Mitt's not lying when he says he was "in" the economy

Mitt Romney recently claimed that one of the key differences between himself and his GOP rivals was the fact that he actually had some experience as an operator in the economy.

Those other guys might have thought about it, wrote about it, brain-stormed about it, lost sleep about it, but Mitt was different because he was "in" the economy.

Was he ever! Nobody is in the economy like our friends in the vulture capitalist crowd. They're in there looting and pillaging and shutting down and out-sourcing and maximizing their profits.

It's the American way!

Curling championship rivets Canadian viewers to their TV screens

It's called "the Brier".

And I don't get it. It's the Canadian men's curling championship.

Curling. It's where you slide a rock with a handle on it down an ice rink and try to land on a target. In curling parlance that rock is called a "rock".

Curling tends to be the domain of small-town white Canadians. A rink (oh, that's curling jargon for a "team") has just as good a chance if they come from Bootscrape Saskatchewan, population 432, as they do if they came from Toronto.

Historically curling was a keep-busy activity that was a perfect fit for the nine month winters typical in many Canadian small towns. The locals would gather at the curling rink and play a few ends (an "end" is curling jargon for a game) while imbibing vast quantities of beer and smoking lots of cigarettes.

That was the appeal of curling. You could play the game while having a smoke and a beer. A bit like golf in that respect.

You'd think that curling would be struggling in the modern age. It doesn't seem to attract a lot of new Canadians. Not too many Indo-Canadians or Somali-Canadians on the pro curling circuit.

In fact, it's hard to find a "pro" curling circuit. Not too many top-ranked curlers don't have to hold down a day job.

So you'd think there wouldn't be much of an audience for something this lame. You'd be wrong.

The Brier is the second most watched sports event in Canadian television, right next to the NHL playoffs.

Why all war criminals are black and African

The LA Times wrestles with this question today. Unfortunately they're a little circumspect with their answers.

There are plenty of folks who'd like to see the Bush gang face war crime charges for what they've wrought in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past ten years or so. Rumsfeld, Cheney, maybe even W himself.

But guess what!? The US doesn't recognize the International Criminal Court! Besides, these guys are white Americans.

There are plenty of folks in the occupied territories and Gaza who'd like to see a number of IDF brass and senior Israeli politicians charged with war crimes. Guess what? Israel doesn't recognize the ICC either! Besides, those guys are white Israelis.

Ditto Putin in Chechnya or Blair and Cameron over Iraq and Afghanistan. There are certainly people willing to make the case that these leaders should be held accountable.

But they won't be.

There are three conditions that have to be met before the ICC will pursue a case.

The war criminal is never a war criminal until he is on the losing side.

The war criminal needs to have lost the support of his sponsors in the so-called developed world.

And finally, the war criminal needs to be expendable. We in the enlightened West can countenance the most egregious human rights violations so long as the perpetrators are seen to be furthering our interests. Failing that, they're toast.

And that pretty much leaves the black Africans.

The many lives of Senator John McCain

In his time John McCain has played many roles.

War hero.

Public servant.

Traitor.

Prisoner of war.

Presidential aspirant.

He's getting a lot of ink these days as the gung-ho guy in favor of American action in Syria. America must intervene, opines McCain, to prevent the slaughter of Syrian civilians.

McCain knows a thing or two about the slaughter of civilians. After all, that was his mission in Viet Nam when he was shot down and became a traitor and/or a war hero, depending on your point of view.

From slaughtering civilians in Viet Nam to saving them in Syria, it's been a long road to redemption for the Senator from Arizona.

Why America needs to bring back the military draft

There's a school of thought that believes all of America's future wars can be won with remote-control drones piloted by teen gamers sitting in air-conditioned offices in the Nevada desert.

That school of thought is laboring under a misconception. Drone strikes are not winning wars. Instead, they are making enemies. Every time you take out a bunch of school kids gathering firewood in Pakistan (hey, what the hell, looked like a Taliban meeting on that 21 inch screen in Nevada) you've got a couple dozen survivors and relatives sworn to revenge.

Wars will never be won without boots on the ground, and lots of them.

The miracle of the "volunteer army" is that it limits membership to those who see enlisting as their best possible option. Who might that be?

Well, it's not a cross-section of America, that's for sure. But it is a cross-section of America's disenfranchised and marginalized.

If America is to continue its course of war without end, maybe it's time to spread the costs a little more evenly. Give Americans of all backgrounds an equal opportunity to be heroic patriots.

And cut out those bullshit college exemptions that gave the middle class a free pass back in the Viet Nam era. Let every American family taste the consequences of the empire's foreign policy. Why limit opportunities for heroic patriotism to white trailer trash and ghetto blacks and illegal immigrants?

My guess is that American foreign policy would make a sharp U-turn withing six months of an all-inclusive draft.

OK, maybe it wasn't the coach...

Alright Mr. Burke, your new coach is one for three.

That's not what we'd call an improvement. We got one for three out of your old coach all the time.

That's good enough to avoid the playoffs in perpetuity. But you could have done that with the old coach.

Got any plans to bring our team to the playoffs? After all, as a fan I like to pretend that it's "our" team. Not a profit center for some faceless pension plan.

Sooner or later, Mr. Burke, you're going to run out of excuses. You're the General Manager. You're the guy who makes the deals. You're the hockey mind who decided to build a tough no-nonsense team around Phil Kessel and Dion Phaneuf.

What we need is a new kind of hockey mind.

Maybe you could get a job with the CBC. I hear they're being pressured to fire Cherry. Maybe you could pick up that slot.

GM's corner with Brian Burke.

Why bin Laden willingly opened the door to the Navy SEAL kill team

Here's why. AP has a story out about Osama bin Laden's last months in that compound in Pakistan.

He was living there with three wives.

That should give you a clue right there.

Three wives. All under the same roof.

Most guys I know have their hands more than full with one wife.

"Take out the garbage!"

"I thought you were picking up the kids today?"

"Walk the dog!"

"The toilet's leaking!"

"The toilet's still leaking."

"You've said for a week you fixed the toilet. It's still leaking."

OK, you know what I mean. Imagine how you'd feel when you multiply that by three. Not only that, but you'd have the inter-wife jealousies at work.

"Number two says you like her better?"

"Why did number three get the genuine gold earrings and all I got was silver?"

And so on. Osama's ordeal beggars the imagination.

I'm sure that when he opened the door to those SEALs he knew exactly what he was doing.