Northman's Fury

Little question that this will be getting some major play on the left-side of the blogosphere in the next couple of days.

RCMP searched Conservative party headquarters in Ottawa on Tuesday at the request of Elections Canada.

. . .

Elections Canada is probing Conservative party spending for advertisements during the 2006 parliamentary election campaign. Corbett, who enforces the Elections Canada Act, launched an investigation in April 2007 after chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand challenged the spending claims.

The best coverage of this is over at Impolitical's place. I'll point you to this post for a great run-down of the whole situation. I'd say there's some storm clouds brewing on the Conservatives horizon. Who knows? This might even give the Liberals the backbone to start acting like an opposition party.

Cross-posted to In The House and Senate

Nice to see someone is paying attention to him.

If this whole “bittergate” flap actually winds up hurting Obama, (and so far, it is too early to tell), it will be another proof that people don’t really want an honest politician, but actually prefer the lies and pandering.

Here’s what Obama said that’s has caused the furor:

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

This isn’t rocket science, and it shouldn’t even be controversial. When people are under stress, particularly economic stress, you hang on hard, “cling” if you will, to those things that are most important to you. Family, friends, faith, culture, and race. These become your touchstones to how you identify yourself. As for the anti-immigrant or anti-trade sentiments, the “Us versus Them” mentality is pretty much hard-wired into the species.

In fact, that’s the exact sentiment the Clinton and McCain campaigns are trying to exploit with Obama’s remarks, by trying to pretend that they’re the ones in touch with small-town America while Obama is some kind of effete liberal snob.

John Baer has a few thoughts on the matter:

SOME THOUGHTS on the latest diversion of Campaign '08, a campaign apparently hell-bent on keeping the nation mired in its own stupidity.

As a native-born, small-town Pennsylvanian, a son of native-born, small-town Pennsylvania parents - one from the coal region, one from Lancaster County - let me assure you that the so-called offensive, condescending things Barack Obama said about the people I come from are basically right on target.

"Bitter" perhaps best describes my late mother, an angry Irish Catholic who absolutely clung to her religion.

Dad, also a journalist, wasn't really bitter as far as I know, but he sure liked to hunt.

So, despite carping from Hillary Clinton and annoying yapping from her surrogates (really, it's like turning on the lights at night in a puppy farm), I take no offense.

. . .

They've been taken for granted by political parties and candidates who stay in power by - and this was the apparent gist of Obama's remarks - forcing attention and debate on issues tied to guns, religion and race (precisely because such issues resonate) rather than real problems such as health care and the economy.

. . .

What's insulting is the ongoing failure of elected "leaders" to deal with long-term, working-class worries while insuring their own futures with hefty, over-rich pensions.

And, look, what Obama said, given a charged atmosphere close to a critical primary, was ill-advised - not because he's wrong, but because it changes the discussion.

The 24-hour broadcast-news cycle will jabber on this for days - the irony being that Obama's "words," which had positioned him so well, now threaten to trip him up.

Another irony is that the candidate running to effect change where change is needed, and to offer hope to those without it, is suddenly tagged as somehow diminishing those he seeks to serve.

So the question is whether Obama effectively defuses this, as he did the controversy surrounding his former minister. And that remains to be seen.

Just don't tell me that he insulted a state or, given his background, that he's an out-of-touch elitist.

And I especially don't want to hear such arguments from a candidate who spent decades in the bubble of a governor's mansion, the White House and the U.S. Senate, and under the blanket of $109 million income during the last eight years.

Pennsylvanians might cling to religion and guns. I hope they don't cling to stupidity.

Given the reaction to Obama and Clinton when they brought up the remarks yesterday; I think it may be that people are finally getting tired of the pandering.

In the meantime, McCain can take a vacation as Clinton continues to field-test his campaign for the fall.

Obama's answer to the question of whether or not his administration "would aggressively go after and investigate whether crimes have been committed."

What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can't prejudge that because we don't have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve.

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing betyween really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I've said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it.

I'm not too happy with that answer. It seems to me that even with the information available that it shouldn't be too hard for someone to conclude that crimes have been committed, and not just "really bad policies". And regardless of the magnitude of the crimes, the Republicans would start screaming "partisan witch hunt" from the moment he had the AG start looking into it.

He has at least left open the possibility of their being some serious investigations and charges, and who knows, maybe once he gets into office, the evidence will be overwhelming enough, and his mandate secure enough, that he'll feel confident pushing through the prosecutions despite the partisan howling.

Of course, we'll have to wait and see how many pre-emptive pardons Bush hands out before he leaves office first.

Good news if you're an American, I suppose. Otherwise?

Reporter: You oppose torture... Why doesn't the same principle apply to detainee enemy combatants, don't we stand for something better than...

McCain: Yes, and I’ve made it very clear, I’ve made it very clear in my statements and in my support of the Detainee Treatment Act, the Geneva Conventions, etc., that there may be some additional techniques to be used, but none of those would violate the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act…And we cannot ever, in my view, torture any American, that includes waterboarding.

He rather neatly avoids the whole point of the question, which was whether or not the principle applied to "enemy combatants". Of course, that shouldn't be too much of a surprise given he voted against banning the CIA from using "enhanced interrogation techniques", more commonly known by their non-euphemistic name of torture.

And as for not doing the same to American citizens, I think Jose Padilla might have something to say about that, were his mind not irretrievably broken.

I simply can't get away from the topic of religion today, it seems. Despite my considerable interest in the US election race, I didn't watch last night's "Compassion Forum" on CNN. Jazz Shaw was kind enough to spell out why I think the whole thing was a crock:

The press is already dutifully lining up to report on last night’s “Compassion Forum” in Pennsylvania, where Senators Clinton and Obama allowed themselves to be thrust into a “Dog and Pony Show for Jesus” contest to see who could “out-God” each other. At the end of this column I’ll get to some more specific observations from the event, as promised in my short summary last night, but first I would like to address a broader question. Was this really necessary - or even desirable - in an American election.

While a few important topics in the political arena - such as poverty - were raised last night, let us make no mistake. This was not a forum on compassion. This was a forum on religion, plain and simple. This issue I place before you today is whether or not this is a valid criteria for selecting our leaders and one which the media should be enabling.

. . .

The point is that the media are ready and willing enablers of a process which systematically eliminates any and all possible candidates who don’t pass “the god test” with a high enough score. This is the one area which really should not be a “test” to be president and, in fact, could readily be described as as unfair religious bigotry to which the press and the public are willing to give a wink, a nod and a smile and just let it pass. Mitt Romney seems to have learned the hard way that Main Street America is not about to vote for a Mormon. Should a candidate raise their head who was otherwise qualified in all areas, but was an agnostic, atheist, Muslim or Hindu, it seems that they would quickly be hounded from the stage, and our media would be leading the whip-wielding pack.

I'm trying to imagine any other democratic nation where such a forum would be considered a matter of course, or even allowed? The US is a very strange place indeed, where regardless of the fact that there isn't supposed to be a religious test for the presidency, faith in God has become a prerequisite. Of course, that really shouldn't surprise me.

In a nationwide poll last year by University of Minnesota researchers, Americans rated atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants and other minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society." They also associated atheists with everything from criminal behavior to rampant materialism. According to a recent USA Today/Gallup Poll, more than half would not vote for an atheist for president.

Invest in luxuries:

Who said anything about a recession? Sometime between the government bailout of Bear Stearns and the Bureau of Labor Statistics report that America lost 80,000 jobs in March, Lee Tachman spent roughly $50,000 last month on a four-day jaunt to Miami for himself and three close friends.

. . .

He is hardly alone in his eagerness to keep spending. Some businesses that cater to the superrich report that clients — many of them traders and private equity investors whose work is tied to Wall Street — are still splurging on multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartments, custom-built yachts, contemporary art and lavish parties.

. . .

“When times get tough, the smart spend money,” said David Monn, an event planner who is organizing a black-tie party on May 10 for dignitaries and recent purchasers of apartments at the Plaza Hotel; the average price there was $7 million. “Short of our country going on food stamps, I don’t think we’re doing anything differently.”

Some extreme spenders say they have not cut back on their impulse Bentley or apartment purchases because they have made so much money in the good times from the Internet, stock market and real estate. Some have been able to move their money into investments like private equity that are available only to those with extensive capital. Some rationalize cars and home renovations as “investments.” And some simply don’t want to skimp on the weddings and anniversary parties that they see as milestone events.

Seriously. It is one of those unfortunate truths that the worse times are, the more the rich feel the need to consume and spend lavishly to prove that they themselves aren't one of the unfortunate ones. Whatever else happens, luxury goods will do fine.

I missed Slate's rather interesting take on Pope Benedict earlier. It's more generous to him than I would probably be, but it does show that the Christian right hasn't been too fond of him either.

Conservative distress began almost immediately after Pope Benedict took over, when in May 2005 he named San Francisco Archbishop William Levada to fill his old job as the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a position that amounts to being the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog. Levada had been suspect to conservatives since 1996, when he worked out a compromise on same-sex partner benefits with San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. Under Levada's proposal, employees at Catholic institutions could designate anyone with whom they were legally domiciled as their beneficiary: an aunt, a cousin, a same-sex partner. The proposal avoided the culture war that some Catholic conservatives were hoping for.

. . .

The next year, when Benedict had to appoint a new archbishop for Washington, D.C.—his first major stateside appointment—neocons hoped he would redeem himself. They championed three archbishops who had publicly urged denying communion to pro-choice politicians during the 2004 election . . . Instead, Benedict chose Pittsburgh Bishop Donald Wuerl, a moderate who has opposed turning the communion rail into a political battle station. Benedict further disappointed conservatives hellbent on denying communion to pro-choice politicians when he named as cardinal Boston Archbishop Sean O'Malley, who refused to order Sen. John Kerry out of church. Benedict's choices shouldn't have surprised anyone, though. According to one American present during a spring 2004 Vatican meeting with U.S. bishops, then-Cardinal Ratzinger laughed when he heard of denying politicians communion based on their political views.

. . .

Pope Benedict shares virtually none of the core political beliefs of American neocons. In his book Jesus of Nazareth, he warned against "capitalism that degrades man to the level of merchandise." He has consistently spoken out against the Iraq war. And the whole reason Benedict is coming to America is to address the United Nations, which is not the neocons' favorite organization. Even when Benedict has endorsed a part of the conservative agenda, he has done so with none of the rigidity that characterizes the writings of American Catholic conservatives.

The important part of the story to me is this:

One of the problems with most press coverage of the Catholic Church is that the left-right template doesn't fit very well.

The Catholic Church is an institution that represents a large fraction of the human race. Like all of the other major faiths, there are parts of it that are intolerant and hateful, and parts that are the polar opposite of that. As leader, the Pope gets to straddle those contradictions, and so absolutists on either side have reason to dislike and distrust him.

I still don't like him much, but it is nice to see that he sticks in the craw of the ultra-conservatives who thought he was one their own.

I'm hardly a big fan of Pope Benny's. He has been far more divisive and intolerant in his relationship to other faiths than JPII. He does, however, earn some props for his continuance of the Vatican's opposition to the Iraq War, and in snubbing the Bush's dinner in his honour.

"I'm sorry, the pope doesn't attend a dinner in his honor?" one reporter asked White House spokesman Scott Stanzel during a briefing last week.

"No," Stanzel replied.

"How does that work?"

"He doesn't come into the building."

Well, glad we cleared that up.

Update: Via the comments from In The House and Senate, this post from Zorpheous:

Now don't get me wrong, it is a fight that needs to faught and won, even if the people are Kate, Kathy and Ezra, but they are hardly the first. Take my blogging partner Mark, who is being sued for defamation for linking to site that had, supposed libellous material. Mark has blogged about this, I have written about, we have pointed the draconian defamation laws for over two years now.

So I have one simple question,... Where were all you freedom of speech warriors then, eh? Oh right, you only support freedom of speech when it is speech you agree with, but when it is Ezra sueing his former employee's or Harper trying to SLAPP the liberal party or the Green Party Backroom boyz trying to squash free speech you just laughed or applauded the people doing the sueing.

. . .

While Mark and are friends, we are not always in communications with each other. This morning, while I was typing my rant, Mark had already posted something about his situation and need for funds. So now, it is time for Kate, Ezra and Kathy to take up Mark's cause as well as theirs, cause it Mark loses his fight, it will set a precedent that can be used against them. Mark fight is their fight and Mark's fight will be faught and won or lost long before theirs. So time to pony up people, if you truly believe in what you have been screaming about, go to Mark's place at Section 15 and help him out

Let me second those sentiments. The Crookes case is the one to focus on, and I for one, feel far better supporting the defendants in that case than the likes of Kate McMillan.

We now return you to the original posting

Admittedly, when I first heard of the libel suit that Richard Warman had launched against a group of bloggers, I was, shall we say, less than sympathetic to their cause. Free Speech doesn't cover you when you launch libelous attacks. Trying to hide behind it when your defamatory rhetoric comes back to bite you in the ass doesn't carry any water with me.

Some further research into the matter, however, indicates that there may be more at stake here than my first rough glance showed. The trigger was a comment by Stageleft:

Part of the action claims that a link to a defamatory publication is republication of the libel - and that concerns me.

Part of the action claims that allowing what others said to stand is also actionable - and that concerns me.

To my understanding action against The Free Dominion, Levant, and Shaidle, would appear reasonable - they actually said stuff.

McMillan appears wrapped up in this because of things she allowed other people to say - and as a guy that owns a group blog with unmoderated comments that concerns the living f*uck out of me.

Now, there are a couple of points there that I'm going to have to address individually, the first being what kind of liability do blog owners face for links? Something like this is probably an overreaction at this point, but it does indicate the kind of worry some may be facing.

As it happens, this isn't the first time this issue has came up. I posted about a CBC story about just such an issue back in August. (YouTube video is gone, but the CBC story can be found on their site here.) That Wayne Crookes case is about the widest application of such an argument in a libel case I can find. Michael Geist wrote a good summary on how that lawsuit threatens online Free Speech. That case is the precedent-setter in Canada, is ongoing, and anyone inclined to defend Free Speech should consider donating to that legal defense fund.

The second point is trickier. How much responsibility do you have for what others post on your site? I can see a site owner bearing some responsibility for what others are allowed to post on their sites, and to remove posts that libel others. Even there, with larger sites where any registered user can post diaries, that logic breaks down as most of those aren't going to be moderated. Comments are even worse, particularly if you don't want to monitor them all the time. If you can be held accountable for what somebody says in relation to your post, it's a quick way to ensure that most blogs disable comments completely, which takes a great deal of the give-and-take nature of blogs and their commentary out of the equation and diminishes their power. (This doesn't mean that the persons who made those posts and comments shouldn't be held accountable for them. Again, I have no sympathy for people who get nailed for what they themselves have said.)

Of course, just to muddle the issue a little further, this post by Red Tory indicates that Ontario's libel laws may be part of the problem:

The present state of Canada’s libel legislation is another bête noire of mine. Simply put, it’s archaic (quite literally medieval, dating back to the time of Henry VII in fact) and in desperate need of overhaul. Under the current legal regime, one can be sued for anything said about another person that allegedly damages their reputation. If sued, the onus is on you to prove the truth of your statements; the fact that you genuinely believed them to be true is not good enough. Even truth is not an absolute defense — if the court finds you told the truth but your intent was malicious, you might lose anyway. Little wonder that people come from all over the world to file libel suits in Canada, particularly in the province of Ontario.

Anyway, I by no means have the legal expertise or knowledge to determine just who is right and wrong on this, but the SDA part of the case appears to be something all Canadian bloggers should be paying close attention to. A couple of other pretty good discussions on the matter can be found here and here, and I'm certain the story will gets loads of victimization play from the defendants ideological brethren.

Cross-posted to In The House and Senate

Spring comes a little later up in my neck of the (way too far north for) woods, but today was still a rather nice day in relative terms. As a result, I rounded up the dog and spent the afternoon hiking outside of town.

(Click on photos for full-size version)








Beat the hell out of watching political coverage all afternoon.

When historians finally get around to pegging Bush's exact spot in the lower depths of failed presidents, how the economy fared under his tenure will be one of the more important indicators. Over the last several days, there has been a good deal of data to help them out on that one.

The most glaring example of the administration's fiscal irresponsibility has been how he turned a $237 billion surplus into record deficits that look to set yet another new record this year. Even under ordinary circumstances, that kind of reckless borrowing would limit what his successors will be able to do given the need to service that enormous debt, but as fester noted, the real story is even worse than that.

. . .the real story is the declining real revenues on both an absolute and per-capita terms.  The AP reports the following facts:

The Treasury's monthly budget report showed that revenues for the first six months of the budget year, which began on Oct. 1, totaled $1.146 trillion, up 2.2 percent from last year. However, government spending was up by a much faster 5.7 percent, rising to $1.457 trillion. Both the spending and the revenues were records for the first six months of a budget year.

The 2.2% increase in revenue is in nominal dollars.  Over any year, absent either massive economic or policy shocks, we should expect government revenue to increase due to the combination of inflation and population growth.  Well right now it is looking like the Federal government took in roughly 3% less revenue in real dollars as it did in the same period as last year. 

That tosses discretionary funding down a few more notches. Part of the reason for that, is the fact that the jobless rate has grown towards a post-WWII high, and will probably get worse:

In the latest report, for March, the Labor Department reported the jobless rate — also called the “not employed rate” by some — at 13.1 percent for men in the prime age group. Only once during a post-World War II recession did the rate ever get that high. It hit 13.3 percent in June 1982, the 12th month of the brutal 1981-82 recession, and continued to rise from there.

To be sure, employment is a lagging economic indicator, and rates higher than this have prevailed after recessions ended. But this rate has arrived at a time when the government still hopes that a recession can be averted.

Add on to that grim picture, another grim reality that shows the median family income hasn't even recovered to 2000 levels.

The bigger problem is that the now-finished boom was, for most Americans, nothing of the sort. In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less — about $60,500.

This has never happened before, at least not for as long as the government has been keeping records. In every other expansion since World War II, the buying power of most American families grew while the economy did. You can think of this as the most basic test of an economy’s health: does it produce ever-rising living standards for its citizens?

Now, some people might wonder why, with the stock market doing so well, so little of that wealth managed to find its way to ordinary Americans. Cynical explanations aside, there's a big picture one that shows just how little real wealth was created as a part of that stock market "boom", the falling value of the US dollar. Reprice the stock market in a foreign currency and you can see how slow the growth really was. From the Agonist, here's a chart of the S&P in dollars and euros to about November, 2007.

You'll notice that there are a few periods. To about early 2003, the two moved more or less in tandem. The S&P goes up or down, so does the Euro S&P. It may be higher or lower, but they're moving together. From early 2003 to early 2005, the S&P in Euros stays basically flat, no matter what the nominal S&P does. Since then S&P in Euros has risen, but risen much more slowly than the nominal S&P.

. . .

At this point the lesson is fairly simple -- measured in Euros (you'd get similiar results in pounds, or with other indices like the Russel 3000 or the Dow) the market has never recovered from its crash. Nominal numbers may say otherwise, but really most of what has been happening is that as the dollar went down, stocks went up. From monthly top (August of 00) to monday's close the S&P is currently up about about 2%.

In terms of the Euro, it's down about 32%.

And all of this lovely data shows us where the US is before it enters what most economists are predicting will be a significant recession, bad enough to stifle growth worldwide. It also comes just as the first of the wave of Baby Boomers begin their assault on the Social Security system. Things are set to be much worse.

Bush managed to kick the can of this collapse to near the very end of his term, and it will be his successor who deals with most of its fallout, but the responsibility is definitely his.

Cross-posted to In The House and Senate

Memeorandum seems a little clearer today of "Bittergate", thanks in no small part that Obama made it quite clear that, however in-artfully he said it the first time, he meant what he said about politicians pandering to small-town voters on issues like gun-rights, religion, and immigration issues because they have no real answers for their economic troubles. And it certainly helps that Obama's right about all of it.

And Hillary, showing that political instinct that took her from near coronation to nearly hopeless, is out today pandering on gun-rights and faith.

Who is it that's out of touch again?

Update:

After a weekend spent making direct appeals to gun owners and church goers, Hillary Clinton said Sunday a query about the last time she fired a gun or attended church services "is not a relevant question in this debate” over Barack Obama’s recent comments on small town Americans.

She just had to find a way to make my title even more appropriate.

While everybody is all distracted over the latest electioneering, this far more important story seems to have fallen through the cracks.

So ABC News had an exclusive interview and got a pretty important scoop last night. You may have heard about it: George Bush, a man who took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, admitted (with zero shame) that he approved of the meetings at which his top advisors discussed and approved the excruciating details of torture.

. . .

And thus far at least, no one seems to give a damn. As of 9AM, the NYT published no news of Bush's admission. The WaPo placed a story on A3 (stating that they had already reported this, even though they hadn't reported this). ABC, the outlet that got the damn scoop, places the story fourth on its list of stories, behind Obama and Indiana and Hillary telling Bill to "butt out," with the main picture on the front page cycling through such critical stories as a dog who invited himself to his owner's funeral. Oh--and do you think maybe there's a connection between the stories of teens beating each other and the President, approving of torture?

Via the above, Digby weighs in:

There was a time when the Village clucked and screeched about "defiling the white house" with an extra marital affair or hosting fund raising coffees. I would say this leaves a far greater stain on that institution than any sexual act could ever do. They did this in your name, Americans.

The vice president, national security advisor and members of the president's cabinet sat around the white house "choreographing" the torture and the president approved it. I have to say that even in my most vivid imaginings about this torture scheme it didn't occur to me that the highest levels of the cabinet were personally involved (except Cheney and Rumsfeld, of course) much less that we would reach a point where the president of the United States would shrug his shoulders and say he approved. I assumed they were all vaguely knowledgeable, some more than others, but that they would have done everything in their power to keep their own fingerprints off of it. But no. It sounds as though they were eagerly involved, they all signed off unanimously and thought nothing of it.

Yes, yes. Once upon a time, stuff like the President of the United States approving torture would have been important. Right now, however, it far more critical to the nation that it be determined whether or not Barack Obama is a snob for proclaiming that people may not be happy about the way multimillionaires like the Clintons, Bushes and McCains of the world have been running things.

Now, if it turns out that such overwhelming focus on the uber-critical parsings of Obama's words means that the authorization of torture at the very highest levels of the Bush administration happens to get memory-holed . . . Well, that's just the price you have to pay in order to ensure you don't elect a president who doesn't always put a shiny, happy face on people's troubles. Just think how much worse things would be then.

Cross-posted to In The House and Senate

There are more important stories, but can I say once again just how much fun it is to watch the Clinton campaign and her supporters join together with McCain and the right-wing smear machine to attack Obama? Because it is really so much fun to watch.

Obama's response is here.

John Cole's is here, here, here, here, and here. I think he may be bitter.

Tomorrow Wednesday night's debate should be interesting.

Or, in the words of Joe Gandelman:

isn’t the time WAY PAST when Senator Hillary Clinton needs to get a big roll of duct tape and use it on her counterproductive husband former President Bill Clinton?

When the history of the Hillary Clinton campaign is written — win or lose — a special chapter will be devoted to how Bill Clinton, a one time savvy politician, evolved into a tin-eared political operative who did more damage to his wife than help her when he opened his mouth at key points during her campaign.

Bill's latest unhelpful episode was, for some inexplicable reason, resurrecting Hillary's whopper of a Bosnia story and making a ham-handed, error-filled defense of it. ABC helpfully footnoted all of the misstatements.

This comes after a week where Hillary had to fire demote her chief strategist, Mark Penn, after it was disclosed he was lobbying for a Columbia Free Trade Agreement that she says she opposes. Getting rid of the husband, who has also lobbied for said agreement, isn't quite so easy and laughing it off probably won't do the trick against an opponent more willing to take her to task over it.

However slim her chances might be at this point, Hillary could really do without the walking, talking credibility problem her husband has become. Given this latest in the repeated gaffes he's made over the course of the campaign, you almost have to wonder as Stephen Green does:

Is there any other conclusion to reach other than Clinton is sabotaging his own wife’s campaign?

Just in case there was some need to remind everyone just how screwed up a system the US uses to elect its presidents really is, we have this touching story of political machines looking for their cash.

Fourteen months into a campaign that has the feel of a movement, Sen. Barack Obama has collided with the gritty political traditions of Philadelphia, where ward bosses love their candidates, but also expect them to pay up.

The dispute centers on the dispensing of "street money," a long-standing Philadelphia ritual in which candidates deliver cash to the city's Democratic operatives in return for getting out the vote.

Flush with payments from well-funded campaigns, the ward leaders and Democratic Party bosses typically spread out the cash in the days before the election, handing $10, $20 and $50 bills to the foot soldiers and loyalists who make up the party's workforce.

It is all legal -- but Obama's people are telling the local bosses he won't pay.

Legal or not, something tells me the accounting for this kind of thing isn't exactly the most robust in place. I'm all for compensating people for their time, even volunteers, but this kind of pre-assumed greasing of the political machine rather rubs me the wrong way.

How to win the Iraq War debate against your dumb friends

Useful analogies for explaining the situation to the intellectually-challenged.

Back in early 2006, William Christie laid out an explanation for Iraq's insurgency in six easy paragraphs, using the American south as a parable. Boris at The Beav' posted the long version on Wednesday, using actual events from Iraq. Read the whole thing, as they say, but the conclusion is inescapable:

The US, UK, Canada and anyone else who tags along, for whatever noble sounding purpose at home, will be resisted as long as they remain because regardless of intent or justification, they keep killing the people they claim to help.

That, quite simply and starkly, is what has ruined any chance for "victory" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'm a little late getting around to this, but the HNN Poll of historians ranking Bush's presidency is still a fun read.

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations.

. . .

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.” 

“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of area: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”

As I said, a fun read, but there is one point that gave me pause:

The reason for the hesitancy some historians had in categorizing the Bush presidency as the worst ever, which led them to place it instead in the “nearly the worst” group, was well expressed by another historian who said, “It is a bit too early to judge whether Bush's presidency is the worst ever, though it certainly has a shot to take the title.  Without a doubt, it is among the worst.”

It got me thinking about a comment made by a southern Democratic friend about the results of the 2004 election.

He basically said that there was a silver lining to Kerry losing, because things were such a mess that it would be impossible for people to not shift some of the blame to the Democrats had he won. (How giving Bush another four years to screw things up even more was going to help the Democrats once they finally got in, he never got around to explaining.)

In any case, if by some miraculous combination of skill, luck, tenacity, and charisma, President Obama can manage to right the sinking economy and reverse the dwindling overseas influence of the US, will this have the effect of boosting Bush’s ranking because his failures didn’t result in a Depression or Civil War-sized disaster?

Or, how a seemingly reasonable proposal can lead to more trouble than you probably thought.

Mindelle Jacobs wants to save us from religious wingnuts. A laudable goal in my mind, though I probably have a broader definition of the group. Hers seems focused on a particular sect in the news recently.

[I]f Canada doesn't take a strong stand against the polygamous commune in Bountiful, B.C., every fringe sect will interpret our passivity as a green light to engage in whatever behaviour they like under the umbrella of charter rights, warns the Calgary lawyer.

Far-fetched? Maybe not. In 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada made the astonishing ruling that religious beliefs are protected regardless of whether those beliefs are supported by recognized religious doctrine.

. . .

This week, in a report for the B.C. government, lawyer Leonard Doust concluded what another legal investigator declared last year - that laying polygamy charges would probably fail because of the charter right to freedom of religion.

Now there is a limitation on religious freedom when it causes harm to others, but apparently that’s not enough for some people.

. . . the harm test isn't good enough, says Marshall. "If a person is seeking to justify their behaviour in a religious context, the reasonableness of that religious belief should also be a matter determined by the court,"

“The reasonableness of that religious belief should be determined by the court. Hmmmm,” he says as he taps his fingers on his copy of Dawkins, “The God Delusion”.

“Let the courts decide whether or not religious beliefs are reasonable . . . make people present evidence for their beliefs?”

Sorry, zoned out there for a second.

Seriously, people should think a lot more about consequences before proposing such foolishness. If religious beliefs are only protected for those whose beliefs are supported by “recognized religious doctrine”, who do you think benefits?

Who determines what a recognized religious doctrine is? Do you think any pagan sects would qualify? Scientology? Mormonism? Certainly the article suggests pruning a few branches from that last belief system.

And there’s where things get really tricky. Even if you’re a catholic, will you be allowed to deviate even slightly from what the Vatican lays down as dogma?

The whole point of Freedom of Religion is so that people aren’t forced to worship in state-approved ways. The fact that there are close to 40,000 Christian sects alone in Canada is a sign of health, not the opposite.

Some sects do promote harmful practices, but fear-mongering about such sects to limit the rights and freedoms of everyone else who doesn’t believe as you do just doesn’t fly.

Letting gays marry doesn’t lead to people marrying their pets, and allowing worship of the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn’t lead to Satanic cattle pedophilia.

Faith is personal. Doctrine leads to coercion and abuse. Let’s not encourage the latter.

Cross-posted to In The House and Senate

A bill has been introduced in the US Congress to remove from databases any reference to South Africa's governing party and its leaders as terrorists.

The African National Congress (ANC) was designated as a terrorist organisation by South Africa's old apartheid regime.

. . .

Last week, Howard Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, who introduced the bill said it was "shameful" that the United States still treated the ANC this way.

"Amazingly, Nelson Mandela still needs to get a special waiver to enter the United States based on his courageous leadership of the ANC. What an indignity. This legislation will wipe it away," he said.

South Africa's apartheid government banned the ANC in 1960, imprisoning or forcing into exile its leaders.

Mr Mandela, who turns 90 this year, was released in 1990 after spending 27 years in prison.

I highlight this story because the situation with Mandela and the ANC is a good example of why terrorist is such a loaded term. Since they were successful, the terror tactics of the ANC are now framed as being part of a legitimate resistance. Had they not been, and had the government of South Africa managed to find a way to make itself still useful to the US after the threat of communism had faded, it is not unlikely that Mandela would have the same public image among many Americans as a certain other terrorist-turned-Peace Prize winner.

Something to keep in mind.

At least I'm not alone on this:

The survey suggests Canadians of every age group, political stripe and gender prefer the rookie senator over his adversaries, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee John McCain.

When asked which of the three candidates they liked most, respondents preferred Obama over McCain by an almost five-to-one margin - 39 per cent to eight per cent. Even among self-declared Conservatives, Obama had almost double McCain's support.

Obama also had a nine-point edge over Clinton, his rival in the Democratic primary. That is a drastic turnaround from January, when the better-known Clinton had an 11-point lead among Canadian poll respondents.

. . .

Obama also led with self-declared Conservative voters - 36 per cent of whom expressed support for him, while 31 per cent supported Clinton and 19 per cent supported McCain.

When asked who they thought would win the presidency, 44 per cent said Obama, 19 per cent said McCain, and only 17 per cent predicted there would be a second Clinton in the White House.

"The momentum for Senator Obama that became evident over recent months in the U.S. is now showing up in Canada," said Harris-Decima president Bruce Anderson.

"Not only is he now preferred by more Canadians than the other two candidates, Canadians believe a Democrat will win the White House and that Senator Obama will be that Democrat."

Whether or not this helps him or hurts him is another question, but I'll second what Michael Stickings says:

Yes, it matters to us who the next president is. And, it seems, we really want it to be Obama. Young and old, men and women, liberals and conservatives, all across this great country: our preference is clear. Americans may not care about what we think, and it may make no difference to them what we think, but we pay extremely close attention to political developments south of the border, and, overall, our views on American politics are well-informed, perceptive, and, while often critical, generally good-spirited. Most of us, I would say, only want the best for our American friends.

Michael Stickings at The Moderate Voice has a few comments regarding the situation in Iraq as presented by General Petraeus. The first two offer a depressing glimpse into the American political landscape:

1) This may be good for Democrats in November. Scenes of troops returning home prior to the election would send a message that the war is going well and that the end is near. This way, if Petraeus gets what he wants, voters would go the polls with a clear-cut difference between Obama/Clinton on one side and McCain on the other. Obama/Clinton would be able to make the case that the war would go on indefinitely under McCain, while McCain would be forced to defend a war that is still going so badly that no troops can come home. (I am concerned about what is good for Democrats, but, needless to say, what is good for the troops, as well as for the U.S. generally, is for the war to end as soon as possible. The troops need to be brought home. The political calendar should not dictate when.)

2) This highlights a key tension for supporters of the war. On the one hand, they want to believe, and may actually believe, that the war, given the supposed success of the Petraeus-led, McCain-promoted surge, is going well enough for some troops to be brought home. On the other hand, they don’t want the war to be brought to what they deem to be a premature end. Which is to say, they talk up success and progress and victory even as they demand ever more war. There is no way out of this: According to this view, it is precisely the surge (more war) that has brought about progress. (It hasn’t.) But if the surge is ended and troops are brought home, all that has been gained (a modest and temporary improvement in overall security) could be lost, the progress reversed. In other words, to end the war, there must be more war, even though it is not at all clear that more war is actually doing anything to bring about the end. (In fact, the reverse is likely true: more war is prolonging the war.) Support for the war in these terms is simply absurd — not to mention reckless, destructive, and untenable.

While the political calender shouldn't dictate the timing of war decisions, the Iraq War has been using that metric since the first vote to authorize it just ahead of the 2002 mid-terms. Another good example was the delay of the second battle for Fallujah until after the ballots were counted in 2004. Expecting anything different from this administration on a war whose effects are so lightly felt by the general population is wishful thinking at best.

But those two comments truly show just how ugly the calculations for the two major camps really are. For those who oppose the war, more violence and more deaths increases the chance of an antiwar President, but how can you hope for such a thing?

On the other side, too much violence increase your chances of losing, but too little robs you of your supposed advantage in "national security". Who cares what kind of war leader you'll be if the war is already won? You need the war to continue at a rate just below that which causes people to pay too close attention; where you can claim progress but point to more needing to be done. Perpetual war allows you to perpetually question your opponents patriotism in opposing it. Too much progress, and McCain doesn't have anything else people might believe they really need him for. He needs the war can kicked down the road every bit as much as the antiwar folks do, just so long as Petraeus can keep things on simmer until voting day.

As per usual, the troops are as pawns, and what a sad, sad reality that is.

To be honest, I’m not paying too close attention to the Senate hearings with General Petraeus or Ambassador Crocker. It is unlikely that anything new or important is suddenly going to be disclosed. Consider Petreaus’ answers to what conditions will be required to begin a substantial drawdown of troops: I’ll know them when I see them. As Fred Kaplan puts it:

The way that Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker formulated the problem, cutting troops below the current level of 140,000 is not even a conceivable option. They laid out a Catch-22: If things in Iraq get worse, we can't cut back, lest things get worse still; if things get better, we can't cut back, lest we risk reversing all our gains.

. . .

Specifically, Petraeus called for a 45-day pause after the five surge brigades go home this July. After the pause will come an "evaluation" of the security situation. Then there will be an "assessment" of that evaluation. And on that basis, there will be a "determination" whether further reductions can be made, "as conditions permit."

As Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the armed services committee, noted, this sounds an awful lot like an "open-ended pause" that could "take pressure off Iraq's leaders to take responsibility for their own country."

Ultimately, these Senate hearings seem to be more about looking for “gotcha” moments than a real assessment of the situation in Iraq, particularly for the presidential candidates. Yesterday, a large number of left-wing blogs seized upon McCain’s again flubbing the sectarian bent of al Qaeda. Today may be Obama’s turn since he once again called for negotiations with Iran:

The Illinois Senator battling Hillary Clinton for his party's nomination called for more pressure on the Iraqi government to embrace political reconciliation and a regional "diplomatic surge that includes Iran."

"We should be talking to them as well," Obama told the top US General in Iraq David Petraeus and US ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker.

"I do not believe we are going to be able to stabilize the situation without that" said Obama, adding that a plan for US troop withdrawals was needed to force Iraqi factions to work together.

"I think that increased pressure in a measured way, in my mind, and this is where we disagree, includes a timetable for withdrawal. Nobody is asking for a precipitous withdrawal."

Obama has taken fire from his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and Republican presumptive nominee John McCain for his offer to talk, if elected president, with the leaders of several US foes including Iran.

A few on the right are already likening the willingness to talk to appeasement and surrender, as is their wont. I’m just guessing here, but I’m willing to bet they’ll ignore Crocker’s willingness to do the same, since including Iran in regional diplomatic efforts actually makes really good sense.

Of course, Crocker himself hasn’t been having much luck at the hearings so far, which brings me to what is probably the most significant “gotcha” moment to date: The admission that the Al Qaeda heartland in the Afghan-Pakistan border region is far more significant to US national security than the puny franchise organization in Iraq.

Perhaps someone can ask John McCain why, given bin Laden likes to see the US bogged down in Iraq, he thinks that fighting there rather than in Afghanistan is the wisest strategic move?

It appears as though the Conservatives are taking a bit of flack over their deliberate paralyzing of parliamentary committees.

NDP whip Yvon Godin said Hill called the meeting in a bid to find a way to end the partisan rancour that has ground the work of several Commons committees to a halt.

According to Godin, opposition whips bluntly told Hill that Conservatives are to blame for the problem, filibustering, walking out or otherwise obstructing the will of the opposition members, who hold a combined majority on all committees. They advised Hill that the only solution is for Conservatives to follow the rules and accept the will of the majority.

Godin said Hill then warned that Harper is prepared to ask the Governor General to call an election on the grounds that the minority Parliament has become dysfunctional.

Three committees have descended into anarchy:

-Environment committee, where Tory MPs are filibustering a NDP climate change bill that is supported by the other two opposition parties.

-Justice committee, where Tory chair Art Hanger has repeatedly walked out of meetings rather than deal with an opposition motion that the committee investigate allegations that the Conservatives tried to bribe former independent MP Chuck Cadman to vote against the previous Liberal government in 2005.

-Procedure and House affairs committee, where opposition members voted to turf Tory chair Gary Goodyear after he rejected demands for an investigation into alleged spending irregularities by the Conservatives in the 2006 election. They replaced Goodyear with another Tory MP who didn't want the job.

Did I say deliberate? I did indeed, because for those of us with long memories, (and blog archives), there was this little story that came out last May.

The Harper government is being accused of a machiavellian plot to wreak parliamentary havoc after a secret Tory handbook on obstructing and manipulating Commons committees was leaked to the press.

Opposition parties pounced on news reports Friday about the 200-page handbook as proof that the Conservatives are to blame for the toxic atmosphere that has paralyzed Parliament this week.

. . .

The handbook reportedly advises chairs on how to promote the government's agenda, select witnesses friendly to the Conservative party and coach them to give favourable testimony. It also reportedly instructs them on how to filibuster and otherwise disrupt committee proceedings and, if all else fails, how to shut committees down entirely.

The tactics described in the current story are all Standard Operating Procedure from the Tory manual. At a guess, they’re hoping for the general amnesia of the news media and public in order to get away with it.

It would be nice if the opposition parties were to bring this to everyone’s attention and hammer the Conservatives over it. Unfortunately, the Liberals seem intent on proving they have the spines of jellyfish.

Late Tuesday, the Liberals offered an olive branch to get the House affairs committee, which has not met in more than a month, back to work. They said they're now willing to "temporarily postpone" examination of the Tory election spending issue while the committee moves on to other matters

Forgive my crudity, but they really need to grow a pair.

Arctic sea ice melting, glaciers shrinking, erosion, more powerful hurricanes, desertification, a new ice age.  All that kind of stuff is important and all.  But this.  It’s unspeakable!

We must do everything in our power to ensure this catastrophe does not come to pass

CathiefromCanada links approvingly to a post by DBK about how Hillary could've been a contender in the Democratic race. (Psst, don't tell the Hillary camp this, they think she still is!) Reading Cathie's post left me with a number of bones to pick over the characterizations. Quoted from DBK:

We need a leader who is prepared to take drastic measures to get the economy on the right track and solve some of the most pressing economic worries of the middle class. That takes vision and courage, because there are entrenched interests that hate the whole idea of an economy that is successful for any but a few.

The problem here is that after 30 years of entrenching herself into that system, Hillary will never be that person. Cathie herself:

she has survived 30 years of the most vicious political games ever played and she knows how to fight back.

Surviving the slugfest and mudslinging isn’t enough, you need to be able to beat it. Yes, she’s been playing that game for quite a long time, and she has a good handle on how to fight dirty, which is likely why after both Huckabee and McCain defended Obama over Rev. Wright, Hillary sat down with Richard Mellon Scaife and attacked him over it. If you can’t beat the VRWC, join it?

And just where has she developed those fighting instincts really? Her husband’s campaigns aside, this is the first time she’s had to fight to be elected. Her first Senate run was a joke, her second even more so. She played this nomination fight like it would be the same, having massive name recognition and a huge war chest going in, to the point people like Al Gore were afraid to even challenge her due to fears over the Clinton “juggernaught” running them down. She expected an easy blowout for the nomination, and every sign points to her having expected to surf the Democratic wave resulting from eight years of W into the White House. She was more than a contender. She was the heir-apparent.

It was only after Obama knocked her off her pedestal that she realized she might have to fight for this, and her performance so far hasn’t been encouraging. Not figuring out how the Texas delegate selection process went and failing to file a full slate of delegates for Pennsylvania even after the Clinton-supporting governor extended the deadline to help her out.

The only real political fight she personally has been involved in before this was over her health care plan in ’93. Her success there roughly matches Bush’s great strides in overhauling Social Security. Not exactly the kind of fighting skill I’d want to be pinning my hopes on.

Obama, on the other hand, has fought his way from long-shot to prospective nominee against that Clinton juggernaught, all the while using tactics that haven’t torn down Clinton to the extent her own tactics back-firing have. I’d say that kind of fighting ability deserves some respect.

Obama’s recovery from the Wright controversy shows he is more than capable of answering the charges that will be thrown his way, and not, as Clinton seems wont to do, by trying to dig up even more dirt on his opponents so they look worse in comparison. He didn’t try to avoid or downplay the issue, he took it head on. Vision and courage? If DBK hasn’t seen any, he hasn’t been paying attention.

He still thinks that the Republican leadership can be reasoned with. He thinks he can "explain". He thinks a great speech is all it will take.

Change a few words there Cathie, and you have the right-wing smear about his meeting with unfriendly heads of state without preconditions.

Listen to what he actually says. When he talks about reaching across the aisle, it isn’t about talking to the Republican leadership, but to the rank and file, and the ones who call themselves independents. The people just as pissed off about the poisonous way politics has been run for these last 30 years as many Democrats are. He knows that when the people are united on an issue, they can force the dickheads in Washington to do their bidding. And in this, yes, great speeches do make a big difference, particularly when the guy giving them is as charismatic and forceful in his delivery as Obama, and has a really big bully pulpit to make them from.

listen to them and to harness their considerable energy, charisma, fundraising, and framing prowess.

Getting rid of Mark Penn, sort of, should make them a bit easier to listen to, but the rest? Energy? The Obama team has been out-hustling the Clintons on the ground in every contested state. It’s why he wins all of those caucus states that “don’t matter”, and why he keeps closing the gaps in states whose demographics heavily favour Clinton.

Charisma? Hillary doesn’t have any. Last poll I saw gave her a 37% favourable rating, which is little better than Bush’s, and the Republican attack dogs haven’t even had to get going on her yet. Bill does, but even he’s been tarnishing his image with his poorly chosen remarks in defense of the wife. Obama has it in spades.

Fund-raising? Obama was competitive with Hillary when the national polls had her up in the 60’s for support and he was wallowing down in the low teens. Now he’s easily surpassing her and bringing in a much wider donor base. He doesn’t need their help personally, though it would be nice if her donors would stop threatening the DNC.

Framing? Like that “experience versus change” thing that’s worked out so well for them?

if Obama can work out a deal with the Clintons, to involve Hillary in his campaign in some meaningful way like a Vice-Presidency, . . . It will take every bit of both Obama and Hillary to defeat the Mugabe Republicans now entrenched in the US government.

I do believe that Obama will do far, far better with the Clinton’s help than with their hinderance, but you can’t begin to work out a deal with someone until they’ve been convinced that they’re not going to win the whole prize.

It won’t be the Vice-Presidency, regardless. As noted above, Hillary doesn't exactly complement Obama's strengths. Feelers are already out for her to accept the Senate Majority Leader position or the Governorship of New York as consolation prizes. I’ve even heard it suggested that Obama appoint her a Supreme Court Justice.

Whatever it is, she needs to quit the race before it can be offered, and the longer and more bitter the campaign goes, the less chance of reconciliation and a consolation prize there will be.

Cross-posted to In The House and Senate

Did you hear about the state legislator who last week blasted a Lutheran minister during a committee hearing for spewing dangerous religious superstitions, and then attempted to order the minister out of the witness chair on the grounds that his Christian beliefs are "destroying what this state was built upon"?

Of course you didn't, because it didn't happen and would never happen. Not to a Christian, not to a Jew, not to a Muslim or to anyone who subscribes to any faith.

Well, maybe Scientology

Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) interrupted atheist activist Rob Sherman during his testimony Wednesday afternoon before the House State Government Administration Committee in Springfield and told him, "What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous . . . it's dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!

"This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God," Davis said. "Get out of that seat . . . You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon."

Remember, Atheists are dangerous! The mere fact that your children may here about people who don't believe in gods could ruin them for life and destroy the very foundation of the State! Which I suppose only exists because of Divine Right?

Nice to see such tolerance on display.

Clinton also said, while defending her argument for her vote for the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein would be envious of Osama bin Laden. "We knew that psychologically the idea that Osama bin Laden would now be given the top spot so to speak among extremists, would be very hard for Saddam to take and would probably encourage him to do something."

So Hillary voted for the Iraq War because she figured that Saddam's feelings would be hurt if he was left out? Sure sounds like a good reason to start a war to me. [/snark]

I don't know how effective all these protests actually are, but I'm betting about now, the IOC is really wishing they gave the 2008 Games to Toronto.

From:

Why Hillary Clinton should be winning

Who gives a shit what rules we agreed to going in, change how things are scored so our candidate does better!

I tried the same ploy during my squash game on Saturday. Changing the rules after the games already been played just shouldn't work, and if it does, it is going to be be seen as blatantly unfair. And Sean goes far beyond that kind of stupidity:

Some of it is because Obama's backers are using the same kind of tactics as George Bush's camp used in Florida in 2000.

You see, it is all Obama's fault that the Florida and Michigan Democratic Parties broke the rules and moved up their primaries, and even though Hillary agreed not to count those two states, now that she needs their votes, they should suddenly be counted as though they were fair contests, even though Obama wasn't even on the ballot in one of them.

And let's not forget that the 2000 election was such a painful one for Democrats because the guy with the most popular votes would up losing because of the way the electoral college is set up. Now, this Clinton supporter apparently thinks such a system would work just great to overturn the fact that Obama enjoys a clear, and for all intents and purposes, insurmountable lead in the popular vote totals so that Hillary can take the nomination.

But it's Obama that reminds them of Bush?

This should have been expected, but for some reason always seems to catch people off guard when it happens.

The stunning collapse of one of the West Coast's biggest wild salmon runs has prompted even cash-strapped fishermen to call for an unprecedented shutdown of salmon fishing off the coasts of California and Oregon.

"There's likely no fish, so what are you going to be fishing for?" asked Duncan MacLean, a fisherman from Half Moon Bay. "I have no problem sitting out to rebuild this resource if that's what's necessary."

The Pacific Fishery Management Council meets in Seattle this week and will likely vote to impose the most severe restrictions ever on West Coast salmon fishing to protect California's dwindling chinook stocks.

The Sacramento River chinook run is usually one of the most productive on the Pacific Coast, providing the bulk of the salmon caught by sport and commercial trollers off California and Oregon.

But only about 90,000 adult chinook returned to the Central Valley last fall -- the second lowest number on record and well below the number needed to maintain a healthy fishery. That number is projected to fall to a record low of 58,000 this year. By contrast, 775,000 adults were counted in the Sacramento River and its tributaries as recently as 2002.

The authorities are looking into a number of reasons for the collapse, such as water pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and ocean conditions. One I don’t see listed is the effects of fish farming, the negative consequences of which have been hitting the news infrequently over the last few years.

Much of the controversy has focused on the fish feces and excess food that build up beneath the floating net pens and can form bacteria mats on the sea floor that harm marine life. Many scientists say these problems can be reversed by rotating the pens and allowing some to lie fallow, and most growers now use closer monitoring to reduce excess feeding. But salmon waste off the British Columbia coast still releases as much excess nitrogen as sewage from a city of 250,000, according to some estimates.

. . .

Many commercial fishermen are more worried about two other factors: the spread of disease that comes when animals are crowded together and the use of chemicals to combat these illnesses. In Maine, Canada and elsewhere, farmed fish have passed sea lice, which eat salmon flesh, to their wild counterparts. Infectious salmon anemia, a lethal disease first discovered in Norway in 1984, has spread globally, prompting one Maine fish farm to kill more than 1.5 million fish in 2002 to try to contain the infection.

Escaped salmon, which compete for natural resources with other fish and can sometimes interbreed with their wild counterparts, pose another potential risk. Fred Whoriskey, who heads the research staff at the Atlantic Salmon Federation and works on saving the few thousand wild salmon that still live in North American waters, found more than eight times as many escaped fish farm salmon as wild salmon in New Brunswick's Magaguadavic River last year.

Mitchell Shapson, a lawyer at the San Francisco-based Institute for Fisheries Resources who represents wild-catch fishermen, said his clients resent aquaculture's impact on their hunting grounds.

"If you destroy the environment and you destroy the wild fish, there won't be anything left to fish," he said.

And that doesn’t even get into the health risks associated with eating the chemically-laden farmed fish. Keep this kind of stuff up, and Ted Turner may not sound like such a nut anymore.

It is really hard to win wars when your leadership is delusional about the outcome of battles and people are unable to get the actual facts to judge the situation.

John McCain has now repeatedly claimed, falsely, that Sadr was the one to call for a cease-fire:

It was al-Sadr that declared the ceasefire, not Maliki. … With respect, I don’t think Sadr would have declared the ceasefire if he thought he was winning. Most times in history, military engagements, the winning side doesn’t declare the ceasefire.

At least the last sentence is accurate. This morning's Washington Post story about the deepening rifts between Iraqi Shiites, contains this line:

Clashes erupted across southern Iraq and Baghdad, diminishing only after Sadr ordered his fighters to lay down their weapons.

Sadr, of course, never ordered his fighters to lay down their weapons, just to stop attacking government forces. He made it pretty clear they could hang to their weapons and continue fighting if the US-backed government/Badr forces didn't back off. But repeat the line often enough and people will start to believe it.

On the bright side, the WaPo story did contain this snippet:

Some fighters believed that Iran was using Dawa and the Badr Brigade, which was originally founded and trained in Iran, to foment violence against Sadr, whose movement has long been wary of Iran. All saw American influence. Abu Haider, a senior Sadrist leader, said the U.S. military was using their Shiite rivals to keep the Mahdi Army busy in order to prevent them from attacking U.S. troops. "They will not change," said Abu Zahra, referring to Badr and Dawa.

Important because a couple of stories out of Britain the last couple of days claim that General Petraeus will say that Iranian troops were fighting alongside al-Sadr's forces against the Badr/government forces and US troops. The ridiculousness of this claim was already pointed out by Eric Martin on Friday, when he noted that a goodly number of the Badr Corps are receiving pensions from the IRGC, but as with most things, the Bush administration has never let pesky things like facts get in the way of their war rationales.

I'm just curious if Petraeus does say what the Brits claim he's going to say, will the WaPo remember what they once knew? Or will they continue their tradition of transcribing what they're told and ignoring the facts? War with Iran might hinge on the outcome.

Hillary Clinton is making it real hard for me to remember that she's supposed to be an alternative to the last eight years of the Bush administration. While others are suppressing gag reflexes over her, "This is not a coronation", line, the one that got me was this little doosey about her 2002 vote for the Iraq War:

Clinton said that historians will judge if her decision was the right one

Sound familiar?

She then went on to claim that she was criticizing the war before Obama was and was a more staunch opponent of it. As Matt Yglesias says:

It turns out that this is true if you ignore the events of 2002, and those of 2003, and those of 2004 and then misportray the events of 2005.

I honestly don't know how much more of this I can take before I slip into full CDS mode.

Vandals have desecrated 148 Muslim graves in France's biggest WWI cemetery, officials have said.

A pig's head was hung from one headstone and slogans insulting Islam and France's Muslim justice minister were daubed on other graves.

. . .

In a similar attack in April 2007, Nazi slogans and swastikas were painted on about 50 graves in the Muslim section of the cemetery. Two men were sentenced to a year in prison for that act.

Somehow I doubt this will get the kind of coverage similar incidents targeting Jewish memorials have. It would be nice, if hopelessly naive, for those defending Gert Wilders "freedom of speech" to recognize some of the, uglier, consequences of such speech.

The line between hate speech and free speech is a tricky one to draw. For myself, I think they should be allowed to speak, but responsible people shouldn't comment, broadcast, host, or promote it in any fashion whatsoever. When people stop lapping up what these bastards are selling, they'll be pushed to the fringes where they belong to die ignominious deaths, rather than be encouraged to produce further screeds that give purpose to the vandals above.

I was just out at the local Racquet Club playing squash. My opponent was unfortunate enough to pull his hamstring at the begining of the fourth game, prematurely ending the match. A segment of the conversation in the locker-room:

G: Was I up when we quit?

Me: You were up two games to one. (Match is best of 5)

G: Hah! Beat you finally!

Me: Well, if you go by points scored, I was actually doing better.

G: Sure. Change the rules halfway through so it looks better for you.

Me: Sorry. Been watching the Democratic race down south and people are doing that kind of thing a lot.

I guess it's been rubbing off.

I don't really care about how much money Bill and Hillary are making, and the noise over releasing tax returns was to me one of the reasons they call this the "silly season". That said, the Clinton campaign timed the release quite badly. John Cole got the screenshot from the New York Times.



Slate's newspaper summary puts it this way:

The Labor Department announced yesterday that the U.S. economy lost 80,000 jobs in March, the largest loss in five years. It remains uncertain whether we're supposed to call this a recession. The other big news today is that Bill and Hillary Clinton are really, really rich. Yesterday the Clinton campaign released tax return documents showing that the Clintons earned $109 million over the last eight years, mostly from their best-selling books and Bill's speaking engagements.

Had the Clinton's released all this earlier when it first became an issue, or even when they promised to a couple of weeks ago, they could have avoided this rather nasty confluence of their impressive wealth with the bad news for those working-class voters she so desperately needs in Pennsylvania.

Not the best example of strategic thought, (and yeah, Mark Penn's sense of timing isn't very helpful to Clinton either).

Anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention to the situation in Iraq knows that al-Maliki, ISCI, and the Badr Corps all have quite significant ties to the new Hilter on the block, Iran. But even I didn't get just how thorough some of those connections are.

Eric Martin, through his laughter, (of a schadenfreude variety I'm sure), explores the latest "head-exploding factiod" via Ilan Goldenberg:

The Badr Organization is the military arm of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI previously known as SCIRI).  Now ISCI is closely aligned with Maliki government and is arguably the most significant player in the current central government.  In fact significant elements of the Badr Organization have been incorporated into the Iraqi Security Forces.

Now, here is where things start to break down.  The Badr Organization (Originally called the Badr Brigades) was originally formed by Iran.  But according to Ware many of its members were considered to be part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.  And many of them are now considered to be retirees of the IRGC.  Which means…wait for it... wait for it...

They still get pensions from the IRGC!!  But it gets better.  The Bush Administration has classified the IRGC as a terrorist organization!!

So, just so that we’re clear on this.  We are building an army full of people who are still getting pension payments from an organization that the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.  And we are basing our entire future in Iraq on that army. 

It is, quite frankly, hard not to be amused by the irony.

Cross-posted to In The House and Senate

Via MyDD, Marc Ambinder finds an interesting data point.

The effort by Hillary Clinton’s bundlers to pressure Speaker Nancy Pelosi into retracting her comments about superdelegates has caused a spurt of Obama-linked donations to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democrats with direct knowledge of the situation said.

The letter, sent last week, was interpreted as an extortion threat; the 20 signatories seemed to suggest that they would withhold donations from the DCCC if Pelosi did not change her position. --- that superdelegates ought strongly consider the expressed will of voters in their states.

“We have been strong supporters of the DCCC,” the letter stated. “We therefore urge you to clarify your position on super-delegates and reflect in your comments a more open [view] to the optional independent actions of each of the delegates at the National Convention in August.”

But the letter may have backfired:, the DCCC saw a surge in online contributions, which officials there attribute to a mass action to protest the Clinton donor threat, and several major Obama donors called Speaker Pelosi and DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen asking how they could be helpful. Sources also said that several major Clinton donors, outraged at the letter sent in the name of the campaign, privately offered their assurances to the DCCC that no money would be cut off.

Singer adds to that:

Here we have the two Democratic campaigns taking two very different tacks. On one hand, you have key supporters of one campaign going out and threatening one of the key party organs, offering the possibility that they will make it more difficult for the party to hold on to, or even pick up, seats in the House. On the other hand, you have the other campaign taking the exact opposite action, offering more support to the party committee and seeing its grassroots supporters send new online support to the party's effort in the House.

I've noted before that the Obama campaign, like Howard Dean's DNC, has been focused on building up and expanding Democratic support, while Clinton falls into the old style of Democratic campaigning; generally effective where your base support is, and the rest doesn't really count because you were going to lose anyway. That little extortion racket also made it look like they care more for their personal success than the party's.

If you're looking to the future, one strategy seems considerably better.

900ft Jesus of In The House and Senate has invited me to post on his site, and I've accepted.

You can see my introductory post here.

Lookee, lookee! Another 3 a.m. ad!



I guess with McCain's rather lousy fund-raising to date, he's found it easier to just borrow Clinton spots. (We won't mention Clinton's desperation on re-using the footage from her own previous ad.) On the other hand, we know with McCain he'll probably be up going to the washroom about that time.

John Cole isn't too impressed with McCain's plan to "grow jobs" using Pony dust, but I'm just getting sick of the lack of imagination here.

I'm trying to figure out what other crisis the campaigns are going to try and stretch this to cover. A 3 a.m. phone call for a national security matter was at least understandable, but home foreclosures? C'mon people! Bankers will wait until the next business day and regular office hours before giving you the news that you're out on your ass.

Message to the Obama campaign: if you feel the urge to go the 3 a.m. route yourselves, make sure it is in clear spoof mode over how ridiculous these latest ads from the Clinton and McCain camps are so we are spared the deluge of such stupidity over the next several months.

A quick look at the stories this morning shows a couple of things. First, that the lion's share of the $15 billion in assistance will be going to home builders, who speculated on the booming housing market and are now left with large inventories they can't sell. For the average Joe?

Families who cannot afford to repay their home loans -- the group at the heart of the mortgage meltdown -- would benefit mainly from $100 million to expand foreclosure counseling services and greater latitude for local housing authorities to use tax-exempt bonds in refinancing subprime loans.

I'm sure that will make a huge difference.

The one measure that may actually have made a big difference to ordinary families never made it into the package.

But it lacks a provision that many housing experts say could have a broad and positive effect on financially strapped homeowners: permission for bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of mortgages on debtors' primary residences. Such a provision has been sharply opposed by the mortgage banking industry and Republican lawmakers.

. . .

To some critics, the decision to leave bankruptcy reform out of the bill amounted to favoring the mortgage industry over borrowers. Under current law, bankruptcy judges have the latitude to adjust the terms of mortgages held by property speculators, but not by homeowners.

Ah well, Washington isn't about helping out financially strapped homeowners, it is about keeping the financial system from melting down, which leads to the second big point about this package: It's a pittance even compared to the amount put up for the Bear Stearns bailout on its own, one that the taxpayers are still on the hook for, not to mention all the other low-interest lines of credit the Fed is pushing. Priorities, priorities.

And on a somewhat related note, a very familiar scenario that won't help the global picture any:

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said Europe's housing markets are finally, and overwhelmingly, turning down.

. . .

Particularly at risk are the U.K. housing market, where the financial crisis is exacerbating issues of affordability and general economic gloom, and the Spanish housing market, which is coming to terms with a largess of new homes, S&P said.

. . .

It noted that the price-to-income ratio is at an all-time high and this, combined with unprecedented levels of household debt (97 percent of GDP in 2007 compared with 59 percent in the Eurozone), calls for a significant correction.

The fun never stops.

A quick check to see how foul-mouthed the world has made me recently.



Ah, for fuck's sake.

You'd think for a site devoted to ranting about things that piss me off, I'd find the time to use less polite language.

The Newshoggers crew have been at their new home for less than two days and have already put up a couple of dozen posts worth the visit on their own. The new digs must have inspired them.

If you haven't already updated your bookmarks and links, get to it.

Not exactly the greatest ad I've seen, and it brings back some unpleasant associations with her last "3 a.m." ad, but I have to give Hillary credit for putting a shot across the bow of the SS McCain.

More like this, please.

Given that Hillary has decided to portray herself as the fictional boxing legend Rocky Balboa, Slate has decided to see just how accurate and/or inaccurate the comparison is. Given my history of being a ring participant and my continued love of the sport, it is a metaphor I can't resist, though I prefer real life to fictional characters.

. . . the Clinton-as-Balboa metaphor is deeply flawed. Hillary started out as the favorite, only becoming the underdog when she started losing primaries and caucuses. If anything, she’s more like Apollo Creed, the undisputed champ who didn’t take an upstart opponent seriously.

However there are a few points where the Clinton as Balboa comparison may make sense, though not in way that make Hillary look all that great:

There’s one Rocky scene in particular that gives us a window into Hillary “Balboa” Clinton’s psyche. The night before the big fight, Rocky sits on the edge of his bed and tells his girl Adrian that he can’t beat Creed. He gets in the ring the next day with one goal: He wants to go the distance, to trade jabs with the champ for 15 rounds. He doesn’t care if he wins—he only wants to prove that he can survive the onslaught and do some damage in the process. He keeps on fighting for himself, his fans, and his country. Even his closest advisers couldn’t convince him to get out of the ring. Sound familiar? 

One last possible parallel carries some salience: Those who are calling for Clinton’s withdrawal say she should bail because she’s going to hurt Obama. During the climactic fight in Rocky, Balboa does serious damage to Creed. He dodges a Creed jab and punches him twice in the torso, breaking his rib in the process.

Given that after both McCain and Huckabee came out in defense of Obama over the whole Wright imbroglio, Hillary entered the heart of the Vast-Right-Wing-Conspiracy to attack him on it, and the fact that her campaign is continuing to use it in an attempt to sap Obama’s electability, and given her campaign has been attacking Obama over wanting to disenfranchise voters, that bruising metaphor is looking rather relevant.

Of course, I’ve been concerned about Hillary producing some sort of Samson option since mid-February, so I’m somewhat pre-disposed to that idea.

It does make me wonder where things will go from here. Back in early March, Big Tent Democrat said that the two Democratic candidates should prove that are the better candidate against McCain by actually running against McCain instead of tearing each other down. Obama has and is doing that, though I doubt he’s getting any points from BTD on that point. It is also clear that despite a few comforting words about supporting whomever the Democratic nominee might turn out to be, the above campaign tactics show that Hillary hasn’t gotten the memo.

Barring a miracle, Clinton will win Pennsylvania, though probably not by the massive margin she needs, not that it will matter to her or her supporters. I also fully expect some variation of the “kitchen sink” fusillade in the closing days of the Pennsylvania campaign so that she can pad her victory by as much as possible. To go back to the boxing metaphor, it is the equivalent of closing out the round with a couple of flashy combinations in order to sway the judges despite a lackluster performance in the rest of the round. Maybe Tina Fey can write a couple more skits for her on SNL.

That means she stays in until at least the May 6 primaries in Indiana and North Carolina. NC appears solid for Obama. Indiana is less certain, but most polls favour Obama as well. Obama takes another late-round flurry, but probably wins both, wiping out any gains Clinton made in Pennsylvania.

It would be nice if this decided the contest, but a look at the calendar shows that a week from these primaries is the one in West Virginia, which favours Clinton, and the week after that she has another solid state in Kentucky while Obama picks up Oregon. That only leaves Montana, South Dakota and Puerto Rico. Clinton shouldn’t have too hard a time convincing herself to carry on through all of them, continuing to complain about the Michigan and Florida primaries she once agreed were not to be counted all the while.

Basically, regardless how slim her chances get, it is pretty easy to see Hillary continuing to potshot Obama all the way to the convention in August, wearing both of them down to the point neither is capable of taking on McCain. Unfortunate given he should be eminently beatable thanks to continuing “gaffes” like this on the only issue he’s supposed to have a advantage on.

The only possibility for Obama to end this is if he somehow manages to win Pennsylvania and/or the media starts treating Hillary’s campaign as they did Huckabee’s after Feb. 5th, despite the fact that he did far better in the next several primaries against McCain than she did against Obama. As soon as the myths are punctured and her true chances become apparent, her already shaky campaign finances will likely dry up and with them her capacity to launch further kitchen sink flurries to damage Obama and the Democrats chances in November.

To go back to the boxing metaphor, the Democratic race is beginning to resemble the "controversy" over the De La Hoya-Mosley 2 decision. Those watching through the lens of the HBO's boxing crews heavily-baised coverage thought De La Hoya was robbed, while those watching ringside or with the mute button engaged agreed with the ringside judges in giving the fight to Mosley.

So long as the media continues to portray the Democratic contest as a close race that Hillary has a decent chance of winning, that is the way it will be perceived. If and when the media abandons her, she's toast, which probably explains her campaigns outreach to such paragons of journalistic integrity such as Richard Melon Scaife and FoxNews.

A poor way to do things, I know, but that's the way it is.

A sad day, though I can't argue that they've probably been on long enough.

The Royal Canadian Air Farce, one of Canada's longest-running comedy troupes, will be grounded after next season, CBC announced on Tuesday.

The venerable weekly sketch comedy TV show, known for its topical mix of political and social satire, will produce nine regular episodes in the fall before ending with its traditional New Year's Eve gala special.

"It's just time," original cast member and producer Don Ferguson told CBC News on Tuesday afternoon.

"We've done pretty much everything we wanted to do. The ratings are still good. I want to be in charge of my own exit."

Always good for a few laughs, but I think they were getting little tired after 15 years on TV. We'll just have to go elsewhere for our snark.

On that note, Fafblog may be back, (if it wasn't just an April Fool's Joke).

And she's taking on the right target:

. . . despite fuzzy language and feel-good lines in the Senator’s proposal, I do understand exactly how devastating it will be to people who have the health conditions with which the Senator and I are confronted (melanoma for him, breast cancer for me) but do not have the financial resources we have. In very unconfusing language: they are left outside the clinic doors.

Senator McCain likes to start speeches with a litany of questions that, presumedly, less plain-spoken politicians would refuse to answer. Well, here are some questions he does not ask but, as that plain-spoken politician, he might want to answer:

1. Under your plan, Senator McCain, would any health insurer be required to sell you or me (or those like us with pre-existing conditions) a health insurance policy?

. . .

4. Isn’t the type of competition you are talking about really a rush to the bottom? As long as you allow insurers to underwrite and deny access, you encourage insurers to offer plans that may be cheap, but that get that way by avoiding people with cancer or other high-cost diseases or by limiting benefits and treatments, particularly if the treatment is expensive or might be needed for a long time. We all live in the real world; those of us lucky enough to have health insurance have seen how insurers cut coverage and up co-pays or deny particular treatments. The insurance company makes money when it doesn’t have to pay for our health care. (I suspect that if they could, they would write obstetrical-only policies for nuns.) Doesn’t your plan really encourage insurers plans to compete to avoid people with cancer or other high-cost diseases? Don’t you think that the kind of competition that starts with a decent level of required coverage, that doesn’t exclude the care we actually need, would be better?

I don't know which of Obama's or Clinton's health care plans is better than the other, but I can virtually guarantee that either of them would be far better than what McCain plans. Who knows? One of them may even listen to the doctors and join the rest of the civilized world with a single-payer, national health insurance program.

McCain is likely to do here what he plans for the economy, the really rich will be looked after and everybody else will be screwed.

Sometimes just the headlines can tell a story for you.

Bigger Nahanni park, zinc mine have to coexist: Harper

Former Tory hopeful to head N.W.T. environmental board

Battle looming over mine site near Nahanni park reserve

See? You don’t even have to read the stories to grow suspicious, particularly if you’re familiar with the Conservative’s maneuvering around the Nuclear Safety Commission and the firing of its head. Consider my interest piqued.

The dormant zinc mine that is sitting on the edge of the Nahinni park has been trying to get permits to open up for years, and has been opposed by Parks Canada and environmental groups. They are rightfully concerned that the toxic tailings from the mine will contaminate the Park’s watershed and want the Park’s protection extended to include the mine site.

That said, a bit of digging shows numerous other, likely more significant, reasons for the Conservatives and the mining industry to want to get rid of Gabrielle Mackenzie-Scott as head of the impact board. The two biggest were the turning down of a uranium exploration bid in the Thelon River , Basin, and the recommendation to end free-entry claim-staking. That second decision in particular would have a significant impact on the mining industry and the environment.

Under the free-entry system, any licensed prospector may stake a claim on any Crown land without notifying local people. That claim gives the holder legal rights on that land and binds him to perform a certain amount of work on it.

Aboriginals and environmentalists have long held that the free-entry system allows industry to chip away at environmentally or culturally significant lands before anyone has a chance to discuss where development should be allowed and where it should remain off limits.

"It's a system that doesn't fully acknowledge that there are other rights of equal or perhaps greater importance," said David Livingstone, Indian and Northern Affairs director of renewable resources and environment for the N.W.T., who spoke in favour of such a recommendation at hearings on the project.

It's almost impossible to establish a protected area or create a land claim on land with pre-existing mineral dispositions on it, Livingstone said.

All of this points to the fact that the mining industry has been none too happy with the Board for the last year or two, which puts the Conservatives decision to ignore the board's recommendation to re-appoint their (now former) chairwoman in a rather poor light. Once again, it appears the Conservatives are interfering with the independence of a regulatory body.

I wish I could say I was surprised.

Not that their debunking will have any effect on her supporters, but it looks like she may be starting to spin down the drain anyway.