Camelot update

I'm seeing more and more comments like this one on the progressive side of the blogosphere.
I divide these into three types:
The drama queens expected Obama to ride into Washington like some kind of cross between Yul Brynner in the Magnificent Seven and Clint Eastwood in Hang 'Em High, kicking ass and taking names and shooting up the joint.
The snide bitter ones never really got over Hillary, and they're faster than Fox News in seeing betrayal and incompetence in every phrase and nuance.
The sincere but naive purists can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that Obama isn't going to try to return to Camelot, that he would be happy enough just to get back to the way things were under Clinton.
Mistakes, sure, Obama has made them and he'll make more. But Bush and Cheney had run the country over a cliff, and ror the last eight months, Barak Obama has been putting the country together again. He's been putting good people in the right places throughout government, he's been writing some OK legislation, then shaking hands and talking to people and persuading them to see it his way.
That's what Barak Obama does. He's good at it.

No more Okey-Dokey

Here is Iggy's new ad:

Steve thinks this has hit the perfect tone.
I agree.
Though apparently some Convservative bloggers wanted a batch of attack ads. As BigCityLib notes:

....the problem with Conservatives generally, is that for them, if you're not accusing someone of being a pedophile or a commie, its just not campaigning.

But speaking of the campaign, I have come to the conclusion that Ignatieff isn't so much wanting to force an election as he's wanting to just stop saying "Okey-dokey" to Harper. As Steve also points out:

The same columnists that are simply AGHAST at the prospects of another election, are the same people who would be writing that Ignatieff's a wimp and the Liberals are rudderless and weak, Harper bested us again, if he announced he would "prop up" the government to avoid an election this fall.

Iggy's basically saying, no more wimping out, its time to let the NDP and the Bloc do the Okey-Dokey with Harper for a change!
Sure, Iggy's ready to go this fall -- and I'm still not sure that this is the right time -- but basically I think the Liberal calculation is that if the NDP and the Bloc ruin their own public credibility by continuing to find reasons to vote with Harper, then fine -- the Liberals just keep on raising more money and running more ads.

Great line of the day

Matt Yglesias about the Afghanistan quagmire:

Afghanistan is often called the “Graveyard of Empires,” but I think the phrase is pretty misleading. It seems to imply that empires that venture in Afghanistan get defeated and die. But the fact of the matter is that empires tend to venture into Afghanistan, get defeated, and then walk away and be just fine. . . . A better analogy might be that it’s the ESPN Zone of empires, someplace where from time to time a lot of people feel tempted to go, but when you get there it turns out to be not so great. But it’s surprisingly expensive to stay! Having gone out of your way to get there in the first place, you’re perhaps initially reluctant to just admit that it’s not worthwhile. But you can’t stay forever.

Emphasis mine.

Another great idea from the American financial industry

Maybe the Death Panels will be set up by Wall Street if grandma lives too long.

Once more

Great one, POGGE -- here's another.

Throwdown!

I'll see your Chet Atkins, POGGE, and raise you Men With Banjos Who Know How To Use Them:

Stupidest idea ever

Canada has 2,000 troops in Afghanistan, and the United States has more than ten times that many. So I can't believe that Americans are going to be suitably impressed by Canada staging explosions at its Washington embassy to wow America about what Canada is doing in Afghanistan.
Actually, I think this will just scare and annoy a lot of people:

Whether they will send jumpy tourists and Washingtonians on Pennsylvania Avenue fleeing in fear remains unknown, but embassy officials say they have a green light from the Secret Service, the State Department and the D.C. fire marshal.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Springtime for Buchanan

Former US Presidential candidate and MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan is arguing that Hitler was just misunderstood. The summer of Sotomayer and the teabaggers have pushed him over the edge, I guess. But if Glenn Beck and the Fox noise commentators now think Obama is Hitler, does this mean that Buchanan is now an Obama supporter?

Issues? You want issues?

Come get yer red-hot issues right here!
In Comments to my election hand-wringing post, Alison provides a brilliant and lengthy list of all of the Conservative outrages of the last several years.
So print off this list, Liberals, and take your pick -- maybe Iggy will have a few issues to run on after all:

. . . the war on Afghanistan, the Cadman tapes, the in and out scheme, attacks on Canadian wheat board, Naftagate, dirty tricks manual, dissing Kyoto accord, gutting public service, cancelling Court Challenges Act, Omar Khadr, Toronto 18/Paintball 11, nuclear watchdog fired, listeriosis mismanagement, C-484, AIDs conference snub, arts and culture funding cuts, Status of Women gutted, war resistors deported, war branding for Olympics, softwood lumber deal, attack on Insite, cuts to mad cow testing, NorthComm pact, deregulating Canada Post, two-tier healthcare push, Abdelrazik, tar sands, ethanol grants to agribiz, extraordinary rendition, Afghan prisoners tortured, refusal to protect lakes, Lougheed Martin census, obstructing HoC committees, conditions on FN reserves, mail-outs from defeated Con candidates, rewriting/deleting research on government websites, Colombia free trade deal, Canada First - not, copycat crime bill, militarization of arctic, Bill C-537, Bill C-10, NACC, Server in the Sky, Canada-Israel homeland security pact, government scientists muzzled/fired, support for Guantanamo, RCMP whitewash, TILMA, Chalk River, no-fly list, biometric passports, CIA access to banking records, Benamar Benatta, North American Forum, red fridays, Bali conference, Commonwealth climate change talks, undermining nuclear disarmament, Question Period a shambles, Independent Panel on Canada's Mission in Afghanistan, war on drugs, lowering pesticide standards, Montebello, deep integration meeting in Banff, "staying the course" in Haiti, DND funding in universities, 600 Canadian companies gone to foreign ownership, support for Wolfowitz at World Bank, Smart Borders, dissing Louise Arbor, P-3 security forces in Afghanistan, attacks on Dion for having a French mother, faking up law and order hysteria, nukes in the tarsands, Accountability Act, UN vote against Palestinian women, Suaad Mohamud, stacking the Senate, dead wrong on economy, Adult Learning and Literacy Program - eliminated, Health Canada- $28M reduction, Medical Marijuana Research Program- eliminated, Law Commission of Canada - eliminated, Museum Assistance Program - funding cut, One Tonne Challenge - 40% budget cut, Stats Can- budget reduced, Status of Women policy research and lobbying - banned, CMHC - funding reduction, Canadian Heritage Centre - eliminated, Canadian Volunteerism Initiative - eliminated, Canadian Labour Business Centre - eliminated, Canadian Policy Research Network - eliminated, Community Access Program - eliminated, privatization of airline safety, sale of federal buildings, isotope "crisis", GHG "intensity targets", Clean Air Act, reversals on aid to Africa, blocking access to public documents, revolving door between Con polis and industry front groups, tacit support for coup in Honduras, prominence of Mike Harris MPs in Harper cabinet, muzzling Con MPs and candidates, and enthusiastic and unstinting support for deep integration with the US.
Plus with 4 senators about to retire, Steve is within a handful of patronage votes in controlling the Senate which, corrupt as it is, has caught more than one crappy piece of legislation these last few years.

And Alison tells me to give my head a shake and get with the tour:

I realize you're talking strategy alone here, Cath, but boiling frog syndrome not looking to improve any time soon.

OK, makes sense to me.

Shorter

Shorter Andrew Sullivan

One could argue that the Bush/Cheney CIA was worse than the Gestapo. And one would be correct.

I told him, Iggy, don't go!

If Ignatieff forces an election next month without any real need for one, just because he can, the Canadian electorate will hand him his head.
Though the pollsters and the journalists love elections, most of the Canadian public do not. They want to go to the polls only when there's a good reason.
Disliking Stephen Harper isn't a good enough reason.
Certainly, there is always a degree of political calculation in any decision to vote down a government -- and nobody is more calculating in that respect than the Harper Conservatives -- but there needs to be a good sort-of-non-political reason, too. Or at least some reason which can be presented as being in the public interest, as opposed to the politician's interest.
Basically, Canadian voters just want that good old peace, order and good government. Absent some overriding national issue or some cause celebre or scandal, or even any leader fatigue, the Canadian public doesn't really want to have to bother about politics very often.
When Harper pulled his stunt last year, calling an election for no good reason, voters would have sandbagged him if they could. What saved Harper then was that people disliked Stephane Dion, so much that many Canadians simply could not bring themselves to vote Liberal. In the end, almost 10 million Canadians sat on their hands and didn't vote at all. So the Conservatives were able to hang onto their base.
Last winter there might have been a good reason for an election -- Harper had proven himself so incompetent with his inadequate and mean economic update that Dion and Layton were able to rev up their supporters and might have been able to justify voting down the government.
And last spring there might also have been a good reason for an election -- Canadians were hurting badly while Harper remained pig-headed about unemployment insurance, so Ignatieff might have been able to justify voting down the government.
But times change. The urgency of unemployment insurance change has dissipated as a national issue, the economy is showing signs of life, and abandoning Canadians abroad is a tough sell.
If Iggy's only answer to the question "Why vote down Harper?" is "Because I can!", that's just not good enough. I fear that Canadians will be so annoyed they'll give Harper a majority just to make sure Ignatieff cannot do it again.

Heck of a job, Cheney!

Steve Benen tells Cheney to fuck off:

What Obama really ought to do, according to Dick Cheney, is seek out the former vice president's advice and follow it. After all, Cheney believes he's proven himself on the issue.
I seem to recall the Bush/Cheney era a little differently. Cheney thinks it was a sterling success when it came to national security and counter-terrorism. Perhaps there's something to this. After all, except for the catastrophic events of 9/11, and the anthrax attacks against Americans, and terrorist attacks against U.S. allies, and the terrorist attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Bush's inability to capture those responsible for 9/11, and waging an unnecessary war that inspired more terrorists, and the success terrorists had in exploiting Bush's international unpopularity, the Bush/Cheney record on counter-terrorism was awesome.
After the previous administration established a record like that, President Obama didn't ask Cheney for tips? The nerve.

Great line of the day

Talking about a ridiculous new book on Europe being taken over by Islam Zombies leads Matthew Yglesias to this comment about conservative world-views:

Running through a lot of contemporary conservative thought is the right’s staggering lack of faith in the power of western civilization’s achievements. Liberal democracy has brought us a great deal of peace and prosperity, and time and again liberal societies have proved stronger than our autocratic rivals. But the right seems obsessed with the idea that impoverished and backward social values, or else dictatorial political institutions, offer the key to world-historical success. Thus Europe, supposedly, would be stronger if it re-embraced fratricidal violence and the United States would be more secure if we embraced the methods of the KGB.

Emphasis mine.

She did WHAT???

I remember when I was pregnant with our first child, one of the things we looked forward to was how having kids would make our lives more interesting because we would learn about things we never would have thought to learn about on our own.
And it turned out to be true. Through our children we have learned about all sorts of interesting stuff, like softball and basketball and hockey and tennis and environmentalism and what its like to be a mascot and philosophy and film making and gay rights and women's studies and the Green Party ... and now, skydiving.
Our daughter went skydiving last weekend!
Apparently, just about anybody can skydive these days in a "tandem" set-up -- basically, strapped to an experienced skydiver so you don't have to take a hundred hours of training first.
Who knew?
But this time, I must say, I'm glad we didn't know until we saw her Facebook page afterwards.

Shorter

Shorter Harper spin about his crony Senate appointments:

But CHRETIEN did it too!