Needlenose

Whale blubber sashimi is a dish best served cold

It’s being spun as a compromise, but the latest effort to ‘cap’ the annual whale kill on the part of the rogue whaling nations of Japan, Norway and Iceland really comes down to providing an international framework to legitimize the commercial blubber sashimi trade.

I’m with Patrick R. Ramage, global whale program director at the International Fund for Animal Welfare:

“From our point of view, it’s a whaler’s wish list.  It would overturn the ’86 moratorium, eviscerate the South Ocean Whale Sanctuary, subordinate science and I.W.C. precedent to reward countries that have refused to comply by allocating quotas to those three countries.”

Amen, brother, say “No!” to appeasement as did Australia , Tokelau, New Zealand, Fiji and many other Pacific nations.

"Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC..."

I probably don’t have to tell anyone who reads this site that the past several months have been kind of difficult in terms of snark.  Between the too-frequent policy disappointments by the Democrats in power and the steady descent of the right wing into craziness so extreme that it’s not quite so funny anymore, there just hasn’t been enough entertainment value amid the bad news — you know, at least something to make you shake your head and smile at the ridiculousness of it all as the world continues its handbasket-borne downward slide.

And that’s why, if you’ll pardon the irony, I say thank goodness for the Catholic church.  The serious issues of its protection of child-abusing priests notwithstanding, at least their unbelievably inept attempts to steer the media away from Pope Ratz’s role in the scandal have provided some grim amusement.

After cycling through nonsensical excuses such as claiming persecution similar to the Holocaust and blaming homosexuality in general for the crisis within its own ranks, the great mind of the Vatican PR department apparently decided it was time for a shift in tactics — why not, say, align themselves with something positive and generally well-liked, such as motherhood, apple pie, or the Beatles:

At a time when they surely have bigger things to think about, the Vatican’s official newspaper has published a glowing appraisal of the Beatles, calling their music “beautiful” and dismissing their years of drug use and excessive living. On the front page of the L’Osservatore Romano, the paper admits that the band once “said they were bigger than Jesus and put out mysterious messages, that were possibly even Satanic”, but also asks: “what would pop music have been like without the Beatles?”

I know — how generous of them, huh?  Good thing they weren’t the last ones on the bandwagon or anything.  But as straight lines go, you have to admit this attempt at positive spin is hard to beat.  Not only did it create an opportunity for Ringo Starr to appear on CNN to comment on current events, it gave a perfect setup to comedians like Stephen Colbert (“The Vatican has forgiven the Beatles. That explains why the altar boys are singing ‘Help!’”)… and, not least of all, prompted some observers to note the original words of John Lennon that got his band in such trouble with the Church:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.

I’m sure that wherever he is now, John Lennon is smiling wryly at the Vatican’s inadvertent efforts to make his prediction come true.

But, lest I get too serious, allow me to suggest that there may be a lasting contribution from this passing moment.  Just as “hiking the Appalachian trail” became a popular euphemism among news junkies for referring to marital infidelity, perhaps we will find ourselves saying that someone who’s in deep trouble is due to “express their appreciation for the Beatles.”

I mean, they may be kind of awful at this religion thing, but at least you have to admit the Catholic church has some (accidental) comedic ability to fall back on.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Tea Bagger political discourse

CNN’s Bob Schieffer doesn’t believe the Tea Baggers are Yahoos.  Here is how Swift described the Yahoos:

“…the Yahoos were known to hate one another more than they did any different species of animals; and the reason usually assigned was the odiousness of their own shapes, which all could see in the rest, but not in themselves.”

“…“For if,” said he, “you throw among five Yahoos as much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating peaceably, fall together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself”…if a cow died of age or accident, before a Houyhnhnm could secure it for his own Yahoos those in the neighborhood would come in herds to seize it, and then would ensue such a battle as I had described, with terrible wounds made by their claws on both sides, although they seldom were able to kill one another, for want of such convenient instruments of death as we had invented. At other times the like battles have been fought between the Yahoos of several neighborhoods without any visible cause: those of one district watching all opportunities to surprise the next, before they are prepared. But if they find their project hath miscarried, they return home, and, for want of enemies, engage in what I call a civil war among themselves.”

“That in some fields of his country there are certain shining stones of several colors, whereof the Yahoos are violently fond; and when part of these stones is fixed in the earth, as it sometimes happeneth, they will dig with their claws for whole days to get them out, then carry them away, and hide them by heaps in their kennels; but still looking round with great caution, for fear their comrades should find out their treasure…in the fields where the shining stones abound the fiercest and most frequent battles are fought, occasioned by perpetual inroads of the neighboring Yahoos…when two Yahoos discovered such a stone in a field and were contending which of them should be the proprietor, a third would take the advantage and carry it away from them both”

“…the Yahoos appear to be the most unteachable of all animals; their capacities never reaching higher than to draw or carry burthens. Yet I am of opinion this defect ariseth chiefly from a perverse, restive disposition. For they are cunning, malicious, treacherous, and revengeful. They are strong and hardy, but of a cowardly spirit, and, by consequence, insolent, abject, and cruel.”

Hmm, I suspect that Bob has ever read Gulliver’s Travels.

That random shouted question about Tiger Woods at the WH Easter Egg Roll didn’t go over so well…

(Photo by Larry Downing for Reuters.)

…in a trophy-hunter kind of way.  This is horrific:
Collateral Murder

Via Huffington Post

There’s always one newbie who falls for the “Easter egg hunt in the IED field” gag…

April Fools’ Day can be a very dangerous holiday in some organizations.

For example, given the well-documented perversity of the Washington Post‘s op-ed pages under Fred Hiatt, it’s probably no surprise that second-tier staffers blow off steam by grumbling and making sarcastic jokes in informal lunch-room conversations.

So, it happens that yesterday, a bunch of them were sitting around on a break at a table with that morning’s Wall Street Journal — lying open to Karl Rove’s opinion piece offering unsubtle GOP-friendly suggestions to the “tea party” movement (including not forming a third party).  The talk turned to how soon it would take Hiatt to ask the staff to gin up a me-too column from one of the WaPo’s ever-growing stable of former Bush administration mouthpieces.

Then, realizing it was April Fools’ Day, one of them said, “You know what would be funny?  If we wrote up our own piece and put it under the name of Dan Quayle.”

“Who’s Dan Quayle?” asked one of the younger staffers.

“The 1980s prototype for Sarah Palin,” another answered.  “Young, supposedly irresistible good looks, and dumber than the day is long.”

“Seriously?  How dumb was he?” asked the younger staffer.

“Bill Kristol was considered his ‘brain’.”

A long pause.  “Holy crap!  I guess you’re right.”

“Exactly!  So wouldn’t it perfect to have a column with advice for the teabaggers from Dan Quayle — the patron saint and godfather they never knew they had?”

Unfortunately, just then Fred Hiatt walked in for a cup of coffee, overhearing the suggestion.  And he thought they were serious.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Hey I volunteer to waterboard these terrorists!  Somehow I doubt they’ll get sent to Gitmo though

Okay, so maybe he didn’t, but if the White House is going to issue press releases on this stuff on April Fools’ Day, they should have tried to have some fun with it…