A grand finale

Where Have All the Grown-Ups Gone? - The Frasier finale marks the end of situation comedies for adults Well, its over. I thought the final episode of Frasier was terrific -- often, final episodes are grim, maudlin clip shows, but Frasier was actually funny -- the bit with Niles and the monkey was so typical -- the whole birth scene was set up for this one joke, and it was a joke where not a word was said. That kind of subtlety, with the implied compliment that the audience is smart enough to get it without having to be hammered over the head, is what I am going to miss the most.

Damned if they do

Liberals fall back on that old-style sleight of hand
and damned if they don't.
So the Liberals have decided they might as well be damned for doing something. The media would have been writing stories about Martin's "do nothing" government if they hadn't started doing a few things -- and in this story, Simpson forgot to mention the foreign fisherman thing the other day.
Personally, I have no particular problem with any of this. At least a few important things are getting done, though its too bad that it takes an imminent election call to get everybody's attention focused on action rather than hearings.

The End

Yahoo! News - Killers: Beheading Avenges Prison Abuse
I think this will be the end, the final straw for Americans. I think they will say, to hell with Iraq. We're not going to take it anymore. Not another dime. Not another soldier. I think they'll say, we came to give you liberty and you should have been grateful but you shot our boys and blew them up and burned them and now you beheaded this nice boy who never did you any harm, so to hell with you all.
They left Vietnam defeated, in an undignified scramble from the embassy roof. They'll leave Iraq because they're pissed off, not remembering or caring that the mess is their own fault, just wanting to be rid of it.

Once again, it all puts me in mind of The Second Coming
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
by William Butler Yeats

Shorter David Brooks

For Iraqis to Win, the U.S. Must Lose "Those cute little Iraqis only think they have defeated us. Actually, as long as they hate us, we've won!"

Well, its about time

Guité, Brault arrested in sponsorship scandal

Ah, the fair and balanced newspaper

Post-Crescent - Editorial: We need more letters to achieve a balance
Thanks to Buzzflash for the link to this incredible piece of so-called journalism -- this excuse for a Wisconsin newspaper wonders why it isn't getting very many letters supporting Bush -- they write "We’ve been getting more letters critical of President Bush than those that support him. We’re not sure why, nor do we want to guess."
Perhaps because there are many more people among their readership who are critical of President Bush than who are are supporting him? Do you think that could possibly be it? Really? Naaah, couldn't be!

Great post at Billmon

Billmon:
"Dick Cheney - the other, dumber half of the Bush administration's answer to Laurel and Hardy - has already weighed in, demanding that all those pesky Congress critters 'get off his back' and let Rumsfeld return to the more important business of losing the war in Iraq. Wolfowitz and Feith can't do it all by themselves, as hard as they try."

Notes for a speech

to be given by Dubya on July 4, 2004.
- [start with Iraq - call it success] Taking nation to war vr hard but I prayed every day for God's guidance and support and he gave it to me. God made me a war president! [proud but humble tone]
- vr proud of successful handover to UN-mandated government. vr proud. got rid of world's worst dictator and started Iraq on road to democracy. No more mass graves and rape rooms. [mention rape rooms twice] Iraq will come to appreciate the great gift of freedom that we have given it. [subtext: any problems now are UN's problems and Iraq's problems, not America's problem any more.] Talk about safety for region [subtext: for Israel] Say I have made US safe from WMD and defeated world's greatest dictator [NOTE TO SELF: do not mention Iran, North Korea, Africa, Asia minor, middle-east. . .]
- God has blessed this great nation and great soldiers. God is proud of you'all. Yes, America can! Vr proud of troops, how well they fought, how brave for country. Country is putting the unfortunate incidents by just a few soldiers at Al Gah-ribby behind us. Moving forward, forward.
- terrorism - we've got them all on the run. but still have to be afraid, really afraid. Remember 9.ll, [repeat - 9.ll, 9.ll] I am the only one who can protect you, not that flip flopper who's running against me and against america. He doesn't know how to fight a war, his record proves that [laugh knowingly]
- economy strong, great - more tax cuts needed, creating more jobs every day, deficit to be cut in half [slur voice to make sure no sound bites for the D word] - job creation strong, great schools progress, Medicare strong, great families. [NOTE TO SELF - call everything STRONG, GREAT] - end with how God has blessed your war president [repeat- war president]
[NOTE TO SELF -- DO NOT mention immigration plan, anti-gay ammendment, Mars initiative, benefit cuts for soldiers, overtime pay rule changes, Medicate overcharges, Phlame investigation, memogate, energy policy, environmental regulation gutting, Halliburton, Enron . . .]

Latimer's dream

Latimer continues to question top-court ruling, won't apply for clemency
This is so sad -- another example of the dream world lived in by Robert Latimer.
Latimer's first mistake was to talk to RCMP without a lawyer -- he apparently thought that if they understood what happened, that would be it. But RCMP don't have that option though they might pretend to.
Then he should have pled not guilty due to insanity -- it was clear at the trials that grief for his daughter had driven him temporarily insane. But he couldn't accept this view of himself. Then the jury entered its own dream world with a meaningless one-year sentence recommendation, when they should have known that the only way he would escape the mandatory sentence would be if they found him not guilty.
So now he wants the supreme court to explain itself? Ain't gonna happen.
Latimer is not a murderer, but if he wants to get out of jail, he will have to accept that in the real world he is considered to be one.

High crimes

Fareed Sakaria - The Price of Arrogance
Since 9/11, a handful of officials at the top of the Defense Department and the vice president's office have commandeered American foreign and defense policy. In the name of fighting terror they have systematically weakened the traditional restraints that have made this country respected around the world. Alliances, international institutions, norms and ethical conventions have all been deemed expensive indulgences at a time of crisis. Within weeks after September 11, senior officials at the Pentagon and the White House began the drive to maximize American freedom of action. They attacked specifically the Geneva Conventions, which govern behavior during wartime. Donald Rumsfeld explained that the conventions did not apply to today's "set of facts." He and his top aides have tried persistently to keep prisoners out of the reach of either American courts or international law, presumably so that they can be handled without those pettifogging rules as barriers. Rumsfeld initially fought both the uniformed military and Colin Powell, who urged that prisoners in Guantanamo be accorded rights under the conventions. Eventually he gave in on the matter but continued to suggest that the protocols were antiquated. Last week he said again that the Geneva Conventions did not "precisely apply" and were simply basic rules. The conventions are not exactly optional. They are the law of the land, signed by the president and ratified by Congress. Rumsfeld's concern—that Al Qaeda members do not wear uniforms and are thus "unlawful combatants"—is understandable, but that is a determination that a military court would have to make. In a war that could go on for decades, you cannot simply arrest and detain people indefinitely on the say-so of the secretary of Defense . . . On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world.
This is why I have been railing against what has been going on in the States since Bush was elected -- the world NEEDS a strong US, as a leader and as a model. Who will do it if the US does not? China? Russia? For sure, they will try to push forward now, but they present only models of dictatorship, not of democracy. Maybe the European Union and Britain can step up to the plate now, but they just don't have the economic health and international clout that the US had. The Bush administration has abandoned the world, and the rest of us will pay the price.

No pot bill?

Liberals prepared to allow marijuana bill to die
As I argued with my kids, this bill was far from perfect, but at least it was a start. Making a crime of pot possession has destroyed tens of thousands of lives, wasted billions of our tax dollars in enforcement and imprisonment, taken police away from catching other criminals, and has made dope so profitable to sell that the biker gangs are flourishing across the country. My kids thought the bill should be better, that the grow penalties shouldn't be so high, but I thought this could be changed later as long as we could decrimilize minor posession.
Hundreds of thousands of Canadians have used dope with no ill effects whatsoever. They haven't damaged themselves or anyone else, they haven't taken harder drugs. It's vastly less harmful to individuals and to society than alcohol -- no one ever smoked dope then went home and beat up their wife and kids or wrecked their house or destroyed their health. If every alcoholic could switch to smoking dope instead, how much better off they would be, and how much less social and economic disruption we would have.
I just hope Martin has the courage to revive this bill after the election.

Shorter David Brooks

The New York Times > Opinion > David Brooks: Crisis of Confidence
"We have handled the occupation of Iraq so badly that now we should be telling the rest of the world how to deal with failed states."

Apologies all around

A Sorry State
Key paragraphs:
If Rumsfeld. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz or Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard B. Myers were honorable men they would resign in shame. But they are not. If Bush were of presidential caliber he would have sacked them by now -- and taken full personal responsibility for their incompetence. But wherever the buck stops these days, it surely is not on the president's desk. Yet nothing short of such an old-fashioned assumption of duty can now retrieve America's standing in the community of nations. To the rest of the world Bush's apologies are mere exercises in damage control. The same president who spoke of leading God's crusade against Evil and who basked in the self-congratulatory aura of his invincible warriors will have difficulty convincing the rest of humanity that he really cares about a few brutalized Arabs. Given the president's simultaneous and reiterated insistence that neither he nor his staff have done anything wrong and that there is nothing to change in his policies or goals, who will take seriously such an apology, extracted in extremis? Like confessions obtained under torture, it is worthless. As recent events have shown, America under Bush can still debase and humiliate its enemies. But it has lost the respect of its friends -- and it is fast losing respect for itself. Now that is something to feel sorry about.

Again with the gonzo journalism

Martin denies charge he uses private health care
Thanks to the Mop and Pail for another gonzo journalism story -- this time, we're supposed to be shocked! shocked! that Martin's doctor runs a clinic that offers X-rays and MRIs on the side. Big deal! My own doctor's clinic, right here in little old Saskatoon, has a lab attached that does blood tests and x-rays -- and they charge $10 for a once-a-week wart clinic. Its not exactly unusual, Mr. Seguin, nor does it represent the crumbling of medicare.
And get this straight -- whether Martin ever availled himself of these services or not, I DON'T CARE! I don't have the least interest in any politician's personal life -- I don't care that Chretin's kid has had legal problems and I thought it was mean of reporters to cover it. And I don't care where Martin gets his hair cut, I don't care how his wife dresses. I don't care whether Layton's wife runs for parliament, because its not in my riding. I don't even know who Stephen Harper is married to or how many kids he has.
The only reason for anyone to write a story about Paul Martin or about any political figure, and the only reason to read it, is when it relates to their actions as a politician.

Its not just the photos that are sickening

Posted today by Associated Press -- Yahoo! News - Early Iraq Abuse Accounts Met With Silence describes detainees punished by hours lying bound in the sun . . . being attacked by dogs . . . being deprived of sufficient water . . .. spending days with hoods over their heads . . . an elderly Iraqi woman tied up and lying in the dust . . .ill men dying in crowded tents . . .a man saw his sister being punished by being stretched out bound in the sun. He angrily tried to cross the razor wire ringing his tent, and they shot him in the shoulder . . . he saw another prisoner shot dead when he approached the wire at Abu Ghraib. "On Friday, the Red Cross disclosed it had repeatedly demanded last year that U.S. authorities correct problems in the detention centers. The Americans took action on some issues but not others, it said. "We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system," Pierre Kraehenbuel, the Red Cross operations director, said in Geneva."
He's wrong in one respect, I think -- there was no system, really, just ad hoc bumbling where prisoner of war camps were set up on the fly, then underresourced and poorly managed, with happenstance dictating whether the individual soldiers trying to run things were competent to do so -- like we've seen with so many other aspects of this occupation. The incompetence of the Pentagon in managing this war is breathtaking.