Here's your shot of pessimism for this week

Digby refers us to two articles today:
First one by Stirling Newbery says don't look for the American economy because you won't find it:

Taking out the defense and financial sectors, and the unemployment rate in the United States isn't the headline 8.5%, but is, in fact, closer to 15% and marching upwards. There is no domestic economy for all practical purposes at this point, other than what is needed to extract every loose dime from the American public to pay off debts.

And Numerian at the Agonist says this isn't going to end well

. . . When the financing tap is finally shut off by the bond markets, we’ll start making our first interest payments on this new debt. It will come in the form of much higher long term interest rates, a weaker U.S. dollar, an inability to import cheap Chinese goods, and declining living standards. All this will happen because the U.S. will have eaten its seed corn. Its businesses will have been shorn of their retained earnings. Consumers will have depleted the equity in their homes. The ability of the federal government to raise taxes and protect the good faith and credit of the U.S. will be shot . . .
The U.S. will be approaching peak oil and water shortages at the very moment it runs out of financial equity and taxing power. It will be an ugly situation . . .

So what do we do, cash out the pension and head for the hills? Well, I suppose there's nothing wrong with being a little more self-sufficient...

Great line of the day

The War Nerd writes about why there are still aircraft carriers and I think this may also be the reason why it was so damned important in Washington to save Citibank and AIG and all the rest of the financial dinosaurs on Wall Street:

. . . whether it’s knights charging with lances on very expensive horses or top gun brats like McCain zooming onto carrier decks in history’s most expensive aircraft, you’ll always find that the worst, most over-funded services are always the ones where the rich kids go to show their stuff. Seriously: why are there aircraft carriers? For asses like John McCain to crash on. Why do they keep getting funded long after they’ve been shown up? The same reason knights were galloping around pretending that the longbow hadn’t turned half their friends into pincushions: because it was a way of life for the richest and dumbest people in the country and they weren’t about to let it go.

Emphasis mine.

Canadian unity

So at least this recession will be good for something -- Alberta is finally joining the rest of us in bitching at Ottawa for better treatment.

Great line of the day

As quoted by the Freeway blogger

"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican." - H. L. Mencken

Saturday Morning Cartoon

"Yoiks and away!"

Thanks for the nomination

Thanks, Alison, for the nomination as Best Feminist political blog over at A Creative Revolution's The Canadian F-word Blog Awards.
It is truly an honour to be nominated in this category.

Things I didn't know

I didn't know that CBC Radio had an interview show about bands playing in Toronto.
I didn't know that Willie Nelson was on tour with Billy Bob Thornton's band.
I didn't even know that Billy Bob Thornton HAD a band.
Well, now I do.
It's sort of painful to watch someone I formerly admiredact like a jerk and screw up both their acting career and their music career in one little interview.
But I guess drugs will do that to you.
UPDATE: Buh-bye

Great line of the day

From TBogg

Sometimes it's hard to believe that these people are the end result of the fastest sperm in the load.

Shorter

Shorter Glenn Greenwald:

Old bums exit there; new bums enter here.

How to play golf

A good walk, spoiled.

The Globe and Mail should be ashamed of itself

Oooh, that Barak -- sooo scary!!!
The Globe and Mail should be ashamed of itself, putting John Ibbitson's ridiculous, ideological smear job against Obama on its front page -- illustrated with hammers and sickles, no less.
Wanna-be Villager Ibbitson lashes about with all sorts of labels -- socialist, interventionist, activist -- but nothing sticks.
He quotes those models of balanced bipartisanship like Mike Huckabee and the Hudson Institute and the National Review, all in service of his premise that Obama shouldn't be trying to change America.
He also rewrites history to conform to his storyline:

The best and the brightest is how author David Halberstam dubbed those who advised Mr. Johnson and John F. Kennedy before him. They believed they could win the war in Vietnam while reshaping health care, education, housing and civil rights —the Great Society, it was called.
But they didn't know what they didn't know, as former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld liked to say. They failed to appreciate the complexity of the issues, and they paid the price in quagmires.
Is Mr. Obama leading us into a domestic Vietnam? Is the ambition and complexity of his agenda bound to overwhelm an administration that has taken on more than any White House could possibly handle?

Actually, this is wrong -- Johnson's Great Society did not fail at all, in fact much of what he did is still benefiting America -- the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, federal funding for education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, PBS, urban renewal.
Where he failed was with Vietnam, but that failure was so massive that it overshadowed Johnson's successes.
Ibbitson does at least talk to Howard Dean, who derides the premise that Obama is doing too much:

"I hate to ruin your article, but I think that's a ludicrous proposal."

That about sums it up, John.

Great line of the day

From Dr. Dawg, about what we could now describe as the Trial of Robert Dziekanski, AKA the Braidwood Inquiry:

We may learn later today of Braidwood's response to Hira's motion to access certain records pertaining to Dziekanski's past. I'll provide an update if and when it becomes available.
In the meantime, let me observe once more that it would be salutary if we could get similar access to the records and past behaviour of the four RCMP officers who killed him. As it is, only the victim has been on trial this week.

Emphasis mine.
UPDATE: The Globe and Mail and the Montreal Gazette are also disgusted with these sleazy RCMP blame the victim tactics.

My question

A couple of years from now, the final Canadian soldier will die in Afghanistan -- maybe he'll be number 135, or number 150.
And will Canadians feel he died in vain? Yes, I'm afraid we will.

NAFTA - letting the cat out of the bag

Stephen Harper indulged in a bit of a mixed metaphor during his interview with Chris Wallace -- implicitly acknowledging that NAFTA wouldn't fly with Canadians if we were negotiating it today:

WALLACE: Finally, briefly, if I may, sir, candidate Obama talked a lot last year about reopening NAFTA, renegotiating our trade agreements. Now that he is President Obama, has there been any serious move in that direction?
HARPER: Well, what President Obama said to me is he's concerned about the labor and environmental aspects. Those were side agreements in the original NAFTA agreement. He'd like to see ways that those are more comprehensively incorporated into the main body of NAFTA.
We're not [opposed]* to doing that, provided we don't open the whole package, because I think it would be hard to ever put — ever get the cat back in the bag if we tried to renegotiate the thing.

Once that cat is out, he ain't goin' back...

*note that the transcript said "we're not closed (ph) to doing that " but in the context, I think it is probable that Harper actually said "we're not opposed to doing that"

Great line of the day

Bob Cesca pinpoints the stupidity of wingnuts who wanted to negate Earth Hour by turning on all their lights:

. . . crank up your utility bills if it'll make you happy, wingnuts. It's your money.

The Earth Hour website also has photos and video about last night's event around the world.