Good Better Best

Good

Larry Wright, The Detroit News

Better


Non-Sequitur

Best

Brian Gable, The Globe and Mail

Compare and contrast

Read these two versions of the same news story. Lots of similarities, but some subtle and not-so-subtle differences.
First, the Canadian story -- Martin and Bush hit stalemate in chat over softwood lumber dispute

Prime Minister Paul Martin has warned U.S. President George W. Bush that Canada will wage its battle over softwood lumber in American courts - and in the court of public opinion. Martin spoke with Bush by phone Friday but they failed to make any progress on the softwood issue. Neither leader budged from his original position during the 20-minute chat, officials said. Bush maintained that he would prefer a negotiated settlement, said a spokeswoman for Martin. The prime minister insisted there's no reason for Canada to negotiate because it has already won all NAFTA challenges to U.S. tariffs and duties that have cost Canadian lumber firms $5 billion. "Canada has won panel decision after panel decision," Martin said while attending the inauguration of a new Quebec border crossing with the U.S. "Fundamentally, what one might call the final court of appeal under NAFTA has also confirmed the Canadian position. And that should be respected." A NAFTA extraordinary challenge committee ruled in August that Canadian exports posed no threat of injury to American producers. But the U.S. government signalled it would not comply with the ruling, saying it was already complying with a World Trade Organization decision on the matter. Martin told Bush that Canada will continue fighting in the U.S. courts and by appealing to Americans who would benefit from cheaper Canadian lumber - something Martin suggested would be an embarrassment to Bush. "(Martin) told the president that we view it as a shame that we should have to take the U.S. to court in its own country to make that point," said a Martin spokesman. "But we're more than prepared to do so and we will do so." Canadian lumber exporters have paid more than $5 billion in duties since May 2002, when American lumber producers filed their fourth trade complaint in 20 years. Canada estimates that, based on past NAFTA rulings, the U.S. should pay back at least $3.5 billion of the duties collected so far. For the fifth time, a dispute resolution panel under the North American Free Trade Agreement has ordered U.S. trade officials to review the way they determine Canadian lumber exports are subsidized. The NAFTA panel, made up of three American and two Canadian trade experts, gave the United States until Oct. 28 to comply. If the panel's ruling is implemented, the countervailing duty rate would fall below one per cent, which under trade rules would result in its cancellation, according to the B.C. Lumber Trade Council. During Friday's phone conversation, the two leaders also discussed the U.S. plan to drill for oil in an Alaska Arctic wildlife refugee - something Canada opposes. Bush insisted he must move forward because his country needs the oil.

Next, the American view - Bush urges Canada to settle lumber tariffs

President Bush pressed Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin for a negotiated settlement of the bitter U.S.-Canadian dispute over lumber tariffs on Friday. Martin rebuffed the overture and warned that Canada would seek relief in U.S. courts if necessary, according to their respective press secretaries. "The president said we should get back to the negotiating table and work to find a lasting solution," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan in describing the 20-minute phone call. In Ottawa, Martin spokeswoman Melanie Gruer said the two leaders made no headway. Martin insisted there's no reason for Canada to negotiate, as it has already won all challenges to U.S. tariffs on Canadian lumber in cases brought before North American Free Trade Agreement panels, Gruer said. "The prime minister emphasized that it makes little sense to negotiate a victory that we've already won." She said Martin told Bush that Canada would take its fight to U.S. courts and appeal to Americans who benefit from cheaper Canadian lumber - something Martin suggested would be an embarrassment to Bush. McClellan did not mention that threat in his version of the conversation. "The prime minister expressed Canada's concerns about the issue of softwood lumber," McClellan said. "The president expressed our strong commitment to NAFTA," he added. At issue is a dispute over steep U.S. tariffs imposed in 2002 on imports of Canadian softwood lumber used in home construction. The tariffs, which now average about 21 percent, were put in place at the urging of the U.S. lumber industry, which contended it was losing thousands of jobs because of unfair subsidies provided to Canadian producers. Martin has accused the United States of ignoring a string of NAFTA rulings against the U.S. duties. Some industry analysts estimate that it costs Americans up to $1,000 more to build new homes since the construction lumber dispute began in 2002. In the most recent ruling, a NAFTA panel of three judges - two Canadians and one American - in August unanimously dismissed U.S. claims that an earlier ruling in favor of Canada in the lumber dispute violated trade rules. Most U.S. timber is harvested from private land at market prices, while in Canada, the government owns 90 percent of timberlands and charges fees for logging. The fee is based on the cost of maintaining and restoring the forest. Canada claims it has lost some $4.1 billion in punitive tariffs. At issue are shipments of such softwoods as pine, spruce and fir. McClellan said that during the call, Bush also thanked Martin for Canada's help in relief efforts for victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. They also talked about the upcoming election in Haiti, the continuing strife in Sudan's Darfur, next month's Summit of the Americas in Argentina, and oil, McClellan said. The Canadian spokeswoman said the two leaders discussed the U.S. plan to drill for oil in an Alaska Arctic wildlife refugee - something Canada opposes. Bush, Gruer said, insisted he must move forward because his country needs the oil.

Two solitudes, eh?

Lying Judy and lying New York Times

So here is the New York Times's big article explaining Judy Miller and all -- The Miller Case: From a Name on a Pad to Jail, and Back.
Lies, damned lies -- no statistics, just lies.
The lying all starts right here, at the very beginning of that story -- "In a notebook belonging to Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, amid notations about Iraq and nuclear weapons, appear two small words: "Valerie Flame." Ms. Miller should have written Valerie Plame. That name is at the core of a federal grand jury investigation that has reached deep into the White House. At issue is whether Bush administration officials leaked the identity of Ms. Plame, an undercover C.I.A. operative, to reporters as part of an effort to blunt criticism of the president's justification for the war in Iraq. Ms. Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify and reveal her confidential source, then relented. On Sept. 30, she told the grand jury that her source was I. Lewis Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. But she said he did not reveal Ms. Plame's name. And when the prosecutor in the case asked her to explain how "Valerie Flame" appeared in the same notebook she used in interviewing Mr. Libby, Ms. Miller said she "didn't think" she heard it from him. "I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall," she wrote on Friday, recounting her testimony for an article that appears today."
Emphasis mine.
So now the New York Times actually reports lies to its readers. Lies they KNOW are lies.
They expect readers to believe that some mysterious stranger told Judy about Plame -- someone whose name she cannot recall? A one-armed man, perhaps? Or maybe it was someone wearing a mask and driving a batmobile? Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
Well, I'm sure she apologized very sincerely to Fitzgerald and the grand jury -- twisting her sash, with a fetching smile, she put her finger to the dimple in her chin and simpered "sorry, Mr. Prosecutor and all you nice jurors, but really, I jest caint remember WHO it was ...."
And they said, OK, fine, thanks, you can go.
And though the New York Times reports blandly on her statement that apparently Libby was NOT her source for Plame's name, what they don't explain in the whole rest of the article is just why she would then have to spend three months in jail -- if it wasn't Libby who told her Plame's name, why was she protecting him so vigorously?
Of course, she is lying -- I don't know if she actually lied to the grand jury, but in this newspaper article she is lying without shame, to her editor, to her own colleagues and to her readers -- and the reporters writing this story know she is lying but they report it anyway. And the editors let it stand. And the publisher printed it.
Oh, how far has this newspaper fallen.
UPDATE: A Kos diary also notes that later the article says "Mr. Bennett [one of Miller's lawyers], who by now had carefully reviewed Ms. Miller's extensive notes taken from two interviews with Mr. Libby, assured Mr. Fitzgerald that Ms. Miller had only one meaningful source. He agreed to limit his questions to Mr. Libby and the Wilson matter." So in effect the article actually says that Miller is lying about her mysterious one-armed source, but the readers have to parse its sentences for these clues. Pathetic!

Three more years

Billmon's post - Hogtied- summarizes the foreign policy bind into which Bush has tied the United States:

. . . one of the great ironies of Shrub's presidency: an administration that came to power determined to win maximum freedom of action in foreign policy by going it alone (or recruiting ad hoc coalitions that would submissively follow Washington's lead) has ended up virtually paralyzed by the consequences of its own hubris. Consider:
With the bulk of the U.S. active duty army marooned in the Iraq quagmire, pre-emptive (much less preventative) war is off the table. Syria, Iran and Hugo Chavez can all thumb their noses at the hegemon with relative impunity, secure in the knowledge that the 82nd Airborne won't come knocking on their doors any time soon.
Bush's inbred arrogance, Field Marshal Von Rumsfeld's moral cluelessness and the neocons' casual contempt for "soft power" have made the United States radioactive not just in the Islamic world but to public opinion in much of the rest of the world as well. Governments that might once have considered enlisting in Uncle Sam's army won't risk it now. . . .
Without a sensible energy policy. . . the U.S. is in no position to threaten Iran with meaningful economic sanctions . . .
Likewise, the U.S. can't risk alienating or destabilizing the House of Saud, lest the kingdom fall into the wrong hands (or none at all) sending oil to $150 a barrel. This makes any talk of "democratizing" the Middle East into a cynical joke . . .
We're not even trying to squeeze Chavez . . .
The failure of the neocons' go-it-alone attempt to isolate North Korea has left Kim Jong Il with a half dozen more nukes, and forced the administration to make a humilating U turn towards appeasement.
The Republican regime's out-of-control fiscal policies have given the People's Republic of China a senior unsubordinated claim on the U.S. Treasury and unprecedented potential influence over the U.S. financial markets. This rules out any attempt to "contain" Beijing or counter its reach into traditional U.S. fiefdoms like Latin America, and could become particularly problematic if the Chinese ever move militarily against Taiwan.
The GOP's drive to steamroll opposition to free trade -- instead of looking for practical compromises on labor and environmental standards -- could soon make it just about impossible to pass any more trade deals, unless the Republican House leadership intends to start using stress positions on party dissidents and holding votes open for three days instead of three hours . . .
the administration has marginalized the United States in the shaping of an International Criminal Court it someday will feel compelled to join . . .
[the Bush administration] virtually destroyed NATO without creating a replacement vehicle for managing relations with either the "new" or the "old" Europe. . . [and]handed out a string of security IOUs in Central Asia that it will be hard pressed to honor without Russian cooperation . . .
The unilateralist fantasy . . . has collided with global reality -- one part economic integration, one part political disintegration, shaken and stirred. And reality has won, tying the colossus down almost as tightly as the Lilliputians did Gulliver. Now the question is: What can Gulliver do about it? Or, even more importantly, what will Gulliver try to do about it?

Not to mention Guantanamo, which will be a national shame for the United States for the next several generations.
And the world has three more years of having to try to deal with these jerks and trying to keep them from causing any more trouble. We really do need to figure out some occupational therapy kind of thing, something harmless to keep the Bush administration busy and occupied and out of the way.
Maybe an expedition to build a bridge between the two peaks of the Mount Kilimanjaros . . .

Great line of the day

The Poorman refers to this post at Bottle of Blog - You Don't Need To Be A Weatherman To Know How Badly Bush Blows:

Republicans! Pick a thing and believe in it. Stop believing in people--especially these people. George W. Bush is not a political philosophy. Stop humiliating yourselves for a guy who couldn't care less how stupid he makes you look! Nobody voted for Clinton because they thought he had a great marriage. But the rubes all voted for Bush for a bunch of crap that, after five years, we all know he couldn't care less about. Cut your losses. Let's wrap this national turkey up. Eighty percent of Republican jokers keep sticking to this clown and they're going to walk away from this administration like the investors of Arbusto and Bush Exploration, and everything else Bush ever ran--broke, embarrassed, and out of business.

Emphasis mine.
I liked this piece because it spoke to the danger we all face of "believing" in a politician, and how vulnerable that makes both us and our political processes.
Of course, we won't vote for someone we don't like, no matter how much we agree with the policies he is promoting -- that's just human. But we have to be aware of the risk we are taking if we start believing that the person IS the party. This crosses the line between leadership and the cult of personality, and takes us into the territory of tyrants and fascists.
I don't get it myself, but apparently George Bush is a likeable guy, a gee-whiz charmer, someone who inspires great loyalty among otherwise intelligent people. Most of the time, the charming people you meet are also very nice people -- but every now and then, they aren't. I have known a couple of very charming people who were, at heart, not very nice. Being charming, they didn't suffer from their mistakes and tantrums and finger-pointing and selfishness -- they sincerely believed that everything that went wrong in their lives was always someone else's fault. They were great fun to spend a few hours with, but they were stunted personalities, really, because they never had to grow up.

Canadian health care doing the Colonel Bogey March

So I read this story and a little song started running through my head:

Provinces say they can't meet year-end deadline for setting medical wait times: In the federal-provincial accord, first ministers promised evidence-based benchmarks in five areas - cardiac and cancer surgery, eye operations, joint replacements and diagnostic scans . . . Alan Hudson, who heads Ontario's wait-times program, says there is evidence to support benchmarks in only two of the five areas - cardiac surgery and cancer treatment.

Bullshit, was all the band could play

"In a broad context - hips and knees and all the rest of it - there's very little evidence," said Hudson.

Bullshit, they played it night and day

Solid evidence relating wait times and health outcomes would require double-blind studies where some patients received care quickly and others received it after a delay, he said.

Bullshit, they just played bullshit, da da da dum dum, da dum dum, da da ...
Ah ha -- now, we've got plenty of Canadians who have had to wait for-goddamn-EVER for their new hips and cataract removals and MRIs, so there's no problem finding half of the study subjects, but maybe the problem is that we just don't have enough Canadians who have actually received care quickly, to compare our data to? Of course, we are right next door to a country with ten times our population, where they have lots of people who got their cataract surgery and joint replacements and MRIs quickly, so we could use THEM for comparison, couldn't we?
Well, nobody mentioned this.
Could it be, perhaps, that the provinces just don't want to create benchmarks? Because then there would be a standard that they would have to live up to?
So here's the next shoe dropping -- in response to this first story comes this next story, titled Medical groups attack government backtracking on wait time benchmarks. And this story says establishing these benchmarks isn't really that difficult:

The Wait Times Alliance, which includes six medical specialist societies and the Canadian Medical Association, has already proposed benchmarks for the five high-priority areas.
For example, it says hip and knee replacement should be done within 24 hours in emergency cases, within 90 days in urgent cases, and within nine months in routine cases. It says heart bypass surgery should be done within 48 hours in emergency cases, and within 10 working days in routine cases. The benchmarks are based on the best available evidence and on the clinical judgment of specialists in each field, says [Alliance spokesperson Normand] Laberge. He said that 80 per cent of medical practice is not based on double-blind studies.

True, of course. And here's what the feds say, in a not-so-subtle "put up or pay us back" line.

A spokesman for Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said the minister "believes that benchmarks will be delivered because all First Ministers agreed to the December 31 deadline. "They made the pledge and accepted the $41 billion so we expect their governments to live up to their word. No government has an option not to deliver benchmarks by December 31."

Great line of the day

Nitpicker looks at recent questions about the al-Zawahiri letter: "As a 13-year veteran of the armed forces, though, I find it repulsive that veterans like myself are put in the position where we're forced to decide whether our commander-in-chief is lying or al Qaeda is--and it's actually a hard decision!"

More Plame commentary - a toxic political culture

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

War on Terror 1 -- Constitution 0

Larry Beinhart: Fog Facts notes that the main casualty so far in the War on Terror has been the US Constitution:

The War on Terror does not catch terrorists, especially the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, and the people in charge don’t really seem to care. That’s with the expenditure of $200 billion in supplementary spending, over and above the normal cost of maintaining our military and intelligence operations. Let’s look at what they actually did, instead of what they spoke of. That would suggest what the real goals are.
The big, obvious thing that the War on Terror permitted was for America to make its imperial lunge. There were papers that made it clear that this was an administration goal, the most notable one posted at the Project for a New American Century, and there were statements too. Something more subtle also took place. It is quite dangerous and it is largely unremarked.
The War on Terror permitted the administration to put an end to the concept that everyone is equal before the law.
We suddenly have people who are beneath the laws. They are called terrorists and unlawful combatants. All it takes to make someone beneath the law is to denounce them. They then have no rights, no phone call, no lawyers. They cannot argue about what they’ve been called. They can be whisked off to a prison and held incommunicado and tortured. Or at least seriously abused. It appears unlikely that this could happen to you or I or your friends across the street. But with the end of equality before the law, there really is nothing to stop it. Except our belief that our leaders are all honorable men who would not abuse such power.
Along with the creation of a class that is below the law, there is also a new class that is above the law. The presidential legal staff, including Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee and John Yoo, came up with the theory that when the presidents puts on his commander-in-chief outfit, and acts in that capacity, he is not constrained by any laws. Not international law, not the laws of the United States, not by treaties and not even by the constitution. Furthermore, anyone that he commands to do things when he is wearing that costume, is also unconstrained by those limits, statutes and laws. They are all above the law.
In addition, we have created a three tier international system in which there are entire nations below the law: terrorist states, states the harbor terrorists and failed states. There is, of course, one nation that is above the law. That is the United States.

Goodbye, Carolyn

Loose cannon, yes, but she was fun and will be missed -- Parrish not seeking re-election: "Controversial MP Carolyn Parrish is telling her constituents she won't seek re-election as a federal Liberal or as an Independent, says a report on a Toronto radio station." One of the great things about Canadian politics is how we can still elect true originals. Parrish, for all her faults, was a Canadian original and never ashamed to be one.

Tweety's great line of the day

Chris Matthews demonstrates that he actually IS a journalist. Here is how he introduced his show on Monday night -- not a bad summary of what Plame is all about and why it matters, and how it all relates to the Bush administration's push for war with Iraq:

If you don't think this leak case matters, ask yourself, what was the most frightening case you heard for going to war with Iraq? Probably it was that Saddam Hussein was buying uranium yellow cake in Africa to build nuclear weapons. The president said it in his 2003 State of the Union address. The vice president repeated it with military precision, almost like a Gatling gun, Saddam Hussein, nuclear weapons, Saddam Hussein, nuclear weapons, again and again.
But it wasn't true. There's no evidence even now that Saddam tried to by nuclear materials in Africa. We know that now because the man the CIA sent down there to Niger to check it out, sent there after Vice President Cheney asked the CIA to check it out, wrote a New York Times article a few months after the war started that there was no deal. Worse yet, the former ambassador, Joseph Wilson, wrote that the people around the president must have known there was no deal, even when the president and his people kept telling the country there was.
How did the Bush people react to this unwelcome news? This is what the CIA leak case, which could produce indictments any day now, is all about. Did the people around the president actively try to discredit that man who came back from Africa, to say the yellow cake story was a phony? Did they try and kill the messenger? Did they use to enormous media power of the White House to discredit the ambassador, his mission and his wife at the CIA, who suggested him for the mission?
And, in doing so, did they abuse the office and the power to which the president was elected? Did they break the law? Did they conspire to punish a critic of the war, even if their weapon was the destruction of his wife's undercover career by identifying her to the public? Did they lie about their actions to government investigators to a grand jury or even to the president himself?

Since 911. Bush has often said his job is to protect the American people -- actually it isn't of course; the president's job really is to defend the Constitution. But leaving that aside for the moment and getting back to my point -- Americans need to ask the Bush administration how well Bush actually protected them when he took them to war with Iraq.

So whose going to be the new Vice President?

Crooks and Liars reports "The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are working on stories that point to Vice President Dick Cheney as the target of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name."
So when Cheney resigns, whose going to be the new VP?
Just figure out who is the bery least-qualified Bush patriot in the world -- how about Karen Hughes?

Great line of the day

Hunter at Daily Kos takes on the right-wing bloggers who are still trying to argue that Plame wasn't really outed as an undercover CIA agent:

Dear Whoever The Hell Comes Up With These Things: . . . It takes an act of wanton dumbassitude to assert, after the case has been investigated for two years, that maybe Plame wasn't really covert, and they'll get around any day now to figuring that out. Call me an excessive believer in the powers of investigative deduction, but I'm pretty sure that before spending two years of investigation, the CIA figured out whether or not Plame was actually covert.
Yes, this is the intellectual movement that is going to take down the mainstream media with their hard-hitting news analysis. These are the New Pundits, the FactCheckers, the Socket Rientists of Journalism. From the militia members stocking up for the nuclear apocalypse to be caused by Y2K, to the network-busting power of small animated gifs, to the monkey howls of Hillary! Hiiiiiillaryyyyyyy! that accompany the slightest dull thud in the political landscape, these are the members of 'Bush's Base'. Lord help us all, we're going to die.

Emphasis mine.
We're heard lots of Plame talking points over the last two years, haven't we - she wasn't really covert, nobody knew who she really was, she was nobody really, nothing was actually leaked, no law was really broken, the law sets such a high standard that no one could ever be actually guilty of breaking it, maybe it was Powell's fault, maybe it was Fleisher's fault, it was the reporters who told Rove and Libby that she was CIA, when Rove and Libby talked to reporters it was about welfare reform not uranium from Africa, that guy Wilson is just a publicity hound, that prosecutor is a nutcase, that guy Wilson is a nutcase, that prosecotor is just a publicity hound -- all gradually falling by the wayside as events proved them just too ridiculous for anyone to keep trying to promote.
The republicans are trying out two new talking points now.
First is that society shouldn't "criminalize politics" -- which implies that the whole thins is somehow really just a part of the usual political game that Washingtonians play, not something anyone should find illegal or take offense at, Democrats argued that nobody cared when Clinton had that affair so wouldn't it be hypocritical to care about this, oh my word can't anyone take a joke around here? Of course, this talking point won't stand for very long. There are just too many Americans who will insist on thinking that this is NOT like having a consentual affair, that outing a covert CIA agent is actually a criminal act, and how dare anyone pretend that such behaviour is OK just because you dislike her husband, what's wrong with you people anyway.
The other new talking point now is the "Rove lied to Bush" story. This may be Bush's last line of defense, the last refuge of a scoundrel.
This fairy tale describes how Bush ASKED his good buddy Karl about the Plame leak yes indeedy he DID, but then that tricky ole Rove lied -- yes, he LIED, and so our pore ole George got tricked by ole buddy Turdblossom.
Now this self-serving piece of twaddle strikes me as about as credible as the "slam-dunk" anecdote. You remember, the Woodward anecdote that in December of 2002 -- long after all the mushroom cloud remarks and the 'fixing the intellegence around the policy' memo -- that Bush supposedly asked then-CIA-director Tenant if he was really really really sure that Saddam had WMD and Tenant said it was a slam dunk. So therefore Bush believers could be comforted that their guy had TRIED to find out the truth about the WMD, he REALLY TRIED, but his staff done him wrong, and it was all Tenant's fault. This "Rove lied to Bush" line strikes me as just another fairy story about how Bush's staff done him wrong AGAIN!
So Bush's only fault, really, was that he loved, not wisely, but too well -- or something like that.

What a suprise!

Well, well, how surprising -- ". . . with Saturday's constitutional referendum appearing more likely to divide than unify the country, some within the administration have concluded that the quest for democracy in Iraq, at least in its current form, could actually strengthen the insurgency . . ." Oh, quel suprise -- so, actually, Bush can argue that they have stayed the course long enough, and it would actually enhance democracy if the US just pulls troops out before the congressional midterms next fall? Except, of course, for the 20,000 troops who will hunker down on those permanent bases.
I don't know if they can actually sell this one to the American people as peace with honour, considering that war with dishonour is the more likely scenario for the next six months regardless of how many purple fingers are waggled.

Cutest kitten ever

Just for fun, I stole this from The Poorman.
The photo is actually entitled "cutest kitten ever".