Great lines of the day

At Daily Kos, SusanG notes that Rumsfeld is now trying to make the argument that the US military is woefully behind the guys living in caves in terms of being tech savvy.

All I can muster is ... huh? I feel like a movie reel has been switched and I'm watching the second half of a completely different movie than the one I walked into. Kinda like starting out in the Last of the Mohicans and ending up in The Matrix . . . So let me see if I have this straight. These same "dead-enders," "remnants of defeated regimes," "small number of terrorists, a small number of militias, coupled with some demonstrations and some lawlessness," these are the same losers who now are suddenly relegated to some category of Blackberry-wielding, VOIP-using, IM'ing wizzes, operating in a country with a few hours of electricity per day? Is that the scenario? Or am I missing an episode in a trilogy? You know, every time Rumsfeld speaks, I feel a little stupider. Here we are, arguably the most industrialized nation in the world, the home of Silicon Valley and Bill Gates and NASA, and our defense secretary is trying to sell us on the idea that we're getting our asses whupped by people he'd previously designated as unaffiliated, dying-gasp, disgruntled losers who are reluctant to enter the 21st century and partake of the fruits of democracy and capitalism with us. If I missed a transitional phase, forgive me.

Emphasis mine.

Hearts and minds

Bush and company keep trying to compare Iraq to World War II. And indeed they may have a point -- if you think of the Americans as playing the German role this time.
A few months ago, when we first started watching the TV series "Over There", I commented on this blog that it was like watching a TV show about the occupation of France as told from the German side.
Now the war movies are being made -- like this one now showing in Turkey:

The crowd cheered, clapped and whistled as the Turkish agent plunged the knife into the chest of the enemy commander. "Valley of the Wolves - Iraq," which opened last week in movie theaters in Turkey, Austria and Germany, is a Rambo-like action story involving Turkish gunmen who seek revenge against a tyrannical occupying army.
In this version, however, at $10 million the most expensive movie ever made in Turkey, the enemy is no oppressive Third World dictatorship. The commander's name is Sam - as in uncle - and the opposing forces are the Americans, who are being punished for offenses against Turkish as well as Iraqi pride and honor. The commander, Sam William Marshall, played by an American actor, Billy Zane, is a sociopath, killing people without a second's thought and claiming that he is doing God's will . . .
The opening sequence portrays an incident that made headlines here in 2003, when a group of Turkish special forces soldiers in Iraq were taken into custody by U.S. Marines. The Turks, mistaken for insurgents, were handcuffed and held with hoods over their heads, which rankled many Turks. Other scenes show ruthless marines killing Iraqis, and soldiers mistreating inmates at Abu Ghraib prison, as well as an American Jewish surgeon, played by Gary Busey, who takes what look like kidneys from inmates during surgery to New York, London and Israel - all, according to the screenwriter, Bahadir Ozdener, inspired by real events . . .
The plot focuses on the hooding incident and its aftermath. The commander of the Turkish soldiers returns home in humiliation, believing that his honor has been so compromised that he has no choice but to commit suicide. But he leaves a note to the hero, a Turkish intelligence agent named Polat Alemdar, pleading with him to defend the country's honor that he had so disserved. So Alemdar leads a small team of special operations soldiers into northern Iraq, where they are astonished and outraged at what they find. "They were after the man who insulted the Turkish soldiers, but they couldn't believe their eyes when they saw the situation there," reads the movie's Web site. "The people of Iraq's values, personalities and history were completely being disregarded. The desired new order was forcing an unacceptable change on the people. The one who is responsible for these unendurable crimes against humanity is a Special Forces commander called Sam William Marshall." Marshall then orders a raid on a wedding, where trigger-happy marines get spooked and kill scores of civilians. It is all in pursuit of his plan to pacify the people through intimidation and violence, all according to God's will and for their own good. Until, ultimately, Alemdar catches up with him.

And here, from this Knight-Ridder story about Samarra is another scene from a movie yet to be made:

. . . Five days after the grenade attack, Lt. Call and his men from the 2nd platoon were planning an afternoon "hearts and minds" foot patrol to hand out soccer balls to local kids.
As Call sat in the schoolhouse, preparing to go out, he heard two loud bursts from the .50-caliber machine gun on the roof . . . Call and his men dashed out the front door. Pena had shot an unarmed Iraqi man on the street. The man had walked past the signs that mark the 200-yard "disable zone" that surrounds the Alamo and into the 100-yard "kill zone" around the base. The Army had forced the residents of the block to leave the houses last year to create the security perimeter. . . . Looking at the man splayed on the ground, Call turned to his medic, Specialist Patrick McCreery, and asked, "What the f--- was he doing?"
McCreery didn't answer. The man's internal organs were hanging out of his side, and his blood was pouring across the ground. He was conscious and groaning. His eyelids hung halfway closed.
"What ... did they shoot him with?" McCreery asked, sweat beginning to show on his brow. "Did someone call a ... ambulance?"
The call to prayer was starting at a mosque down the street. The words "Allahu Akbar" - God is great - wafted down from a minaret's speakers.
The man looked up at the sky as he heard the words. He repeated the phrase "Ya Allah. Ya Allah. Ya Allah." Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
He looked at McCreery and raised his finger toward the house in front of him.
"This my house," he said in broken English.
McCreery reached down. With his hands cupped, he shoved the man's organs back into his body and held them in place as Call unwrapped a bandage to put around the hole.
"He's fading, he's fading," McCreery shouted.
Looking into the dying man's eyes, the medic said, "Haji, haji, look at me," using the honorific title reserved for older Muslim men who presumably have gone on Hajj - pilgrimage - to Mecca.
"Why? Why?" asked the man, his eyes beginning to close.
"Haji, I don't know," said McCreery, sweat pouring down his face.
An Iraqi ambulance pulled up and the Humvees followed. They followed the man to the hospital they'd raided a few days earlier. The soldiers filed in and watched as the man died.
Call said nothing. McCreery, a 35-year-old former foundry worker from Levering, Mich., walked toward a wall, alone. He looked at the dead man for a moment and wiped tears from his eyes.
A few days later, Call's commander asked him to take pictures of the entrails left by the man Pena had shot, identified as Wissam Abbas, age 31, to document that Abbas was inside the sign warning of deadly force.
McHenry, who was driving, told him, "There's not going to be much left, sir. The dogs will have eaten all of it."
Pena was up on the schoolhouse roof manning the same .50-caliber machine gun. He didn't say a word about the man he'd killed. As he stared at a patch of earth in front of him, at Samarra and its wreckage, he couldn't contain his frustration.
"No one told me why I'm putting my life on the line in Samarra, and you know why they didn't?" Pena asked. "Because there is no f------ reason."

And does anybody think a few soccer balls are going to make up for this?

Play ball!

The crowd is getting a little restless as the batter keeps stepping out of the box and taking a few more practice swings.
So we've already heard about what the Conservatives are NOT going to be doing right away -- they're not going to fix the so-called fiscal imbalance until 2007; and they don't support trading of emissions credits to help the world meet its Kyoto emissions targets.
But its been a month since the election, and we're still waiting to hear about all the other things they promised to do.
Are they going to implement their new family allowance plan, and pull the rug out from under the provinces on the day care space funding which the Liberals promised?
What about the infrastructure funding for the municipalities -- you said you would implement what the Liberals had promised but why haven't the municipalities heard anything yet?
Where's that GST reduction -- or are you going to have to raise our income taxes again first?
It's time to step up to the plate and start swinging, boys.

An idea whose time has come

An Ontario New Democrat has introduced a private members bill which would allow doctors to harvest organs for transplants unless told not to do so. In my opinion, this is an excellent idea, and I don't understand why anyone would vote against it.
The proposed bill says that anyone who, for religious or other reasons, does not want to donate organs can refuse to do so.
But everyone else shares, without having to remember to sign an organ donor card. And why not? Of what possible use are my organs to me after I am dead? Yet for someone else, they can be lifesaving. Sure, I have my organ donation card signed and in my wallet, but maybe the hospital doesn't find it in time, or maybe my next-of-kin get squeamish and say no.
The bizarre aspect of this news story is the comparison that the anti-abortion group Campaign Life Coalition makes to the Rogers Cable negative option billing proposal of several years ago, postulating that because people didn't like that proposal they won't like this one either. Its not really the same, guys -- one is about needless TV stations, and the other is about saving people's lives. I think Canadians will understand the difference.

Who does Ezra Levant think he is?

So he endangers Canadians overseas by gratuitously printing the Mohammed cartoons, and now he slimes Colleen Klein, wife of Ralph Klein, by gratuitously printing a racist slur against her. Congratulations to Air Canada for stopping its distribution of this magazine. And I hope other bookstores follow McNally Robinson's lead and refuse to sell the Western Standard.
Hate speech is not a standard of western Canada.

Disappearing act

Just when I am wondering whether I had missed something, comes this Globe story -- Why has Stephen Harper stayed out of sight? I was starting to think there had been some news stories about the doings of Harper and the federal government which I hadn't seen for some reason, but here is the Globe confirming that after leaving Emerson and Fortier hanging out to dry last week, Harper just disappeared.
So its not me, its him.
Seems to me that he has done this in the past, too -- pulled disappearing acts when nobody knew for weeks at a time what he was doing. Maybe its his style -- the Prime Minister who jumps down the rabbit hole.

Oooh, smart move, guys!

So after hemming and hawing all day yesterday, the White House finally decides that it should try to make a joke of the Cheney shooting incident -- "White House Finds Humor in Hunting Mishap"
And then what happens? "Hunter shot by Cheney has heart attack"
Great timing, guys.
And meanwhile the rumours start to swirl -- that Cheney was drunk, that he was weekending with another woman, Oh, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy...

Publicity hounds

As I read this column -- Gretzky undaunted -- I remembered the one thing about American jurisprudence which should never be forgotten: never underestimate the desire of US prosecutors for publicity.
Their dinky little gambling case against a state trooper and an assistant coach hit the big time just because they were able to drag Janet and Wayne Gretzky into it.

Al Gore takes one for the team

So, Al Gore has apologized to Muslims for how the US has treated them since 9/11. And the wingnuts are raking him over the coals for it.
But what they don't realize is that this isn't Al Gore's apology -- it is Condi Rice's apology. It may even be George Bush's apology.
There is no way that Al Gore would have ever gone to Saudi Arabia to say these things unless Rice had approved the trip, and maybe even instigated it. Condi herself could never have apologized for the racist brutality of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense -- but Al Gore is the one US politician who might be listened to by Muslim leaders. Now the Muslim leadership has the apology they needed, to help them cool down their own hotheads.

Accident update 3

Well, well, here's sone news. I saw my doctor again today and had more chest xrays -- this time, they found three or maybe four broken ribs, and I may also have a bruised lung -- so no wonder it seemed to be taking a long time to feel better. Anyway, my doctor said I should stay home and rest for the rest of the week. The radiologist will be reading the xrays in a day or two, so I will have some more precise information after that.
And I guess they don't tape broken ribs anymore, so at least I escaped that.

Deja vu all over again

I didn't watch the show but when I read Adrianna Hurrington's account of today's Meet the Press with Democrats Tom Daschle and Jane Harman, and Republicans Pat Roberts and Peter Hoekstra I had a strange sense of deja vu.
The way Huffington described it, Daschle and Harmon apparently spent most of the program wringing their hands -- not about how Bush's domestic wiretap program contravenes the US constitution, but rather about how Democrats have to prove their patriotism by supporting the program:

Senators Rockefeller and Daschle were not given the power to sign away our civil liberties. A Get Out of Jail Free card for Bush to break the law isn't theirs to give . . . I don't particularly care what the reaction by Rockefeller or Harman or Daschle was to the program. Their silence doesn't make it legal. The question is: what do we do about a President who's breaking the law? And, sadly, the answer, at least from Daschle and Harman, was this: instead of making him conform his actions to the law, we fix the law so that it conforms to whatever actions he wants to take.

And then I remembered why this seemed so familiar -- it is EXACTLY what Peter Daou said would happen, six weeks ago when he described how the wiretap scandal would likely follow the typical Bush scandal pattern:

1. POTUS circumvents the law - an impeachable offense.
2. The story breaks . . .
3. The Bush crew floats a number of pushback strategies, settling on one that becomes the mantra of virtually every Republican surrogate. These Republicans face down poorly prepped Dem surrogates and shred them on cable news shows.
4. Rightwing attack dogs on talk radio, blogs, cable nets, and conservative editorial pages maul Bush's critics as traitors for questioning the CIC.
5. The Republican leadership plays defense for Bush, no matter how flagrant the Bush over-reach, no matter how damaging the administration's actions to America's reputation and to the Constitution . . .
6. Left-leaning bloggers and online activists go ballistic . . . Several newspaper editorials echo these sentiments but quickly move on to other issues.
7. A few reliable Dems, Conyers, Boxer, et al, take a stand on principle, giving momentary hope to the progressive grassroots/netroots community. The rest of the Dem leadership is temporarily outraged (adding to that hope), but is chronically incapable of maintaining the sense of high indignation and focus required to reach critical mass and create a wholesale shift in public opinion.. . .
8. Reporters and media outlets obfuscate and equivocate, pretending to ask tough questions but essentially pushing the same narratives they've developed and perfected over the past five years, namely, some variation of "Bush firm, Dems soft." A range of Bush-protecting tactics are put into play, one being to ask ridiculously misleading questions such as "Should Bush have the right to protect Americans or should he cave in to Democratic political pressure?" All the while, the right assaults the "liberal" media for daring to tell anything resembling the truth.
9. Polls will emerge with 'proof' that half the public agrees that Bush should have the right to "protect Americans against terrorists." Again, the issue will be framed to mask the true nature of the malfeasance. The media will use these polls to create a self-fulfilling loop and convince the public that it isn't that bad after all. The president breaks the law. Life goes on.
10. The story starts blending into a long string of administration scandals, and through skillful use of scandal fatigue, Bush weathers the storm and moves on, further demoralizing his opponents and cementing the press narrative about his 'resolve' and toughness. Congressional hearings might revive the issue momentarily, and bloggers will hammer away at it, but the initial hype is all the Democratic leadership and the media can muster, and anyway, it's never as juicy the second time around...

I remember the reaction when Daou wrote that, on Dec. 20 -- so many American progressive bloggers were bound and determined that THIS TIME it wouldn't happen this way.
But if Daschle's craven bootlicking becomes the new Democratic line, then this is exactly what will happen -- the Washington Post already has a story up titled "Spying Necessary, Democrats Say" , which will be in page A3 of tomorrow's paper.
Not only did Meet the Press undermine Democratic outrage about this scandal, it also undermined the few Republicans who have tried to speak out against this program until now.

The not-quite-ready-for-prime-time players

Following the neocon dictate to create your own reality, Harper seems determined to ignore what the country is saying about his cabinet.
Maybe he thinks he can follow in Bush's footsteps and create a different reality, one where Canada will think his cabinet is just loverly. Maybe he thinks they're grow on us. Maybe he thinks Canadians will give his Cabinet time to "grow into the job".
But riddle me this -- how are these people going to be able to run a government when they can't even organize a press conference?
So far, these people seem to be "not quite ready" for prime time in Cabinet. I guess we'd better hope that some of those good Liberal civil servants and senators and judges are still hanging around, like Harper promised us they would be, to save us from this gang that can't shoot straight.
Hundreds rallied in Vancouver yesterday to call Emerson a traitor. Apparently, being merely the people who voted for Emerson two weeks ago, his constituents, they aren't worthy of any consideration from either Harper or Emerson -- as CBC reported in its story about the rally, "Emerson arrived in Vancouver from Ottawa on Friday night but he has yet to speak publicly to his constituents."
Yeah, they've noticed.
He cannot even seem to speak to the Ottawa press gallery. In the Ottawa Sun, Greg Weston describes the bizarre press-conference-that-wasn't on Thursday night:

As most media outlets were beginning to eyeball their Thursday evening deadlines this week, reporters were invited to dial into an unusual conference-call with Trade Minister David Emerson, the elect-and-eject defector from the losing Liberals, and one of the week’s many star public relations disasters for the new Conservative government. It was weird enough that Emerson was holding a press conference by phone with journalists only a few blocks away, not to mention infuriating for the television networks that would get no video. But when an operator came on the line after 30 minutes of elevator music, and announced there would be no press conference because Emerson was “stuck in traffic,” disbelieving journalists were left rolling in the aisles.

To summarize the depth of anger over the Harper cabinet picks, Murdock Davis writes in the Toronto Star - The West is in, and already it feels offended:

. . . In editorials, letters, coffee shops, on talk shows and the streets . . . The adjectives are harsh: corrupt, hypocritical, cynical, disloyal, manipulative, scandalous, deceitful, unprincipled, dishonest, and then some really bad ones. . . . The cynicism runs deep across the country, but especially in the West, where so many felt that in the new Conservative party they were getting politicians who believed what they said about ethics, accountability and democracy. It might be most among Harper's keenest supporters, creating an ugly wound where healing had occurred between the predominantly western Reform/Alliance group and the more eastern Tory group.
Within that western base, matters such as an elected Senate, honour, saying what you mean and meaning what you say, democratic reform and electoral ethics are core beliefs . . .

Watch the news for these guys

By the way, good catch for Canadian Cynic to report that Focus on the Family is now setting up shop in Ottawa -- hoping to be just the first in a long line of anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-feminist, anti-union wingnuts who can now begin spewing forth lots of bogus "studies" showing the awfulness of gay marriage, feminism, etc.
Watch for an uptick in editorial-page "opinion" pieces authored by these people or their fellow travellers.
And watch for newspapers to send their reporters dutifully trotting over to interview these guys and get some pithy quotes about the issue du jour -- maybe we'll find that Marge Barlow and the gang at Rabble will no longer be the "go-to" guys for social issue quotes.
Here Focus on the Family is calling themselves the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada so this is the name that will begin to pop up in editorial-page bylines and 'fair-and-balanced reaction' quotations.

Heading the think-tank is executive director Dave Quist, who has worked on the Hill for seven years—six years as executive assistant to former B.C. Conservative MP Reed Elley and one year in the office of the Leader of the Opposition. “I know how busy an MP’s office is, and quite honestly, there simply isn’t time in the day sometimes to do all the necessary research it takes to debate an issue,” he says. Joining Quist are two researchers, a communications director and a secretary. He also recently published the inaugural issue of IMFC Review, a twice-yearly magazine . . . Reinforcing that desire to be heard, Quist believes, is “a general awakening by the social conservative community across Canada…people asking, ‘How did we get here and what can we do to strengthen family in the years ahead through policy?" [Focus senior VP Derek] Rogusky insists, however, that the paramount goal of the IMFC is to help Parliament craft family-friendly laws, regardless of who forms the government.
“It is very much non-partisan,” he says. “We’re not about grassroots lobbying. We’re not about trying to vote certain people out of office. We’re not behind one particular party or one particular candidate—never have been and never will be.”
“We’re not going to be organizing the petitions and letters to the MPs. There are other groups that will do that,” Quist adds. “We want to say [to them], ‘Here’s the impact on children, here’s the impact on moms or dads or couples, if you go down this road.’”
At the same time, Rogusky does not rule out temporary partnerships with secular groups and individuals to achieve mutually desirable results. “We’d be eager to work with anyone and everyone, but it would be on a case-by-case basis, obviously….That includes other think-tanks, academics, people in the media, civil servants and even elected officials,” he says.
Rogusky concedes “it’s going to take some work” for the IMFC to overcome the perception fostered by critics of Focus on the Family that it is merely a front for the “religious right.” But he is confident that will happen. “We’re not going to be bullied or intimidated by anyone,” says Rogusky. “And over time, with a real emphasis on consistently putting out good quality research and defending that research, you may not always agree with us, but eventually you’re going to have to respect us.”

Er, NOT!

Great line of the day

In Scandal Fatique, Catnip & the "Angry" Left, Peter Daou reports:

. . . It's no accident that the scandals get more and more outrageous - after all, the whole point is to have the opposition frantically racing around, chasing stories, distracted and exhausted, wearing itself out like a kitten in a catnip-doused, mouse-filled room. The amazing thing is that so many of Bush's opponents continue to play along. The sheer inability to put on blinders and drive one scandal home, to take it to its ultimate conclusion, is a failing of magnificent proportions. The warrantless spying fiasco is a perfect example. The day the NSA story broke, it should have been the only issue discussed by Democrats and progressive activists, the only one. Day in, day out. No matter if thirty other scandals intervened. Bush and his team count on the opposition's lack of focus, joyfully handing them more catnip. Perhaps that explains the ubiquitous and infamous administration smirk, most recently gracing Alberto Gonzales' face as he humored the Senate Judiciary Committee about breaking the law.

Emphasis mine. And who does that smirk remind you of?

Why we all love computers

Here's a great example of garbage in, garbage out:

A house erroneously valued at $400 million US is being blamed for budget shortfalls and possible layoffs in municipalities and school districts in northwestern Indiana . . . The house had been valued at $121,900 before the glitch. . . the home usually carried about $1,500 in property taxes; this year, it was billed $8 million. . . the $400-million value ended up on documents that were used to calculate tax rates. Most local officials did not learn about the mistake until Tuesday, when 18 government taxing units were asked to return a total of $3.1 million of tax money. The city of Valparaiso and the Valparaiso Community School Corp. were asked to return $2.7 million. As a result, the school system has a $200,000 budget shortfall and the city loses $900,000.. . . the user probably tried to use a real estate record display by pressing R-E-D but accidentally typed R-E-R, which brought up an assessment program written in 1995. The program is no longer in use and technology officials did not know it could be used. The county treasurer said his office spotted the $400-million error after it caused an improper billing but apparently it wasn't corrected elsewhere.

And as more and more computer programs are partly overwritten and abandoned, chances are this type of thing will happen more often.