Ouch!

Via Digby comes this historian's assessment of the Bush presidency:

Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large . . . When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point —rightly— to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of area: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.

Of the 109 historians surveyed by the History News Network, 107 of them rated the Bush presidency as a failure.

Shorter

Recommendations on the inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair:

I know we said there would be a full public inquiry, but we didn't really mean it.

Great post of the day, from DBK

DBK says that Hillary coulda been a contendah!:

If I were Senator Clinton's strategist . . . I'd have had her get on the universal single payer health care hobbyhorse and she would have ridden that to victory . . . We need a leader who is prepared to take drastic measures to get the economy on the right track and solve some of the most pressing economic worries of the middle class. That takes vision and courage, because there are entrenched interests that hate the whole idea of an economy that is successful for any but a few. Had Senator Clinton been that person, she would have trounced Senator Obama and been a shoo-in.

Yes, I think he is absolutely right about that. And he continues

Senator Obama has not shown that vision or courage at all, either, and I am left hoping it is there, but keeping silent for the duration of the primary. I think I'll be disappointed, but a slim hope is all I have left.

Yes, he is right about that, too.
The thing I hope for is this -- if Obama can work out a deal with the Clintons, to involve Hillary in his campaign in some meaningful way like a Vice-Presidency, then the full weight of the Clinton juggernaught comes on side with the Obama campaign. Love her or hate her, she has survived 30 years of the most vicious political games ever played and she knows how to fight back.
Obama does not. He still thinks that the Republican leadership can be reasoned with. He thinks he can "explain". He thinks a great speech is all it will take. He is wrong, and Hillary Clinton knows it.
The Clintons understand the enemy. They can teach Obama a lot, if he is prepared to listen to them and to harness their considerable energy, charisma, fundraising, and framing prowess. It will take every bit of both Obama and Hillary to defeat the Mugabe Republicans now entrenched in the US government.

The new Olympic image

Betsy at I Am TRex provides us with the powerful image of the Reporters Without Borders Beijing poster:



The Olympic Torch route has now become just one long protest about Tibet. Unless China smartens up and stops trying to crush the Tibet people, this poster may well become the image of these Olympic games.

They know a lame duck when they see one

Maybe this:

is explained by this. As Dave writes:

Somebody needs to bring the clown home, strap him into a chair and unplug his telephone until the end of November.

The poor baby was so mad at the press coverage of his NATO trip that he wouldn't speak to reporters on the way home.

Thoughts on a scandal

They're trying really hard, but it's getting increasingly difficult for conservative commentators in Saskatchewan to avoid blasting the stupidities of the provincial Sask Party and the federal Conservative Party -- how much kinder gentler thousand points of light spin can they construct?
In today's Star Phoenix column, John Gormley did manage to insert a gratuitous swipe against the NDP for "allegedly" finding the tape and while he ended with a Limbaugh-esk flourish against Pat Atkinson's so-called "drive-by smear" of Brad Wall aka Chester -- as though the scandal was the fault of the people who revealed the tape rather than the people who made it -- really, I didn't think his heart was in it.
Someday soon, he's just not going to be able to stand it anymore -- someday soon, I'm going to tune into his radio show and hear him thundering "What were they thinking? How dare they? Are they ignorant or arrogant or both?" and he's going to be talking about the federal Conservatives or the provincial Sask Party, and I will just have to pull over and call.
When it comes to Tom Lukiwski's homophobic slur, I agree with Michelle Hugli's commentary. To imply it was all just youthful immaturity doesn't cut it, considering he was 41 years old at the time:

Lukiwski has a lot more to do to get beyond this. Like answer the question: WHY do these comments not reflect who you are today? What's changed? And if he can't answer those questions, then that's an answer in itself.

And while Brad Wall's Ukrainian farmer bit will tarnish his image, and deservedly so, I thought the more revealing and meaningful part of the tape was its anti-union attitude, for which no elected person has apologized. Says Larry Hubich:

"Clearly this government's labour relations strategy is based in a deeply held, irrational dislike of unions and their leadership."

Yeah, that about sums it up, I think.

Priceless!

A great story from the Rev:

Todd and his father were avid outdoorsmen . . . One weekend he and his father had been out on an early morning duck hunt and had bagged several birds. As the junior partner in the operation, Todd, then about 17, was stuck with the chore of cleaning the ducks. So he dug in, plucking the feathers, lopping off the heads and feet and gutting the half dozen or so birds.
When a knock came at the front door, he went to answer, hunting knife in hand and spattered with gore from the quarry he was preparing for the table. . . . It was a pair of middle aged ladies with the inevitable copies of The Watchtower.
Being a staunch agnostic and always ready for a good argument, Todd flung open the door and barked "What the hell do you want?" . . . Time, Todd told me later, slowed to the pace of molasses dripping uphill in February.
He stared at the Jehovah Witnesses. The Jehovah Witnesses stared back at him, briefly.
Mindful of his bloodspattered shirt and the big, bloody knife in his hand, Todd simply grimaced and the servants of Jehovah decided that it would be a good idea to give their witness elsewhere, immediately, if not sooner, and decamped in considerable haste.
Hilarity ensued. And ten minutes later when the police cruiser arrived, Todd, his sister, his father and his next-door neighbor who had allowed the panicked Witnesses to use his telephone were still sitting on the front porch roaring and holding their sides. When the constabulary were given the full picture, they were hard pressed not to take part in the merriment.
The Witnesses never darkened Todd's door again.

I won't be able to answer the door again without thinking of this.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving blog

Today's Nelson Moment is this one - Blog loses Wall backing over comments:

Premier Brad Wall distanced the Saskatchewan Party from a popular right-wing blog Tuesday over controversial comments posted about inner city Saskatoon.
Wall told reporters that the Saskatchewan Party would remove from its own website an endorsement of Wall from Saskatchewan-based Kate McMillan of smalldeadanimals.com.
Saskatchewan Party MLAs have referenced the website approvingly in the legislature in the past but Wall said that would likely not occur in the future.

Well, I should hope not. But little does he know that the winged monkey hordes have now been let loose. Here's what she said that was so offensive:

Following the government's cancellation of $8 million in funding for the Station 20 West project in Saskatoon's core, McMillan posted on her blog suggesting "economic stimuli" for the area to get a private sector grocery store.
These included "put the cap back on the used needle . . . failing that, share it with your friends. It's a quicker solution to your problem anyway."
She also suggested "cross your legs" and "put down the spray can." McMillan later posted "try not vandalizing every business still standing in your neighbourhood, try not selling your ass up and down the street in front of the doors. Try parenting your sticky-fingered brats."

Now, that's a bit much for somebody who doesn't even live in Saskatoon. So please feel free to never to come into the city again --
Saskatoon doesn't need this kind of attitude. The Star Phoenix story continues:

Wall said the comments were "beyond the pale."
"Those are intolerant and unacceptable remarks," he told reporters, adding that the government has a firm commitment to the province's core urban neighbourhoods despite its reservations about the Station 20 West project.
The comments -- and the Sask. Party's relationship to the blog -- was raised in a member's statement by the Opposition NDP Tuesday.
Saskatoon Massey Place MLA Cam Broten praised Wall for his actions.
"The comments were quite hurtful, quite ugly," he told reporters. "We recognize that people have a right to free speech but comments like that don't need to be given more credibility by having an association with the premier of the province."
McMillan, who is not a member of the Saskatchewan Party, said her comments were "hyperbolic" but she stood by them and believes many provincial residents share her opinions.
She said Wall's condemnation of her comments on Tuesday were "predictable" given "today's politically correct atmosphere."

Well, maybe your friends still think Saskatchewan is just Mississippi North, but everyone else has moved on. Well, except for David Ahenakew, who feels the same way as Kate does, but about different people.

If a protest happens and the media doesn't cover it...

When we were talking the other day about the Dirty Fucking Hippies and the Vietnam War protests, my son asked me why there hadn't been protests against the Iraq War.
I said there had been -- 30 million people, the biggest anti-war protests in history -- but the media in the United States and Britain just mostly ignored them. The media had to ignore them because the protests just didn't fit into the comforting media narrative about the (then) imminent Iraq War, about how absolutely justified the war was and how the leaders had to protect the people from those awful weapons and how the protests really had no legitimacy because they were just a bunch of commies.
And now Media Bloodhound reports that Big Media is STILL ignoring these protests.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is listening, did it make any sound?

Nobody does it better

Flying penguins found by BBC, who also reported on the spaghetti harvest story fifty years ago.

Great photo of the day

The photo shows a surrender in Iraq. But its Iraqi police in Baghdad, and they're surrendering to the Mahdi Army (Al Sadr's militia.)
Somehow, I don't think this is quite what the Bush administration had in mind.
(From Juan Cole Informed Comment)

Great post of the day

Robert Parry writes about the madness of US media and government group-think:

. . . In the news media, there were specials, including a much-touted PBS Frontline two-parter on “Bush’s War” which followed the mainstream line of mostly accepting the Bush administration’s good intentions while blaming the disaster on policy execution – a lack of planning, bureaucratic rivalries, rash decisions and wishful thinking . . .
Remaining outside the frame of mainstream US debate was any serious examination of the war’s fundamental illegality....
The cumulative effect of this willful conformity and this informal censorship has been to engender a form of collective madness at the decision-making levels of the US government -- and within the upper echelons of the news media.
But it is a flexible form of insanity in which reality is alternatively banished – as it was in the early phases of the Iraq War, from WMD "mushroom clouds" through "Mission Accomplished" – and then is brought in for retooling when matters get too far out of control, when the jarring gap between the official line and the truth starts to destabilize the national political consensus.
In listening to the measured tones of the Frontline narration – not to mention the well-dressed ex-government officials and the well-spoken mainstream journalists – I was left with the feeling that a new synthetic “reality” was being lowered in to replace the older discredited version.
It was as if the bloody madness that President Bush inflicted on the people of Iraq – aided and abetted by many witting and unwitting American accomplices – was being drained of its crimson hue and stripped of its human horrors.
Forget the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead and maimed. Forget the innumerable lives destroyed and the millions displaced. Forget the bizarre forms of torture at Abu Ghraib and the widespread mistreatment of detainees at other Iraqi prisons.
After all, we were being told, the war’s architects were honorable and reasonable men and women who were trying to do the right thing, but sadly they were undermined by bureaucratic inertia, back-biting and, yes, incompetence. It was just one big SNAFU.
But, with a few changes here and there – a new general or two, a tweaked counter-insurgency strategy, some more US soldiers and a bit more patience – everything will work out just fine.
No need for national guilt. No need for accountability. No reason to purge the editorial offices of leading newspapers and TV networks. No reason to talk about impeachment or war-crimes tribunals for committing the "supreme" crime against world peace. No need for any of that.

I have seen more and more of this kind of analysis lately, I think, as more people edge toward the truth, as the unthinkable becomes thinkable, as more appear to realize that the invasion of Iraq was simply wrong.

Driving

I read somewhere that there is one belief that unites all Canadians -- we all think we are above-average drivers!
Not true, of course (except for me).
Saskboy found Zack's rant about Saskatoon drivers:

If you are making a right turn under one of these signs it means you have your own lane to turn into. DO NOT STOP. I can't emphasize this one enough. . . . Perhaps this is a new sign to Saskatoon but sweet zombie jesus it is not difficult to understand. It means shut up and drive. Do not stop and think about it just go. Be kind to the people behind you and just drive. I don't know how I can make this any simpler. . . .
This brings us to merging. For fucks sake don't stop at the end of a merge lane. You are asking to be removed from this world by a fast moving truck. Also do not merge way below the speed of traffic. This seems to be difficult for anyone over 25. You NEED to be going the same speed as the faster traffic in order to safely and smoothly merge into it. Again this is not a complex concept. Learn to love your gas pedal and just put the hammer down.

Tell it, Zack!

Is this what you voted for?

What a stupid, short-sighted decision:

Earlier this week, the Saskatchewan Party government admitted it would no longer hand over the $8 million once intended for the $12-million to-$14 million development in Saskatoon's inner city. The NDP had approved the funds for Station 20 West, which would house a low-cost dental clinic to train senior dentistry students, a medical clinic, public health and counselling clinics, a co-operative grocery store and other community organizations.

And given all the Sask Party's fumbling around about how much the project would have cost and how much had been raised, it was quite obvious that nobody in the Sask Party cabinet had actually studied the project at all or talked to anyone about it before they canceled it. Somebody told them it was just a grocery co-op.
They put about as much thought into this one as they did into the cancellation of the pulp mill deal.
Here's the funniest line in all of the news stories:

Withdrawing financial support for the project was not a political decision, [Health minister] McMorris insists.

Oh, sure.
"An NDP idea? Gotta kill it!"
They just couldn't stand to admit that an NDP project was a good idea.
UPDATE: Ah ha! Maybe it was a west-side landlord who is the source of the complaint. Wall is quoted in one of the news stories with this justification of canceling the project:

"...we'd be competing with grocery stores, competing with others who are already renting now to community clinics in the area"

Now, everybody knows the complaint about 'competing with grocery stores' in the area is ridiculous because there has not been a grocery story in the area for more than a decade. But there are landowners who rent to other businesses -- did one of them get worried that his tenants would move? Did one of them decide that, instead of fixing up his property so he could rent to someone else, it would be easier just to phone up the boys in Regina to get the project killed? The Star Phoenix should check out who owns the property whose tenants would have moved to Station 20.

Great post of the day

Via Sideshow, I found this great post by Lance Mannion on liberals and reality:

...one of Liberalism's virtues is that it is pragmatic, not ideological or even idealistic. Liberalism is and has been about recognizing and adapting to, and when called for making corrections to, reality, that is to the world as it actually is and to people as they actually are. Most of Liberalism's successes over time have required making people see what is really going on, as opposed to what they wish was going on or what they are being told by the ruling class is going on. Liberalism is first and foremost an insistence on freeing people from their own deluded and demented thinking. It is a demand that people give up their prejudices and their vain and self-centered illusions and deal with the facts of life.
One of the facts of life is that times change. Conservativism is based on the belief that this is always a bad thing and must be resisted when it can't be ignored. In other words, conservativism is a lot of wishful thinking.
But the American Right is not conservative. It is reactionary. It doesn't want to deny that times change. It wants to turn back time. Conservativism is a mild delusion. Reaction is an outright madness . . . I don't know exactly why the News Media Elites have decided to treat this madness as a legitimate point of view, but they have, and since they have they have put themselves in the bind of sounding "liberal" every time an actual fact escapes their lips.

Read it all.