Flexing

You can tell what scares people by what they use to threaten others.
Here's an example:

The Conservative government is promising to take historic steps to limit federal spending power - but only if Quebecers vote for a federalist party next Monday.
Lost in all the budget headlines this week was a little-noticed promise to negotiate with the provinces about how to formally prevent Ottawa from spending money in provincial jurisdictions. Prime Minister Stephen Harper repeated the promise in the House of Commons on Wednesday and said he hopes to hold those discussions with a federalist government in Quebec.
Tory Quebec lieutenant Lawrence Cannon was asked whether that means the entire initiative hinges on the defeat of the separatist Parti Quebecois in Monday's election.
"That's what I understood," Cannon said of the prime minister's remarks.
"We'll see what happens on election night. But it takes federalists to reform federalism."
The suggestion that Ottawa could scrap such a major initiative if it disagrees with Quebec voters' choice drew accusations of interference in the provincial election.
"It's not a responsible comment," Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe said.

Harper is trying to flex his fiscal muscles in an attempt to make Quebec shiver in shock and awe. Now for Harper, like many federal politicians, nothing is more frightening than the prospect of losing influence, being cut off from authority and power by electing the "wrong" party.
So he thinks Quebeckers must be frightened of this, too.
Not!
There's not much that scares Quebec, but I think they find this kind of federal flexing to be particularly pathetic.

And another great line today

Digby talks about the Fox Noise reaction to Al Gore's global warming testimony today:

. . . my favorite thing about the know-nothing wingnut argument is that Al Gore is said to be all hysterical on this silly little problem by the same people who are screeching like howler monkeys that the oceans don't protect us anymore and "they're comin' to kill us in our beds!" The fact that ridding ourselves of our dependence on oil might mitigate both of these problems escapes their notice. But then, they are incredibly stupid.

Great line of the day

The Editors write about the Bush statement on how the American people should be patient about Iraq:

Today, we find Bush asking us to be patient with progress in Iraq, and warning of dire consequences should Democrats succeed in denying Bush the chance of passing on responsibility for losing the war to the next administration. . . . . the American people, after being entirely too patient, have lost patience with President George W. Bush, and with his cronies and sycophants. They have lost patience with his conduct of the war - and, as no one else can conduct the war, they have lost patience with the war itself. And I doubt they are much inclined to hear sermons on “patience” from the man who was so anxious to rush into a war that, four years later, he still can’t justify.

Emphasis mine.

Canadian artists

I don't know very much about art or artists, so I decided to do a little research into the winners of the 2007 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts:

The Canada Council for the Arts today announced the names of the eight winners of the 2007 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts.
Ian Carr-Harris, Aganetha Dyck, R. Bruce Elder, Murray Favro, Fernand Leduc and Daphne Odjig will receive awards for artistic achievement; ceramist Paul Mathieu will receive the Saidye Bronfman Award for excellence in the fine crafts, while David P. Silcox will receive the outstanding contribution award for his work as a writer, educator, cultural administrator and arts volunteer.

Here are some photos related to their work, which I found on the web (there are other photos posted with the Canada Council press release, too):

Ian Carr-Harris



Aganetha Dyck


R. Bruce Elder


Murray Favro


Fernand Leduc


Daphne Odjig


Paul Mathieu


David P. Silcox


Beautiful, aren't they?
I have often wished I was an artistically creative person -- learning more about art and finding a creative muse for myself is something I do want to do, one of these years.

Continuing the misery

Please! Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who.

Finance minister Flaherty thinks its time to put bickering aside:

The federal budget has now restored fiscal balance and the "discussion is over," Flaherty said during a breakfast speech in this city east of Toronto. "We brought forward yesterday the resolution to that issue. It's been met with substantial approval by the provinces," Flaherty said.
"Now we can get over the bickering and now the federal government can concentrate on our constitutional responsibilities."

But Saskatchewan got screwed.
And the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation are annoyed.
And most important of all, Aboriginal people got nothing in this budget.
I heard on the radio coming home that the chiefs are pissed, and are warning that confrontations will increase if Aboriginal people don't feel their concerns are being taken seriously. Here's Phil Fontaine describing the reaction of Aboriginal people to this budget:

Canadians believe in fairness, and trust that no one should be left behind in prosperous times. Some Canadians will welcome this budget, but many more would be alarmed if they knew about the devastating consequences for First Nations given the lack of attention that First Nations have received in this budget. The frustration of First Nations people is only growing, and this budget does nothing to allay their concerns.
It is clear that the circumstances of First Nations peoples remain a black mark on Canada. It’s an enormous burden, not just on First Nations people, but the whole country. We want to turn this situation around so that First Nations are more effective contributors to Canada’s prosperity. First Nations need to be able create opportunities, not continue to miss out on them.
Nowhere is the fiscal imbalance more apparent than in the critical under-funding of First Nations health, child welfare, education, housing and infrastructure. No other Canadian citizen has had to endure a two-percent cap on funding that has now lasted for over a decade. Our population continues to grow and the poverty gap continues to widen.
. . .
Minister Prentice committed to the process established under the Accord at a meeting of BC First Nations last year. I call upon him to act in accordance with the provisions of the Accord as a way to replace fundamentally flawed government processes and policies.
We have patiently waited a long time for action. This budget only allows for enough money to continue the management of misery.

Is it too cynical of me to think that the Harper government does not care -- would a few high-profile confrontations this summer with Aboriginal protesters play into the political and ideological right-wing agenda?

Phoned anyone in the USA lately?

And did you say anything "interesting"?
Combine this story:

. . . there were no limits on the telecommunications records which the FBI sought and obtained. They just asked for whatever records they wanted, said whatever they had to say in their lawless letters to get them (even when such statements were false), and the telecom companies instantaneously provided the data to the FBI.

with what we already know about the NSA Scandal:

. . . Unlike the [National Security Agency's] longstanding practice of spying on specific individuals and communications based upon some source of suspicion, data mining involves formula-based searches through mountains of data for individuals whose behavior or profile is in some way suspiciously different from the norm.
Data mining is a broad dragnet. Instead of targeting you because you once received a telephone call from a person who received a telephone call from a person who is a suspected terrorist, you might be targeted because the NSA's computers have analyzed your communications and have determined that they contain certain words or word combinations, addressing information, or other factors with a frequency that deviates from the average, and which they have decided might be an indication of suspiciousness. The NSA has no prior reason to suspect you, and you are in no way tied to any other suspicious individuals -- you have just been plucked out of the crowd by a computer algorithm's analysis of your behavior.

and you see why I asked about what you've been saying on the phone lately.
Of course, the whole thing is a stupid waste of both the FBI's time and the NSA's time:

. . . the creation of large numbers of wasteful and distracting leads is one of the primary reasons that many security experts say data mining and other dragnet strategies are a poor way of preventing crime and terrorism. The New York Times confirmed that point, with its report that the NSA has sent the FBI a "flood" of tips generated by mass domestic eavesdropping and data mining, virtually all of which led to dead ends that wasted the FBI's resources. "We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism," one former FBI agent told the Times . "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."

But since when did wasting time and money ever stop the Bush administration?
We also must not forget that the Bushies think that Democrats and journalists and Quakers and bloggers and peace activists and senators and George Soros and Donald Trump and Hollywood are all traitors, or at least "fellow travellers".
So does anyone wonder whose phone calls and emails they are targetting?

Iraq war protests today

Photos from Yahoo

Prague


Madrid


Barcelona


Copenhagen


Istanbul


Washington


Montreal


Los Angeles

Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go

'Tis a grand day for Brennan On The Moor...

and Finnegans Wake

and Shoals Of Herring!

Great line of the day

Over at Blanton's and Ashton's, cutting through all the chatter about whether Valerie Plame was or was not covert and whether outing her was or was not a crime, DBK asks:

. . . on what planet is it okay to start blabbing about a CIA operative to a newspaper reporter for the purpose of intimidating the operative's husband into shutting up?

Exactly.

When you take the gloves off, your own hands get hurt

Joe Scarborough and the right-wingers are apparently flipping out about Rosie O'Donnell asking whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was tortured into his 31 confessions.
But ABC's Matt Lauer is also asking whether Mohammed's confessions can be trusted - and yes, I'm wondering about this myself.
Sad, isn't it, that in their bloodthirsty eagerness to "take the gloves off", the Bush administration has ensured that these confessions may not be believed even in America itself, not to mention in countries where scum like this may be sanctified as martyrs to a cause.
UPDATE (as of Friday night): Somehow, I don't think the progressive blogosphere is taking those scary terrorists seriously enough! TBogg notes

. . . While the left discusses possible obstruction of justice and perjury within the Justice Department that may cause the Attorney General to either step down or be fired, the right is concerned with what Rosie O'Donnell said on an afternoon talk show.

while Attaturk says:

Khalid Ron Jeremy, er, Mohammad confessed not just to 9/11 apparently, but to more than 30 other acts and plots which were:
Attacking Chicago, attacking Los Angeles, attempting to assassinate Presidents Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Carter. Taking part in forging the Zimmerman Telegram and writing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; rubbing down Barry Bonds; the 18-minute gap; clubbing Jon Benet to death with Jimmy Hoffa's femur; an unauthorized biography of Howard Hughes; revealing Thers name and address to Jeff Goldstein; Piltdown Man; being the fifth dentist in the Trident commercials; trying to steal Whitney Houston away from both Bobby Brown AND Osama; the donation of Constantine; shacking up in the Pacific with Amelia Earhart; shooting Harry Whittington; being the inspiration for 'A Million Little Pieces'; molesting CNN anchorbots; not anticipating the breaching of the levees, or ironically anticipating flying planes into buildings; designing Tori Clark's suitcoats; blogging for Edwards 2008; replacing a restaurants expensive coffee with Folgers Crystals; belonging to Hannidate; that he eats aardvarks, armadillos, bears, boars, cats, bats, dawgs, hawgs, stoats, goats, yaks, and old gnus, but prefers ducks; watching "The World According to Jim"; choosing Barabas; laughing at Carrot Top; being a fugitive from OJ's justice; killing both Jerry Mathers & Mikey from the Life Cereal commericials in 'Nam; paying to see "Ishtar"; being Richard Hatch's financial advisor; plagiarizing Ben Domenech; clubbing Mrs. Richard Kimble to Death with Jimmy Hoffa's humorus bone; trying to put together a coalition of terror groups including rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers, RedState readers and Methodists; dumping Maureen Dowd because she was so clingy; and joining the John Podhoretz Handsome Man Modeling Agency.

And I guess now everyone is supposed to forget about Gonzales and Plame and Iraq and start some hysterical witchhunts against brown-skinned school bus drivers. Look, look, its a shiny thing up in the sky?. . .

More red tape, please

Murray Dobbin has an interesting column on deregulation posted at Rabble.
I'm not sure whether I agree with all of it -- in particular, there is an implicit assumption that all regulations brought into effect prior to 1990 were good and useful and necessary, and therefore any dismantling of these regulations is dangerous and motivated by an unseemly desire for profits. It is, I think, possible to overdo good things, to the point they become bad things -- such as requiring so many tests for drugs aimed at rare medical conditions that the drug companies can't afford to develop these drugs.
That said, however, here's his main point:

Deregulation is one of neo-liberalism's five big initiatives (free trade, privatization, service cuts and tax cuts make up the rest). And it shows how successfully they have framed the issue.
Who in their right mind would want more red tape?
Well, for starters, pretty much anyone who flies in Canada, eats food, drives a car, uses prescription drugs or lives some place that could catch fire. That's just the short list.

And yes, that covers a fair number of us, doesn't it?
And Dobbin has an interesting discussion of the difference between the old 'precautionary principle', and the new 'risk management' model that is worth keeping in mind whenever a politician starts preaching deregulation:

The concept that drives this deregulation train is referred to as “risk management.” In the good old days of government in the public interest a different principle prevailed: the precautionary principle. That held that if there looked like there might be a problem, then you assumed in your decisions that there would be a problem. In other words, the goal used to be: err on the side of caution. Now we err on the side of profit.

Dobbin concludes with some warnings for the future -- and guess what? Why, it's our old friend, the Security and Prosperity Partnership, rearing its ugly head once again:

It can only get worse given two initiatives that are currently working at increasing the speed and breadth of deregulation.
The first is the deep integration initiative — now formally called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America — which aims to harmonize all such inspection systems to create a “single North American economy.” The SPP, driven and guided by the powerful Canadian Council of Chief Executives, is the biggest single initiative in deregulation. According to New Democrat MP Peter Julian “We're looking at potentially 300 different areas where Canada is accepting lower American standards.” . . . The second initiative is TILMA*, the B.C.-Alberta investors' rights pact that hands over responsibility for deregulation directly to business.
The two measures, in fact, work hand in hand. Because a great deal of regulatory activity in Canada happens at the provincial and municipal level, harmonizing at the level of national governments still leaves thousands of regulations in place. There are strong suspicions that the federal government had a hand in pushing Alberta and B.C. to take the first step in bringing all the provinces (and municipalities) into a massive deregulation project that would smooth the way for deep integration.

Thanks, but no thanks. Given the alternative, I'll take the red tape.

*If you hadn't heard of TILMA before -- and neither had I - here is a link

Great line of the day

Digby on the incompetence of US foreign policy in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice/Wolfowitz/Pearl "Bush Doctrine" era:

Their defining characteristic, in fact, is that they have always been wrong about everything and they never, ever learn anything from their experience. It is also the case that their animating principle in the first few years of the administration was to do the exact opposite of Clinton in all things. It was a simple, easy to remember formula (for simple, forgetful people) that unfortunately led them to reject long-standing, bipartisan foreign policy along with everything else. When you combined the neocon and harcore hawk track records with a mandate to reject anything that Bill Clinton might have endorsed, you ended up with the hacktacular mishmash of sophomoric chest thumping, mindless military actions and conscious rejection all mutual understanding with our allies.

Emphasis mine.