Tough talk

Jason Cherniak is right -- the Tories didn't actually want an election at all.

We could not go into an election over that Throne Speech. Never mind the organizational issues in Quebec - there was no issue over which to bring down the government. I have sympathy with Liberals who want to get rid of Harper. I feel exactly the same way. However, politics is not about going into an election every chance you get. Politics is about proposing good policies and opposing bad policies. The Throne speech, quite simply, did not give us that opportunity.

In spite of all the tough talk before the throne speech, the Conservatives fuzzied and fudged the Speech language so that the Liberals would not have to vote against it.
Kyoto is now shown to be a case in point -- in spite of all the rhetoric, the Cons are NOT withdrawing from Kyoto -- a position on which Dion and the Liberals could not have abstained. In fact, whenever the election does finally come, the Liberals will be able to argue that it is the Conservatives own fault that they cannot meet the Kyoto targets.
And likewise, the crime bill -- the Cons are blustering and posturing, apparently hoping that if they talk loudly enough nobody will remember it was also the Conservatives' own fault these laws weren't passed last spring.
As for Dion's future, Harper has pushed him to the wall -- the question is, can he push back?
In an editorial titled "Tough Dion refuses Harper's double-dare", the Edmonton Journal says don't sell Dion short:

...perhaps they should be more wary about attempts to humiliate or rout Stephen Dion.
Say what you like about the man -- and we'll say Dion has shown a lot more interest in Edmonton than the southern Alberta prime minister in the last year and a half -- the former cabinet minister under both Martin and Chretien is no pushover.
When it comes to vitriolic firepower, even the likes of Environment Minister John Baird is no match for the hardcore separatists of Quebec. For years, they've tried to bring the architect and champion of the Clarity Act to his knees and failed . . . underestimated for decades, Stephane Dion could yet have the last laugh.
One thing is for certain. He's a tough nut to crack.

Dogs playing poker

It's one week into the Saskatchewan election campaign, and the constant ante-upping is beginning to remind me of dogs playing poker.
Calvert must be the long-nosed collie, with Brad Wall on the far right (of course) and David Karwacki in the middle.

Fool me once

George Bush:"We don't torture."
Larry Craig: "I am not gay."
Bill Clinton: "I did not have sex with that woman."
Well, when Clinton said that, I believed him. But fool me once, shame on you...

Lifeline or anchor?

It's all in how you see it.
Here's the Globe and Mail story about Stephane Dion's decision not to vote against the Throne Speech:

Battered federal Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion scrambled Wednesday to reassure fretful colleagues about the party's future in a watershed speech aimed at controlling damage from a string of recent setbacks.

But the BBC story sees the same news from quite a different angle -- their story is titled Liberals send PM lifeline:

Canada's opposition Liberal party has thrown a lifeline to the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, saying it will not force early snap elections.

Don't worry, be happy

I guess women shouldn't worry about the anti-abortion right-wingers who are being appointed as judges by the Harper Conservatives -- like Lawrence O'Neil, who will be sworn in next week to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, and David Brown, who was appointed last year to the Ontario Superior Court -- even though O'Neil said that a mother doesn't have the right to control her own body, and Brown was a lawyer for Focus on the Family and REAL Women of Canada:

Brown's defenders pointed out that, even in the unlikely case his personal values influenced his legal rulings, such viewpoints are flotsam in a sea of Liberal appointees.

So I guess that means its OK for the Harper Conservatives to pander to their base.
Silly me, and here I thought those judicial appointments actually meant something...

Teh funny

Before Amazon takes it down, check out the list of "tags" from prospective readers for Jonah Goldberg's multi-titled book. Here are some of the funniest ones:

propaganda (35)
missed deadlines (24)
fairytales for simple people (22)
wingnut welfare (20)
unintentional comedy (18)
banged out by howler monkeys (15)
what a boat load of crap (15)
attend to luciannes bunions (11)
chickenhawk (9)
libburluls are stoopit (5)
...
chinese democracy (2)
doughy (2)
editors nightmare (2)
...

Great line of the day

In Nutcracker Fever, Digby writes about how Tucker Carlson is totally eeyuuhhh! about women who say they would vote for Hillary because she's a woman:

Carlson has well documented issues with Clinton, whom he says makes him "cross his legs" every time he hears her voice. Evidently his "instinctive" revulsion is a perfectly valid reaction, but women who are inspired by the fact that she is the first woman in history to be a serious candidate for president are thinking with their twats.

This has been another edition of What Digby Said!

Be still my heart...

Canadian Press finds the dramatic moment in an apparently otherwise-tedious Throne Speech:

When Jean read that the government would respond to the Supreme Court of Canada's decision on terrorist security certificates, a keen observer might have observed a noticeable lifting of the eyebrows of Justice Louis LeBel, seated among his fellow ermine-robed high court judges in front of the dais.

One eyebrow-lifting moment -- how exciting!

So here's the plan...

I don't know which is worse -- the belief that the Bush Administration has an ineffective plan for dealing with the Middle East, or the frightening realization that they really are just making it up as they go along -- and they have been for years.

Problem solved!

It's the Helen Thomas solution:first step - declare victory; second step - leave
.

Gone

Well, its good to know that there is a line below which Conservative rank-and-file won't go.
The MLA who called Belinda Stronach a whore was not re-nominated in his provincial riding.

Some fun now

Alison informs us about Harper's Afghan panel. Oh, ain't we havin' some fun now.

Vast right-wing conspiracy

Democrats and whistleblowers and people who don't do what the Bush Administration wants seem to end up slimed or jobless or in jail.
Like Don Siegelman and Usman Ali and Rogelio Mejorada-Lopez and Joe Nacchio and Richard Clarke, Teresa Chambers, Richard Foster, David Lappa, David Lewis, Douglas Parker, and Eric Shinseki and the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed.
Rachel Maddow added more on Countdown yesterday:

“Twelve year old Graeme Frost, meet Cindy Sheehan, meet 9/11 widows, meet Staff Sgt. Brian McGough, meet Michael J. Fox, meet the kids who were targeted by Mark Foley, meet Jack Murtha. I mean, Graeme Frost as a twelve year old now joins an esteemed list of Americans who have been personally attacked, personally slimed, called liars and cowards and frauds, and threatened for daring to publicly espouse a view that the right disagrees with. I mean, just when you think you’ve found the person who they can’t possibly slime, I don’t know, say a twelve year old kid just out of a coma, turns out yeah, the bar does actually go that low, it’s just astonishing.”

The message is chillingly clear, isn't it -- go along to get along, because if you get out of line you'll be hammered.
Yes, Virginia, there IS a vast right-wing conspiracy.

You realize of course this means war

There always reaches a point in a Bugs Bunny cartoon when Bugs, the heretofore aggrieved innocent, decides he has had enough. That's when he declares -- to Daffy, or Yosemite, or the bull, or the gangsters, or the tenor -- "You realize of course, this means war!"
I think the blogosphere has finally reached that point with the wingnuts -- the Greame Frost attacks are the last straw.
I haven't seen such outraged commentary since Shiavio -- here and here and here and here.
Wolcott sums it up perfectly:

Rush Limbaugh and his fellow talk-radio troll dolls didn't "pervert" conservatism--he didn't lay siege to some maiden fair and debauch her virtue. Rush Limbaugh didn't inject an "ideology of hate" into conservatism, he extracted the contemptuous, divisive animosity inherent in the Gingrich doctrine and sugared it up with comedy and his own personal saga for popular consumption. He, like Clarence Thomas, was just what the Republican overseers ordered. Rush Limbaugh is modern mainstream conservatism in all its bullying bluster, hypocrisy, jolly ignorance (global warming etc), slavish submission to military, corporate, and executive power, and slimeballing of political opponents. To believe otherwise is like putting your faith in those few remaining Republican moderates who always manage not to come through in the clutch, who put up a brief show of conscience or faint dissent before the inevitable capitulation. It's a little late to suddenly look around and realize what sleazebags you've got on your team, especially since those sleazebags were there before you arrived. The only difference between Limbaugh and the orc pit of the right blogosphere is one of degree, or perhaps I should say radius.

Emphasis mine. And be sure to check his "radius" link -- yes, it DOES mean what you think it means.

The "Rodney Dangerfield" Strike

I support unions, because it benefits both the employer and the employee to bargain collectively.
But to continue to be effective, unions have to deserve respect -- particularly, for public sector unions, from the public. This 3-month Vancouver strike has now passed irrational and is moving toward ridiculous.
I have been involved in several strikes over the years, and even a two-week strike is tough. I can't imagine what it would be like to walk a picket line for 12 weeks, with no end in sight and facing mortgage payments and car loans and school fees.
Certainly union members have to support each other, but they also have to get some results from their union leadership. Reading the stories about the recent vote, I begin to wonder if these union leaders are going to break their own unions because of their intransigence.
Now the inside workers have voted to go back, but the leadership of the outside workers urged members to vote against a settlement for some piss-poor reasons:

For the 1,800 outside workers the sticking points were overtime, grievance language and the city's ability to contract out their work.
"It's not money," said Dave Van Dyke, a member of CUPE 1004's bargaining committee.
"It's about mostly language. A couple of non-monetary items. Something like overtime shift language."

Sounds pretty blase, doesn't he? Apparently the workers have construction industry jobs now anyway, so they're not suffering:

Many outside employees feel little pressure to accept the Foley package because they have found employment in the construction industry

And they apparently don't care whether the people of Vancouver can use their parks or playgrounds, or get their streets cleaned. And they don't care that some of the inside workers will be kept off the job because of picketing at common job sites. The attitude seems to be, I've got mine, Jack, so screw you!
In a fever of solidarity, the library workers also voted to stay out -- but the library staff are the group of civic workers that could find themselves out in the cold for a long, long time. I worry that this could be one of those strikes where, sometime next spring, somebody says "Oh, are the library workers STILL out? I'd forgotten."
Basically, and with apologies to the librarians I know, libraries fall into the category of 'nice-to-have', not 'need-to-have' -- once the building permits are being issued again and the garbage is being picked up, the strike will be just a bad memory for most of the people in Vancouver even if the library workers are still picketing.
And maybe this strike won't even be remembered much. Vancouver Sun columnist Miro Cernetig sums up the attitude:

This civic strike has hardly proven the urban disaster that many anticipated. In fact, it has made a lot of people start to wonder about just what they are paying for in that ever-rising tax bill that arrives every spring from city hall . . . Yes, there have been inconveniences this summer. You can't check out a book from the library. You've got to learn a few new urban survival techniques to keep your backyard from stinking up . . . The flow of permits from city hall is at a crawl. . . . But the take home message so far from this summer's strike is that Vancouverites have proven surprisingly adept at making do with less city government. We haven't, despite the warnings, reached some tipping point that will shut the city down.

An ineffective strike ultimately results in making public sector unions weaker -- they don't get no respect.