Various Items

1. Rush Limbaugh is one ignorant motherfucker:

Rush Limbaugh baselessly asserted of Sen. Barack Obama: "Do you know he has not one shred of African-American blood?" Limbaugh continued: "He's Arab. You know, he's from Africa. He's from Arab parts of Africa.... [H]e's not African-American. The last thing that he is is African-American."

Millions of people actually listen to this idiot. First off, Obama isn't from any part of Africa. He was born in Hawaii, to a white Kansan mother and a Kenyan father. Second, Kenya is not an "Arab part of Africa", and Barack Obama is not an "Arab".

Here is a basic geography lesson for anyone stupid enough to listen to and believe the likes of Rush Limbaugh:

Kenya is located in Sub-Saharan Africa, just south of Ethiopia and southwest of Somalia. The people are largely descended from Bantu tribes that expanded over much of central and southern Africa during the past several thousand years, and are, in very broad terms, part of the same racial group as the descendents of West African slaves that make up much of today's African American minority. They speak Swahili, a Bantu language that is not in any way related to Arabic or any other Semitic language.

Perhaps that's too many foren' soundin' werds for Limbaugh's admirers to understand, but I did the best I could.

2. While Joe Biden is out...being Joe Biden, Obama is getting remarkably little support from the big guns of the Democratic party. Where is Hillary? Where is Al Gore? Where is Bill Clinton?

3. A pretty scary story shedding more light on the Taliban's attack on French paratroops last month implies that the guerillas are refining their tactics, and becoming more deadly. 2008 is already the deadliest year so far for coalition forces. Meanwhile, Pakistan is shooting at US unmanned aircraft. Well that's just great.

4. The numbers for our election haven't budged too much. Maybe that's because we're just not all that excited. Personally, I was pretty happy to get my voter identification card in the mail. That was exciting.

MSM, where art thou?

So McCain just flip-flopped on Afghanistan, basically adopting the position that Obama has held for months (sending more troops there), but you wouldn't know it from watching the news.



Honestly, this has what the entire campaign has been like so far. It's absolutely maddening.

Middle of the week mini-roundup

I know, it's a strange time to be doing one of my trademarked roundups, but the alternative would be to write four or five little posts, which I view as cheating.

1. It seems that the New Yorker article about Obama was actually pretty damned interesting. Nate from FiveThirtyEight recaps:

Ryan Lizza's 15,000-word epic by no means paints the most flattering picture of
Barack Obama. His Obama is remarkably intelligent and very level-headed, but
also understands every lever of power, and is ambitious to the point of being
ruthless.Well, no shit he's ambitious. For any American to go from a relatively
unprivileged childhood (or a privileged one for that matter) to be on the
doorstep of the Preisdency by the time he's age 46 requires a perfect storm of
luck, intelligence, and ambition. Obama has ample amounts of each.

But the article is more remarkable for revealing what Obama is not.

One, he's not some Pierre Trudeau type of academic. Obama became interested
in politics very early, and seemed to have some keen understanding of his upside
potential. The sometimes languid pace of academia was not really compatible with
that.

Two, Obama was not corrupt. He knew how to navigate the rules of the
system. But he didn't cheat the system. Obama succeeded, for instance, in
disqualifying Alice Palmer from the ballot in the Illinois State Senate because
she faked hundreds of signatures to get her name on it, and then Obama called
her out. That's maybe not the most mannerly, tea-and-crumpets way of doing
things. But Obama didn't cheat. Palmer had cheated. What Obama did was to
exploit some of the inefficiencies of the Chicago machine system. Tony Rezko
donates, though legal channels, a bunch of money because he expects you to
behave like a typical machine politician and do him illegal favors? What to do?
Well, you take his money. And then you don't do him the favors.

I'll have to give it a read, but 15,000 words is too many to handle right now.

2. I also missed this during my brief break from blogging and the internet:

'Heroic' fighting repels Afghan militants

Apparently there was a big huge battle in Afghanistan that resulted in 9 US dead and 15 wounded, as well as dozens and dozens of Taliban killed, as hundreds of militants attempted to capture a coalition outpost in eastern Afghanistan. This was the deadliest single day for US forces in that country in 3 years.

If the Taliban is able to carry out an operation involving hundreds of men and mount a credible attack against a US military base, I'd say that means the situation is not improving.

3. Ooh, the plot thickens. An expert hired by Stephen Harper says there isn't enough evidence to conclude that Tom Zytaruk's interview tape was doctored, contradicting the others that Harper got to examine it. I gotta say, Harper is really pushing this lawsuit. I guess it's possible that he simply doesn't remember what he said about the Cadman deal, but he's playing it hard the other way.

4. Big financial worries on Wall Street, amid impending bailouts of major mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and ominious comments from Ben Bernanke. And an idiotic run on IndyMac isn't helping things. What part of "deposit insurance" do these people not understand? And for those who do understand it, what kind of moron keeps their entire life savings in deposits at a US bank? In Canada, it's different. The chances of one of our chartered banks going poof is practically zero (the World Economic Forum rated our banks the second safest in the world, behind only Switzerland). But in the unregulated and free-wheeling US financial sector, don't you dare trust all your money to one bank.

Anyways, bad shit all around.

5. What is with all these snooty New York critics bashing The Dark Knight? The film currently has four negative reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, all of them courtesy of New York magazine critics. This one faults it for not being a masterpiece. This one faults it for being too serious. This one says it's "noisy and sadistic". This one thinks it's too violent and "isn't necessarily fun".

Jesus Christ, if you don't want a sadistic, noisy, violent, and serious near-masterpiece, go watch Space Chimps, you pretentious fucks. Another recurring theme with these negative reviews is that it isn't enough like Tim Burton's movies. The last reviewer even says this:

In brief, Warner Bros. has continued to drain the poetry, fantasy, and comedy
out of Tim Burton’s original conception for “Batman” (1989), completing the job
of coarsening the material into hyperviolent summer action spectacle.

Well I don't give a shit about "Tim Burton's original conception for Batman", because it was a very flawed conception. Fun and entertaining, but I don't even put it in the same league as Batman Begins. The critics sure liked the pretty set design, but beyond that, Jack Nicholson had too much screentime, the action was clumsy, and the Joker killing Bruce's parents was just stupid. And by Returns, it was clear that Burton had no respect for the source material, preferring to apply his own quirky style and sensibilities to Batman's world.

Check out Berardinelli for a real review of the movie written by someone who isn't a hack. More reviews should be flooding in pretty soon.

6. I think I'll wait for the paperback, but The Dark Side by Jane Mayer looks really interesting. It appears to be an in-depth examination of the US torture regime that developed after 9/11. Must be a disturbing and anger-inducing read.

The mother of all roundups

I hope everyone had a nice Canada Day!

There's a whole bunch of things to mention today that don't quite warrant their own posts.

1. First, watch this, if you can stomach it.



I mean, I expect this from Fox, since they've long since descended into self-parody. But what excuse do CNN and MSNBC have? Disgusting.

2. Christopher Hitchens had himself waterboarded. His conclusion? Yup, it's torture. No shit, Sherlock. Click the link for the full article and video. I'm going to give him props for being a braver man than most of the right-wing blowhards who justify torture with their bizarre Jack Bauer fantasies. He makes all the right points about the utter senselessness and immorality of torturing terrorist suspects.

I like Hitch; some of his politics are just wacky and distasteful, but I can't help but admire his bluntness and utter lack of decorum. This is him discussing Jerry Falwell's death on Hannity and Colmes.

3. More whining from the crybabies in the McCain campaign:

Last night, Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) was on MSNBC, and was asked about the
right’s flap over Clark. Webb thought this was much ado about nothing, suggested
McCain “calm down,” and said it’s time to “get the politics out of the
military.”

And in response, the McCain campaign is, once again, outraged by this
“attack” on McCain’s military service. McCain spokesperson Brian
Rogers told Greg Sargent:

“If you didn’t think this was a coordinated attack on John McCain’s
credentials before, it’s clear now that it is. Barack Obama’s surrogates are
telling the McCain campaign to “calm down” about attacks on his military record?
Seriously? Now somehow Wes Clark’s attacks are John McCain’s fault? It’s absurd.
If Barack Obama can’t control his own surrogate operation, how can he be trusted to run the country?”

I find it hard to imagine that Rogers even believes this nonsense
himself, highlighting why it’s a mistake to keep going to the same well over and
again. Not only did Clark not coordinate with Obama — the most controversial
remark in Clark’s interview originated with Bob Schieffer, not the Obama
campaign — but Webb didn’t attack McCain.

Is this what we're in for? Months of the McCain campaign whining and hyperventilating over everything?

4. This is more like it:

Obama takes a stand against gay-marriage ban

Also, today's statement on Wes Clark:

“I guess my question is why, given all the vast numbers of things that we’ve got
to work on, that that would be a top priority of mine?” Obama said, responding
to a reporter who asked the candidate why he hadn’t called on Wesley Clark to
apologize for his remarks yesterday. “I’m happy to have all sorts of
conversations about how we deal with Iraq and what happens with Iran, but the
fact that somebody on a cable show or on a news show like Gen. Clark said
something that was inartful about Sen. McCain I don’t think is probably the
thing that is keeping Ohioans up at night."

Much better. I'm big enough to admit I may have been overly hasty in my judgement of Obama's "move to the center", but let's keep him honest.

5. For the second month in a row, US and coalition casualties were higher in Afghanistan than Iraq. Wow. I guess that means you should defeat one insurgency before you start fighting another one, huh?

6. I've seen Batman: Gotham Knight, the animated tie-in to the Nolan Bat-films (don't ask me how I've seen it). And as much as it pains me to say this, don't waste your time or money on it. Of the six episodes included on the disc, only two are really any good. The others are boring, poorly animated, and totally out of synch with the universe established in Batman Begins. I think it would have been a much better idea to make a single coherent animated movie, by one director, one writer, and one set of animators.

7. Finally, Brad Reed examines the 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency. It's one of those laugh or cry situations.

Narrowing down the Bush administration's various debacles to a mere 10 was no easy feat. In fact, I expect that many people will express dismay that their least favorite moment was left off the list. "How could commuting Scooter Libby's sentence not even make the top 10??!!" I can hear some of you shrieking already. Well, I'll tell you. Essentially, I tried to rate each Bush disaster by two main criteria: its body count and its damage to the country's reputation. So while Bush's awkward groping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel may be personally humiliating to everyone, it doesn't have the same heft as, say, the Iraq War.

But for those of you who insist on seeing your least favorite moment get its due, here is list of every honorable mention I could come up with: warrantless wiretapping; Valerie Plame; Scooter Libby's sentence commuted; Bush believes Rafael Palmeiro is innocent; soldiers face neglect at Walter Reed; signing statements; the Kyoto treaty ripped up; loyalty oaths; the fake turkey; a staged teleconference with troops, staged FEMA press conference, extraordinary rendition, support for junk science; endorsement of neo-creationist "intelligent design"; inaction against global warming; record oil prices; record budget deficits; record trade deficits; record number of Americans without health insurance; two recessions; no-bid contracts; bin Laden still at large; the Federal Marriage Amendment; stem cell research vetoed; waterboarding ban vetoed; "Last throes"; "Old Europe"; "It's hard work"; "Bring it on"; "Yo, Blair!"; "I'm the decider"; "I'm the commander guy"; "I'm a war president"; "This is the guy who tried to kill my dad"; "So?"; "Let the Eagle Soar"; John Bolton; Kenny Boy; Harriet Miers; John Roberts; Sam Alito; Blair talks Bush out of bombing al-Jazeera; Cheney shoots some guy in the face; the Military Commissions Act; Jose Padilla arrested and held without charge or access to counsel; endless tax cuts for the rich; let's waste a shitload of money by sending people to Mars and let's hire some Heritage Foundation staffers to rebuild Iraq.

The whole thing is worth a read, but I started to feel sick to my stomach by the end of it. Not to disparage Americans or anything, but how can this coming election not be a massive landslide? How much evidence of Republican misrule do you need?

I'm sure all my Canadian readers remember the sponsorship scandal. We all remember how that was the major contributing factor in Paul Martin's downfall. And he wasn't even PM at the time! That's what I call accountability; we bring down a government over the previous government's sins. And those sins were downright insignificant in comparison to this laundry list of Bush fuck-ups.

Our precarious position in Afghanistan

The Taliban made the news yesterday, as they and other militants seemed to be closing in on Peshawar, an important city in northwest Pakistan. The provincial government is now considering arming the locals as a first line of defense, and the Pakistani army is also fighting back, but it can't be very encouraging that the Taliban felt strong enough to even attempt a takeover.

Meanwhile, there has been little letup in the violence in Afghanistan. A new US report credits the Taliban for their "resilience", and predicts a possible increase in attacks during the year to come.

Without knowing all the facts on the ground, it's hard to say, but it sure seems as though things are going backwards in Afghanistan. Few of the underlying problems seem to have been solved; the central government and national army remain ineffectual, the poppy crop was bigger than ever last year, and there still seems to be too few foreign troops to clamp down on the Taliban.

As I said last month, I do believe Canada has a role to play in Afghanistan. I think it is a worthy cause, and the Afghan people deserve a new beginning. Unlike Iraq, the mission there is characterized by a truly multi-national force. The problem is that this multi-national force is not nearly large enough to accomplish what needs to be accomplished.

Our 2500 soldiers in and around Kandahar have responsibility for a vast region that is infested with insurgents and other troubles. Kandahar was the birthplace of the Taliban, and they retain a base of support there. I have full confidence in the abilities of our soldiers to do their jobs, but when confronted with the facts on the ground, one could be forgiven for thinking the entire enterprise hopeless.

This page has a very nice rundown of important statistics, graphs, and maps showing insurgent activity and progress on humanitarian/reconstruction projects. What do they tell us? They tell us that vast regions of the country are still classified as "extreme risk", that opium cultivation has never been higher, and that casualties for Afghan security forces have risen each year since 2002.

I think it's fairly obvious that a much greater international committment to Afghanistan is needed if any substantial progress is to be made, not just in terms of military forces, but also financial and humanitarian assistance, since much of the violence is ultimately fueled by the country's poverty and general lack of education among its people. It's a mistake to think we are only fighting the Taliban; they are but a sympton of what 30 years of constant war have done to Afghanistan. We are fighting to repair the damage of those 30 years, and that's no easy task.

Canada in Afghanistan

The US commander in Afghanistan calls the Taliban's spring offensive a "myth", but nevertheless, US and NATO forces continue to take casualties.

The most recent Canadian death was Cpl. Michael Starker from Calgary, killed just west of Kandahar on May 6.

For non-Canadians, it may surprise you to learn that we actually have the highest casualty rate of any coalition military force in Afghanistan. We've suffered 83 deaths since 2002, most of them since the expansion of the Kandahar mission to a full-time committment of 2,500 troops in 2006. This is mostly due to our presence in one of the most dangerous regions of Afghanistan. Kandahar was the home of the Taliban and remains a hotbed of militant support.

Predictably, the Afghan mission has become a very hot topic in our politics. The Conservatives support the mission, as do the Liberals, but there is a growing sentiment that our troops should be redeployed out of the combat zone while other NATO countries such as France and Germany pick up the slack. There has been very limited progress on that front, mostly vague promises and symbolic measures, though France has promised to deploy more troops to eastern Afghanistan, thus freeing up some American forces who can then aid us.

It's worth noting that for decades, the Canadian public and government viewed the military largely as a peacekeeping force, and thus, its peacemaking capabilities steadily deteriorated. The Conservatives have injected some new funds into the Forces, but there are still many deficiencies to overcome. And the Afghan mission has really sparked a public debate over Canada's role in the world. Should we be fighting wars? Is this what Canada is about?

My opinion is that the Afghan mission is legitimate, unlike the war in Iraq. We have an obligation to the people of Afghanistan to finish the job we started, and to get the country on its feet and making progress toward economic development. But we have to recognize the basic fact that poppy cultivation (leading to heroin production) is the central obstacle blocking a peaceful resolution. The warlords depend on it, as do most Afghan farmers. If we destroy their poppy crops, they see us as their enemy and join the Taliban.

A major international committment is needed to solve this problem; Afghans need alternative means of making money, and this will come only after the basic needs of a functioning society are in place: basic sanitation, disease control, universal primary education, adequate food and water supplies, well maintained roads, and a competent government that is accountable to the people. And the deplorable oppression of women must end as well, but societal transformation will only come as a by-product of economic transformation. Afghanistan needs a hell of a lot more aid then they are getting. Without that, any military progress we make is like pissing into the wind.

UPDATE: There is an ongoing blog at the Globe and Mail by Katherine O'Neill (on the ground in Kandahar) about Canada's mission in Afghanistan; it can be accessed here:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/afghanistanblog

Also of interest:

Tories grilled on defence plan