For a few dollars more

When my daughter was in grade 8, she had to write a report on "buying" a piece of household equipment -- in her case, a stove. She had to compare prices and models, go to several stores to see what was best value, and visit the banks to arrange for a "loan".
Well, when we went to the bank, they told her they didn't lend such small amounts of money, about $500. Instead, they told her that people now used Visa cards for purchases like this.
Well, I wondered, what if you didn't HAVE a Visa card? What if you didn't make enough money to qualify for one? And what if you didn't want to pay 20 per cent interest? Does that mean you're not allowed to buy yourself a stove?
So it was interesting to see that this year's Nobel Peace Prize went to Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, who invented microcredit.
He describes his innovation thusly: "Whatever banks did, I did the opposite." Words to live by.
And now he is leading the second Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax:

Nine years ago, the Microcredit Summit Campaign set a goal to lend money to 100 million of the world's poorest people - those living on less than US$1 a day - by the end of 2005.
Of the 113 million that received loans by the end of last year, only 82 million were considered the world's poorest, but the campaign expects to reach the 100-million goal this year.
Two new goals are the focus of the Halifax summit . . . to reach another 75 million of the world's poorest by 2015, and to ensure the loans help at least 100 million people live on more than a dollar a day.

For too long, our society has just accepted idea that 'the poor will always be with us' and there was nothing individually that anybody could do about poverty except earn enough money ourselves to give some of it away to relief agencies.
Now here is a man who used the skills and knowledge he had to do create something meaningful and directly helpful to millions of people. Its an inspirational example for us all.

. . . Peter MacKay. . . admitted he was awestruck when he first met Yunus before the summit. "You are immediately struck that you're in the presence of greatness," MacKay told a crowd at the summit's opening ceremonies on Sunday. "This man who is so soft-spoken, such an understated giant of a man, has literally changed the world."

Great line of the day

. . . In the middle of an intersection of roads lies a $100 bill. On the corners stand Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Continuing Sectarian Violence [in Iraq], and Something The U.S. Can Do That Will Save Iraq.
Who wins the race to the money? Continuing Sectarian Violence.
Why? Because the other three are figments of your *@%#ing imagination! . . .

From AJ at AMERICAblog. The whole post is a good one.

Mission accomplished

And a lot more cartoons here on Daily Kos

Great line of the day

Wesley Clark talks to University of Arkansas students:

All wars are eventually about convincing your enemy not to fight.

He had some other interesting things to say too.

The Big Lie

The Big Lie is beginning -- the Lie that the American election was NOT about Iraq.
And the Republican goal is to convince Democrats to wimp out on their promises to the American people.
Karl Rove has already announced that it was corruption that caused people to vote Democratic -- for which, of course, the White House and Bush are completely blameless, innocent as the driven snow and all that.
Now, the Sunday talk shows are promoting part two of the strategy -- that it would be a great idea to increase the number of troops in Iraq, instead of decreasing them. Atrios says today:

Well, reading the tea leaves it's pretty clear what's going on. The Iraq Study Group which Democrats have decided is going to save them is going to recommend either sending in more troops (McCain/Lieberman position this morning) or beginning to bug out. Elite Consensus will tell us to double down one more time, send in another 30,000 troops or so, while condemning the Democrats as defeatists. There won't be enough Democrat support to use what little levers of power they have (not many) to force the administration's hand. So more American soldiers will have their lives disrupted and families torn apart, more of them will die, more Iraqis will die, so that soulless Joe "no one wants out of Iraq more than I do" Lieberman can prop up his feeling of self-importance.
God I hate these people.

The reason for pretending the election was not about Iraq is to undermine the Democrats -- because if the nation looks around in two years and finds that the US is STILL losing in Iraq, the Republicans can argue that the Democrats don't fulfull their promises so why bother to vote for them again.
And they might be right at that.
The Democrats have to remember to dance with the one that brung them. They can start by electing Murtha as majority leader in the House -- sending a clear signal that they support his strategy.
Because the Americans could send in 30,000 more troops, or 50,000 more, or 100,000 more, doesn't matter -- they're still going to lose in Iraq.



UPDATE: See Swopa over at Needlenose.

Remembering

From the Globe and Mail

New blogs

I've put some New Blogs up -- it was suggested in comments that I link to Rick Mercer's Blog so I did, and here's a great post about the income trust debacle:

. . . when Harper made this promise, I believed him. And so did a lot of seniors, apparently, because they kept investing in the bloody things. And why not? Harper’s entire shtick is that you can believe what he says. The entire raison d’être of the Harper government is: you may not like what we do, but we do what we say. Those Tories give you a promise, you can take it to the bank.
In fact if you go to a Harper rally, you can’t hear yourself think for all the Tories chanting “promise made, promise kept” over and over again like a herd of demented Moonies
. . . Well thank God that’s over. Because the next time Stephen Harper or any of his minions chant “promise made, promise kept,” you might want to step back, because if there is a God, the forecast calls for lightning
. . . yes, I know Harper has all sorts of excuses why he had to break his promise to seniors, but you know what? I don’t really care — because years ago I came to the conclusion that there were only two real reasons why politicians break their promises: You already voted for them and you already voted for them.

Also, I have linked to cartoonist August J. Pollak, a funny writer too, and to Ken Levin, about TV and movies.

Harper 1, Press Gallery 0

Remember the fight between Harper and the Ottawa Press Gallery over who got to ask questions at press conferences? Over at Rabble, Ira Basen reports that Harper won and the press gallery lost.
And actually, it was the public which lost:

. . . how many Canadians are lucid enough to notice what's really happening. The men and women of the Parliamentary Press Gallery are generally not sympathetic characters, and Harper took a low risk gamble when he decided to begin his assault on the press with them. In the end, few Canadians care who gets to ask questions at press conferences, and so long as the dispute continues to be framed that way, Harper's moves will cause him little harm.
But Canadians should care if their Prime Minister's real agenda is to de-certify the press; if, like George Bush, he believes that the national media's role in framing the democratic debate needs to be significantly reduced; if, while denouncing the press “filters,” he is actually advancing the idea that the information functions provided by his office through websites and podcasts have an equal legitimacy; and if by trying to control who gets to ask questions, and relying on sympathetic media and bloggers to get his message out, he actually believes it will “helpful for democracy.”
In the end, Stephen Harper's efforts to rollback the press may be more sophisticated and more subtle than the in-your-face tactics employed by the Bush White House. This is Canada after all! But the consequences are no less disturbing.

Harper may have won the battle, however, and be losing the war. No matter how it is spun, the Canadian public does manage to find out what the Conservatives are doing -- like here and here and here and here and here -- and that's just from today. Unless they start getting out in front of the news, it's not going to be pretty for the Conservatives.

Great line (of two days ago)

Tim at Peace, order and good government, eh?:

This election marks the twilight of neoconservatism as a credible philospohy, so Harper's brain trust in the Calgary School will now have to find a less idiotic guiding philosophy, like say tantric flying.

The independent socialist

I had wondered what Vermont was thinking -- here is the story behind "independent socialist" Bernie Saunders who will be the swing vote in the US Senate.
He's been promoting his own values and following his own principles all his life -- Washington should be terrified.

Great line of the day

Kos talking about James Carville's latest stupidity:

I doubt the state party chairs who provided Dean's margin of victory are going to get too torn up about the fact that Dean is helping fund their resurgence.
Carville needs to shut the fuck up. If he wants a war, we'll give him one.
And it won't be a war that DC can win.
There's more of us than there are of them.

Emphasis mine.

Changing the subject

But enough about the United States -- let's talk about Canada for a change.
Did you hear that Howard Dean will be talking to the Liberal convention?

Suitable for framing

This should be framed and hung in every Democrat's office:

This election is not a mandate; far from it. Your majorities are slim and your positions frankly precarious. You are on probation. You have two years to get this country in the mood to elect a Democrat to the presidency, and to generally see Democrats--and, by extension, liberals--as upright, forthright human beings. You will treat your fellow VIPs and your constituents with respect and dignity, while not letting them walk all over you. You will stand firm when it's called for and negotiate and compromise when it's called for. You are permitted exactly zero scandals, backstabbings, and slingings of mud. We are counting on you. Do not fuck this up.

UPDATE: And send two framed copies to that idiot James Carville, too. He can send the extra to Harold Ford.

Birth of a talking point

Glenn Greenwald on today's example of pund-idiocy from Charles Krauthammer:

The 2004 victory by President George W. Bush with a margin of 3.5 million votes (and by one closely decided state) was a "resounding endorsement" and a glorious triumph that vests the President with a powerful and clear "mandate." That was a "serious majority."
The 2006 victory by Democrats with a margin of 7 million votes was a victory by the "thinnest of margins" and was "razor-thin." It was a banal and weak outcome that was even "slightly below the post 1930 average for the six-year itch in a two-term presidency," and it was nothing more notable or meaningful than "an event-driven election that produced the shift of power one would expect when a finely balanced electorate swings mildly one way or the other.

Thanks, Charles, for straightening that out for everyone. I'm sure we'll see this talking point again and again and . . .

Little shop of horrors

Some fun now. Oh, we're in for some fun now.
The hearings about the nomination of Robert Gates to be Secretary of Defense have every potential of turning into a little shop of horrors for the Bush administration, considering who Gates is and his history with the Bushies:

. . . In 1991, when President George H. W. Bush nominated Robert Gates for the post of director of Central Intelligence, there was a virtual insurrection among CIA analysts who had suffered under his penchant for cooking intelligence. The stakes for integrity of analysis were so high that many still employed at the agency summoned the courage to testify against the nomination. But the fix was in, thanks to then-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee David Boren and his staff director, George Tenet. The issue was considered so important, however, that 31 senators voted against Gates when the committee forwarded his nomination. Never before or since has a CIA director nominee received so many nay votes.
Gates is the one most responsible for institutionalizing the politicization of intelligence analysis by setting the example and promoting malleable managers more interested in career advancement than in the ethos of speaking truth to power. In 2002, it was those managers who then-CIA Director George Tenet ordered to prepare what has become known as the "Whore of Babylon" – the Oct. 1 National Intelligence Mis-Estimate on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq . . .

No wonder Bush wants to try to get this nomination through the lame duck Congress rather than waiting until the Democrats are running the committees. But I wonder if Bush realizes how deeply Gates -- and his own father -- were involved in Iran-Contra?
I wonder if Bush even remembers what Iran-Contra was?