Advice from The Editors

The Editors nails it -- Who’s just like Hitler today?

. . . I have no doubt that there are very well-considered legal and moral arguments about how Russia has done a terrible thing, and I’m sure the World Police and International Relations Jesus will spurred into action by their eloquence and power. Similarly, I’m sure Russia doesn’t give a fuck, and Russia has the under-appreciated advantage of actually existing.
. . . on this foundational level - the simple playground realities of power politics - Georgia fucked up horribly. THOU SHALT NOT PICK FIGHTS THOU CAN NOT POSSIBLY WIN is a fundamental precept one needs to appreciate before any thrilling arguments about how things ought to be . . . I feel bad for Georgia, as - in my all-encompassing benevolence - I feel bad for losers everywhere, but I still can’t help noticing that they are among those who weren’t being very practical about their situation.

The Editors also has some advice for Europe

think very seriously about making formal NATO promises to countries who can’t protect themselves and like to pick fights with Russia.

and for Russia

They’ve successfully neutralized the Georgian Menace, so I’m sure they’ll sleep easier for that, and also demonstrated their ability to repel the not-really threats posed by countries with small, hand-me-down military forces. It depends on how Russia sees its place in the world, I suppose. If they are trying to get the Soviet Union back together, this would be the first step - though its not clear that things would turn out any better than they did last time. If they are trying to join the West, or at least have a cordial working relationship with it, they probably want to wind this thing down quickly.

Smaller stick

Digby on the defeat of America in the Russia-Georgia War:

. . . most people over the age of nine learn that issuing a bunch of threats and failing to carry them through --- or following through and failing to succeed --- is a recipe for people to stop taking you seriously. Bush and Cheney (and now McCain) have made a fetish out of sabre rattling for the past eight years and the results have been, shall we say, less than stellar. The US has shown that its volunteer military, while valiant, is undermanned and overstretched, its intelligence services are willing servants of political manipulators and its leadership is dishonest, immoral and incompetent. It's understandable that somebody out there would think that now is the time to make a move.

The nine-year-old analogy is apt.
Looking back at the past two decades, its clear that both Bush 1 and Clinton knew that America's stick wasn't actually as big or as utilitarian as the American voters believed. They could never say this to the American public, but their power was based on a nuclear arsenal they couldn't actually use and a military which could win tough wars but had neither the expertise nor the political will for oppressive occupations.
The neocons and the Pentagon, on the other hand, actually believed all the hype about how America could do anything it wanted. In the end, against both the new "enemy" in the Middle East, and the old "enemy" in Russia, the neocon overreach has resulted in the rest of the world not taking America seriously anymore.
I hope they don't nuke somebody just to get even.

Olympic spirit

Canadian cyclist Martin Gilbert has the true Olympic spirit.
He had to train in his garage, and now his bike is broken:

. . . He wouldn't be in this position if any of the three Canadian manufacturers he contacted before leaving had only agreed to supply him with a bike.
The best they offered was to sell him one at cost, which would still set him back several thousand dollars.
British cyclists, in the meantime, arrived at the Olympics with prototypes designed by Formula One racing team McLaren . . .
Along with teammate Zach Bell of Watson Lake, Yukon, Gilbert's selection to the national team was contested before the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada.
He only got the final go ahead a month before the Games began.
While waiting for the verdict, the Chateauguay, Que., native trained in his garage and at a exterior velodrome in Bromont, Que., about 85 kilometres south of Montreal.

Canada was too cheap to get him a good bike. And he trained IN HIS GARAGE!
But he's in China for us. And he's still proud to represent us there.
Oh, if anyone deserves a medal at these Games . . .

They should be ashamed of themselves

The United States should apologize to the rest of the world for treating innocent people this way.
We can laugh all we like about Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh and their anti-immigration rants, but the way the United States is treating immigrants now is shameful and disgusting.
"Give me your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", yeah sure, and we'll treat them like dirt and throw them in jail and let them die.
Olbermann said that what Homeland Security did to Hui Lui Ng was murder. He was right.

“ ‘I don’t have much time to live,’ ” his sister said he told her in a call from Rhode Island Hospital in Providence. She said the doctor warned that if the family came to visit, immigration authorities might transfer her brother. Three days passed before the warden approved a family visit, she said, after demanding their Social Security numbers. Late in the afternoon of Aug. 5, as Mr. Ng lay on a gurney, hours away from death and still under guard, she and his wife held up his sons, 3 and 1. “Brother, don’t worry, don’t be afraid,” Ms. Zhao said, repeating her last words to him. “They are not going to send you back to the facility again. Brother, you are free now.”

Olympic priorities for 2012

Canada always debates its priorities for Olympic funding but now I have the answer -- pick the two sports which have finals on the first days of the Olympics! Then in 2012 Canada will win a medal early and we won't have to endure any more "the sky is falling" commentary like this -- and wouldn't that be great for all of us!

Great line of the day

Kos writes about Bayh? Kaine?

I'm starting to suspect that the Evan Bayh boomlet is designed to make Tim Kaine look better by comparison, because really, Evan Bayh is about the only Democrat who makes Tim Kaine look palatable by comparison as Obama's veep. [editorial insertion: well, no, not really]
I'm trying to derive some hope from the fact the Obama campaign plans on releasing the name of the veep via text message. Because if people get that message and it says "Bayh" or "Kaine", too many of those phones will be thrown out the window of moving cars, or against the wall, or into a lake. And really, would Obama really do that to his supporters?

Simple answers to simple questions

POGGE writes about the Ethics Committee hearings into the Conservative national advertising taxpayer reimbursement scheme:

. . . the Conservatives are hoping that by turning the committee hearings into a media circus they can detract from the legitimacy of the proceedings if it's determined that the Conservatives cheated in the last election. And in simple terms, that's what this is about: did the Conservatives cheat?

Well, that's just too easy.
Yes. Yes, they did.
This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

They paid Dyer in cash?

Alison alerts us that Gwynne Dyer did not rip off Canadians:

I was asked to go to Cuba in early 2007 by the Department of Foreign Affairs. . . . I didn't get paid for the work, but the Canadian embassy gave me $3,000 in cash to cover my travel costs. I never applied for a grant, and I never heard of PromArt until last week, but obviously some wily accountant at Foreign Affairs took the money for the Cuban project out of the wrong pocket. Stephen Harper's ministers just can't keep control of their departments.

Now, this struck me as an odd way for the embassy to act, actually. Governments simply do not pay people lump sums in cash -- the auditors don't like it at all. They issue cheques, for which someone has to write a cheque requisition, based on actual travel expense claims or invoices.
The only time I can recall that governments have given out cash to people is when they are pulling a fast one.

Predictions

Russia orders halt to war in Georgia:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a halt to military operations in Georgia on Tuesday but Tbilisi cast doubt on the announcement, saying Moscow was still bombing towns and villages.

There have been a number of news stories in the past few days quoting Georgia's president and generals about how much Georgian terrority the Russians are occupying, which are then contradicted by reporters who aren't seeing massive advances by Russian tanks or military.
Though the tone of the coverage is "poor, poor Georgia vs mean old Russia", I think in the end the world will conclude that the thousands of civilian deaths, the millions in property damage and the tens of thousands of refugees are mostly Georgia's own fault, for deciding to mercilessly attack and bomb their own people, without giving them any warning or any chance to negotiate, surrender, or evacuate.

Georgia says dozens of civilians were killed when Russian bombs hit two blocks of flats in Gori. Reporters saw casualties at the scene, but the death toll has not been independently confirmed.
...Reports from the UNHCR and Russian media speak of total devastation in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali, with few buildings left intact after intense bombardments and street fighting.
Russian television showed pictures of a heavily damaged hospital in Tskhinvali, with wounded civilians lying in makeshift wards in the basement. ...
Russian officials say more than 1,500 civilians were killed in Tskhinvali after Georgia launched an all-out assault last Friday, using heavy artillery and tanks. The casualty toll cannot be independently verified . . .
More than 30,000 civilians fled the fighting in Tskhinvali, Russian officials say. Most of them went to North Ossetia, which is part of the Russian Federation.
Several thousand fled south into Georgia and up to 12,000 people are estimated to be displaced within South Ossetia, officials say.

I think we will also find out that Georgia has been exaggerating the extent of the Russian advance, to justify its own military retreat, and to try to frighten the US into sending the 82nd Airborne for military support. And I think we can depend on the Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, to continue to be an inflammatory blowhard.

Yeah

A conservative makes a comment on an Obama news story:

Here comes the gigantic liberal media guilt trip. If you don't vote for Obama, then you must be a racist.

Works for me.

Airport woes

James Kunstler describes the journey of the damned when he recently flew from Colorado to New York. He makes this astute observation:

...a lot of this trouble was weather-related. But it was greatly aggravated by the extreme shortage of United Airlines ground employees. There are just no gate agents around. So, when delays occur, there is nobody around to re-book passengers. The majority of Customer Service desks are shuttered, and the few open ones have lines a quarter-mile long, so that even if you got on line, you'd miss the next available flight before anybody re-booked you.
The result of all this is a climate of anxiety, helplessness, and despair that makes air travel a miserable experience. You never know whether your flight will take off. The few ground employees actually on duty lie incessantly about the reasons for delays and cancellations (or say they have no information). If you get on a flight, you never know whether you will make your connection, or whether your connection will be there (if an actual plane will get there from someplace else).
The overall effect of US aviation these days is of life during wartime.
I'm quite sure it's not going to get better.

And that's what happens when airlines lay off staff incessantly.
In my own flight experience, I have learned that it is simply not at all worthwhile to expect the gate staff or the stewards on a flight will be able to give you any information about your connection -- they usually don't know, and if they do tell you anything, it turns out to be wrong anyway.
Or it got changed while you were on the way down.
The only thing you can do is reduce your carry-ons to the absolute minimum, wear running shoes, and sit on an aisle seat as far forward as you can. Then you barge out of the plane as soon it lands, knocking children and little old ladies aside as you go, and rudely interrupt the gate staff at your arrival gate in the hope that they MIGHT be able to give you the gate number for your connection.
But don't get your hopes up...

They did it again

Jerome at Daily Kos says the warmongers have lost yet another war:

Neocons are people that see danger everywhere and seem to crave military solutions in all cases. They endlessly blather about how we need to stand firm against bullies or other threats (Russia being near the top of the list), and protect our brave allies on the front lines, and along with them, democracy, freedom and our honor. They mock cowardly European who think appeasement (read - any diplomacy) might have a chance. They fuel conflicts and perpetually tout military options.
And yet, whenever given the opportunity to stand up to their words (and sent other people to fight, of course, they don't do that themselves), the results are surprisingly poor.
After the catastrophic invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the neocons have just lost a third war, in Georgia.

Actually, its the fourth - Jerome could have included Lebanon in 2006.

The Ossetia War

If you're wondering what is going on between Georgia and Russia in South Ossetia, check Robert Farley's series of posts analyzing the events.
Bottom line -- Georgia bit off more than it could chew (perhaps due to neocon encouragement) and gave Putin an opening to throw his weight around.

Olympic rant

I've added CBC Olympics to the blogroll, just to make it easier to find.
But every Olympics I get frustrated with CBC's coverage. Here I am ranting already and it is only day two.
Why, oh why, are they virtually incapable of doing an actual sports show? You know, the kind of show that sports networks like TSN and The Score do every day, where they have knowledgeable announcers who summarize what happened while they visuals cover the most important highlights of the game? Nope, for that, I have to rely on Newsworld's once-a-night half hour, which in my time zone starts at 5:30 so chances are I'll mostly miss it.
Why, oh why, are they incapable of announcing a schedule of what happened that day and what they will be covering? CBC thinks we've all got five hours a night, every night, to plunk down in front of the TV and mindlessly watch whatever bits and pieces of events they throw at us, in whatever chaotic order they chose, bouncing us from the freestyle relay to soccer with a brief pause at the parallel bars and a quick shot of some unnamed athlete actually putting in a gold medal performance at some event but they don't tell us what, exactly...
Did you know a tiny Chinese woman won a gold medal today in some weightlifting event? I saw her performance twice, for about 30 seconds, with no commentary about what she was lifting and whether it was a world record or not. And there were some shooting medals being won somewhere, but CBC couldn't be bothered covering that event. And some sailing was going on too...
God forbid they should actually throw a graphic up on the screen showing us an actual nightly schedule, like a list of the sports they are going to cover that night and the time they are going to be on. Instead, we get this endless "Coming up, women's swimming!" kind of stuff and even then we don't actually get to the pool for another hour or more.
And why, oh why can't they give us a five-minute highlight reel every hour, so we could check in and be sure of catching the most memorable performances? I think they won't do it because they worry that's all people would watch and the sponsors would be upset.
And God forbid they should upset the sponsors! If they did, why, then we wouldn't get the chance to see the umpteenth iteration of that Royal Bank commercial about some red-haired woman -- you know, the one we're already so tired of that we immediately switch the channel when it comes on . . .

Great line of the day

From Avedon Carol:

I disagree completely with the theory that he [Obama] can't hit back. If that's really true (and this was always going to be a question in this race), he shouldn't have run for president now, either. We need a winner, and if you support a candidate who you believe has to throw away winning strategies just because he's black, you shouldn't have supported him. Either he can play all-out or he shouldn't be in the big leagues. Meanwhile, he proved to be adept in the primaries at spreading nasty memes while mostly keeping his own fingerprints off of them, and I'm sure Axlerod hasn't forgotten how to do that.