Great line of the day

Josh Marshall writes the truth about Iran:

The only crisis with Iran is the crisis with the president's public approval ratings. Period. End of story. The Iranians are years, probably as long as a decade away, and possibly even longer from creating even a limited yield nuclear weapon. Ergo, the only reason to ramp up a confrontation now is to help the president's poll numbers . . . The period of peril the country is entering into isn't tied to an Iranian bomb. It turns on how far a desperate president will go to avoid losing control of Congress.
Go to his heart. Go to his weaknesses. Though the realization of the fact is something of a lagging indicator, the man is a laughing stock, whose lies and failures are all catching up with him.
To the president the Democrats should be saying, Double or Nothing is Not a Foreign Policy.
The great bulk of the public doesn't believe this president any more when he tries to gin up a phony crisis. They don't believe he'd have much of an idea of how to deal with a real one. Enough of the lies. Enough of the incompetence and failure. No buying into another of the president's phony crises.

Emphasis mine.

"Gronk!"

Some poet once described poetry as a make-believe garden containing a real, live toad.
Stephen Colbert was the Poet Laureate of America last night -- his ugly toad just hopped into the make-believe Washington garden and gronked all over the fantasy-land that is official Washington.
Colbert better watch his back -- the knives will be out. Jon Stewart can tell Tucker Carlson and Paul Begula that they are endangering the republic on live TV and it can be brushed aside as just another comedy central moment. But Colbert's rant, likewise on live TV, will provoke an "Off with his head!" response from the Bush administration and the entire White House press corps -- or, as Colbert described them so unforgettably, the typists:

. . . let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The president makes decisions, he’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home.

And try as they might, will anyone in Washington ever again be able to forget Helen Thomas's basic question:

Why did we invade Iraq?

Billmon says "It may have been comedy, but it also sounded like a bill of indictment, and everybody understood the charges."

Simple principles

Following up on yesterday's post about the antiwar movement, it occurred to me that my own opposition to the war in Iraq wasn't really a very difficult position to achieve -- it didn't take a lot of discussion or deep thinking. Basically I just followed my own standard principles:

Never eat in a restaurant named Mom's
Never play poker with a man named Doc
Never buy a car from a man named Frenchy
Never go to war unless the United Nations says to

And I plan to follow the same principles when it comes to Iran. If the United States cannot convince the Security Council to authorize a war with Iran, the US has no right to go on its own -- no matter how much Iran is mouthing off.
I guess I trust the collective judgment of the UN over the warmongering judgment of the Bush administration any day.

Great line of the day

A reporter at the UN speaks truth to power. She asks John Bolton why the United States thinks it has any credibility now in promoting war with Iran:

. . . you violated the UN charter when you went to war against Iraq and you constantly lied to us about the reasons we went to war . . . why do you have credibility other than you've got the biggest guns?

Crooks and Liars has the video.

War protests

The anti-war movement in the United States and elsewhere has been pretty discouraged lately because protests don't appear to be making any difference to US policies in Iraq.
But protests may still make a difference with Iran.
And anyway, we have to take a stand, whether anybody is listening or not. Imagine how we would feel if we didn't protest and then Bush usee nuclear weapons against Iran, and then he said, well, I did it because nobody was against it!
Overseas, I think governments ARE still listening -- hence the protests in Greece this week when Rice visited:

In fact, I don't think there is anywhere in the world that Rice or anyone from the Bush administration would not be greeted with thousands of protesters.
Here's some AP photos of today's march in New York City, with Cindy Sheehan, Susan Sarandon, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and a cast of thousands:






And at the University of Minnesota on Friday, AP reports that "scores of high school students skipped school to join the college students in the protest as rain fell."


Atrios today highlights an interesting column from a blogger called Belle Waring, who was for the war before she was against it:

Don't you sometimes wonder what I was thinking way back when when I thought it was a good idea to invade Iraq? I sure do. My apologia from September 2004: Why I Was So Totally Wrong About Iraq. I ain't feeling a whole lot righter, I'll tell you that. It still seems to me, even now, that war supporters on the left, even those who now basically agree that the whole thing was a bad idea, still cling to some weird sense of moral superiority [cough, Euston manifesto, cough]. Like, "at least I wasn't some big hippie who didn't seriously grapple with the issues." The thing is, those people, hippies or not, were completely right, and many of them were right because they had seriously considered the issue and decided (correctly, mind you) that it was a bad idea . . . there seems to be some sense floating around the pundit class that those on the left who were wrong about invading Iraq were wrong in an interesting, morally meaningful way; wrong in the manner of a wrong Winston Churchill, or something . . . That's just total bullshit and any of these people who is now going on to advocate war with Iran should be roundly ignored. No, they should be laughed at, and then ignored. And then maybe someone should pistol-whip them a little.

And don't miss the great Comments to Belle's post, which discuss in thoughtful detail what is going on with the anti-war movement now in the US. I was particularly impressed by this comment from a blogger named Nell (who's blog is called A Lovely Promise and its a keeper.) Nell describes his own intense involvement in the anti-war movement. How sad that his principled, thoughtful opposition to the Iraq war wasn't taken seriously in time -- a situation which I sincerely hope will NOT be repeated when it comes to Iran:

I live in a small, conservative, southern college town. We mounted a determined, sizable, and energetic opposition to the war much earlier than most places, and with all the seriousness asked by Bah above.
- collected hundreds of signatures in July and August on a petition to our Congressional rep and Senators that featured pragmatic as well as moral reasons for why not an Iraq war.
- joined 30 other Virginians in meeting with the staffs of our Senators at their Richmond offices in August 2002. Huge collection of serious, factual arguments on why invading Iraq was bad idea.
- locally, had fifty people on sidelines of annual Labor Day parade (a mandatory stop for statewide pols) asking Warner to oppose the war, and thanking him for holding hearings. Hearings which heard from at least one general opposed to war (Hoar) and got ZERO media coverage.
- sent small delegation to Washington in late September to meet with Congressman (he bailed and we met with staff).
- while in DC, joined a larger delegation that met with Sen. Warner's staff. Rather than put his defense/foreign poliy L.A. to work, Warner sent a 22-year-old intern. Who took no notes.
- had letters in the local and regional papers every week during September and October opposing the war, then again after the UN vote consistently mid-November to the eve of the war.
- sent a dozen people to the October DC march against the war, and 70 locals to the January 2003 one.
- helped bring Tony Zinni and Pat Lang to a panel discussion at VMI three days after the fatal Congressional vote in front of 400 cadets and locals in which Zinni blasted the war.
- got on national TV when Good Morning America came to town on Veterans Day; as we constituted half the crowd for the Potemkin-village Veterans Day parade, replete with signs, American flags, sober-minded flyers, and red-white-and-blue balloons reading 'No War on Iraq', they had to interview us.
- held weekly vigils outside the courthouse from mid-January through the invasion.
- got excellent coverage from our local paper for all our public activities, culminating with very sympathetic interviews (balanced with one of a local war supporter) that appeared on the day Baghdad fell.
We made more of a dent locally than the movement did nationally, exactly because we got a much more respectful hearing for our arguments.
But the national media and "respectable" pundits froze out coverage of dissenters (especially ones like Webb and Zinni who could not be dismissed as hippies), mocked opposition, pretended there were no serious arguments being made, and bowed to the powerful CW that this war was just plain going to happen. As did the Democratic leadership in Congress.
No amount or soberness of opposition would have stopped Bush once he had that blank check from Congress . . . If Democrats buy into the lie that there is a military option to prevent Iran getting a nuclear weapon, then we'll end up having that war. I'll blame you, among others, though of course the fundamental blame is on Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld.

And someone named TK has another great comment in the same thread:

The unacknowledged irony in Belle's spot-on description of the American political climate (even today) is that the so-called "sober realists," who were so much more serious than the hippies, were the ones who engaged in the lion's share of the vituperation. Not to put too fine a point on it, they acted like immature children, while the hippies tried to keep them from possibly running the car of a cliff. Yes, the antiwar people said unkind and cynical things about the people planning the war, and those unkind and cynical things turned out to be, if anything, too kind and trusting.
But I don't think anyone who opposed the war ever impugned the patriotism of fellow Americans who supported the invasion. What we didn't appreciate was being told we were stupid and knee-jerk and terrorist sympathizers and didn't deserve a place in a debate about the single most decision a democracy can make: declaring unprovoked war on another country. What kind of mature democracy thinks that way?
The reason I say "even today" about the political climate is that war supporters still can't wean themselves from these habits of thought. Upthread someone confesses to agreeing with Hitchens about "anti-Americans" like Noam Chomsky. Noam Chomsky, for all his manifest and erfectly human faults, has spent a life writing and giving lectures to thousands about US foreign policy, at little or no profit to himself, and that's not even his day job. You think he does this to turn his native country over to its enemies? So do you think he needs moralistic lectures from a drunken Trotskyite British ex-pat like Christopher Hitchens? Please. Chomsky probably receives more personal vituperation and orchestrated slander than any nonpolitician in American political life, which is a pretty odd effort to go to for someone whose views are supposed so self-evidently crackpot.
Maybe that's because he's actually proven right a good deal of the time? Recall shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan (the "good" war of course, which all decent patriots support) when Chomsky was derided as a nutball by the smart people at the Note and Slate (and Salon) for predicting that the US would commit human rights abuses that would be covered up and if that failed, rationalized by the US media? How crackpot does that sound now?
Here's an idea for the "sober realists": try acting sober and dealing with reality, not some cartoon version you carry around in your head.

North American Defense Union?

Hmmm -- why was this done on the QT?
This news story -- Canada recommits to NORAD in quiet ceremony -- says "NORAD has previously only been responsible for guarding North American skies from attack. The new deal also authorizes NORAD to watch out for drug traffickers and human smugglers operating by sea."
So, in effect, do we now have a "defense union" between Canada and the United States, where the US military, instead of the Canadian coast guard, can pick up possible criminals in Canadian waters?
UPDATE: I guess the new agreement isn't actually signed yet -- it still has to be debated in Parliament.

It's Harper's credit, or blame -- whatever.

One last item on the softwood deal -- though the Globe and Mail may be trying to give Martin some credit when it notes that the softwood deal was brewing for a year or more, make no mistake that this deal is primarily Harper's baby.
So if it works out, then it is to Harper's credit that he got a deal negotiated which, hopefully, will allow our forest industry to maintain production.
And if the deal doesn't work out, if it turns out that our producers are more damaged by these provisions than they should have been, then it is Harper who must be blamed -- its pretty clear from reading the Globe story that the deal would not have happened without him.
Still, I got sort of a chuckle out of the comment in the story to the effect that Canada and the US had to resolve the lumber dispute so we could get on with building our great relationship in other areas -- and then the very next story is about how the US State department is manufacturing fantasy accusations about Islamic terrorist cells operating due to Canada's "liberal" immigration system.
UPDATE: Over at Galloping Beaver, Dana notes several problems with the deal -- or perhaps we should now be calling it, the "so-called deal".

The Americans are laughing at us

So the guy who is executive director of the main anti-Canada lobby group had a good laugh today at Canada's expense, when he said that U.S. lumber producers may use their $1 billion in softwood deal money to sue Canada.
It was a Nelson moment -- ha-ha!
The chair of the group later withdrew these remarks. And somebody else quickly said that the deal will prevent lawsuits.
Yeah, sure it will.
And I think its pretty clear what they really think of us now.

Guilty, sort of...

Now I get it -- the wierd Rush Limbaugh Settlement Agreement is designed so that Rush doesn't have to admit he has been "convicted" of a crime. His lawyer says "we believe the outcome for him personally will be much as if he had fought the charge and won" -- except, of course, he didn't.
Excellence in Broadcasting wins again, I guess.

No joy in Mudville

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.

As Harper is discovering, the problem with being kissy-kissy with the Bush administration is that when you make a deal, nobody likes it. Nobody believes you have gone all out to get the best deal possible for Canada; in fact, they suspect you sold Canada down the river.
What is being said about the softwood lumber deal today isn't very pretty:

Shares of Canadian lumber companies dropped Thursday ahead of Mr. Harper's news, as a slew of analysts derided the tentative deal.

First, here's how much the shares dropped:

Shares of Canadian forestry companies dropped in Toronto on Thursday, with International Forest Products Ltd. shares dropping 3.7 per cent to $7.80, Tembec Inc. shedding 9.52 per cent to $1.90, Canfor Corp. stock shedding 2.6 per cent to $14.36, and West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. losing 1.27 per cent to $42.70.

And here's what the "slew of analysts" said:

"The deal is awful. It basically marginalizes the Canadian industry over the next seven years," Richard Kelertas, an analyst at Desjardins Securities, said in an interview. "Even if the Americans make some modifications to this, it is still a trap for the Canadians. The trap is that there is no language to exit, so they will be trapped in this bad deal for seven years." . . . Mr. Kelertas, the Desjardins Securities analyst, said that the original deal flew in the face of the North American Free Trade Agreement and World Trade Organization regulations, which state that cross-border deals are illegal. "The danger here is that you set a very dangerous precedent by saying that NAFTA is no good and can be argued by the Americans that it is unconstitutional." Mr. Kelertas lambasted Mr. Harper for agreeing to a deal that is bad for Canada "just to get a nice photo-op" with U.S. President George Bush. "George Bush apparently told Canadian and U.S. officials that if a deal is not done by midnight Thursday, the NAFTA appeal deadline, they don't want to spend any more time on this," he said. "We are talking about the lifeblood of thousands of communities across Canada." . . . The Thursday midnight deadline has been artificially created by the Bush administration, who are trying create a sense of urgency in order for Mr. Harper's government to accept a "shitty" deal, Mr. Kelertas said. If an agreement similar to the one on the table does go through, he added, shareholders of Canadian forestry and paper companies could sue the Canadian federal government for financially crippling them.

BMO Nesbitt Burns analyst Stephen Atkinson said the recouped duty payments are not a "windfall," but rather money that Canadian companies were giving their rivals. "Why would you give 22 per cent to your competition?" he said. "This money belongs to the companies and their shareholders, and the Canadian government is giving it away."

The framework deal negotiated Wednesday is "negative for many of the Canadian producers" said Robert Duncan, an analyst with MGI Securities.

"I didn't talk to anyone who was happy with it," another analyst, who did not want to be named, said of his discussions with lumber executives.

In the blogosphere, Ross at Gazetteer has a number of posts up about this deal and its impact on British Columbia, in particular visualizing Harper waving a newspaper "Peace in our Time".
Over at Galloping Beaver, Dana writes:

. . . This is almost exactly the same deal that Emerson reportedly scuttled during the election campaign. One analyst referred to it as the same pig just with lipstick and a nice dress . . . It undercuts NAFTA, rewards US thuggery with a billion point three dollars from Canadian producers, limits access to US markets, has no exit clause...jaysus wept...it's just a dreadful outcome. If all you were going to do was drop to your knees and pucker Stephen you could have at least waited until the BBQ at George's ranch in Texas.

Scott Tribe over at Progressive Bloggers writes:

. . . Harper has arm-twisted the provinces and producers to accept this sham of a deal. The US gets a 1 billion $ reward for illegally harrassing our lumber producers..we're not allowed more then 34% of the US market.. and this is a victory for Canada according to Harper? And we're locked into this deal for 7 years? The NDP's trade critic has reminded everyone on CTV that the Conservatives had promised to bring international treaties to the H of C for debate and votes. If thats the case, this deal should be voted down.

And BigCityLib notices an "entitled to my entitlements" moment:

In trying to explain where $1,000,000,000 stolen from Canada and redistributed to the American lumber lobby went, Ambassador Michael Wilson said that "A Negotiation is a Negotiation." Can anyone explain what that means?

So, I guess the US gets what it wants

But does Canada? I'm not sure. Ontario isn't happy, but neither BC nor Quebec have chimed in yet.
One line in the CTV story about the resolution of the softwood lumber dispute worried me:

The framework would also require both sides . . . to drop lawsuits and place a moratorium on future trade complaints.

Now, this ain't gonna happen. The US lumber industry and the lumber states may say now that they will live with such restrictions, but their promises will last only until the next US election.

Four toilet seats and six hammers

Canadian Cynic refers us to Gaanjah Mama's letter to Revenue Canada:

Dear Canada Revenue Agency
Enclosed is my 2005 tax return showing that I owe $3,407.00 in taxes. Please note the attached article from the Globe and Mail, wherein you will see the Feds are paying $171.50 for hammers and The Royal Canadian Air Force has paid $600.00 for a toilet seat. I am enclosing four toilet seats (value $2400) and six hammers (value $1029), bringing my total remitted to $3429.00.Please apply the overpayment of $22.00 to the 'Conservative Election Fund,' as noted on my return. You can do this inexpensively by sending them one 1.5" Phillips head screw (article from the Globe and Mail detailing how CMHC pays $22.00 each for 1.5" Phillips Head screws).
It has been a pleasure to pay my tax bill this year, and I look forward to paying it again next year.
Sincerely, A Satisfied Taxpayer

I think the postage would run about $30, so Canada Post would also be happy with this solution.

Shooting themselves in the foot

Dana at Galloping Beaver has posted Why I Quit The NDP -- an excellent post which explains a lot of the problems I have seen with Jack Layton's NDP.
I couldn't understand it last fall, why Layton would suddely become so bitterly opposed to Paul Martin's Liberals, especially when they were finally seeing the development of a national NDP-oriented agenda, in particular the national day-care program, the Kelowna accords with Aboriginal people, housing programs, and the Kyoto implementation. Did Jack think Canadians would actually thank him for screwing this up? Harper will abandon all of these initiatives as quickly as he can.
Dana's post explains the NPD's delusions -- they think they can wipe the Liberals off the map and take over as Canada's "progressive" party. Dana writes:

. . . The Harper Conservatives pose significant enough perils to the future well being of this country that foolish hubris and bravado like Pat Martin’s or narrow partisan triangulation like Jack Layton’s have no place . . . Harper hates the press, the eyes and ears of the people . . . Harper is as contemptuous of those who expected he would be a politician to keep his campaign promises as he is of those who did not expect he would. Harper has constructed his centrepiece Accountability Act in order to give himself cover for his Defence Minister, who himself appears to want nothing more than to emulate Donald Rumsfeld. Harper’s centralization of power in his own office is in near diametric opposition to what he has led us to believe his governing style would be. His aping of the tactics of the Bush Republicans are now fully exposed and we can expect more, including the rhetorical contortions and protestations of the Bush-lite Harper fanatics . . .
This is the crowd that . . . the NDP caucus wants to legitimize in order that they can exercise their delusion that they have the electoral clout to remove the Liberals from the board. Jack, I will not participate.

The Liberals disappeared in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan 10 years ago not because of anything the NDP or even the Conservatives did. It was because of the gun registry.
Eastern Canada has never appreciated the depth of western anger over the registry, I don't think. The Liberal vote in the west has not disappeared, but in many previously Liberal western ridings the margins were slim enough to begin with that the anger over the registry waw enough to eliminate Liberal MPs. Without MPs for a decade, the constituency organizations also deteroirate.
But Liberal fortunes will begin to rise again in the West as soon as the Conservatives dump the registry -- provided the new Liberal leader doesn't indicate he would reintroduce it, a safe bet, I think.
The western vote didn't go to the NDP this election, and won't go there in the future either -- even those western voters who support the NDP provincially don't want a Toronto alderman in charge of the Wheat Board.

Meltdown

Apparently the Bush administration is getting set to appoint a Fox news reporter, Tony Snow, as press secretary.
Now, never having watched Fox news, I don't know who this fellow is. But I gather I haven't missed much.
ThinkProgress has rounded up all the names that Snow has called George Bush recently, like "An Embarrassment" and "Impotent" and a "dime-store democrat". Media Matters has gathered a lengthy list of his botched news stories. And Firedoglake can hardly wait to start using the term "Snow Job" for everything announced by the White House henceforth.
And the guy hasn't even been appointed yet!
I wonder what it feels like to be eaten alive by the press? I have a feeling that Snow is going to find out.
Help meeee, I'm melting!!!!

The reasons NOT to attack Iran

Writing in the International Herald Tribune, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski tells the United States why they should not attack Iran.
I hope they're listening:

. . . there are four compelling reasons against a preventive air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities:
1. In the absence of an imminent threat (with the Iranians at least several years away from having a nuclear arsenal), the attack would be a unilateral act of war. If undertaken without formal Congressional declaration, it would be unconstitutional and merit the impeachment of the president. Similarly, if undertaken without the sanction of the UN Security Council . . . it would stamp the perpetrator(s) as an international outlaw(s).
2. Likely Iranian reactions would significantly compound ongoing U.S. difficulties in Iraq and in Afghanistan [and would likely] cause the United States to become bogged down in regional violence for a decade or more to come. Iran is a country of some 70 million people and a conflict with it would make the misadventure in Iraq look trivial.
3. Oil prices would climb steeply, especially if the Iranians cut their production and seek to disrupt the flow of oil from the nearby Saudi oil fields. The world economy would be severely impacted, with America blamed for it. . . .
4. America would become an even more likely target of terrorism, with much of the world concluding that America's support for Israel is itself a major cause of the rise in terrorism. . . With America increasingly the object of widespread hostility, the era of American preponderance could come to a premature end. . .
The choice is either to be stampeded into a reckless adventure profoundly damaging to long-term U.S. national interests or to become serious about giving negotiations with Iran a genuine chance to be productive . . . American policy should not be swayed by a contrived atmosphere of urgency ominously reminiscent of what preceded the intervention in Iraq.

Emphasis mine. These reasons apply equally well to Canada -- I just hope Harper doesn't think that hiding a few caskets will persuade Canadians to string along with Bush on this one -- actually, NOTHING could convince Canadians to join Bush in attacking Iran.