Thanks, Massachusetts

So something has happened to once again jar me out of my blogging slumber. Bear with me, because this isn't going to be pretty.

There was a special election held in the state of Massachusetts this evening, to decide who would take over for the now-deceased Senator Edward Kennedy. Due to the Democratic candidate's inability to tell a Red Sock from a Yankee, and her general lack of campaigning skills, this Senate seat now belongs to some Republican yahoo who looks a lot like a younger Mitt Romney and has posed nude on at least one occasion. But, to his credit, he's a real 'murikan, and has promised to be tough on terrorists and to vote against any and all attempts to reform the healthcare system, which is all you really need to be a Republican senator these days.

Anyway, this will leave the Dems with a 59 vote majority in the Senate, which in any other epoch of American politics would be more than enough to get quite a bit done. After all, Bush never had this type of legislative majority, but nevertheless got nearly everything he wanted during his administration. But given that the Republican party will filibuster any and all legislation coming from Democrats (including declarations that Hitler was a bad person, or that kicking puppies is mean), and also considering that the Dems have been, at best, ineffectual with a 60 vote majority, it's quite likely that they will be entirely useless from now until the likely ass-kicking that they will suffer at the end of this year. The crazies on the Right are smelling blood.

I think the events of the past year (and really, the past decade) amply demonstrate that the US political system is hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of our time. You have one party that is weak, torn by ideological divisions, and largely beholden to the concerns of corporations and special interests, while the other party is simply insane. Obama is a huge improvement over the last occupant of the White House, but he hasn't shown the decisive leadership necessary to overcome this sad state of affairs.

Health care is a great example. Without dramatic health care reform, the US will continue to be an embarrassing exception among First World nations that guarantee quality health care to all their citizens. Health care costs will continue to skyrocket, enriching insurance and drug companies while bankrupting ordinary citizens, and eventually, the US government itself. Rather than giving up altogether on health care, the House may still pass the Senate health care reform compromise, but that hardly qualifies as "dramatic", and will do little to solve the larger problems the US faces on this front.

And we can pretty much forget about anything meaningful being done about climate change or regulating the financial sector or restoring civil liberties or transitioning to a greener economy or...I could go on. The one area where Obama will still have some room to maneuver is foreign policy, but that will make little difference when it comes to the long-term fiscal and social stability of our neighbor to the south.

I wish I could come to a more positive conclusion, but unless the Democrats man up and surprise me, or the Republicans finally come to their senses, and stop being so damned crazy and nihilistic, I don't see one. In future histories of the decline of the American empire, 2009 will surely be viewed as a huge missed opportunity to right the wrongs of the "lost decade" of the 2000s. Maybe it will take President Palin, a military dicatorship, and total economic collapse for Americans to finally come to their senses, but by that point it will be too late.

Update:

Yes.

The Democrats in Massachusetts nominated a horrendous candidate who proceeded to run a somnolent campaign (or non-campaign) that presumed victory and excited exactly no one. The Republicans were highly motivated even though Scott Brown is far from great shakes himself. So we're back to the pre-2008 electoral dynamics: Republicans vote, Democrats don't. And why would they? What kind of rallying cry could Coakley have used? "Get out to vote! Protect that watered-down embarrassment of a health care 'reform' bill! You know, the one we let the insurance companies write!" Something tells me that would not have worked. It is plainly obvious that Democratic candidates can't expect success without the voters who showed up in 2008, and they're not going to show up unless they're highly motivated by distaste for the GOP (which they aren't at the moment, given the results from 2006-08) or enthusiasm for the Congressional agenda. What we're seeing is not a schizophrenic electorate giving the GOP eight years to screw things up and expecting the Democrats to fix it all in nine months. We're seeing that nine months is more than enough time for the modern Democratic Party to disgust most of its base.

And this isn't unfair either:

In the end, however, Obama will get exactly what he deserves. He took office with all the enthusiasm in the world behind him and he proceeded to govern like an Eisenhower Republican. Like Clinton, Obama will probably survive re-election in 2012 because of his personal appeal and the pitiful field of challengers. But his brief window of opportunity to seize the initiative and take control of the Congressional agenda has passed.

Of course, it doesn't help that some Democrats are already falling all over themselves in declaring defeat. So typical .

Why We Don't Torture

Okay, I'm back, but just temporarily. There are many subjects I'd like to comment on, from the economy, to the performance of the Obama administration thus far, to the BSG finale, but there's one thing above all that has awoken me from my blogging slumber and compelled me to say something.

The decision by the Obama administration to release memos showing the extent of the Bush torture regime (and I won't shy away from the word "torture") has ignited a debate in the United States over whether the perpetrators should be prosecuted. To me, it seems self-evident that actions in clear violation of domestic US law, international law, and various treaties including the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention Against Torture (signed by the US in 1984), should be prosecuted, and those responsible brought to justice. When someone commits crimes in a liberal democracy, they are supposed to be held accountable by the justice system. At least in theory. Currently on display in the American media and government is a bizarre aversion to any form of accountability for crimes committed by the political elites of that country. John McCain even compared prosecutions for torture to something that only happens in "banana republics", as opposed to, you know, torture only happening in banana republics. But that is a whole other post, and I'll leave it to Glenn Greenwald and other bloggers to document the shameful goings-ons. In any case, there were some positive signs from yesterday's Presidential press conference, wherein Obama used unambiguous language describing waterboarding as "torture". This may indicate a shift in his position on prosecutions, but we shall see.

Part of what makes the “debate” over torture so exasperating is the way that some very simple facts get lost or ignored by one side (the torture apologists). The facts are that the United States waterboarded various “high value” prisoners, including Khalid Sheikh Mohamed and Abu Zubaydah, dozens of times. Was it to stop a ticking bomb? To gain crucial intelligence on impending Al Qaeda plots?

It’s important to recognize that torture has seldom ever been used as a means of extracting usable intelligence from terrorists or prisoners of war, and the current arguments in favor of such a practice are as new as they are morally bankrupt. From the Spanish Inquisition to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, torture has been used throughout history as a means of extracting false confessions from political prisoners or as a blunt tool of repression, not for gathering usable intelligence against terrorists. For this reason alone, the argument that the apologists use (that using torture is somehow necessary for the national security of the United States) is both ignorant and unprecedented in a modern liberal democracy, none of which, until now, have had any reason to sanction such a barbaric practice.

Let us return now to the documented cases of waterboarding. Upon their capture, both suspects were claimed to be very high level members of Al Qaeda’s organization, deeply involved in both the planning and execution of terrorist attacks. Looking back, it has become clear that these claims were highly inflated.

Of the two, it is likely that Mohammed was the more important figure, implicated in a number of terrorist activities even before 9/11. When he was captured, the Bush Administration authorized the CIA to use waterboarding on Mohammed, ostensibly to gain intelligence on any terrorist plots he had knowledge of. After being waterboarded on at least five separate occasions in March 2003, Mohammed “admitted” to his involvement in literally dozens of different plots, including everything from plans to attack NATO headquarters in Europe to the assassination of Jimmy Carter. Though it is far from clear how many of these plots ever amounted to anything more than wistful daydreams of Mohammed and his fellow jihadists, the United States government nevertheless sent agents and security personnel all around the country and the world in response to these imagined threats, and the Bush administration trumpeted their role in disrupting “dozens of terrorist attacks” thanks to their interrogations of Mohammed. More importantly, Mohammed admitted to being the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, though given the obviously unreliable nature of intelligence gained through torture, even this fact is suspect.

Abu Zubaydah was captured almost a year before Mohammed, and similarly, the Bush Administration claimed that he was a high ranking member of Al Qaeda with knowledge of terrorist plots and operations. And like Mohammed, he was waterboarded multiple times. Looking back, it seems quite likely that Zubaydah was nothing like the central figure that he was purported to be. His specialty in Al Qaeda was not planning attacks, but rather logistics, such as the transportation of the wives and children of terrorist leaders. Additionally, he suffered from various psychological disorders, and wrote a diary from the viewpoints of several split personalities. But like the interrogations of Mohammed, the admissions gained from the torture of Zubaydah were taken seriously by the American intelligence community, and resulted in significant waste of resources through the investigations of and responses to these non-existent plots.

It is important to note that neither Zubaydah nor Mohammed were tortured immediately after their capture. Though the two subjects were evasive and hostile, traditional interrogation methods (which included building a rapport between subject and interrogator, and “good cop, bad cop”) were initially used, and seemed to be producing results. The decision to torture the two suspects came not from any direct knowledge of a “ticking bomb” scenario (a common excuse made by torture apologists), but rather from the suspicions of US officials that these men knew much more than they were letting on, and from the Bush administration’s desire to trumpet successes in their war on terror. This is worth restating: these men were tortured to confirm the pre-existing suspicions of their torturers, which is qualitatively no different from torturing to extract a false confession. In both scenarios, torture is used to arrive at a pre-determined outcome. It is very dangerous to confuse this scenario with valid intelligence gathering, as torture will eventually compel the subject to provide whatever answers the interrogator wants to hear, and not the truth.

Additionally, there are strong indications that the Bush administration (notably Cheney and Rumsfeld) applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use these harsher techniques as part of their larger goal of tying the government of Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda. Where no evidence of a link was being found, these officials demanded that interrogators produce it. Yet again, torture was being used to produce a pre-determined outcome, not to reveal some crucial piece of information that would stop an impending attack. And predictably, this produced faulty information that was used to help justify a war against Iraq, most notably in the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who, after being tortured and deducing what his torturers wanted to hear, made wild claims about Iraq and Al Qaeda collaborating on biological and chemical weapons training.

These cases are merely the most extreme examples of state-sanctioned torture and prisoner abuse, but a pervasive system of abuse was implemented for the rest of the captured “enemy combatants”, including those held in Guantanamo Bay, Bagram air base in Afghanistan, and numerous CIA secret prisons spread throughout Europe. Detainees in these prisons have been routinely subjected to forced nakedness, induced hypothermia, dousing with cold water, sleep deprivation (both with harsh lighting and the playing of loud music), stress positions, isolation, and complete audio-visual deprivation, all of which are taken almost directly from the Soviet playbook. There were more creative techniques used at Abu Ghraib prison, including sexual humiliation and the use of dogs in a threatening manner, and although seemingly unauthorized by the highest levels of government, it is not hard to see the logical progression from what was authorized to what was not.

Almost invariably, professional intelligence personnel and experienced interrogators have denounced the use of torture by the US government, with its defenders reduced to bloviating talk radio/Fox news hosts, and right-wing politicians with no professional expertise in the subject. Here's a description of a visit to Iraq by Stephen Kleinman, formerly part of the Air Force's SERE program, designed to train US military personnel to resist torture:

Kleinman, a senior officer at the Air Force Academy where SERE training was conducted, was part of a team invited to Iraq in 2003 to observe interrogations and offer advice. He said he witnessed several episodes in which young troops sought to overcome a lack of training in interrogations by blindly using harsh SERE tactics on Iraqi detainees. Many of the interrogations took place in a former ammunition bunker, which he described as "underground, cold and dark."

In one instance, he said, a detainee was forced to kneel under a spotlight, flanked by guards toting iron bars, while interrogators shouted questions at him. Each answer automatically elicited a hard slap across the face -- a pattern that was repeated without pause for 30 minutes.

When Kleinman intervened to stop the questioning, the interrogators appeared baffled. "They didn't seem to think it was a problem," he said.

A second detainee interrogated in Kleinman's presence was subjected to sleep deprivation and painful stress positions. A third had all his clothes physically torn from his body and was ordered to stand continuously for 12 hours, "or until he passed out," Kleinman said.

When Kleinman complained about the practices, various Defense Department officials agreed that the techniques probably violated Geneva Conventions standards but the interrogations continued unabated, he said. By then, six months into the Iraq war, White House and Defense Department lawyers had issued legal opinions that declared the Iraqi detainees to be "unlawful enemy combatants" not covered by Geneva Conventions protections for prisoners of war.

Kleinman said the Air Force's training program was distorted into an offensive program. He noted that the harsh techniques were adapted from torture methods used by Chinese communists, and were never regarded as useful in eliciting intelligence. Instead, they break a prisoner psychologically and make him eager to say anything to stop the pain.

"That model's primary objective was to compel a prisoner to generate propaganda, not intelligence," he said.

Torture is not only immoral and illegal under US and international law, but as I hope I have demonstrated, it is also near-useless as a valid counter-terrorism tool. The debate is too often framed in false terms, with television personalities gravely pontificating about the “necessity” of real-life Jack Bauers doing the dirty work to keep their country safe, or the false dilemma of torturing a terrorist to prevent a bomb from detonating in an American city.

In fact, torture is not a necessity under any realistic circumstances, and evidence to the contrary is non-existent. There are those who claim otherwise, of course, those who claim that “enhanced interrogation” was instrumental in saving American lives. But they refuse to produce any corroborating evidence, using the typical defence that any such evidence is classified, and that releasing it would be harmful to national security. Such a defence is blatantly disingenuous, being obviously vacant yet impossible to disprove.

Taking a breather

As you may have guessed, I'm taking something of an extended timeout from blogging. Several factors have contributed to this, not least among them a new job and the stresses and lack of free time associated with it. But I've also become somewhat mentally exhausted with politics and current events (not to mention the dreary economic situation), and have lacked motivation to blog lately.

I'll probably have some more things to say at some point (likely when elections are on the way), but for now, I'm leaving the commentary to others.

So I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to read my unique take on things during these past seven months, and say goodbye for the time being. Stay safe, and don't let the world get you down.

Same old sad story

I don't really have much to say about Israel and Gaza, only that I think we've all seen this movie before. Israel will pound the shit out of some Hamas fuckheads, but in the process, kill a lot of innocent people, embittering Palestinians even more strongly against Israel, and giving Hamas and the other extremists their next wave of suicide bomber recruits. The UN and most countries not called the United States will condemn Israel with harsh words, and organizations like Amnesty International will criticize Israel for not doing enough to avoid civilian casualties, but no one is actually going to do anything about it. But Hamas will not make Gaza a "graveyard" for the Israeli army. Despite their tough talk, they are no Hezbollah, and are much better at strapping bombs to scared teenagers than they are at fighting the professional Israeli army. They understand military tactics no better than they understand human rights or religious freedom.

To be frank, I find it difficult to fully sympathize with the residents of Gaza. First, some background. This is the Gaza strip:



That scale is correct; Gaza is only 360 square km, with a population of roughly 1.5 million. It has no economy to speak of, with a per capita GDP of around $600. It is entirely dependent on Israel for electricity, and Israel and other nations for food aid. More than 60% of the population lives below the poverty line (I shudder to think what is considered "poverty" in Gaza).

Despite all this humiliating deprivation, Hamas was elected with a majority of the seats in the Palestinian parliament in 2006, and they later seized full control within Gaza, with a coalition government teetering on the brink in the West Bank.

Does Hamas promise an improvement in living conditions? An economic plan for the future? Since neither is possible without Israeli help, and Hamas refuses to even acknowledge Israel's existence as a sovereign nation, the answer is clearly no.

The problem here, as I see it, is the inability of a significant portion of the Palestinian population to accept their defeat in 1948. Until they get over that simple fact, and realize that they will never get their land back through violence, there will never be peace, and there will never be a viable Palestinian state. And if the people let them, assholes like Hamas will continue to steer Palestinian society in an entirely counter-productive direction. Instead of launching stupid little rockets at Israeli towns, the residents of Gaza should be investing in their future and trying to build a better life for themselves and their families. That's the only way out of this never-ending quagmire.

Better than standing still, but the rot runs deep

As we head into the new year, there's a lot of anxiety over where the economy is headed. According to most economists, Canada is probably facing only a mild recession, with a recovery possibly beginning within six months. Historically, bull markets after recessions lead the actual economic recovery by roughly that length of time. Investors speculate on future economic performance, not what has already happened. And the markets have indeed been optimistic over the past week or so.

This article is most likely right that while 2009 will be a positive year, we shouldn't expect a boom right away. This, I think, is the key point:

But even a modest improvement in the economy, which has been in recession since last December, could help stocks extend their recent run.

"If you're standing still, walking is a pickup of speed," said Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price Associates Inc.

Also, this:

In addition, some analysts believe the market will improve because so many investors have pulled out, leaving little room for more selling.

"Given the nasty carnage how much further risk is there?" said David Darst, chief investment strategist for Morgan Stanley's global wealth management group.

It's going to take a little longer for the credit markets to recover, with the banks still in an extremely cautious state after being burned so badly in the crisis of 2008.

And it's important to remember that the US is not out of the woods yet. They still face some very serious problems, new administration or not. That $11 trillion in national debt isn't going away just because the new President has a (D) next to his name. Nor are GM and Ford going to suddenly become competitive simply because the government threw them a few billion dollars to keep them from drowning. Nor is an economy based on people borrowing money to buy shit from China while they struggle to pay for their health insurance and ever more expensive gasoline ever going to be viable in the long run. A lot of things need to change for America's economy to be healthy again, but one of the most immediate problems is a simple lack of revenues.

Bush's tax cuts and resultant deficits have left America's government starved of cash, forced to borrow record amounts of money in order to keep their economy afloat and avoid a longer term depression. The conservative mantra of tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts was sold on the idea that they were necessary for the health of the economy. Yet the government kept spending money and the economy crashed anyway. Now that it is necessary for the government to spend money, all they can do is borrow imaginary money that will be paid back through some combination of fairy dust, heavenly manna, and magic jelly beans.

The challenge for the new US administration is going to be stimulating the economy without bankrupting the country or resorting to devaluation of the currency. Obama will need to cut some expenditures (military pork spending, Iraq) while increasing others (public works, health care, alternative energy). It's a fine line to walk, and it isn't going to be easy.

This looks like a job for...Master Legend?

This story makes me smile:

Like other real life super-heroes, Master Legend is not an orphan from a distant dying sun or the mutated product of a gamma-ray experiment gone awry. He is not an eccentric billionaire moonlighting as a crime fighter. He is, as he puts it, "just a man hellbent on battling evil." Although Master Legend was one of the first to call himself a Real Life Superhero, in recent years a growing network of similarly homespun caped crusaders has emerged across the country. Some were inspired by 9/11. If malevolent individuals can threaten the world, the argument goes, why can't other individuals step up to save it? "What is Osama bin Laden if not a supervillain, off in his cave, scheming to destroy us?" asks Green Scorpion, a masked avenger in Arizona. True to comic-book tradition, each superhero has his own aesthetic. Green Scorpion's name is derived from his desert home, from which he recently issued a proclamation to "the criminals of Arizona and beyond," warning that to continue illegal activities is to risk the "Sting of the Green Scorpion!" The Eye takes his cue from the primordial era of Detective Comics, prowling Mountain View, California, in a trench coat, goggles and a black fedora featuring a self-designed logo: the "all-seeing" Eye of Horus. Superhero — his full name — is a former wrestler from Clearwater, Florida, who wears red and blue spandex and a burgundy helicopter helmet, and drives a 1975 Corvette Stingray customized with license plates that read SUPRHRO.

Most Real Life Superheroes are listed on the World Superhero Registry, a recently assembled online roster. ("I can't say if I will ever fight an army of giant robots or a criminal mastermind," an Indianapolis superhero called Mr. Silent notes in his entry. "I just don't know.") Some superheroes have joined forces in local crime-fighting syndicates: the Black Monday Society in Salt Lake City, the Artemis National Consortium in San Diego and the tautologically titled Justice Society of Justice in Indianapolis. Attempting to unite all the superheroes under one banner are groups like the World Heroes Organization and Heroes Network, which hosts an online forum where more than 200 crime fighters trade tactics (should I wear a mask?), patrolling tips (how do I identify a street gang?) and advice/feedback (can you get bulletproof vests on eBay?).

I dunno, if I were a real superhero, I'd want a cooler name. And Batarangs.

Holiday blues update

I haven't really been motivated to blog lately. Between work, family matters, and the general stress of the Christmas splurging season, I'm not left with much energy or time to rant on the internet.

During my time away from the keyboard, the Democratic governor of Illinois went down in flames, and turns out to have been a complete asshole and egomaniac. Or, as Dickipedia so aptly summarizes:

The subject of no fewer than a dozen separate federal investigations, Blagojevich is a disgrace to all Serbian-American governors everywhere—that means you, George Voinovich of Ohio. He is also just the kind of a-hole who threatens to screw the whole thing up for Barack Obama before he even takes office.

Rod Blagojevich was the first Democrat to be elected governor of Illinois in 30 years, a distinction he proceeded to totally crap all over by continually failing to pass legislation and budgets, making many political enemies (even in his own party), committing federal and state crimes, wearing a ridiculous side-part in some seriously bouffant hair, and, in October 2008, earning the title “America’s Least Popular Governor.” All that before he got arrested.

On December 9, 2008, adding dick insult to dick injury, Blagojevich was detained by the FBI and charged with conspiracy to commit fraud as well as solicitation of bribery for allegedly trying to sell president-elect Barack Obama’s vacated seat in the U.S. Senate. This happened the day before Blagojevich’s 52nd birthday. One imagines they canceled the stripper.

Heh. Hee hee.

What else?

Oh, I should mention that the BSG spinoff Caprica has been picked up by Scifi as a series! Details here. The only downside is that we won't be seeing any of it until 2010.

Webisodes bridging seasons 4.0 and 4.5 are currently airing as well, but I refuse to link to them in protest of their unavailability for Canadian web surfers (can't see the logic in shutting out fans who happen to be outside of the US; if Space is too cheap to get the rights to them, that's their problem). Catch them on Youtube instead.

WTF, Dubai?

World's tallest skyscraper, under construction in Dubai:



Something about that building indicates low self-esteem on the part of the architects...

(click the picture for more detail)

Not Iggy!

Okay, so Dion wasn't the very best party leader. But Ignatieff? Seriously? He's the best guy they've got?

Look, I don't usually get worked up at the thought of elitist inteleckshuals sipping their lattes and scoffing at the common folk, but this guy pretty much embodies that stereotype. He's spent more of his life at Oxford and Harvard than in Canada.

More to the point, he has only three years of actual political experience. The former director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy was a prominent and early supporter of the war in Iraq (using dumbass reasoning), and equivocated on torture (using even more dumbass reasoning). This unappealing intellectual midgetry is fine for the Republican Party, but the Liberal Party of Canada? Seriously? What exactly gives this guy the credibility to become a potential Prime Minister of Canada, other than his admittedly unimpeachable Ivory Tower credentials?

Ah, whatever. For some levity, here's Jon Stewart attempting to make sense of our wacky political adventures.

I agree with the Governor General

She made the right move in proroguing Parliament. I know a lot of liberals and progressives out there will be disappointed that Harper has lived to fight another day (and really, that fight might come immediately after January 26), but in the long run, it's for the best.

Harper overreached. He knows that, and he and his party are chastened. They are still a minority government, and they need to act like one. They will now get to work on a budget that the opposition will support, meaning real concessions on the economy and no more poison pills like the removal of campaign financing dollars or crackdowns on public employees' rights to strike.

This unexpected vacation will give all the parties time to step back from the brink and think about what is best for Canada and their own political futures (there should be some overlap). We'll also have a better idea of what the US is planning to do on their end before we march ahead with a massive stimulus.

Meanwhile, despite all the fireworks, the rest of the world has barely noticed our Grave Political Crisis. How typical.

So anyway, maybe you guys were right after all...

Lost amidst everything else that has been going on, the US and Iraqi governments have quietly agreed to a withdrawal timetable, a timetable that includes the withdrawal of most combat troops by mid-2009. Bush is still in office, mind you. The same Bush who repeatedly warned us that such a thing would amount to surrendering to terror, a warning that was endlessly regurgitated by all the usual suspects in the Right Wing Noise Machine.

Never mind that the Iraqis have been requesting this for quite some time, withdrawal was a crazy moonbat Left Wing socialist Islamofascocommunist idea! Only the Defeatocrats and their terrorist allies would ever consider such a thing! USA! USA! USA!

Just thought I'd throw that out there...

Here we go

Things are moving quite quickly. The opposition parties have come to an agreement on power-sharing, and are going ahead with plans to topple the Harper government. The NDP will have claim to 6 cabinet seats out of 25, while Dion would be PM temporarily until May, when the Liberals choose a new leader. For their part, the Bloc have pledged to support this government for 2 1/2 years (not unexpectedly, the Tories are attempting to paint the coalition as anti-Canada on account of Bloc support). Practically the only option open to Harper at this point for preserving his government is pro-roguing, which sets a dangerous precedent, and is no less drastic a move as what the opposition is currently doing.

Despite the sheer craziness of all this, the media seems to be placing the blame mostly on Mr. Harper. Here's Jeffrey Simpson, in today's Globe and Mail:

Mr. Harper, who bulldozed his way toward this cliff and who will be judged harshly and perhaps fatally by his party if the government goes over the cliff, has tried unsuccessfully to show belated flexibility by backing down (temporarily) from plans to eliminate party subsidies and ending the right to strike. But he had nothing new yesterday – not that any fresh concession would have derailed the coalition's drive for power.

His options now would seem to be a) persuade the Governor-General to prorogue Parliament only three weeks after a Speech from the Throne, hoping to gain time to manoeuvre; b) lose the confidence of the House but persuade the G-G to dissolve Parliament and call an election.
He could always offer a mea culpa and alter his economic statement. It would not likely impress the coalition partners.

Mr. Harper has either to get to another Speech from the Throne in January that might be a better platform than the rickety one of Thursday's economic statement, or get to the people and argue, as he and his MPs did yesterday, that the opposition parties are trying to take power through parliamentary intrigue, having been defeated in the election.

His fate depends, it would appear, on the Governor-General's decision to grant prorogation or an election. Otherwise, he will have done a Joe Clark, miscalculating his way out of office.

And the editorial board editor, John Geiger, is calling for Harper's resignation:

"Mr. Harper is ultimately responsible for this unhappy state of affairs. It is the byproduct of his machinations, and the product of a failure of his leadership.

"The opposition parties, especially with the Liberals busy licking their election wounds, were not out to pick a fight in the new Parliament.

"Mr. Harper gave them one anyway, turning his government's economic update into a partisan document aimed less at strengthening Canada's economic position than at undermining their ability to compete in the next election.

"In so doing, he sent the message that even if he backs down in this instance, he has no interest in making the current Parliament work.

"His conduct since then — epitomized by his blustery and provocative statement last Friday, and his party's disturbing act in eavesdropping on a private NDP conference call this past weekend — has only reinforced for the opposition the necessity of defeating him while it has the opportunity.

Regardless of where the blame lies, I have deep reservations about a coalition government.

First, it will be seen as illegitimate by many Canadians. The Conservatives may have only secured the support of 37% of Canadian voters, but they hold more seats in the House of Commons than the Liberals and NDP combined. And Liberal/NDP voters were voting for their preferred party, not a coalition. I'll be interested to see some polling, because I wonder how much support this action really has.

Second, it will grant the NDP legitimacy and a real role in government (though hopefully not any direct role in economic policy). Jack Layton will attempt to undercut Stephane Dion at every opportunity, and given their relative political talents, he'll probably succeed at promoting himself and his party at the expense of his coalition partner, causing a further deterioration of Liberal support.

Finally, this government would be coming in riding a wave of fear and uncertainty over the economy, and will be expected to take strong action to minimize the effects of a recession. Would this coalition be up to the task? Is $30 billion a realistic number for a stimulus package? One positive sign is that the NDP seem to have dropped their opposition to corporate tax cuts, showing that they will likely defer to the Liberals in most economic matters. Since I think the Liberals are generally better stewards of the economy than the Conservatives and definitely better than the NDP, that sits well with me.

To sum up, there are a lot of potential pitfalls. This could easily be a disaster for the Left that will ensure a Conservative majority in the next election. But given the way things have gone, I also don't see any other option for the opposition at this point, other than forcing some further concession out of Harper on economic stimulus. Given his current weakness, that might be possible. It would at least spare the country the trauma of leadership change so soon after an election, and it might also spare the Liberals the embarrassment of partnering with the NDP and Bloc, and governing with an unpopular leader in Stephane Dion.

(Photo: Chris Wattie, Reuters)

The "Bush boom"

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), today:

The National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the U.S. has been in a
recession since December 2007, making official what most Americans have already
believed about the state of the economy .

The NBER is a private group of
leading economists charged with dating the start and end of economic downturns.
It typically takes a long time after the start of a recession to declare its
start because of the need to look at final readings of various economic
measures.

Larry Kudlow, in December 2007 :

There is no recession. Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic
pessimistas, the resilient U.S economy continues moving ahead—quarter after
quarter, year after year—defying dire forecasts and delivering positive growth.
In fact, we are about to enter the seventh consecutive year of the Bush boom.

The pessimistas are a persistent bunch. In 2006, they were certain a
recession was just around the corner. They were wrong. Instead, the economy
posted two consecutive quarters of near or above four-percent growth.

Earlier today, a doom and gloom economic forecast from Macro Economic
Advisors was released predicting zero percent growth in the fourth quarter. This
report is off by at least two percentage points. These guys are going to wind up
with egg on their faces.

I've picked on Larry before, but why anyone pays this idiot to spread his idiocy is beyond me. The only thing he's good at is being consistently hilariously wrong. Kind of like Bill Kristol.

The need for stimulus

I may have been a bit premature in announcing the end of our political quagmire, as the Tory capitulation on public funding subsidies will not appease the opposition. Obviously, that cannot be seen as the fundamental issue here, otherwise Harper will use it as a bludgeon later on, and be the stronger for it. Instead, the Liberals and NDP will press forward with coalition talks and keep focusing on the economy, as this is probably their best chance yet to take Harper down.

And what about the economy? Is the government really guilty of negligence in the face of crisis?

Before the election, I defended Harper on the economy, pointing out that much of Canada's troubles are completely beyond our control. We cannot help but be affected by a total meltdown south of the border; Trudeau knew what he was talking about when he made his famous comment about sleeping with the elephant.

But this "economic update" from Jim Flaherty was downright bizarre.

At a time when countries around the world are working to fight a global recession by stimulating economic activity through increased government spending, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Tory government actually plans to put the squeeze on Canada's economy.

In its all-out effort to avoid running a deficit, Flaherty has promised that federal spending will be slashed by $5 billion in the fiscal year that begins next April, when economic conditions probably will be at their worst. Another $1 billion in windfall income will be banked, not recycled into economic stimulus, for a total squeeze of $6 billion.

"That's precisely the thing not to do," said Carlos Leitao, chief economist at Laurentian Bank Securities. Rather than a balanced budget, he believes, what we need right now is new spending of $15 billion or more to do things like bail out provincial budgets and boost benefits to the unemployed. This would translate into a deficit of about the same size, but it would prevent economic damage worth far more.

As a (possibly severe) recession looms, the government's focus appears to be on cutting spending and keeping the budget balanced. I'm as big a deficit hawk as anyone, but even I recognize the need for stimulus. Now is not the time to worry about balanced budgets. Now is the time to boost aggregate demand by injecting money into the economy. Canada is lucky to be in a position to do this with very little negative fallout, due to our debt reduction policies of the last decade.

I'm frankly a little puzzled by Harper's strategy here. I understand the caution on economic stimulus packages, but I don't understand why Flaherty would choose to focus on balanced budgets at a time of uncertainty and near panic over the economy.

I wish the grown-ups were in charge

The Liberals and NDP are threatening to bring down the Harper government and form a coalition, ostensibly due to inaction on an economic stimulus package, but it might also have something to do with a Tory plan to end a government subsidy paid to the parties for every vote they earn (with the Liberals with in debt, and the Conservatives possessing a formidable fundraising machine, this is a serious threat).

Link

It looks like Harper intentionally provoked the opposition just to see what they would do, and that they've fallen into the trap, so to speak (though his delaying of the confidence vote for a week may indicate some apprehension). If they backtrack now without any concessions from Harper, they'll just look ridiculous. But the way things are looking right now, it's very possible that Stephane Dion will be PM in a couple weeks time. The key question is whether the Liberals and NDP are serious about this or are just stamping their feet over losing their badly needed public funding. And also what the Bloc will do and what incentives the other parties will need to offer them for their support.

The opposition has undertaken an extremely risky strategy here. On the face of it, there is nothing inherently wrong with forming a coalition government. It is commonplace in other parliamentary democracies. Nor is it somehow "undemocratic", as that jerkoff Ezra Levant was arguing yesterday on Newsnet, as 63% of Canadians did not vote for Harper and the Tories, yet they form our government nevertheless.

But it all depends how this is framed. The Liberals and NDP desperately want this to be about the economy and inaction on the part of Harper and Flaherty towards a stimulus package. This argument is not entirely without merit, but it's more than a little suspect that this coincided with the move to remove the public funding subsidy. The Tories have a huge advantage in fundraising, while the Liberals and NDP are in debt. If the public sees this as nothing more than a naked attempt by the opposition to keep their public funding (meaning millions of taxpayer dollars), this could backfire in a big way.

On the other hand, this may be the best way to look at it:

If you're just tunning in now...

...here's what you've missed:

Tories want to destroy the opposition! Bring it on! Another election?Another election! Coalition government! Prime Minister Dion? A Liberal coup? Prime Minister Layton? Prime Minister Goodale? Harper blinks - election averted! Election on? Coalition on? Prime Minister Chretien? And Ed Broadbent? Je ne comprends pas anglais. Liberal non-confidence motion! WHAT THE @#&! IS GOING ON HERE??!!?!?!?

UPDATE: Harper delays the confidence vote until December 8th! What does it all mean? WHO THE HELL KNOWS! Let's just sit back and enjoy the ride!

Our politics are getting pretty crazy.

UPDATE: Looks like Harper wants to keep his job after all.

After 24 hours of peering into a yawning political abyss, the Harper
government stepped back from the brink Saturday, dropping a plan to kill public
subsidies for political parties.

"When it comes to the funding and subsidies that political parties get,
we just don't think it's worth getting into an election on that issue,"
Transport Minister John Baird said in an interview.

"We won't be proceeding."

I guess Italy gets to keep its dubious honour of being the most disfunctional Western democracy. For now.

Battlestar's coming!

New promo:



I can't wait! :)

This is very cool as well. Scifi's posting clues right up until Jan. 16, when Season 4.5 premieres.

I hate it that the show's ending, but at least it will have a proper ending. And there is still more Battlestar to come:

The Plan

Caprica

That's more like it; Pats beat Fins 48-28

New England looked very good today. Cassel just did something that even Brady has yet to achieve: two consecutive 400+ yard games. Miami looked utterly outclassed, especially towards the end when their discipline seemed to break down (though Matt Light will likely be suspended for his part in that fracas).

If Cassel keeps this up, and keeps finding Moss in the end zone, this team suddenly looks very scary. The only question marks are their beat-up defense and running game.

Liberal disappointment with Obama

Most of Obama's cabinet appointments announced thus far have been centrist Democrats, some of whom have endorsed things like the Iraq war, "harsh interrogation methods" (if not necessarily waterboarding), and other excesses of the Bush administration. One very important post, Secretary of Defense, may even stay unchanged, if Obama decides to keep Robert Gates, albeit temporarily.

Predictably, this has resulted in some consternation from the Left. Here's Chris Bowers:

I know everyone is obsessed with the "team of rivals" idea right now, but I feel incredibly frustrated. Even after two landslide elections in a row, are our only governing options as a nation either all right-wing Republicans, or a centrist mixture of Democrats and Republicans? Isn't there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration? Also, why isn't there a single member of Obama's cabinet who will be advising him from the left? It seems to me as though there is a team of rivals, except for the left, which is left off the team entirely.

Of course, we don't know his entire cabinet just yet. And many of the people being discussed have not been officially confirmed. The Left may be going nuts over Robert Gates, but we only have speculation over who Obama's SecDef will actually be.

And some appointments are very encouraging. As Glenn Greenwald explains in this post, Eric Holder for Attorney General would be a huge improvement, and offers a real possibility of reversing much of Bush's assault on the Constitution (but his rape of the Justice Department may not be as easily corrected).

Finally, while Obama may be wary of starting witch hunts over torture, and prosecuting everyone involved (a process that would be satisfying, but inevitably polarizing), he has sent signals through his advisors that he may institute a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the matter and make its findings public. Not my ideal solution (I think war crimes can and should be prosecuted, no matter how important and powerful the perpetrators are), but it's in keeping with his philosophy.

The simple truth is that Obama is not a politician that will rock the boat. Despite all his talk about "change", he is, in fact, an extremely cautious and pragmatic man. He is also not a liberal ideologue. His decisions on the transition thus far are entirely in keeping with that. To this Canadian, Democrats are almost always disappointingly center-right, but I knew that about Obama from the start. Nevertheless, he was worth supporting. And he remains so. And any progressives who harbored unrealistic expectations of Obama have no one but themselves to blame. I pretty much agree with this e-mail Digby sent to Greenwald:

The villagers and the right made it very clear what they required of Obama --- bipartisanship, technocratic competence and center-right orthodoxy. Liberals took cultural signifiers as a sign of solidarity and didn't ask for anything. So, we have the great symbolic victory of the first black president (and that's not nothing, by the way) who is also a bipartisan, centrist technocrat. Surprise.

There are things to applaud about the cabinet picks -- Clinton is a global superstar who, along with Barack himself, signals to the world that the US is no longer being run by incompetent, extremist, political fringe dwellers. Holder seems to be genuinely against torture and hostile to the concept of the imperial presidency. Gaithner is a smart guy who has the trust of the Big Money Boyz, which may end up being useful considering the enormous and risky economic challenges ahead. Emmanuel is someone who is not afraid to wield a knife and if we're lucky he might just wield it from time to time against a Republican or a right wing Democrat. Napolitano seems to have a deft political touch with difficult issues like immigration which is going to be a battleground at DHS. And on and on.

None of them are liberals, but then Obama said repeatedly that he wasn't ideological, that he cared about "what works." I don't know why people didn't believe that. He's a technocrat who wants to "solve problems" and "change politics." The first may actually end up producing the kind of ideological shift liberals desire simply because of the dire set of circumstances greeting the new administration. (Hooray for the new depression!) The second was always an empty fantasy --- politics is just another word for human nature, and that hasn't changed since we were dancing around the fire outside our caves.

If you want to press for a cabinet appointment at this late date who might bring some ideological ballast, I would guess that labor and energy are where the action is. It would be really helpful to have somebody from the left in the room when the wonks start dryly parceling out the compromises on the economy and climate change. But basically, we are going to be dealing with an administration whose raison d'etre is to make government "work." That's essentially a progressive goal and one that nobody can really argue with. But he never said he would make government "work" for a liberal agenda. Liberals just assumed that.

On a related note, don't all these center-right appointments make the Right's pre-election spittle-flecked rants and nervous breakdowns over socialist left-wing firebrand Black Power Obama even more absurd? They unceasingly pushed this nonsense about him being the "most liberal senator" and a dangerous radical absent any evidence whatsoever, only the thinnest of guilt by association justifications. Does anyone think these idiots will be the least bit chastened by their pre-election rhetoric's utter disassociation from the truth? If you do, you haven't been paying attention the past 8 years.

We get a blizzard, they get plummeting space debris

Check out this video of a meteor impact in Alberta:



Awesome. Meanwhile, all we get in Nova Scotia is 30cm of snow. In fucking November. Not that I'm asking for us to get hit with meteors. But it would be more fun.

No good options for Detroit

I am of the opinion that while the executives at GM, Ford and Chrysler are total jackasses and short-sighted morons, it's quite necessary that some type of bailout take place.

In more normal times, the answer may be different. Chapter 11 bankruptcy would be a credible option. Unfortunately, these are not normal times. Chapter 11 is simply not a realistic option right now. GM is literally on its last legs. Who would run the company while things were being settled in court, and how would they keep it running with no cash, no credit, and absolutely no one willing to lend them the billions of dollars necessary to keep making and selling cars? Here's Jonathan Cohn , making this precise point:

One reason for the casual support for letting GM fail is the assumption that bankruptcy would be no big deal: As USA Today editorialized recently, "Bankruptcy need not mean that the company disappears." But, while it's worked out that way for the airlines, among others, it's unlikely a GM business failure would play out in the same fashion. In order to seek so-called Chapter 11 status, a distressed company must find some way to operate while the bankruptcy court keeps creditors at bay. But GM can't build cars without parts, and it can't get parts without credit. Chapter 11 companies typically get that sort of credit from something called Debtor-in-Possession (DIP) loans. But the same Wall Street meltdown that has dragged down the economy and GM sales has also dried up the DIP money GM would need to operate.

And for that matter, who would buy a car from a bankrupt manufacturer? What about warranty/service coverage? It's not like buying an airline ticket, which is a one-time thing; you use it to get from one place to another, and that's it. But a car is a long term investment. You don't want the maker of your new Cadillac to go out of business next week.

What would happen to the Big 3 instead is Chapter 7: total liquidation, and millions of people suddenly without jobs, health insurance, or pensions. Millions of people newly dependent on social assistance from the government, which would itself cost billions and billions of dollars. The repercussions for an already sinking economy would be devastating. Stock markets went into another tailspin today, partly because of uncertainty on this very issue. If these companies actually went under, it just might be what turns this nasty recession into a longer-term depression.

As unpalatable as it is, I think a bailout is the only option, provided that it has serious strings attached, as President-elect Obama seems to be in favor of. If American taxpayers are going to bail out these failing companies, Detroit must be given some real shock treatment, forcing them to start making cars for the 21st century. Take it or leave it.