Tech support cheat sheet

What actually happens when you call tech support, as found at Bouquets of Gray:

Turning myths upside down

The Toronto Star punctures four election myths which the Conservatives are promoting.
But I'd like to see Ignatieff and the Liberals do more -- they should be turning these myths on their head. Here are the responses I would make --
Myth one:

An election would imperil economic recovery.

The response I'd like to see:

Bay Street is laughing at that one. An election would improve economic recovery by putting in charge a government which knows what to do with the economy, rather than the fumbling Jim Flaherty and the ideological Harper cabinet.

Myth two:

The Liberals will wrest power from the Conservatives by joining in a coalition with the NDP and the Bloc Québécois.

The response I'd like to see:

Canadians never did elect a Harper majority because they did NOT want Harper to be given free reign. And thank heavens for that -- when every other government in the world was helping its industries to survive the recession, Harper wouldn't do it until Parliament forced him to. Without the Coalition threat last winter, the Harper government would never have done the right thing for the Canadian economy; they would have sat on their hands and watched our auto industry just disappear, along with millions of jobs in other industries all across the country. Canadians deserve a better government that that.

Myth three:

A Liberal proposal to make it easier for laid-off workers to obtain Employment Insurance would be irresponsibly costly.

The response I'd like to see:

EI reform would pump a billion dollars into the Canadian economy, getting this money out of government bank accounts and putting it directly into the pockets of millions of people -- people who have already paid it into the EI system in the first place.

Myth four:

An election will cheat Canadians out of their home renovation tax credit.

The response I'd like to see:

So what kind of incompetent bumblers would announce a program but never get around to making it legal? Was it some kind of bait-and-switch where they were going to change it at the last minute? Or is this just another one of the blizzard of Harper press releases which announce laws they never get around to implementing? Of course the Liberals would implement this tax credit immediately, unlike the untrustworthy Conservatives.

There, that oughta do it!

Great line of the day

Glenn Greenwald:

I have very mixed feelings about the protests of conservatives such as David Frum or Andrew Sullivan that the conservative movement has been supposedly "hijacked" by extremists and crazies. On the one hand, this is true. But when was it different? Rush Limbaugh didn't just magically appear in the last twelve months. He -- along with people like James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Bill Kristol and Jesse Helms -- have been leaders of that party for decades. Republicans spent the 1990s wallowing in Ken Starr's sex report, "Angry White Male" militias, black U.N. helicopters, Vince Foster's murder, Clinton's Mena drug runway, Monica's semen-stained dress, Hillary's lesbianism, "wag the dog" theories, and all sorts of efforts to personally humiliate Clinton and destroy the legitimacy of his presidency using the most paranoid, reality-detached, and scurrilous attacks . . . Nothing that the GOP is doing to Obama should be the slightest bit surprising because this is the true face of the American Right -- and that's been true for a very long time now. It didn't just become true in the last few months or in the last two years. Recent months is just the time period when the media began noticing and acknowledging what they are: a pack of crazed, primitive radicals who don't really believe in the country's core founding values and don't merely disagree with, but contest the legitimacy of, any elected political officials who aren't part of their movement. Before the last year or so, the media pretended that this was a serious, adult, substantive political movement, but it wasn't any truer then than it is now.

Emphasis mine.
The difference between the Clinton Presidency and the Obama Presidency is Keith Olbermann and Daily Kos, Rahm Emmanuel and Rachel Maddow, Firedoglake and Glenn Greenwald.
I hope it will be enough.

Watching the speech

From the Charlotte Observer, some photos of people watching Obama's health care speech:











I also include this photo of Hillary and Obama together, because I've been wondering what she thinks about Obama's handling of health care reform this summer.



Myself, I don't know whether Hillary could have done a better job in getting health care reform through without such divisiveness or not, but I do know that Republican congressmen would also have yelled at her and walked out -- they wouldn't have accepted or respected a woman as president any more than they accept or respect an African-American.

Why America is doomed

Hallelujah brother!
John Cole provides the latest from that Phoenix pastor who prays for Obama to die -- he's talking about why real men of God need to take a stance, so to speak:

That’s where we’re headed in this country, my friend. We’ve got a bunch of pastors who pee sitting down.

I blame homeschooling for all this craziness, I really do....

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.