Shaking our heads

I wonder if Americans realize how closely their presidential election is being followed around the world. And I wonder if Americans realize how pathetic the Republican party has now shown itself to be.
When McCain sends his beer heiress wife to Georgia, and then when she comes home she argues that the eye-candy political neotype chosen by her husband for VP is "ready to lead" because Alaska is geographically closer to Russia than California is, well, its all so ridiculous that the rest of the world is just shaking its head. The Republicans are willing to give control of their country to people like Cindy McCain and Sarah Palin?
Pathetic.

"I was there"

This is the most amazing story of the Obama speech:

. . . We were in the lesser rungs of the print media section, which meant sitting behind the CNN and ABC booths, with only a peephole sized spot through which we could get a glimpse of the podium. . . . [we noticed] the folks inside CNN's booth -- the techs and crew that helped the booth operate. At the moment Obama began speaking, even though they were sitting behind CNN's own cameras, they produced their personal cameras, help them up and started to take pictures. The same thing happened next door at the ABC booth, and at CBS, and around the curve at FOX. Each of these people was there to do a job, but they realized they were witnessing history, and they wanted to connect with it in a personal way. They wanted an image of their own to mark the occasion -- something they could look at and say "I was there, I was really there, the day Barack Obama delivered his acceptance speech."

Obama's acceptance speech may become one of those cultural events where, in ten years or twenty years, people still talk about the experience of hearing it.

Yes, he actually is The One

What a marvelous speech given by the next US president, Barak Obama.
Tweety was overcome -- he started babbling about how the whole tone of the campaign has been elevated and how Democrats and Republicans could put the politics of division and smear behind them and how everyone could join together in national conversation about life, the universe and everything that really matters to people.
And ponies. Don't forget the ponies.
Ain't gonna happen of course, because the Republicans are going to start whispering Did You Know Obama Is A Ni...? and so much for elevating the tone.
But it was a nice moment, and demonstrated exactly why Obama should be elected -- America needs him to bring out the best in themselves.

Risking lives to save a buck

The Conservatives thought the only risk to eliminating meat inspections would be in the area of "communications" -- in other words, that the stupid public wouldn't like it.
The risk of people dying so the government could save a few bucks didn't seem to be a factor in their decision-making.
Allison provides a copy of last November's Treasury Board memo which supported the elimination of on-site meat inspections. The idea was to allow industry "to implement food safety control programs and to manage key risks." But Vic Toews and the rest of the Treasury Board brain trust must have been impressed with the opportunity to save a million dollars this year, and three millions a year after that. The Treasury Board memo says, in the usual pompous governmentese:

In addition to the reallocation proposals announced in the Budget [ie, the ones we were told about], Treasury Board Ministers also supported the proposal shown in Annex B [ie, the ones we were NOT told about. This is where eliminating meat inspections is described] however, the announcement of these reallocations has been deferred owing to significant communications risks and to allow for further policy and communications work to be completed."

The Conservatives fired the food scientist who sent this memo to the union. Without his brave action, Canadians might have believed Health Minister Tony Clement's pious declaration that:

"When it comes to health and safety, you can't scrimp and save; you've got to do your job on behalf of Canadians and that's what we're doing."

Instead, as Allison points out:

What you're doing is privatizing food safety ... and lying about it.

Move on

I think it's time for self-important pundits and pseudo-feminists to STOP bitching about Hillary Clinton. Please!
Hey, maybe we should start an organization and we could call it "Move On"...

Georgians as Underpants Gnomes

Edstock at Galloping Beaver links to this great post by the War Nerd who asks what in the world Georgia was thinking would happen when it invaded South Ossetia:

. . . Most likely the Georgians just thought the Russians wouldn’t react. They were doing something they learned from Bush and Cheney: sticking to best-case scenarios, positive thinking. The Georgian plan was classic shock’n’awe with no hard, grown-up thinking about the long term. Their shiny new army would go in, zap the South Ossetians while they were on a peace hangover (the worst kind), and then…uh, they’d be welcomed as liberators? Sure, just like we were in Iraq. Man, you pay a price for believing in Bush. The Georgians did. They thought he’d help.

Reminded me of the Underpants Gnomes business plan:

1. Collect underpants
2. ?
3. Profit

Hillary's message

Hillary give a barn-burner of a speech tonight, as even the commenters at Daily Kos agree. I thought Hillary included a very subtle message to Barak in her Harriet Tubmann story:

"When you hear the dogs, keep going."

There has been far too much backing down in recent Democratic presidential campaigns, Gore and Kerry both.
I will never forget, during the third debate with Gore and Bush, seeing Gore give a shamefaced chuckle and virtually apologize to Bush for "inventing the Internet".
Now Barak is being told to do this as well -- like just a week ago, some pundit at the New Republic said Barak shouldn't hold public appearances in front of large crowds anymore because the Republicans would attack his "celebrity". And during this convention, apparently some of the commentators are saying Barak has to tone down the attacks on McCain because after all it will just result in McCain getting mad (like, what is he, the Incredible Hulk?)
The message from Hillary was, ignore the baying dogs and just keep going.
Maybe now Barak will even have the guts to enlist the best campaigner in the Democratic Party, Bill Clinton, in his campaign!

Oh, for crying out loud!

This is the kind of stuff that happens when people get the idea that they can express their personal prejudices when they're on the job.

Passive-aggressive

Strange wording for this CBC news story about Harper calling an election

The CBC's Keith Boag, covering Harper's news conference in Ottawa, said Tuesday's comments marked the first time Harper has been direct in answering questions about the possibility he will call an election.
Harper didn't say an election would depend on what Dion decides, or on any other conditions, as he has in past news conferences.
"The prime minister is not trying to be coy about it in any way at all anymore," Boag said. "He more or less accepted that an election is going to happen."
"When the prime minister himself is talking that way, you can pretty much take it to the bank that he's made up his mind that he'll have to call an election very, very soon."

Emphasis mine.
Note the passive wording, as though calling an election is not Harper's decision.
But it is, entirely and completely his own decision. And he is breaking is own law to do it. None of the opposition parties are forcing this -- except that they just will not stop winning byelections or holding hearings into the In-and-Out scam and the Bernier scandal, even though Harper has asked them really nicely.
Oooh, those bastards! How dare they? Obviously, Canadians cannot expect Harper to follow his own law under such intolerable conditions!

Great line of the day

From Billmon:

...the Republican Party is essentially frozen at a moment in time -- roughly, 1972 (or at the latest, 1984). The politics of the culture war are all it knows, and, here in the twilight of its long ideological dominance, all it really wants to know. And maybe all it has left . . . The '60s culture war is gasping its last gasps, with McCain and his Rovian crew frantically trying to get one last bestial fuck out of the old sow before she lays down in the mud and dies.

This explains it

I was finding the lengthy and hysterical buildup to the Democratic VP pick to be more than a little tiresome, and I guess so was Lance Mannion. But in his usual perceptiveness, Mannion has now figured out why the Obama campaign did it this way:

All summer McCain and Obama have been playing chicken over their choices for VP, each waiting for the other to go first. If the game of chicken lasted long enough, Obama was going to have to go first, and that's what happened. But Obama found a way to win by going first. He kept the Media attention on his choice all this past week without giving McCain the opportunity to upstage him.
McCain can't make his announcement next week. There's no way he can force the attention away from the Democratic Convention unless he picks Hillary. Which means that, basically, he has to announce his choice as part of the routine business of the Republican Convention. Which means that either his Veep gets lost in the shuffle, or he (or she) upstages McCain himself.
Being upstaged is not something McCain allows.
So, what mattered this week wasn't who Obama's choice would or wouldn't be. In fact, I won't be surprised if we find out that it's been Biden all along. What mattered was that that's what everybody was talking about.

Great photos

The Globe and Mail features 10 photos that changed Canada. Here are my favorites:






One of the blogs I read frequently is BAGnewsNotes, for their photo analysis.

"I don't trust this party anymore"

Harper appears bound and determined to call an election, and I suspect the goal is to shut down the In-and-Out hearings. Opposition MPs are saying this too:

A federal election would kill any attempt by MPs to cite for contempt Tory witnesses who ignored parliamentary summonses to election-finance hearings last week, and opposition politicians argue it is a key reason the government wants to rush to the polls.

The hearings have been pretty embarrassing for the Conservatives, particularly the ex-candidates who testified they smelled a rat. Kady O'Malley was liveblogging the Ethics Committee hearings and this is the kind of stuff that was coming out:

... basically, [Martelli] was asked to take a deposit, which would be returned to the party within the same day — “a simple in and out.” The money was deposited - $14,000 - and he eventually got back $8,000 from Elections Canada, which was sent back to the party.
When Michel Rivard looked at the papers — he was the one who did his - Martelli’s - taxes during the campaign, he had him sign “a bunch of papers.”
Carole Lavallee wonders whether he ever saw an invoice for these ad buys — he didn’t.
I’m beginning to see why the Conservatives may not have wanted to give this guy time to speak. . . .
He joined the party, he says, because he believed in their vision — but he doesn’t believe that anymore. “They’ve lost a lot of people,” he notes.
“They had set forth a vision, and there were people who believed in that vision,” he says. “It was disappointing when they pushed it over.” . . .
Twisting the knife a little, Pat Martin asks how Martelli felt — ethically — about the in and out scheme. “Disappointed,” he says. “A lot of people were disappointed.”
. . . “I don’t trust this party anymore,” he repeats.

And this :

Finally, the witnesses get to speak, and Marcel Proulx gets things started by asking David Marler about his experience as a candidate for the Conservatives . . . he asked ... about the transfer, and was told that it was “none of his business.”
You could seriously hear a pin drop right now. Marler is just so — ordinary, and I don’t mean that in a dismissive way. He doesn’t seem to have any sort of hidden agenda; he’s just telling his story, and It’s an amazingly intense - and tense - moment.
For his final question, Proulx asks whether Marler is still a Conservative Party candidate; the answer, he says, is no.

Now the Cons have brought in some new candidate rules. We won't be hearing any testimony in the future about how Conservative candidates don't trust the Conservative party anymore.

Obama-Biden 2008

Well, I think its too bad it's not Hillary, but everybody seems happy with the Biden choice.
Steve Clemons makes some excellent arguments about Why Joe Biden is Vital and the Right Choice.
My clearest memory of Joe Biden was watching him at some Senate hearing, when he got angry at former defense secretary Rumsfeld over the implications of Abu Ghraib. Biden actually shouted, he was so angry, and he said something like, its my son you are putting at risk here, my son and every American's son, if we treat their soldiers so badly, how dare you put my son in danger. Biden brought a personal, family dimension to the discussion that it badly needed.
Also, it was Biden who torpedoed Guilliani's campaign with his "Noun. Verb. 9-11". Good line, that. I hope he can issue a few memorable zingers in this campaign too.

Epic fail

Dave at Galloping Beaver sums up the situation between Russia and NATO now, in Add a little ice, hit "chop" for 30 seconds and Voila! A Cold War cocktail!. And we find out that the United States has shot itself in the foot with its promises to Poland and the Czech Republic about missile defense systems. He alerts us to this article posted at The Guardian points out:

. . . Missile defence is so expensive and the measures required to evade it so cheap that if the US government were serious about making the system work it would bankrupt the country, just as the arms race helped to bring the Soviet Union down. By spending a couple of billion dollars on decoy technologies, Russia would commit the US to trillions of dollars of countermeasures. The cost ratios are such that even Iran could outspend the US.

So the Bush administration has even figured out a way to neutralize its own vast military overspending. Heck of a job, Bushie.
UPDATE: Cernig has more.