The end of American democracy

[This ruling] ...creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now "lies about like a loaded weapon" for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation… The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority's reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy's Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune…

 

The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.

--Dissenting opinion of SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor

 

Earlier today - Canada Day for us Canadians, now even prouder so than e'er before, given how much we tend to define ourselves in relation to our southern neighbors (you no longer rate the British "u" in this neighbourhood, bro") - the American republic effectively self-immolated.

 

As the British would say, that's a wash. As in, when Richard M. Nixon, post-resignation, said in the famous 1977 Frost interview, "When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."

 

For my whole life, since learning US history from Saturday morning US of Archie cartoons on American network TV, I have been told of the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution. It used to matter. All pols used to declare their steadfast allegiance to that document, to its principles, above all else. But that's all gone now.

 

I'm talking about the whole American experiment with democracy. That thing that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams and James Madison and Alexander Hamilton and a few others got going back in the 18th century that was all built on the concepts of the Age of Reason and a Declaration of Independence.

 

Oh, it was a nice bit of theater for a quarter-millenium, but in the end, the concept of three co-equal branches of government fucked itself over. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States of America gave carte-blanche to completely immasculate itself to one of the two other branches (the Executive one, the President).

 

This is all a scam, of course, to help foster criminal immunity to Donald J. Trump, that rascal of rascals, who has crimed his way to the very top of an international crime syndicate masquerading as a government, as U.S. journalist and author Sarah Kendzior so bluntly ascribed this cabal of the omni-rich plutocracy/autocracy/kleptocracy (basically, if it ends in ocracy and isn't prefixed by "dem" you know you're one of the chumps on the outside looking in).

 

Meanwhile, the sometimes-coherent current President of the United States, Joseph Robinet (that means "sink faucet" in French btw) Biden decried this judgment as "a dangerous precedent… The only limits will be self-imposed by the president."

The presidency is the most powerful office in the world. It's an office that not only tests your judgment; perhaps even more importantly, it's an office that can test your character.

Because you're not only faced with moments where you need the courage to exercise the full power of the office of the presidency. You also face moments where you need the wisdom to respect the limits of the power of the presidency. This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America. Each of us is equal before the law. No one is above the law - not even the President of the United States. But (with) today's Supreme Court decision on Presidential immunity, that fundamentally changed. For all practical purposes, today's decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a President can do. This is a fundamentally new principle. And it's a dangerous precedent because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even and inclucing the Supreme Court of the United States. The only limits will be self-imposed by the President.

 

I watched this 73-second performance a few times while transcribing it. It leaves me more bereft than hopeful.

 

Like his steadfast support for the Zionist project of Israel in the Levant, where the worst proclivities of the ruling class render him a worldwide laughingstock while Netanyahu's racist and autocratic government continues its brutal assault on the Gazans and West Bank Palestinians in what will surely be seen in years hence as a classic and particularly heinous crime against humanity, Biden's outrage on this quintessential and existential crisis in the American project lands deflated of the gravity deserving of the matter at hand, regardless of how expertly-coined his comms team has so painstakingly crafted each word for his oh-so-forgiving teleprompter.

 

Ironically, it was just last year, just before the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, that the Israeli Supreme Court (as a branch of a governing structure greatly inspired by the American model) found itself forced to affirm its own sanctity within the political structure, thwarting the dictatorial impulses of the wily President. 

Like a good disciple of US President George W. Bush, Bibi knows well the self-preserving balm furnished by being a "War President" prosecuting an esoteric war of unattainable goals. Until All Terrorists Against the USA Are Completely Destroyed, meet: Until All of Hamas Is Completely Destroyed - in both cases, creating more enemies among the survivors with each coldly-calculated war crime. So to perpetuate the state of endless war, and the need to seek refuge in the Great, Strong Protector-Leader Who Will Keep Us All Safe™

(that is Fascism, folks. That scourge that cost some 61 million lives between 1937-45)

 

Biden obviously doesn't know what he is doing. On one hand, he is trying to uphold the concept of the integrity of the nation-state against naked aggression (Russia's invasion of Ukraine), while on the other, he unquestioningly supports the Israeli-Zionist cause as it follows the worst examples of Nazi Germany in dehumanizing the Palestinians whose only real crime is being in their way (of total domination of some of the most precious real estate in the world).

Carl Bernstein on CNN, earlier today: Multiple sources tell him that there have been at least 15 occasions in the last year and a half “where the president has appeared like he did at that horror show (his debate performance).” Bernstein reports that in the last six months sources have told him that there has been a marked incidence of cognitive decline. He says that his sources have gone to Ron Klain in the last year to express concern about the President losing his train of thought and not having the ability to pick up where he left off.

If this is the most powerful man in the world, one must ask, why does he appear so desperately weak?

 

As history shows us, it is the perfect recipe for an authoritarian with the very worst impulses to come up and assume power.

 

Biden must step down. Or the United States is over. And that leaves the world in a very unstable place.

 

 - 30 -

Further reading:

https://www.authoritarianplaybook2025.org/

It's the Econom... I mean, Senate, Stupid!

For my younger audience, note that the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign was driven by the message: It's the Economy, Stupid! (internally only).

So...

Super Tuesday results are coming in and I see three things:

1) Being unjustly targeted by Trump is turning out to be a very good thing for Joe Biden.
2) Being a candidate with long coattails to help Senate races is a good thing for Joe Biden.
3) Being a better candidate for President is useless now that we know the silly 'merican republic can somehow lurch along for three-plus years with a knob that is exponentially more DOOFUS than POTUS in charge of the executive branch (not unlike some big-ass U.S. corporations I have had the misadventure of working for, I might add).

There are something like a hundred amazingly progressive pieces of legislation the Democratic Party controlled House of Representatives has passed (least of which, Impeachment of Preznit Donald J. Trump) that the Rethuglican Senate Majority Leader fucker (and I use that term graciously) Mitch McConnell, palpateenishly relishes stonewalling in his chamber. I have a friend who is a very very smart and very very good man, thinking very very hard about urban ecology and doing very very good things with this knowledge to help society not collapse.

He is an American who today lives in Portland, OR, and was in Montreal for a year, and will soon return for good (hopefully) if no asteroids destroy us on or about the 29th of April,  2020.

While I have incredibly good instincts about Canadian politics at times, my take on the shit south of this border is way wobblier, which was proven in 2018 when I sadly told my friend that I predicted BOTH houses of Congress would surely turn to the control of the Dems (huzzahs all around)!

Not so, he thought, knowing far better than I the peccadilloes of the individual races and their respective states where they were being fought. I was struck by his sadness about the matter. It came from a man with a heart that cares deeply about far more than his own kin, who understood the bigger picture, and the SCOTUS appointments, and the many other federal judge appointments, that would all hinge upon the control of the United States Senate. There have been many. The good people at wikipedia have made a comprehensive list. These judges make a myriad of judgments, and you can be damned sure they aren't going to come down on the side of the people who don't pull the Rethuglicans' strings (very, very, rich people, of course, and no others).

I have since learned that something like 70% of Senate power is in the hands of voters from rural areas, due to the two Senators per state allocation, coupled with extremely high population differences between individual states. I feel this may have made sense in 1776, when 13 states came together to form a union, as they put it. But in contemporary USA, it creates a huge imbalance of influence; unlike us in Canada, where our Senate is an upper body with much less say-so on matters that matter. I daresay our Canadian parliamentary system has better built-in bulwarks (imperfect, I admit) against such oligarchical control manifesting itself.

What we lack is a federation that can protect provinces from despotic premieres like Ford in Ontario, Kenney in Alberta, and Legault here in Québec, from fucking us over, since the provinces control so much more of what affects our daily existence, such as Health, Education, and Natural Resources. But that is a topic for another day.

Back to my point: Elizabeth Warren, in an earlier USA, would be a gobsmackingly perfect and unbeatable candidate, looking at her knowledge, policies and political talents. But when it's the Senate, Stupid, a guy like Joe Biden - who has been a Senator for a bazillion years, and who presided over it as Vice-President for eight of the last eleven years - is your obvious man if your Big Strategy is to wrest control of that most powerful chamber from the Rethuglicans.

Democracy is what brought this about. The best of all imperfect modes of government. May they actually have an honest election come November. This Canadian is doubtful, and morosely so.

- 30 -

Every Canadian should read Bob Rae's column in the Walrus

It is all about Canada-USA relations, and in particular, this uncomforting reality:

"It’s time we understood just how far apart our two countries are and act accordingly"

The whole text is here.

Interestingly, it comes just hours after the publication of this warning for the EU from the Guardian:
EU must 'prepare for worst-case scenarios' under Trump, top official warns

From that article, from European Council president, Donald Tusk:

“More and more people are starting to believe that only strong-handed authority, anti-European and anti-liberal in spirit, with a tendency towards overt authoritarianism, is capable of stopping the wave of illegal migration.”

“If people believe them, that only they can offer an effective solution to the migration crisis, they will also believe anything else they say. The stakes are very high. And time is short.”

Time for all of us to stop ignoring the painful truth. If you're not with Trump, you're not only against Trump,...

you're at war

- 30 -

EXCLUSIVE: Mubarak's conversation with Obama:

"If I go there will be trouble, If I stay there will be double"



So, go.

Anderson Cooper is restoring my faith in journalism

Full credit to Anderson Cooper. In one hour this evening, he did more to awaken his countrymen to the horrors of unchecked neo-liberal corporatism than a thousand indie-film docs on Monsanto, GM or Enron combined.

Having been riveted by Cooper's 360 show during the aftermath of the disastrous Haiti earthquake earlier this year, I felt certain he would have the best daily on-the-ground coverage available from the Gulf of Mexico, where the unfettered oil leak contamination is worsening daily.

I was not disappointed. Unlike most broadcast journalists, Cooper does not shirk to use his considerable status and reach to effectively and boldly tell the story, and to hold the powerful to account. Tonight he did just that.

This evening's show was intelligently and unrelentingly critical of the callous reaction of British Petroleum to the growing Gulf of Mexico oil-spill catastrophe that they created but cannot seem to stop.

Cooper is completely in his element when reporting on the ground from a crisis situation. Back in the territory where he made his name five years ago by tirelessly covering the devastation and abysmal federal response to Hurricane Katrina, Cooper is now setting his sites on this huge multinational corporation (British Petroleum) overdue its comeuppance for generations of being everything rotten about Big Oil that the makers of There Will Be Blood tried hopelessly to tell us. And the wily Cooper knows precisely when, where and how hard to throw his punches for maximum effect.

Just for perspective's sake, BP is the fourth-largest corporation in the world. Its market capitalization at the end of last year stood at 181 billion USD, a figure that surpasses the GNP of entire nations, including Slovakia, Morocco and Chile.

And Anderson Cooper had at 'em. With few new developments today, save for yet another spectacular mishap on BP's part in containing the leak, Cooper stoically gave their CEO Tony Hayward full benefit of the doubt in trying gamely to understand his off-the-cuff explanation for clean-up workers' health complaints as being almost certain cases of food poisoning.



Together with Dr. Sanjay Gupta (who himself was most endearing in his chemically-challenged attempts at describing hydrocarbons as things "surrounded by hydrogen molecules"), Cooper efficiently swatted away Hayward's dubious food poisoning claim by pointing out these numerous sufferers of teary-eyed dizzyness and nausea didn't all eat at the same diner, after all. He also got Dr. Riki Ott to go on camera explaining what long-term effects (including increased cancer rates) she's documented from protected Exxon Valdez clean-up workers.

Next, Cooper got a couple of today's Gulf Coast clean-up workers on camera, even though they were scared of being fired for going against the non-disclosure agreements they'd signed with BP in order to obtain their $12 an hour clean-up jobs. They were speaking out about the lack of timely pay for services; about the lack of protective gear for their personal well-being (in particular, face masks); about the fact they felt they couldn't speak up for what they thought was right because of the waivers they were forced to sign. Cooper remarked on the irony of a British company stifling the free speech of American citizens.

In truth, it could just as easily have been an American or Japanese or Indian company, of course. But the historical precedent must rankle for any American with a passing knowledge of their country's founding history, especially with Hayward doing such a fabulous job of re-enacting King George III in every way that matters.

Not done there, Cooper did everything but hold his hat in his hand, humbly begging for anyone from BP to come onto his show for an interview, while explaining that there has been no shortage of direct invitations to do so. Then, in the last few minutes of his broadcast, a live meter reading of the estimated gallons of oil gushing into the Gulf was prominently displayed in the bottom-right corner of the screen. The figure increased at a rate of about nine gallons per second, with well over 34 million gallons already disgorged.

As the show ended, I realized something more significant than Katrina is now unfolding before us. Unbelievably, I wonder if we mightn't be looking back someday, remembering this time as the beginning of the end of Big Oil.

...if not the end of Big Business itself. In conjunction with Obama's bold words today, one can only assume that some kind of significant change in American capitalism is afoot.

- 30 -

Greenbacked-up as hell and not taking it anymore

Roll out red carpets
Here come the China boys
-- The Payola$ (1979)

A report by Robert Fisk (the only Western journalist to ever interview Osama bin Laden) in today's Independent augurs ill for the continuance of the United States' dominance of world finance - perhaps a body blow to a crumbling empire:

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

"These plans will change the face of international financial transactions," one Chinese banker said. "America and Britain must be very worried. You will know how worried by the thunder of denials this news will generate."

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.

Well that tidbit of truth is a wee bit disturbing.

Give Unto Woman What is Woman's

A woman must have control over her own body. But the anti-abortionists will never be satisfied with that. I am sickened to learn of this 40-day campaign of self-righteous busy-bodies, bent on harassing women at abortion clinics across the United States and Canada - even here in Montreal.

From Antonia Zerbiasis:

The birds of `pray' who will be targeting women's clinics in Canadian cities for the next 40 days really don't care about saving lives.

If they did, they wouldn't be so much about intimidating the desperate women and girls who are seeking abortions.

That's because, no matter how much they will attempt to cloak their vigils outside two Toronto clinics with solemn vows to "never stop defending life," their true agenda is unveiled by their lack of support for babies once they're born, their often impoverished mothers and the kind of sex education and contraception accessibility that would avoid abortion in the first place.

Nowhere on 40DaysForLife.com is there any discussion of any of these matters.

Of course not. I wonder what these people would have had Mackenzie Phillips do if abortion wasn't an option for her after being impregnated by her own father? There are more than enough unwanted children in this world. And when safe abortion is not an option, the result is that women die. Needlessly.

As for our governing Conservatives, Zerbisias goes on to remind us of where they stand:

There are reports in the blogosphere that Harper will replace Status of Women minister Helena Guergis – who hasn't done much for women, but that's another column – with the anti-choice Cheryl Gallant, who has fought against gay rights and even parental leave.

It just gets worse.

Last weekend, a prominent American anti-choice activist made a speech at the "Value Voters Summit" where she proposed that abortions be performed "in the public square."

This is the true backlash against feminism, whose second wave became a tsunami after the pill became widely available in the late 1960s.

It's all about keeping women down to those Biblical depths where they are little more than breeding stock, born to serve their masters.

...

No wonder Harper boasted two weeks ago, in a closed-door meeting of the party faithful, that he killed the mechanisms for women to protect their constitutional rights.

Zerbisias signs off her blog post saying she worries about the prospect of a Harper majority government.

Antonia, let me just say this: As a Canadian; as a proud father; as a feminist; as a humanitarian, I couldn't agree more. This is a public health issue, and it's also about protecting women's rights, and protecting the integrity of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

That's why we can't get these Harper Conservatives out of power fast enough.

- 30 -

I was on my way to the Death Star that morning...

h/t to Section 15 for finding this one:



There is comic brilliance, and then there is comic brilliance with exquisite post-modernist satire, done with impeccable execution. Brilliant.

(The real tragedy is that all three brave Stormtroopers pictured here would eventually be killed in the destruction of the second Death Star, just five years later. Contributions to their widows and children are being taken up by the Intergalactic Imperial Loyalist Fund. Your generosity is greatly appreciated.)

- 30 -

Juan Cole's contrast in Joe Wilsons

This is why the historical perspective is important. I haven't seen anyone sum it up any better than this.

No Washington Bullets in Iran please

For the very first time ever,
When they had a revolution in Nicaragua,
There was no interference from America
Human rights in America

Well the people fought the leader,
And up he flew...
With no Washington bullets what else could he do?
--The Clash, from Washington Bullets

As usual, historian Juan Cole has an excellent round-up of the latest news from Iran, taking care to attribute his sources, and contextualizing them with his knowledge of the underlying politics. In Cole's words:

Mousavi has thrown down a gauntlet before the Supreme Leader and a battle has been joined. By the rules of the Khomeinist regime, only one of them can now survive. And perhaps neither will.

It doesn't seem like that long ago that Bush's United States was perilously close to invading Iran. Thank goodness this never came to pass. Obama's low-key reaction thus far seems appropriate to me. Let the Iranians find their way on their own and avoid the impression of Washington Bullets dictating the outcome. Because then any reform movement that may come to light will have a chance at being taken as legitimate by the Iranian people and the world at large.



But before we get too excited, we must recall there is always also this possibility.

Meanwhile, we must sit and we wait; and view events from afar with a hopeful (if jaundiced) eye.

- 30 -

The New Collection-Based Economy

How bad will it get?

One of the scariest examples of the world economic melt-down is the experience of Iceland. Yes, the tiny but proud country with the Björk-based economy likely did themselves no favours relying on the quirky but prolific pixie-like recording artist for over 45% of their GNP.

(I know that's true cuz I saw it somewhere in an Onion article once...)

All kidding aside, Iceland's real problem was that their banks' finances were way too heavily beholden to the Bullshit Bush financial model, where carefully concealed Bullshit is repackaged to become the investment option of choice for organizations worldwide.

It wasn't Björk's fault the Icelandic banks found themselves holding six times as much debt as real capital to cover it late last year.

The relative health of Canadian financial institutions should be a source of comfort for those of us lucky enough to live here, right? Well, not entirely:

Lost in Traslation?
Apart from the obvious need for political cover, I really don't see the point in Quebec Premier Jean Charest's decision yesterday to haul the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec onto the carpet after suffering its worst year on record.

"As with all other investors, the first element that explains our return this year is the global financial crisis that broke out in the fourth quarter," said Caisse president and CEO Fernand Perreault.

However, he said the fund's decision to delve heavily into asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP)also cost it dearly. The Caisse invested $12.6 billion in the form of short-term debt, making it the largest holder in Canada.

With the market for the debt frozen, ABCP accounted for $4 billion of the Caisse 's total losses in 2008.

Perreault now admits investing so heavily in ABCP was a bad idea.

"In hindsight, we placed too much confidence in these securities …. It was a mistake to accumulate so much ABCP," said Perreault.

"We mistakenly believed that these products were as safe, or almost as safe, as other money market instruments."

Of course, the decision to go so heavily into asset-backed commercial paper can be easily explained by the usual Quebec excuse of the unfair language barrier sticking a knife in our backs. (Mais Jean, c'n'est pas juste! We thought they said "acid-backed paper". We thought it had industrial applications, hôtie...)
[Note to Icelandic bankers looking for some kind of excuse: you're welcome, and don't worry, we won't bill you.]

What knee-jerk Quebec media don't understand is that mammoth funds like the Caisse handles are too big not to be a reflection of the underlying economy on the whole. Yes, Quebec lost 25% of the supposed value of its nationalized pension fund (if you choose the highest benchmark as your relational point), but what else did we expect? Of course the fund managers did the same things as their counterparts worldwide who were using paradigms for risk that assumed triple-a securities were rated accordingly.

From there, the need to get in the game and follow the other lemmings takes over naturally. If everyone else is doing it, it must be okay, right? Over the cliff with us!*

The Bush Trickle-down Bullshit Model
Not if the "assets" on the backs of all that paper amount to utter Bullshit.

It all boils down to the Bullshit right-wing deregulation of the financial markets in the United States. The United States under their Bullshit President and their Bullshit Republican-controlled Congress became a bastion of utter Bullshit generally. And if the right-wing "trickle-down" concept applies to anything, then surely it applies to Bullshit (especially when coupled with governmental leadership).

Because as Bullshit ruled the White House, so did Bullshit rule the way American financial markets were run.

As did it rule the way American companies were run.

Right down to American household economies, where buying a house with nothing down and a 40-year amortization on a mortgage with no principal paid-down in the first few years became common-place. And then, they get a new flat-screen TV and cable and end up watching home renovation shows where the illusion is propagated that 22 minutes later you've got a beautiful, modern kitchen gleaming in the morning sunlight. Add some happily-scrubbed children's faces, munching on microwaved pizza pops and you're in the Promised Land.

So it becomes normal to not just over-leverage your household income, but to dream about over-leveraging it even more (like all the other lemmings in your neighbourhood), and go to that beautiful church-like Home Reno warehouse store and get a Home Reno Platinum Card (fine print showing 28.75% interest, compounded daily, subject to change at the issuer's discretion), and spend, spend, spend to make your own home the temple You Deserve since you don't have any other spirituality to cling to and make sense of your daily existence.

That's what it meant to be a good little consumer in the consumer-driven economy of the Bullshit George W. Bush America.

Dead Stop
And what are we left with? A world where the Bullshit has trickled down world-wide. Hence Iceland. Hence pension funds exposed to have little real value. Hence world-wide panic that filters down to a financial and economic dead stop.

No one is paying anyone for anything unless they absolutely have to. So the new economy is a collection-based economy. At least that is how it appears when I look in my email inbox, where I see the hard-working little application at Workopolis.com has sent me links to the day's new job postings - and more and more of them are related to people trying to lean on other people to pony-up (three out of four today):

Your Job Search Results
We’ve found new jobs that fit what you’re looking for! Click the links below to find out more.

AN UNNAMED COMPANY
Bilingual Customer Service Rep- English/French Required (2/25/2009)

GROUPE MONTPETIT RESSOURCES HUMAINES INC
Collection administrator bilingual - (english and french) (2/25/2009)

HSBC Finance
Collector (2/25/2009)

HSBC Finance
Collector (2/25/2009)

Please, World, Scare me Some More
Meanwhile, with the unknown effects of what's looking more and more like runaway global warming, will all this seem quaintly anti-climactic a generation from now?

Antarctic glaciers are melting faster than previously thought, which could lead to an unprecedented rise in sea levels, scientists said Wednesday.
The warming of western Antarctica is a real concern. "There's some people who fear that this is the first signs of an incipient collapse of the west Antarctic ice sheet," said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

Sea levels will rise faster than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Summerhayes said.

An IPCC panel in 2007 predicted warmer temperatures could raise sea levels by 76 centimetres to 120 centimetres this century, which could flood low-lying areas and force millions to flee.

"If the west Antarctica sheet collapses, then we're looking at a sea level rise of between one metre and 1.5 metres," Summerhayes said.

Researchers found that the southern ocean around Antarctica has warmed about 0.36 F in the past decade, double the average warming of the rest of the Earth's oceans over the past 30 years, he said.

Obama doesn't have a monopoly on change. A complete shake-up of society is upon us.

- 30 -

*Turns out the meme of lemmings mindlessly running over a cliff to their deaths is another piece of US-propogated bullshit - this one exposed long ago by the Canadian CBC. The staged lemming "mass suicide" part comes just over a third of the way in.

Peevey Stevie's ungratiousness not befitting a Canadian

With US President Barack Obama going so far out of his way to publicly thank Canada today for the contribution in effort, monies and blood (he even mentioned our 108 dead in the Afghanistan conflict), would it have been so much trouble for our Prime Minister to say, "You're welcome, Mr. President"?

Canadians used to be known for having good manners. I'm also not impressed with Harper for again playing down the difference between Obama's proposal of meeting absolute greenhouse gas emission targets, and his own government's history of doing virtually nothing and of undermining worldwide efforts to take decisive action on the issue.

What was that about corporate greed and corruption?

Just in case you missed it at the congressional hearings into the AIG collapse, here is a sweet little tidbit:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., also said that even as losses were engulfing the company, AIG executives depleted AIG's capital through stock buybacks and higher dividends.

Pretty much sums up a sick and twisted situation for you. Looks like things are going to get ugly, and we have barely scratched the surface.

For more blood-boiling AIG outrages - even post-bailout! - see this stuff over at dailykos.

- 30 -

No Depression?

Oh joy:

The word “recession” wouldn’t describe the deep structural problems affecting everything from the U.S. housing sector to the Canadian oil industry, said Bank of Nova Scotia chief economist Warren Jestin.

“You have to invent a new word to describe what we’re in now,” he said after the banks presented their perspectives at the Economic Club today.

How about: Global Economic Shitstorm?

But please, no depression. (Apologies to Uncle Tupelo).



- 30 -

Sarah Palin's no Truman either

Dave over at the Galloping Beaver really does a bravura job of picking apart the conceit written into Republican VP Candidate Sarah Palin's speech to the RNC last night that tried to equate her candidacy with that of one Harry S. Truman:

By the time a person is selected as the possible successor for the prospective holder of the nuclear launch codes, offering one's membership on an elementary school PTA simply does not cut it as a valid credential and certainly doesn't compare to the route taken by a much more substantial and skilled politician.

Dave, hats off to you. Read the whole thing.

Geeks in Uproar over Bill Clinton's comments

PHILADELPHIA--Saying he was "way out of his solar quadrant" in declaring that Sen. Barack Obama's slim, goofy-guy personae has benefited him in attracting the geek vote, leading geeks were united in their scorn for former President Bill Clinton's comment during a campaign stop in support of his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton and her Democratic nomination bid.

Clinton's remark, made before a steelworkers union in Allentown yesterday, was: "All I'm saying is that he sure is lucky he was born a geeky, funny-looking character because he's sure got the Trekkie-vote sewn up but good."

"That's not even phasers on stun anymore," declared Sidney R. Khozhang, editor of Mac World. "Just singling us out as some political force in this way - while it does seem kind of exciting - is very racist, and not at all becoming of a former leader of all free humanoids; more like what you'd expect of a Sith Lord."

Another prominent geek, Martin Cohen, editor of Battlestar Gallactikosher, which tags itself as "the highest circulation Jewish Battlestar Gallactica fanzine in the lower twelve states", was equally unimpressed.

"What rankles is that we geeks have been working to have better representation in U.S. politics for decades," Cohen said in a telephone interview. "Finally, this guy with the geekiest name, the geekiest smile and the geekiest frame you've ever seen is (gasp) less than a parsec away from the White House. This (publicity) is the last thing we need. But I think there will be a backlash. Like in that Battlestar Gallactica episode from Season 2, where..." at which point this reporter felt the urge to retch and could not continue the interview.

While Senator Clinton was quick to distance herself from her husband's remarks, calling them "regrettable" and noting it remains to be seen "what the definition of 'is' is," she stopped short of firing her husband from the campaign (not that anyone is surprised), but did mention she intends to refrain from administering him any "num-nums" for the foreseeable future.

For his part, Sen. Obama was quick to pounce on the perceived faux pas, stating at a rally in Pittsburgh: "Geeks built this country - or at least its interactive gaming sites."

"I know I'm no linebacker. Sure, when the wind is blowing at 20-plus miles an hour, I know enough to stay inside and not get blown over. But that doesn't excuse these remarks, and I anxiously await a response from the Senator from New York, on how she intends to respond to this insult to geeks across this great nation. That's not the kind of politics Americans want."

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I am so sorry for my sorry-ass Canadian government

(note: this has been cross-posted from my diary on Dailykos)

Dear Americans,

You deserve much better from your northern neighbor. Please accept my sincere apology for my stupid government (I've taken to calling them the SSHITs). As the Globe & Mail has very recently made clear, our Prime Minister's Chief of Staff can't be trusted not to blab confidential information to the media from our allies - or at least the Democratic ones.

I don't blame you if you are upset. If the tables were turned, surely Canadians would be up in arms at any whiff of American influence on our political process.

Of course, it doesn't help when our idiot newsroom at CTV can't keep the facts straight:

The Canadian Press cited an unnamed source last night as saying that several people overheard the remark.

The news agency quoted that source as saying that Mr. Brodie said that someone from Ms. Clinton's campaign called and was "telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt."

The story was followed by CTV's Washington bureau chief, Tom Clark, who reported that the Obama campaign, not the Clinton's, had reassured Canadian diplomats.

Mr. Clark cited unnamed Canadian sources in his initial report.

There was no explanation last night for why Mr. Brodie was said to have referred to the Clinton campaign but the news report was about the Obama campaign. Robert Hurst, president of CTV News, declined to comment.

The Prime Minister's communications director, Sandra Buckler, has said that Mr. Brodie "does not recall" discussing the issue.

(By the way, both CTV and the Globe and Mail are owned by these people, although under separate editorial control.) Given the results in Ohio and Texas, and the way Clinton made political hay with the story to her advantage, you must all be pretty damn livid right now (I know I am - for multiple reasons).

So please accept my apologies, but also understand that the current government is very moronically neo-con in their thinking, and not at all aligned with the majority of Canadians.

As for the source of the leak, Ian Brodie, here's what one magazine journalist observed in an article published just two months ago:

(Ian Brodie is) 100% the single most influential figure in Harper's inner circle. There are others who have as much impact on policy, or image-making, or managing critical files, or on keeping an eye on the next election. But nobody else brings all those concerns together as Brodie does.

...

He has more direct daily access to Harper than any other senior official, typically starting when he and top bureaucrat Kevin Lynch deliver a morning briefing to the Prime Minister at about 9 a.m

Again, my sincere and humble apologies. We will try very hard to rectify the situation, but first our opposition Liberals will need to find a backbone.

Please bear with us; the outrage over this particular fiasco is by no means ready to peter out on this side of the border. We must have hope.

With Respect,
Scott in Montreal

U.S. Senate matches Oilers' $50M offer for Bin Laden

The United States Senate voted to match the Edmonton Oilers' $50 million offer on Restricted Free Agent Osama bin Laden last week, thus thwarting Oilers GM Kevin Lowe from acquiring the highly sought-after veteran.

"Bin Laden is simply too important for us to let him go, no matter the cost," said the Senator who co-authored the measure.

In a hasitly-called press conference in Edmonton, Lowe was visibly distraught.

"We are sorry to miss out on him," Lowe said. "Scouting reports noted his toughness, and the inability of other teams to knock him off the puck. As a player, he has shown great tenacity and a truly explosive offensive capability."

Several commentators expressed unease over the implications this may have on the bounties put on other terrorists' heads.

"If the NHL allows its General Managers to continue down this reckless path in pursuing free agents, there's no telling what ceiling to expect in this post 9-11, post lock-out market," blasted the Hockey Snooze in an online editorial.

Others were openly questioning Lowe's sanity.

"We knew Lowe was desperate to add offense, but I don't even know if this guy can skate, and his health is certainly questionable," mused one hockey blogger. "Playing high-stakes chicken with the Buffalo Sabres is one thing, but first he threw away $27 Million at one defenseman with questionable health and skating ability, and now he offers $50 million for another? Going up against the U.S. Senate? It's time someone told Kevin there is good psychiatric help available."

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Live Free to Die: U.S. Gun Lobby

We're all looking for
The right kind
Of live free or die
--Jay Farrar (Son Volt)

The phrase, "Live Free or Die" first entered my vocabulary as a child. Whether I was first exposed to it watching U.S. of Archie or from a car trip to Santa's Village in Jefferson, New Hampshire (it appears on their licence plates), I had it seared into my consciousness by the time Rene Levesque put "Je Me Souviens" on our Quebec plates - or at least before I was ten.

The 1995 Son Volt song above asks what I think is the great question of America. What is the right balance? While the phrase was apparently derived from the writings of a U.S. Revolutionary War general, I think it has now morphed into a question that we ask ourselves whenever mass murderers carry out their hideous University of Texas Tower Massacres, their Columbines, their Dawsons and now their Virginia Techs. How free do you need to be?

If anyone is clamoring to answer that, it's the U.S. Gun Lobby, and their answer is: "Free enough to die." For only a gun lobby group could look upon the massacre of a week ago today and see a golden opportunity to - get ready for this - relax the restrictions on carrying concealed firearms in the state of Virginia.

"This is a huge nail in the coffin of gun control," said Philip Van Cleave, president of the gun rights group Virginia Citizens Defense League.

"They had gun control on campus and it got all those people killed, because nobody could defend themselves," he told AFP.

"You want people to be able to defend themselves -- always," he said.

Van Cleave said the tragedy could give a boost to a years-long effort in Virginia to pass legislation allowing students to carry weapons on campus -- especially since existing laws failed to prevent Cho's murderous rampage.

"Gun control failed. That student under university rules was not to have a gun," Van Cleave said.

I'm not even going to weigh in on the twisted logic of gun-control being the culprit in the Virgina Tech massacre, except to say that in the context of a heavily-armed U.S. population, it may not sound as stupid to them as it does to me. My male Texas co-workers (quote: "I'm white, so I vote Republican") all own guns and consider them as normal an accessory as a wristwatch or cellphone. When you believe everyone else around you is packing, and that they may very well try to get the better of you, you need to know where your gun is so you can defend yourself. And for many Americans it's a measure of their freedom that they can do so unfettered.

At least that's how one middle-aged (white) church-going Texan described it to me.

To which my response was that in my neck of the woods, the assumption is no one else you bump into is likely to have one, and therefore why should you go to the trouble? And who would want to pull a gun on you anyway? Unless you're connected to the criminal underworld, it's really a non-issue.

But that's not the only response, because my American friends, when pressed, don't have a good answer about what happens on the day they do find themselves in the gunfight they've so diligently readied themselves for (not unlike their dusty Y2K bunkers)? Cause once the guns are out and being fired, I don't think it's going to end like a James Bond or Die Hard movie.

Anyone who thinks otherwise may be prone to other illogical fantasies - like that invading and occupying a country halfway around the world will provide them with freedom. Or that Jesus will save the believers on the Day of Reckoning. Or that deregulation can solve our problems because the companies care about people more than governments. Or that your society can carry on polluting and consuming with reckless abandon as an exercise of your God-given freedom to enjoy "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness". The prospects of our planet sustaining human life in two generations be damned!

That's living. The American Way.

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Keith Olbermann, ladies and gentlemen

I honestly didn't think the U.S. media machine was capable of providing lucid and critical commentary like this anymore. (This is for you, Mum.)



It's ten minutes and 28 seconds of sheer courage. Edward R. Murrow reborn? Too damn bad I can't tune in MSNBC's Countdown.

For those who can't make the YouTube thingy work (or don't have high-speed), here's the full transcript.

OLBERMANN: Finally tonight, a special comment about President Clinton‘s interview. The headlines about it are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past present bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster finally lashed back. It is not important that the current president‘s portable public chorus has described his predecessor‘s tone as crazed. Our tone should be crazed. The nation‘s freedoms are under assault by an administration‘s policies can do us as much damage as al Qaeda. The nation‘s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would have quit.

Nonetheless, the headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years—he has spoken the truth about 9/11 and the current presidential administration. “At least I tried,” he said, of his own efforts, “to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. That‘s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try, they did not try, I tried.”

Thus in his supposed emeritus years, has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty and for us. Action as vital and courageous as any of his presidency. Action as startling and as liberating as any, by anyone, in these last five long years.

The Bush administration did not try to get Osama bin Laden before 9/11. The Bush administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors. The Bush administration did not understand the daily briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The Bush administration did not try.

Moreover, for the five years, one month, and two weeks, the current administration and in particular the president has been given the greatest pass for incompetence and malfeasance in American history.

President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs, some of them 17 years old before Pearl Harbor. President Hoover was correctly blamed for, if not the Great Depression itself, then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the stock market crash. Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War, though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.

But for this president. To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been president on September 11, 2001 or the nearly eight months that preceded it.

That hardly reflects the honestly nor manliness we expect of the executive. But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.

Except for this: After five years of skirting even the most inarguable facts that he was president on 9/11, he must bear some responsibility for his and our un-readiness, Mr. Bush has now moved on, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards rewriting history, and attempting to make the responsibility entirely Mr. Clinton‘s.

Of course, he is not honest enough to do that directly. As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him by proxy.

Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon.

Consider the timing: The very weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is-not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it.

The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.

It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired—but a propagandist, promoted—promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.

And don‘t even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for e-mailing you the question.

Mr. Clinton responded as you have seen.

He told the great truth untold about this administration‘s negligence, perhaps criminal negligence, about bin Laden. Mr. Clinton was brave.

Then again, Chris Wallace might be braver still. Had I, in one moment, surrendered all my credibility as a journalist, and been irredeemably humiliated, as was he, I would have gone home and started a new career selling seeds by mail.

The smearing by proxy, of course, did not begin Friday afternoon. Disney was first to sell-out its corporate reputation, with “The Path to 9/11.” Of that company‘s crimes against truth one needs to say little. Simply put: Someone there enabled an authoritarian zealot to belch out Mr.

Bush‘s new and improved history.

The basic plot-line was this: Because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.

The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this slapdash theory, is that the right wingers who have advocated it—who try to sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews—have simply skipped past its most glaring flaw.

Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for bin Laden in 1998 because of the Lewinsky nonsense, why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed bin Laden‘s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on Aug. 20, of that year? For mentioning bin Laden by name as he did so?

That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie “Wag the Dog.”

Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton‘s judgment.

Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri—the future attorney general

echoed Coats.

Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.

And of course, were it true Clinton had been distracted by the Lewinsky witch-hunt, who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt?

Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?

Who corrupted the political media?

Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us here?

Who preempted them in order to strangle us with the trivia that was, “All Monica All The Time?”

Who distracted whom?

This is, of course, where, as is inevitable, Mr. Bush and his henchmen prove not quite as smart as they think they are.

The full responsibility for 9/11 is obviously shared by three administrations, possibly four.

But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it‘s all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you.

The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr. Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton, but by the same people who got you elected president.

Thus, instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it, we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently read the Orwell playbook too quickly.

Thus, instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us “safe” ever since—a statement that might range anywhere from zero, to 100 percent, true.

We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.

And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush, you got the name of the supposedly targeted tower in Los Angeles wrong.

Thus was it left for the previous president to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack: You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor. You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people. Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be a textbook definition, sir, of cowardice.

To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past. That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair, writing as George Orwell, gave us in the book “1984.”

The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution, is persecution. The object of torture, is torture. The object of power is power.”

Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the FOX ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr. Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln‘s State of the Union address from 1862.

“We must disenthrall ourselves.”

Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr. Lincoln‘s sentence. He might well have.

“We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”

And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date, to save our country.

The free pass has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush.

You did not act to prevent 9/11.

We do not know what you have done to prevent another 9/11.

You have failed us-then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.

You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.

And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.

And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture which doesn‘t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.

And there it is, sir. Are yours the actions of a true American?

I‘m Keith Olbermann, good night and good luck.

Now who in Canada could you see being this tough on Stephen Harper?

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