Year of the turnip

I'm getting a chuckle out of all the earnest journalists covering the Republican primaries, talking about McCain vs Romney and Guiliani vs. Thompson, as though any of them mattered in the least.
The American electorate is so angry at the Republicans they would vote for a turnip if it was a Democrat.
Luckily, the Democratic nominee will be Obama or Clinton or Edwards, any one of whom will make a fine president.
As Avedon Carol says:

America doesn't really need Obama to bring us together, because we already are together with just about anyone who isn't a movement conservative/Republican. We want liberal programs and we don't want crazy neocon wars or stupid privatized "services" and destructive monetarist trade/economic policies. There's a minority that will hate Obama just for being a Democrat, but there's no pleasing them. Everyone else is sick of the Republicans. Messrs. Broder and Sullivan may not get this, but pretty much everyone else does.

Standing up to the bully on the block

Does Saskatchewan's New Premier Brad Wall think we will be satisfied with a federal press release instead of a fair equalization formula? On the eve of his first federal-provincial first-ministers meeting, Wall seems to be preparing the ground for an argument that Saskatchewan doesn't either need or deserve the money:

"Equalization is for 'have-not' provinces and we're a 'have' province," said Wall. "That doesn't mean there's any less case for federal government investment and partnership in our province.
"We want to have a vision of remaining a 'have' province and then pressing hard and aggressively for a federal partnership in key areas to make sure the current boom lasts."

Yada, yada, yada. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars here, Brad -- not just a few millions in grants for new bridges and hospital equipment that everybody else is going to get anyway. As Lorne Calvert says:

"It should not be a circumstance where even before the meeting you're saying, 'Well, I'm willing to back off that and look at some other issues like infrastructure,"' Calvert said.
"Yes, I'd be participating with every other premier in terms of federal involvement in infrastructure, federal involvement in dealing with industries in this country that are being hurt by the high Canadian dollar.
"But I would not be leaving at home the promise that Mr. Harper made to the people of Saskatchewan."

Doubtless the feds will be pressuring Wall very hard to drop the constitutional lawsuit -- they will be terrified to lose it.
In fact, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they turn the tables on Wall, trying to bully him by threatening to drag the lawsuit out for years and saying they won't give Saskatchewan one thin dime as long as the lawsuit is outstanding.
How Wall responds may well turn into Wall's first real challenge as a new premier.

Reaching out

This is what worries me about Obama: You're Not Really Thinking of Going On O'Reilly, Are You?

[O'Reilly's] objective is a vilification of the Left and Progressives since from day one and he brings on a brigade of cronies to back that up on every show. Add his history of sexual harassment, blaming rape victims for their molestation, and multitudes of lies and attacks on any who disagree with him, and you'll realize that Bill O'Reilly's goal is not to illicit information. It's to divide the nation, diminish the truth to an almost unrecognizable state and sell himself (and Factor Gear). Why in the world would you want to play into the hands of one who would only be using you to further his partisan profitability?
Why don't you just meet him at Sylvia's?

I know Obama is a supremely confident person, and, particularly if he can sweep enough Democrats into the Senate and House with him, then there is great potential for him to get some progressive changes done, like health care. And he can certainly make an effective difference in American government with the hundreds of well-qualified progressives who will steam into Washington with him and start cleaning up the messes that Bush has made.
But the older I get, the less I am charmed by charisma and good speeches.
I worry that Obama thinks he can carry all before him with the force of his personality. I worry that he thinks he can reform the US political system by being a charismatic leader. I worry that he thinks the neocons and the Religious Right will listen to him if he just talks intelligently enough. I worry that he can be persuaded to put all his plans on hold until he has made peace with Lieberman and the Republicans. Ain't gonna happen.
What Digby says:

When people say they want change it's not because they are tired of "partisan bickering" (which basically consists of derisive Republican laughter.) They're sick of a government that does exactly the opposite of what they want it to do. And they aren't picky about how it gets done. If it can be done with gentle persuasion, that's great. But if it takes a fight, they're all right with that too.
This is the central difference between the beltway CW as expressed by the Bloomer party and the village gasbags. The elders believe that nothing can get done without "moving to the middle" which currently means, even in the best interpretation, somewhere between the center right and the far right. And even that is incredibly optimistic. The truth is that Republicans out of power believe in total obstruction. They are perfectly happy to block all progressive legislation because they know they will suffer no consequences for it from the mild mannered Democrats and the bipartisan zombies.

Obama has to be willing to fight. For eight full years. And I'm not sure if he is.

Ordinary woman

When I read about the amazing courage of ordinary women, it is both humbling and inspiring. Here is a story from Devilstower at Daily Kos:

Here, let me tell you a story of someone I knew. Someone who made her life so light that in comparison I might as well be living under a rock.
She worked with me a few years ago, at a time when our office was going through one of its regular interludes of pointless but frenetic activity. In the midst of hundreds of people hurrying to "reform business processes" or "transform the supply chain," she was a Zen breeze. She came, and she went, with remarkably little "stuff." No house, no car, next to no furniture in her small apartment.
While the rest of us fretted about where we would work when this company recovered from its bout of mania, she was pondering a question of another sort: what were the lives of women like around the world? Not glamorous women in metropolitan hot spots, but ordinary women in ordinary lives. What did they think? What did they feel? What did they hope for?
So one day, she walked away from the job, reduced everything she owned to the contents of one small backpack, and went to find out.
She went first to Haiti. She shared a night in a hotel there with a woman from France who had won a ticket to anywhere in the world, and picked Port au Prince from a map because it was in the Caribbean and the name sounded pretty. Then she spent six weeks living with a family in a ramshackle home on a muddy slope. She helped with the chores, played with the children, attended a wedding, spent the long nights talking, and left with a larger family than she'd had when she arrived.
She repeated this experience In Macedonia at a time when eating dinner outside meant seeing the flash of bombs falling in the distance. She crossed China on a train where her ticket didn't allow her to sit down, clutching a piece of paper that had an address she could neither read nor say. She lived with families in Moscow, in Delhi, and Phenom Phen. She greeted the new year at the temples of Angkor Wat. My favorite picture of her is one in which she is defiantly removing her headscarf in front of a huge painting of the Ayatollah Khomeini on the streets of Tehran.
If all this sounds like the indulgence of a wealthy American, let me hurry on to the end of the trip. Eventually, she came to Africa and by train, and car, and on foot, found herself in Zimbabwe. The arrangements she'd made to stay with a family there fell through, but at a time when the country was in turmoil and even diplomats were being removed for their safety, she didn't leave. Instead, she took a job working at an orphanage. There she worked with the older kids, the ones no longer babies, the ones who at two or three still could not walk because they'd never had a chance to try.
Most of the children she worked with were thought to have AIDS. It was assumed that their short lives would involve only a crib and a coffin. It was also thought that, after so long without contact, these children would never be able to love. But when she looked at one young boy, she thought she saw a spark. She thought he has suffering from hunger and neglect, but only from hunger and neglect. She thought he was something special. The more she worked with him, the more she thought he was an amazing survivor in a terrible place. She took him from his crib and into the sunshine. She taught him to walk, play, and love. And she loved him in return.
She asked to adopt the child, but was refused. Zimbabwean law was strict on allowing adoptions by foreigners. So she stayed in Zimbabwe. Stayed long enough to apply for citizenship. Stayed long enough to badger the courts into agreement. Stayed until she won her adoption and got her child.
Then, in the dark of night, she took her new child in her arms and like thousands of other refugees fleeing violence and starvation in Zimbabwe, she walked across the border.
I've only seen the child once. He was laughing as he ran around a park in St. Louis, deliriously excited by water tumbling from a fountain. She looked just the same after all her journeys. Slender and beautiful, with blue jeans and a backpack, a half smile on her face as she watched her son. Just the same as I remembered when I would see her sitting on a park bench at lunchtime, reading Walden, or a Kurt Vonnegut novel.
They're in the United States now. She has an ordinary job again and a child to raise, but I'd bet that her life is not heavier, not even by a gram. She went to discover something about the lives of women, and she found it.

Amateur Hour

Chet says about the US election punditry:

...these stupid high school metaphors don't tell us anything useful. All they tell us is that the author of them has no imagination and a questionable level of emotional maturity. If this is really what counts as substantive political discussion in the United States (and it is), then the country is in bigger trouble than can be easily fathomed.
Punditry was never a real profession. Now it has ceased even to be a craft.

Life is just so much easier when you don't work at it.

Great line of the day

Echidne talking about Kos' crashing the gate comparison:

Kos is right that both parties would prefer to ignore certain segments of their core supporters. Where the Huckabee comparison fails, though, is in what those segments desire from their respective parties. As far as I can tell, the Evangelists would like to change the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to reflect a theocracy, whereas the [progressive] gate-crashers tend to want to preserve the First Amendment and the other amendments which are on the way to the garbage chute right now. It's sort of sarcastic that the conservative stance is taken by the progressives and the radical stance by the conservatives.

Emphasis mine.

Hold that tiger

Take a look at the Comments to the Globe and Mail story on the Tiger Team -- about two-thirds don't have much respect for the knee-jerk "situational security" rationale, including several who note how hypocritical the Harper government is about supposedly being more "open", and others asking how Canadians are supposed to be supportive of extending the Afghanistan mission when the military are roadblocking information about it.
And here's a funny one:

What more do we need to know about the maturity and mentality of our 'professional' military bureaucrats, when from the pathetically isolated wells of their cubicles, they start calling themselves the 'Tiger Team', to deal with lawful Freedom of Information requests from presumably members of the 'Gazelle Team' they are supposed to be serving.

Edwards

I think the real story of the Iowa caucuses is how well Edwards did. And I hope he takes it all -- he would win the presidential election without mussing his hair!

Great line of the day

From Josh Marshall:

I guess people may have various reasons why they don't want Barack Obama to win the nomination. But there's one reason that wins out. If he wins it'll be years before Chris Matthews shuts up about Obama being a man of Third World.

At least he won't have Hilary to kick around anymore.

Above average drivers

Well, we may think our looks are about average, but I guess 8 out of 10 of us think we are above average drivers!
Me too, of course.
I discovered us above average drivers even have our own website where we can complain about how the other two drive! I found more information here about what makes a good driver -- I liked this guideline, based on one of the comments on this site:

Here’s a quick way to judge a careful, sensible street driver: how often do you NEED to brake hard?
If you have to brake hard either you did something wrong or you failed to anticipate somebody else's mistake.

And this whole discussion reminds me of a classic joke:

I'd rather die like my grandfather did, peacefully in his sleep, rather than screaming in terror like his passengers.

Air safety must be a lot worse than we thought

One can only conclude that air safety must be a lot worse than anybody realized.
Not only did NASA release its survey of airline pilots talking about safety problems on the afternoon of New Year's Eve, it also posted the report as dozens of pdf files, then it held a telephone press conference right at the time the report was posted so that reporters couldn't even skim the material first. And finally, the Globe reports that "NASA did not provide documentation on how to use its data, nor did it provide keys to unlock the cryptic codes used in the dataset."
In all, there are so many problems in the way this report was written and released that either this is the worst report ever produced or someone is trying to bury some bad news here. The Globe reports that

Earlier characterizations from people who have seen the results said they would show that events like near-collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than previously recognized. Such information could not be gleaned from the 16,208 pages posted by NASA on its Web site, however, because of the way it was presented. The data was based on interviews with about 8,000 pilots per year from 2001 until the end of 2004. . . .
Pilots were asked how many times they encountered safety incidents in flight and on the ground, such as near-collisions, equipment failure, runway interference, trouble communicating with the tower and unruly passengers.

I think its another example of how nobody connected with the Bush administration ever wants to do anything that will annoy companies, in this case the airlines. But seeing NASA's hysteria and paranoia over this survey, the results must be bad, really bad.

Great line of the day

From a commenter to the Huffington Post's photo of a buff 73-year-old Giorgio Armani in a Speedo:

Americans would do to almost anything to be fit, except eat well and exercise.

Bipartisanship

Shorter Digby:

Let's not bicker and argue over who killed who.

Paying protection in Iraq

Nice little country you've got here, General Petraeus. Be a shame if something were to happen to it . . .
Dahr Jamail says that a more peaceful Iraq has been achieved by paying what could basically be described as protection money to the former resistance fighters:

Late in 2007, the U.S. military began paying monthly wages of 300 dollars to former militants, calling them now "concerned local citizens."

This explains some of the odd terminology I have been reading in the Associated Press and AFP cutlines for recent photos from Iraq:


Here are "security volunteers" checking vehicles entering the primarily Sunni Azamiyah neighborhood of north Baghdad, Iraq on Sunday, Dec. 23.


This AFP photo describes "A Sunni Arab awakening member" as he patrols a market in Baghdad's al-Adhamiyah district, 08 December 2007.


And here is a "concerned local citizen" standing guard over a weapons trafficking suspect during a joint patrol with U.S. and Iraqi troops in Hawr Rajab, a predominantly Sunni area of southern Baghdad, Iraq in this Oct. 9, 2007 file photo.
But it isn't going to be a permanent situation, oh no. The idea is that these "volunteers" are going to be disbanded just as soon as the security situation in Iraq allows it. Jamal continues:

While this policy has cut violence in al-Anbar, it has also increased political divisions between the dominant Shia political party and the Sunnis – the majority of these "concerned citizens" being paid are Sunni Muslims. Prime Minister Maliki has said these "concerned local citizens" will never be part of the government's security apparatus, which is predominantly composed of members of various Shia militias.

Its a civil war waiting to happen.

Synchronized Ironing

Is there anything that people won't turn into a sport? This is from the Extreme Ironing website, which a commenter on TRex linked to.