Reading the tea leaves

I'm not so sanguine about Nick Burns leaving the State Department as Steve Clemmons and West End Bound.
Burns was apparently one of the strongest voices against Cheney's plan for war with Iran. And he's leaving voluntarily? I don't believe it. Combined with the overinflated Strait of Hormuz dust-up, and Defense secretary Gates acting hard-done-by and the continuing promotion of the idea that the Iraq War has been won, I'm starting to wonder whether ducks are being lined up here.
Bush and Cheney have only one more year to save the world.

I read the news today, oh boy

Well, I see New Brunswick has now closed the barn door. As a parent, I was so angry last week when I realized that people knew about how dangerous these vans are, they've known for years, yet instead of hiring a bus and a driver for these after school game treks, instead of billeting kids overnight, or instead of playing during the day on the weekends, the school let the coach drive along a slick, dark highway in the middle of the night in the middle of the winter -- all for the sake of saving a few bucks "for the children".

Here's a scandal waiting to go boom!: Bad results kill drug studies

Of the 74 studies that started for the 12 antidepressants, 38 produced positive results for the drug. All but one of those studies were published.
However, when it came to the 36 studies with negative or questionable results, as assessed by the FDA, only three were published and another 11 were turned around and written as if the drug had worked.

So are half of the research studies for new drugs actually poorly designed? Or were the researchers prevented from publishing by the terms of their research contracts? Either way, its outrageous.

And let me get this straight -- its not the torture of Canadian citizens itself that is wrong, its the document that labels the US as a nation that tortures people. Thanks, Maxime, for clearing that up for us.

So the United States is trying to get people spending money by sending them money to spend. Dare I say, doesn't that seem sorta socialist? So why don't they just provide health care -- that would save people hundreds of dollars every single month?

And looking at the Republican turnouts in the South Carolina primaries in 2000 and in 2008, a difference of something like 150,000 people, one could conclude that "none of the above" came in first this time.

We coulda been a contender!

Kent Austin is gone and as much as everybody wishes him well and all that, what I also say is, damn it all anyway!
We needed him a lot more than Ole Miss did.
We may be a small pond, but here he was a pretty big fish. At Ole Miss, not so much. For someone who hasn't played ball in the US for 20 years, I have some doubts about this as a career move. But what do I know about football administration anyway -- if he wanted to get to the NFL someday, it wasn't going to happen for him here. And I guess the time to offer a CFL coach a job in Mississippi is in January.
So Austin goes from running the show here:


to not running the show here:


So next November instead of looking forward to the Grey Cup, Austin will be looking forward to the Egg Bowl.

Well, then, do it yourself

Yes, I read the LA Times story about how the United States knows how to do it right in Afghanistan, while Canada and Britain and the Netherlands are doing it wrong, and I knew it was self-serving crap.
What I didn't know was WHY it was crap -- had to wait for Dave to enlighten us. And he does -- Gates knows nothing of counter-insurgency. MacKay supports him.

Gates was throwing a temper tantrum because things in Afghanistan are little better now than they were in 2002. What he won't acknowledge is that the fault lays squarely with the Bush administration for screwing up the job in the first place.
MacKay, instead of demanding that Gates come out and clarify his words, sucked up to him because there's nothing more important to a Conservative than a Republican.
There is something interesting out of this little US-spits-on-allies episode though.
Apparently all the sunshine the Harperites continually attempt to blow up everyone's ass about how so much progress is being made in Afghanistan is pure crap.
If the US SecDef is concerned that NATO forces don't have a grip on counter-insurgency operations it's because the insurgency is alive and growing.
That MacKay is a liar and remarkably stupid isn't worth getting into. But Gates needs to be taken to the woodshed. The reason a counter-insurgency operation is so difficult to mount is because that's not what is being fought. The Bush administration never did secure Afghanistan properly. The distraction with Iraq robbed the Afghanistan occupation of the necessary troops to do the job.
And as for not knowing how to deal with an insurgency, I would suggest Gates and his pet puppy MacKay do a little light reading. I do believe the British wrote the book on counter-insurgency operations.

[cough - Northern Ireland - cough]

Great line of the day

Glenn Greenwald on journalisming:

Ponder how much better things would be if establishment journalists -- in response to being endlessly lied to and manipulated by political officials and upon witnessing extreme lawbreaking and corruption at the highest levels of our government -- were able to muster just a tiny fraction of the high dudgeon, petulant offense, and melodramatic outrage that comes pouring forth whenever their 'reporting' is criticized.

Oh, such a special little province!

Well, isn't that nice? Harper thinks we're a winning province -- not a bunch of losers anymore.
Why do I feel like I've just been patted on the head and given a lollypop?

And we'll have fun, fun, fun...

Well, I'm honoured -- Dr. Dawg has asked me and a number of other bloggers to contribute some posts to his blog in February and March.
It reminds me a bit of those good old days in the neighbourhood when foolish parents would go away for the weekend and leave the teenagers alone and then their whole high school would show up and the music would blast and the police would eventually be called and then we'd see a very sorry kid out in the street the next morning under the blazing sun sweeping up the broken glass.
But Dr. Dawg doesn't have to worry. He can trust us....

First rule

Canadians try to talk some sense into Glenn Greenwald -- start here and then go here and here and here and here and especially here.
But if the ACLU can defend the Nazis, then I guess Glenn Greenwald can continue to defend Ezra Levant.
Looks like Glenn hasn't heard John's first rule of Canadian blogging:

Whatever Ezra Levant is doing/saying at any given moment, it's not worth talking about.

No smears, please

It sounds like the Hillary camp and the Barak camp are calming down and walking back from a silly fight about who's a racist.
Karl Rove must be gobsmacked, because according to the gospel of Rove, modern political campaigns are supposed to go for the throat, and the under-the-radar smear is supposed to be the perfect way to chop down an opponent.
But I suspect that Hillary and Barak got a message from the Democratic rank and file, who have had it up to here with the politics of personal destruction. And the message was, smarten up!

Never again

Dave writes about about the importance of abortion rights after a supposedly pro-choice blogger said that pro-choice tactics "trivialize pregnancy and the decision facing women considering an abortion".
At first I thought this blogger must be a young person, in his early 20s maybe, who has never known what it was like to live in a society where abortion was illegal. But looking at the profile on his website, it turns out he's my age, for crying out loud -- he knows very well how long and terrible the fight was to decriminalize abortion -- the hospital board battles of the 1970s and 1980s, and the 30 years of Morgentaler's court cases.
And now what he calls "the Pro-Choice movement" should make nice so that it "maintains credibility and broad public support"?
How ridiculous.
Depending on the poll, at least seven or eight out of every ten Canadians support unlimited and unrestricted abortion rights. Nobody is going to stop supporting abortion rights just because they don't like the term "fetus fetishist", however insulting that may be. This support has nothing to do with any ad campaign or brochure or news interview from any pro-choice organization.
It is simply because we want our daughters or granddaughters or girlfriends or wives or mothers or ourselves to have the right to chose to end a pregnancy.
And this is a right we won't ever let any government take away from us. Nope. Never again.

The bully

Alison speculates on why women don't like Harper very much.
Maybe its because we know a bully when we see one.

Pathetic

The Bush Administration just can't do anything right.
With Bush and Cheney desperately demanding a Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify anti-Iran sabre-rattling during Bush's trip to the Middle East this week, all the Pentagon can come up with is a laughably ridiculous "Gulf of Hormuz incident" -- a few buzzing speedboats, some non-existant 'white boxes' and a clownish 'voice of doom'. Bush tries to rattle anyway, but accusing Iran of "alarming rhetoric" just doesn't cut it.

Gracious good afternoon

Oh that skdadl -- who else would think to call this ridiculous story the wrath of Ernestine? And then follow it up with some great Youtube clips.
The question that occurred to me was this -- didn't these telecom companies put the security of the free world at risk when they cut off these wiretaps just because of mere filthy lucre? How dare they! They didn't have any constitutional principles when it came to setting up these wiretaps illegally, so how come they all of a sudden got these business principles just because they didn't get paid on time. And isn't it just wrong to allow this traitorous behaviour to go unpunished by passing legislation which would immunize the telecom companies from any lawsuits arising out of these wiretaps? And ...... oh, did I get that backward? Never mind...

Dog Whistle Words

It's like looking at one of those Word Search puzzles -- a jumble of letters until suddenly some actual words pop out at you.
Today's American political scene is increasingly being distorted by so-called "dog whistles" -- incomprehensible jumble language which is actually double-secret-probation code words sending an under-the-radar racist or sexist message
Bush started it, using terms like "wonder-working power" and "Dred Scott" and "just a comma" as dog whistles to the religious right to convince them that he was really one of them at heart.
Now we see Huckabee talking about "vertical leadership" -- an incomprensible term until you realize that vertical is now used by evangelicals to describe their relationship with God.
And with a woman and an African-American man leading the presidential nomination race, the whistles to racist and sexist stereotypes are getting louder all the time.
Like Karl Rove describing Obama as "lazy" -- the whistle is to the right-wing stereotype of the black welfare queen
Like the New York Attorney General describing Obama as shucking and jiving.
Like talking about the "lynching" of Hillary Clinton -- a loaded term when someone is describing how the Obama campaign is criticizing the Clinton campaign.
Like the stream of misogynistic dribble about Hillary Clinton over the last several months, examples too numerous to count.
And like the "Breck Girl" slur against John Edwards, a homophobic dog whistle.
Criticizing this racist and sexist dog whistle language in US politics has nothing to do with "political correctness" and everything to do with the importance of not being sucked into the determined effort by republicans to trash all of the Democratic candidates.
I expect we'll see the same kind of tactics being tried here during the next political campaign. Luckily, Canadian society is not quite as riddled with stereotypes as American culture -- though we do have some -- but we already see Harper and the Conservatives trying to use ridicule rather than substantive debate against Dion and the Liberals.
Listen for dog whistles.

Cry me a river

So now David Orchard is complaining that he was misled -- Orchard says he was assured Liberal nomination for Sask byelection would be open.
Well, yes, three months ago the nomination for Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River WAS open.
Then two months ago, the Saskatchewan provincial election was held, and Joan Beatty won her provincial seat but the provincial NDP lost the election.
So all of a sudden the Liberals had available to them:
1. a woman
2. who is Aboriginal
3. who actually lives in the riding
4. who has actually won elections, and
5. who has been a provincial cabinet minister
David Orchard, however admirable a person he may be, is none of the above.