Sorry, Stockie

Fundies have been all a-dither and a-shriek the last few days over the "discovery" of dinosaur and human footprints embedded in a slab of limestone in Texas. Rock-solid proof that man walked with the dinosaurs!

"A slab of North Texas limestone is on track to rock the world, with its two imbedded footprints poised to make a huge impression in scientific and religious circles." [...]

The limestone contains two distinct prints – one of a human footprint and one belonging to a dinosaur. The significance of the cement-hard fossil is that it shows the dinosaur print partially over and intersecting the human print.

In other words, the stone’s impressions indicate that the human stepped first, the dinosaur second. If proven genuine, the artifact would provide evidence that man and dinosaur roamed the Earth at the same time, according to those associated with the find and with its safekeeping. It could potentially toss out the window many commonly held scientific theories on evolution and the history of the world."

Um yeah, sure. But what do the experts say? I knew just where to go to get the straight goods on the story:

"It's supposed to be a human footprint with that of an Acrocanthosaurus on top of it, showing that dinosaurs walked the earth after human beings.Unfortunately, they both look ridiculously fake. The human print has toes like tubes and a wierdly dug-in big toe, and looks ridiculously fake. The dino print is even worse — it's basically a three-pronged flat plate, looking like it was modeled after the smooth bottoms of a plastic dinosaur toy."

D'oh!

Law & Order Stockie is on the job, chumps!

It doesn't get any dumber than this. (Please! Don't let it get any dumber than this.) Today Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day (also known as one of the guys who's in ur gubmint, trashin ur principles) dropped into Vancouver for a !surprise! visit to the Vancouver Cops:

"Vancouver police investigating another stabbing in the city's Downtown Eastside had a surprise visitor Thursday morning: Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.

The minister's unexpected appearance on a street corner in Vancouver's grittiest neighbourhood surprised police and reporters who were already at the crime scene.

After emerging without notice from his official car, Day spent a couple of minutes being briefed by Sgt. Anne Drennan, the former VPD media liaison turned beat cop, before talking to reporters while his two handlers looked on.

"I'm here doing business in Vancouver and just happened to be down here, saw the scene, like to talk to officers on the scene," Day told reporters. "It gives me an idea of what's happening on the ground.""

Stockie surfs right into the middle of a crime scene... for a photo-op! Of course! This is just the kind of thing that cops absolutely love -- some government gonad interrupting them to grab a photo-op while they're busy trying to do police work. And in the Downtown Eastside, no less! The DTES is a notoriously busy area for the cops -- I'm sure Sgt Drennan, a beat cop, had nothing else on to attend to this morning than an impromptu briefing of the Stockmeister.

But gee, I wonder if seeing "what's happening on the ground" in the Downtown Eastside gave Stockie pause to wonder about the wretched conditions there, and how to help improve them. Ya think?

Me neither.

(h/t: Impolitical)

Pro-choice violence?

I blog for the Family Coalition Party!!! Hahahaha juuuuuustkidding. Ahem.

Quick, the smelling salts!! The gasping, swooning and clutching of pearls has begun as Family Coalition candidates writhe in the throes of a persecution high.

SUZANNE reports that FCP campaign signs in the Ottawa area are being vandalized. The signs in question feature (what else?!) a fetus -- the message being (I guess?) that the FCP is anti-abortion. In the graphic the fetus is just sitting there doing its fetus-y thang, not something I'd characterize as particularly "offensive". Weird maybe, but offensive? Meh. The anti-choice message it's meant to convey most certainly is offensive, but to their credit, the signs at least don't say "ABORTIONZ IZ MURDURZ" or some such happy horseshit, in that red blood-dripping font. (Now something like that would deserve a good shit-kicking.) Nonetheless, someone's got it in for those signs. The suspects: pro-choicers, of course.

And back in Reality World... It's highly improbable that a pro-choicer would be so enraged and threatened by the FCP's fetus-y little sign that they'd go all demolition derby on it -- if I wouldn't do it, nobody would. And what about the other candidates' signs that are being vandalized? Much as the FCP would like to believe they alone are targets of persecution, campaign sign vandalism is part of the landscape for any political party. It's likely just kids having fun destroying stuff, but to admit that would be to deprive oneself of a good Persecution High. And there's far more propaganda and outrage value in positioning the vandalism as a salvo in what these nitwits like to refer to as "The Abortion Wars". Kind of a "Why We Fight" for fetus fetishists. "Pro-choice violence!" shriek their blogs.

"Pro-choice violence"?? Whoops, this is where things could go seriously sideways if they aren't careful. They'd be better off to keep quiet, fix the signs and carry on... I'm not sure abortion-related violence is a road they want to go down. Dead doctors always trump spray-bombed signs.

Because the real threat is peace

Recently declassified files reveal that the RCMP and CSIS released information about John Lennon and Yoko Ono to the FBI in 1970. The crime: organizing a "peace festival" at Mosport Park:

"Declassified records show the Mounties sent confidential correspondence to the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning efforts by Lennon and wife Yoko Ono to assemble a star-studded lineup of performers for the July 1970 event at Mosport Park.

"The Mosport Peace Festival was initiated by John Lennon (of Beatle fame) and his wife, while visiting Canada during December 1969," says the April 1970 letter to a liaison at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa from the RCMP's J.E.M. Barrette, director of security and intelligence.

The RCMP correspondence, portions of which remain secret, found its way into what would soon become an extensive FBI file on Lennon.

In the months before the Beatles formally parted ways in 1970, Lennon devoted much of his energy to promoting global harmony."

Promoting global harmony? Baaaaastaaaaard!!!

This is so silly it's almost unbelievable. It's a good thing governments have grown up a little and spend their time (and taxpayers' dollars) investigating the real threats.