.S. as an embarrassment when it came to equality and equal opportunity, blaming then-U.S. president George W. Bush for the declining percentage of women in the workforce. The professor also labelled the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and UN as ineffective “captives” of the U.S.

All those criticisms came in the first class, the cable notes.

The incidents at the university are used to illustrate what the cable portrays as an overarching tradition of anti-Americanism in Canada.

An overarching tradition of not having governments fulla assholes might go some distance to redressing this genocidal hatred.

Via the Lovely Daughter

Any Publicity is Good Publicity

What is the root word of "dignitary" anyhow?

The Vatican yesterday said it had "nothing to hide" after it emerged that Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe, widely condemned over human rights abuses, would be among the dignitaries attending Sunday's beatification of Pope John Paul II.

I Remain Skeptical

Canadian election discussion. My guys are doing absurdly well in popularity polls. I don't believe it'll translate to the amount of seats necessary to govern or even be the official opposition. If I am wrong I will be very happy.

PDF of poll results supplied by vasi in comments.

The Sneer Goggles

Instaputz:

WOW: Sarah Palin is a lot better looking than Julianne Moore. I wouldn’t have guessed that. What’s with those protruding teeth?

The picture in question:



Not that I want to get into a beauty contest thread, but I'm not seeing a lotta distance here between Palin and faux Palin. What's in those glasses he's wearing?

Proportion

Veronique de Rugy:

My colleague Matt Michell sends me this remarkable chart courtesy of Catherine Rampell of Economix. It is from a new book, The Haves and the Have Nots, by the World Bank’s Branko Milanovic. It takes a moment to wrap your head around it, but it’s worth the time.

The chart:



The conclusion:

Debate over the data aside, the most striking point on this chart is that even the poorest 5 percent of Americans are among the richest people in the world — richer than nearly 70 percent of the world’s population.

[Quote from the chart's author omitted]

I doubt this is comforting to the poorest Americans, but it does show that America is doing something right.

Why don't America's poorest simply buy a plane ticket to India to become the richest peasant in the village?

Doing It Well

I don't really have much to add to this column by Ben Shapiro except that I wish all right-wing writing could be so clearly spiteful. It'd save a lot of time. Excerpts:

While Christians across the world marked Easter and Jews marked Passover, liberals marked their annual ode to neo-paganism with hippy-dippy exercises in green self-righteousness. Of course, they neglected to mention that Gaia herself was a Greek hussy who mythologically created the oceans and the depths by an incestuous relationship with her son, Uranus. They also neglected to mention that one original co-founder of Earth Day was a murderer, that its first backers were tie-dyed socialists who hated capitalism, and that Earth Day itself was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin.

That is an action-packed paragraph. There's more!

The dirtiest secret of all with regard to Earth Day is that one of its co-founders, Ira Einhorn, would go on to murder his girlfriend and stuff her in a closet beneath environmentally-unfriendly Styrofoam. After fleeing the United States and spending 23 years abroad, France finally extradited Einhorn. Upon his return, Einhorn explained that the CIA had framed him after discovering that Einhorn had uncovered their paranormal military weaponry plans. Einhorn is currently sitting in prison.

The biggest problem with Earth Day was not Earth Day itself, which was little more than a showcase for the smelliest, highest, dirtiest group of college students ever to live off the parental dime.

Okay, I snipped some boring stuff about regulations off that last part. But there's more!

Earth Day, Newsweek magazine reported in 1970, was a "bizarre nationwide rain dance." Today, it is a government-sponsored rain dance that's devoted to the promotion of secularism and the worship of a pagan ethos that values dirt and trees rather than people -- or at least pretends to in order to achieve redistributionist ends. If we're going to start cutting the deficit, the first place we should look to cut is Earth Day nonsense designed to indoctrinate children with the watermelon value system: green on the outside, red on the inside.

Have we reached peak Shapiro?

Sexy Librarian Alert!

Christian Schneider:

Yesterday, public-library officials in New York City made official what we all knew what was coming: They declared watching pornography on public-library computers to be permissible, protected by the First Amendment.

There follows the usual pearl-necklace clutching that befits ninnies who pretend to morality. I feel somewhat bad for patrons and employees that have to be near the inevitably weird scenes such boldness will entail, but oh well, people will get their porn one way or another, whacking off in public remains illegal, and I haven't found the general-purpose library yet without a stock of filthy novels.

Libraries are now equipped with full multimedia capabilities and serve less as educational opportunities and more as neighborhood entertainment centers. Library patrons have expanded from those who need no-cost materials to free-riding wealthy people looking for some free entertainment. Get a library card and you now have full access to a wide variety of music CDs, DVD movies, and video games, all for free — which is to say all at taxpayer expense.

GOD SAVE US FROM THE FREE-RIDING WEALTHY PEOPLE! Yes, yacht-racing jet-setters are taking advantage of libraries everywhere. What is comes down to for Schneider is this:

When we consider the proper scope of government, do we really think of free entertainment as a basic public service?

Er, um, ah, yes we do, but I suppose a law could be passed so that on the evening of July 4th everyone must wear blindfolds unless a ten dollar fee is paid.

Here, though, is the creepy-guy tell:

With local and state governments facing significant budget challenges, it might be time to take a closer look at the non-essential services they are providing. Nobody is facing imminent death because they haven’t seen season one of Who’s the Boss? on DVD. Yet local libraries might be soaking the taxpayers to make watching Alyssa Milano’s pre-teen years a reality for all.

That's Derbyshire territory right there, but I take solace in the idea that Schneider is a sucker enough to pay for his perversions.

Assumptions

My Place on These Internets

Intrepid searchers at last understand my talent:



Well okay, "intrepid searcher" meaning no plural, but word will get around. In addition to "best fuck ever recorded" I expect to see "wild fuck" "awesome fuck" and "SMcGILF" showing up in these searches very soon.

BUT SHOVE THE PIPLUP UP YOUR ASSES ALREADY!!

And don't mention that Eugene Delgaudio stuff.

UPDATE!

I guess I should own it. Maybe Pooplup at some point.



Oh hell, you're all adults. You can add the poop to the cartoon penguin by yourselves. Hi search engines! пиплуп ポッチャマ 팽도리

The Religion Section

Brent Bozell:

For the Christian faithful, the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday is sacred. It’s a time of reflection and prayer and fasting. It is Holy Week. It deserves the strongest respect.

You guessed it, that means STRONG RESPECTFUL RAGING. Targets please.

[Lady Gaga] is spitting in Christ’s face and pounding the crown of thorns into his head.

So...Christ's back?

The spirit of Lady Gaga also came alive in April in "The Borgias," the new Showtime miniseries that dwells playfully on an adulterous, murderous pope – a Spanish mobster in papal vestments. (It’s what Showtime considers “religious” programming.) There’s no historical doubt that Rodrigo Borgia (who became Pope Alexander VI) was flagrantly immoral, with seven illegitimate children, one of whom he named a cardinal. He was a terrible pope and a medieval Judas – and the perfect vehicle to sully today’s Catholic Church.

Boy, if there was a perfect vehicle to sully today's Catholic Church it would have to be a show about a guy five centuries dead. Also the Democrats are the party of slavery! Sure hope Brent didn't learn the many things he seems to know about the Borgias during Holy Week. Mind you, Popes is Popes I guess.

Italian Nanni Moretti dared to make a comedy about said world-spanning child-buggery operation:

Some felt this movie was mocking Pope Benedict, who recently recounted to German journalist Peter Seewald that his election was “a real shock.” Franco Zeffirelli, the director of the TV miniseries “Jesus of Nazareth,” agreed Moretti's film was an insult to the Pope and the faith. "It's a horrible cheap shot," Mr Zeffirelli said. "I feel especially sorry for this pontiff, who may not be a crowd-pleaser, but who is very civilized and reasonable."

I feel especially sorry for him too! The austere life of a servant of God precludes a lot of life's pleasures. Oiled-up acrobats are okay though.



So the Catholic Church, during Holy Week, has been sullied by a song, a TV series, and a movie. It is a very good thing that the Church, during the Oh So Sacred Whatsit, was not sullied by this or this or this or this or this or this or this or this or this or this. To be fair, it's unkind to think that news items are objects of interest to the good folks at Newsbusters.

Non-Profit Forgery

An interesting story:

For nearly three decades, [Mark] Landis has visited ­museums across the US in various guises and tried to donate paintings he has forged. As well as Father Scott, he has posed as “Steven Gardiner” among other aliases. He never asks for money, although museums have often hosted meals for him and made small gifts. His only stipulation is that he is donating in his parents’ names – often his actual father, ­Lieutenant Commander Arthur Landis Jr, a former US Navy officer.

Landis has been prolific and amazingly persistent. A few weeks before he came to Lafayette, “Father Scott” arrived at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, with a ­forgery of Head of a Sioux by Alfred Jacob Miller that he said he was giving in memory of his mother, “Helen Mitchell Scott”. Landis has so far offered copies of that work to five other museums. Yet in all this time, although curators speculate about his motives, no one has found out why he is doing it.

The Flag

Someone has made a film!

Cliff Elliot is close to getting his Eagle Scout award, a promise he made to his late father. His eagle project includes having a flagpole erected at the local Petty County High School. He paid for the project by having flags posted in neighbors’ yards for a year on patriotic holidays.

By the end of that year, the Boy Scouts of America had closed its doors due to bad press from an accidental death at a scout camp. The American Flag has also been banned from public viewing.

The Citizens Taskforce, represented by local congressman Jude Marx (who was paramount in getting the scouts closed and the flag banned), search for Cliff in an effort to stop the flag postings. Instead, Cliff skirts around the “pretend police” in an effort to finish his eagle project and become the last boy in America to become an Eagle Scout… all while striving to live the scout law.

Here's a trailer:



The title of the article introducing the film is a fine muddle:

Why We Shouldn’t Take Our Freedoms for Granted: Introducing ‘The Last Eagle Scout’

Indeed, if we take our freedoms for granted we may end up with The Last Eagle Scout.

Filed For Later Use

Yes yes, the power of dumb. How droll.

I still really like ol' Ethel:



Bonus excuse generation template:



Were those ACME™ Unpredictable Super Apes? Because when you're standing at the checkout counter behind a singed and flattened coyote it's head-scratching time.

A Remedy

Via Roy I am led to something that makes me far more furious than it should.

Fortunately we here at Substance Labs™ have been working on the Ambulatory Idea and the first tests are taking place right now!

IDEA

Things would be different if Ann could shoot that idea in the head, but alas it has no head. TAKE THAT, KRUGMAN!

Initial tests with the Ambulatory Clue were interesting but troublesome as the Substance Labs™ staff were unable to run fast enough to catch the results.

Flowers Flowers

Maybe this'll work. If so, GROOVY.

Les crane - Beauty ( shining from ... download

found at bomb-mp3 search engine

Walking It and Talking It

Someone is cranky:

None of the characters expresses a hint of sympathetic human emotion — which is precisely the point. [Ayn] Rand’s novels are vehicles for a system of thought known as Objectivism. Rand developed this philosophy at the length of Tolstoy, with the intellectual pretensions of Hegel, but it can be summarized on a napkin. Reason is everything. Religion is a fraud. Selfishness is a virtue. Altruism is a crime against human excellence. Self-sacrifice is weakness. Weakness is contemptible. “The Objectivist ethics, in essence,” said Rand, “hold that man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself.”

If Objectivism seems familiar, it is because most people know it under another name: adolescence. Many of us experienced a few unfortunate years of invincible self-involvement, testing moral boundaries and prone to stormy egotism and hero worship. Usually one grows out of it, eventually discovering that the quality of our lives is tied to the benefit of others. Rand’s achievement was to turn a phase into a philosophy, as attractive as an outbreak of acne.

The foregoing condemnation was written by Michael Gerson, chief speechwriter and senior policy advisor for George W. Bush.

Sympathy for the Devil

TPM blew the headline, but Josh Marshall is never funny.

51st State and So Forth

It used to be that American talking points would take around six months to make their way into the Canadian discourse. These days, of course, we have the internet and things move faster:

A Saskatchewan Conservative candidate says the federal government has decided to cut funding to the International Planned Parenthood Federation, a decision he says was influenced by anti-abortion supporters.

It's good to hear this just before the election.