Great photo of the day

If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it.
Alison at Creekside generously shares this fantastic, ridiculous, essence-of-pop-culture photo -- the Star Wars stormtroopers carry the flags of the world in the Rose Bowl parade.

Great line of the day

As the story of Saddam Hussein's cheap, hurried, ugly, and thuggish execution emerges, Josh Marshall asks the question about which many Americans will be wondering:

Is that what 3,000 Americans died for?

And just to hammer another nail into the coffin of American hopes in Iraq, now go read BBC reporter John Simpson on Saddam's new reputation as a martyr.

Follow the bouncing ball

Related to my post from a couple of days ago about how the world is not waiting for US leadership anymore, here is Richard Clarke writing the Washington Post about all of the world crises which the US should be doing something about, but isn't -- global warming, Russian retrenchment, Latin America's "leftist lurch", wars in Africa, arms control, international crime, and problems with the Pakinstan-Afghan border. Clark blames the Bush administration's distration with Iraq:

. . . with the nation involved in a messy war spiraling toward a bad conclusion, the key deputies and Cabinet members and advisers are all focusing on one issue, at the expense of all others: Iraq.
National Security Council veteran Rand Beers has called this the "7-year-old's soccer syndrome" -- just like little kids playing soccer, everyone forgets their particular positions and responsibilities and runs like a herd after the ball.

But on the other hand, given the Bush administration's record of failure, maybe we're safer if they all stay distracted.

Feud

I've been trying to decide on my response to the news that Saddam Hussein is dead -- he loomed so large in the US reasons for their invasion, yet in the end he was such a ridiculous figure.
So what does his death mean? Should we be glad? indifferent? hopeful? fearful? Will it lead to more violence or less?
Here is one response which will likely turn out to be accurate, from Juan Cole in Salon:

Saddam's hanging is just one more occasion for a blood feud in a country that now has thousands of them.

Greatest talking point ever!

It's the most billiant spin ever twisted, the best talking point ever produced. It's a phrase so fiendishly useful that we'll be hearing it again and again, from every government and corporation on earth.
Crooks and Liars quotes Homeland Security spokesperson Fran Townsend talking about the US failure to capture Osama Bin Laden. And really, it isn't a failure at all:

"It's a success that hasn't occurred yet."

Amazing! In one quick turn of phrase, a miserable present reality is converted into a glorious future achievement. How could anyone criticize this? Likewise, I suppose, one could describe just about any government or corporate failure.
Overspending? Government deficits? Naahh, those are just balanced budgets that haven't occured yet.
Election promises ignored or broken? Not at all, just fulfilment that hasn't occured yet.
Business decline? Inventory overstock? Real estate tanking? Nope, just a strong economy that hasn't occured yet.
Corruption and scandal? No such thing, just unimpeachable ethics that haven't occured yet.

Decline and fall of the American empire

Steve Clemons writes:

What many Americans fail to understand, is that George W. Bush's swaggering pugnaciousness and invasion of Iraq justified by the president with contrived and false excuses made much of the world very, very angry with us. That anger has been measured by the well known Pew Global Attitudes Project but by others as well.
While Bush scoffed at this global reaction, it has since hardened into power strategies -- and global leaders know that they can achieve greater legitimacy at home now by thwarting American preferences -- like in the latest UN sanctions against Iran.
American diplomacy needs to take this into account. Everything we want in the world is more expensive now -- not only because of a weakened dollar -- but because of our deteriorating political position and the anger that so many have at this country and our president.
But we do need to win some battles, or at least put things on hold, until there is someone in the White House who can begin turning around the tattered state of America's foreign policy position.

What Steve Clemons fails to understand --or perhaps just doesn't want to mention because its too upsetting -- is that the rest of the world is not going to wait around for the United States to take over again.
Nobody is going to let Commander Coo-coo Bananas and President Cheney "win some battles". Nor is the world going to "put things on hold" waiting for the American electorate to come to its senses and vote in a president who isn't a warmongering moron.
Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.
We waited for the American people to come to their senses in 2004.
They didn't.
And we have no guarantees for 2008 either.
It was really all mostly smoke and mirrors anyway -- all the stuff about how America was the shining city on the hill, the world's only superpower with the world's best military and the world's greatest democracy, and the president was the world's natural leader. It's really only been since FDR that America took on this reputation for world leadership anyway -- Woodrow Wilson was an oddball exception, but Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover were happy enough to let Europe entangle itself in Africa and Asia and the Middle East; they wanted America to remain aloof and independent.
After World War II and during the Cold War, FDR, Eisenhower and Kennedy really did seem to think the US could run the world. But since Vietnam, American presidents had realized that American exceptionalism was more myth than reality.
In reality, America was actually more like The Emerald City, and the President was more like the Wizard of Oz -- hiding a Rube Goldberg machine behind the curtain, pushing and pulling levers and setting off fireworks and puffs of smoke, making unearthly groaning noises and calliope music.
It was a useful myth while it lasted, valuable at keeping everybody else in line, particularly after the Cold War ended -- nobody dared challenge the US because, after all, it might be true. So the nations of the world continued to tip their hats to the American president.
Now the world has watched as America elected a meglomaniac ignoramus as President. Twice. Who has demonstrated that the American military is apparently still incapable of winning a war against a bunch of teenagers making bombs in their basements.
We've all seen that behind a curtain is just a deeply flawed man who doesn't know what he is doing.
So now the world is shaking itself loose from the American myth.
Maybe this will turn out to be good for the world, when everyone has to stand on their own.
Or maybe not.
But either way, the world won't go back.
The American empire has fallen and it can't get up.

Great photo of the day

In this great AP photo by Jeff Topping, we see Booger the dog, Kitty the cat, and Mousie the mouse, all waiting outside an Arizona restaurant for their owner.

Stepping up

Following up on this story from two weeks ago about the terrible conditions at Pikangikum, I'm happy to note that the Guelph Tribune reports the Rotary Club of Wellington South has donated $12,000 to provide a reverse osmosis water purification system for the school.
At least its a start.
And I missed this at the time, but the federal Conservatives are acting to repeal a section of the Indian Act which prevents Aboriginal people from making discrimination complaints against band councils and the federal government. Some Aboriginal leaders are afraid of the potential impact on band councils. But it sounds to me like this change in long overdue and I applaud it:

Grand Chief Stan Beardy of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, a political group representing 49 First Nations across Ontario, hopes the bill may ultimately bring relief to people living in the kind of squalor most Canadians can only imagine.
His communities include Pikangikum, 250 kilometres north of Kenora, where most homes have no running water.
“In many areas there are minimum standards of what is acceptable and what isn't,” Mr. Beardy said. “And it's only recently that my young people have started to put pressure to make sure that those same rights are afforded to them.
“I think they'll demand that they have access to universal rights like everybody else.”

You know, whenever we are extenting human rights to a group that doesn't have them yet, we are told the same things -- that we can't do it, we mustn't rush, we need more time, society just isn't ready, and besides, we can't afford it.
Well, tough. We've got to do it anyway.
At least its a start.

Bush tries The Martingale

There's a betting system called The Martingale that if you lose, you wager double the next time and the next time and the next time, until eventually you win and so get all your losses back.
Sounds like a plan -- after all, you're bound to win eventually, aren't you?
It is the Gambler's Fallacy to think that you're ever due to win any time, no matter how many in a row you 've lost - cards have no memory and neither does the roulette wheel. After doubling your bet a few times, you are risking a huge amount of money against a miniscule benefit -- even if you do win, all you have is your first investment back.
But the Bush administration appears bound and determined to try a Martingale in the Middle East -- either by escalating the war in Iraq, or widening it to Iran, or both.
They're playing Viva Las Vegas with real people's lives. The Martingale doesn't turn losers into winners, it only makes bigger losers.

Great line of the day

From Attytood via Today in Iraq:

. . . it all gets intellectually tangled when you try to compare a one-day terrorist attack, which deliberately targeted civilians in a way that any civilized human should find repulsive, with three and a half years of combat and collateral damage.
Tangled -- and yet I do believe in my gut that the killing fields in Iraq flow directly from the senseless violence of 9/11, and so I believe that stories and blog posts that compare the death tolls are worthwhile -- because for one day they make us think, a little harder and a little more out loud than usual, what Americans should be thinking every single day.
Just what in God's name are we doing over there?

Emphasis mine.

Stick with Canada

Reading about war on today of all days, one thought occured to me -- America should stay out of any war that Canada doesn't want to fight.
Look at the record-
WWI, WWII, Korea, Gulf War, Kosovo: Canada supported, and the allies, including America, won.
Vietnam, Iraq: Canada did not support, and America lost
Afghanistan: Still a toss-up.
But if Canada pulls out, it's likely safe to assume that America will lose that one, too.

John Williams conducts Handel's Messiah

A number of years ago I participated in a "sing-along" Messiah -- great fun and a great Christmas experience.

Claymation "We three kings"

Claymation "Angels we have heard on high"

Claymation "Carol of the Bells"