The Political Value of Anger

Once again Glenn Greenwald hits the nail on the head:

Anger and passion are indispensable weapons for overcoming indifference and motivating political action. Particularly in a non-presidential election -- but, really, always -- people need a reason to care about the outcome. If a political party can't even muster enough conviction in its own views to articulate clear ideas -- if candidates like Joe Sestak had listened to the listless, fear-based advice from consultants "not to talk about pulling troops out of Iraq, arguing it would only encourage the image of Democrats as weak on national security" -- then Democrats are not going to motivate anyone to even care enough if they succeed, let alone take action to promote that outcome. Why would anyone?

This applies here in Canada as well of course, the mushy mainstream middle offered by the top Liberal leadership candidates does not offer a real viable energized alternative to the ideological right wingers of Harper's Conservatives.

The End of Habeas Corpus

How has Olbermann not been locked in Gitmo yet?

The Damage Done

The Other Side

David Gray

The next arrivals on Bush's enemy list

Ecuador's citizens go to the polls today and the front runner is Rafael Correa a leftist economist who thinks Bush is 'temendously dimwitted' and has close ties with Hugo Chavez. Next month Reagan's old hate fixations Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas are poised to win in Nicaragua.

While the US has been embroiled in Iraq Latin America has inexorably swung leftward and away from the Washington Consensus on Globalization.

List of Demands

Saul Williams

Killing the Wheat Board

The zeal Conservatives have, for the idea of holding the Wheat Board's head underwater, is based purely and soley on ideology. The pragmatic observer asks why, if it's such a bad deal for farmers why have the Americans tried so hard to kill it in trade negotiations? Why do so many farmers, supportive of the Conservatives traditionally, oppose the moves to kill the Board.

Why Conservative governments have had to spend millions on undermining it.

Why the government openly packed the commission into it's future with opponents of the Board. Sneered Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl:

it would be pointless to have people in favour of the status quo on the panel.

Why the Wheat Board employees have been forbidden from speaking out for their employer and the job it does.

Its such a blatant and brute piece of bullying and suppression of dissent. Farmers are about to learn that their support is taken for granted by this government, and get another taste of being screwed over by free market ideologues pursuing a long term sovereignty sell out plan.

The Conservatives may be following the same path of their ideological soulmates to the south and leaving their supporters behind.

Weekend Link Blast

• Battlestar Iraqtica
  Does Battlestar Galactica support the Insurgency?
  
  
• Electricity Deregulation
  A failed paradigm everywhere
  
  
• North Korea
  Crazy, or clear-eyed and pragmatic
  
  
• Bush determined to hit Iran
  If you know you're going to do it, why not save congress while you're at it?
  
  
• Suicide Bots
  A blog about robots, in a familiar format...
  
  
• The Republican war on Liberty
  The GOP protect Americans from their freedoms

The View from the Afternoon

The Arctic Monkeys

The Only Safe Assumption

With their back against the wall, they will try to steal it.

the one thing we aren't shining a light upon and forcing the media to look hard at is which of these 30-40 races will be determined by electronic voting machinery that is in the GOP's hands. After all, you can cover a fraud quite nicely by arguing that despite pre-election polls, voters had a polling booth conversion because negative ads gave them doubts about the Democratic challenger, when in fact it may not be true.

Republican Meltdown

All the indicators are starting to swing, not just to a slim loss as seemed likely only a week ago, but to a Republican Armageddon on November 7. With the Foley coverup nightmare for the house leadership, the Bob Ney confession and now, out of the blue, the Weldon investigation, the Republicans = corruption narrative has taken hold of the public perception. The GOP have started pulling money out of races they thought they were competitive in and turned inward, fighting defense in places they thought they were safe.

Perhaps most importantly, the nature of extremist primary politics in America have shoved the Republican party so far to the right, while simultaneously abandoning fiscal conservatism outright, that they may have left their base behind.

Charlie Cook says bluntly that:

...this is without question the worst political situation for the GOP since the Watergate disaster in 1974. I think a 30-seat gain today for Democrats is more likely to occur than a 15-seat gain, the minimum that would tip the majority. The chances of that number going higher are also strong, unless something occurs that fundamentally changes the dynamic of this election. This is what Republican strategists' nightmares look like.

Daily Kos sees the narrative beginning to change as the MSM begin to hear what the public is telling them about where they are headed. Red State Ohio in particular may represent the kind of sea-change that portends massive cultural shifts in American politics. As the BBC points out:

In 1928 Herbert Hoover, who had been the hero of the American relief effort in Europe after the First World War, had been elected president with a huge majority.

Yet in 1930, a year after the Great Crash, he was seen as a liability and the Democrats made major gains in the mid-terms. The era of the New Deal began. In 1932, Roosevelt became president.

By now the caveats are familiar; this could all be moot due to the GOP's incumbency and money advantages. They spent the last several years of almost absolute power, gerrymandering and spending furiously to maintain their power through exactly this kind of storm.

But it may be the difference between a storm and a hurricane that makes things different this time.

Rabbit in your Headlights

Once again: UNKLE and the banality of horror

All terrorists not created equal

Toxic chemicals, explosives, extremist literature, a bio weapons/radiation suit, a rocket launcher. Why isn't this terrorism plot bust, bigger, more dangerous, more heavily armed than any in Britain in years not front page news all over the world?

If it had been extremist Muslims caught with this kind of a deadly arsenal instead of white racists it might have fit the narrative better.

Roads

Portishead - Live

Economic sovereignty in the News

A couple of excellent articles in today's Globe and Mail. A great look at the Wheat Board, that while unbiased straight reporting clearly shows the advantages and disadvantages of competing globally with the power of the Wheat Board behind you or without it. Money quote:

Mr. Chorney, whose family has farmed an area 40 kilometres north of Winnipeg for the past 77 years, scoffs at the assertions of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers.

They speak for a tiny minority, he says.

He doesn't want to get into a debate about ideology; he's interested in the bottom line. If the Wheat Board was really hurting Canadian farmers, he asks, would the Americans have launched so many trade challenges?

"There's got to be a competitive advantage," Mr. Chorney says.

One of the most well-known studies of the Wheat Board, hotly contested by economists on both sides of the debate, argued that over a 14-year period the board averaged sales of $265-million more per year than would have been realized by multiple sellers.

But Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl makes it clear that opposing points of view are neither solicited or wanted:

The task force members are almost all well-known opponents of the Wheat Board, and none of the large provincial farm associations was asked to take part. Mr. Strahl says it would be pointless to have people in favour of the status quo on the panel.

And in the Globe and Mail's Business section of all places Columnist Eric Reguly sounds the alarm on the dangers of bulk water sales to the USA:

Water is a vital economic tool. Exporting water is tantamount to exporting jobs. Mr. Wihbey says businesses in Texas are already struggling to find water supplies and may have to leave the state if they come up dry. They're welcome to come to Canada. Or we can build a water pipeline to Texas to allow them to stay put, and fill their pools too.

Relinquishing water rights to NAFTA means relinquishing the sovereign right to manage Canada's resources. In a world of scarcer and scarcer reserves of fresh water, water is the most valuable economic tool this country possesses. It can be used to attract new industries. Or it can be exported to build industries elsewhere.

You don't expect such a clear eyed look at long term consequences beyond short term profits from a business columnist - at least I've learned not to expect it.

American voters turn decisively against the GOP?

The polls already looked lousy for the Republicans, the Foley scandal appears to have crystallized the thinking of independents and conservative Democrats that the GOP needed to win, while Republican voters may just stay home. Even Republicans have turned gloomy and talk candidly of losing at least 7 seats in congress - possibly as many as thirty. In the Senate the two parties have pulled even with the momentum clearly trending to the Democrats - the same trend can be seen in governor races.

In the new USA Today pie chart the Democrats look like a gape mawed blue Pac-man about to devour a ghostly red Republican single pie slice.

Bush Distracted from North Korea and War on Terror by Iraq Sideshow

Howard Dean warned that becoming distracted by Iraq would leave America vulnerable to the real threat of North Korean nuclear proliferation. For that he was branded a naive peacnik. Of course as recent events have shown, he was one hundred percent right. Glenn Greenwald points out how prescient he was just a month before the invasion of Iraq:

We must remember, though, that Iraq is not the greatest danger we face today. Consider, to begin with, North Korea.

The Administration says it is wrong to draw a parallel between the situations in Iraq and North Korea, because those situations are quite different. I agree.

Iraq has let UN inspectors back in. North Korea has kicked them out.

Saddam Hussein does not have a clear path to acquiring nuclear weapons. North Korea may already have them - and is on a clear path to acquiring more.

Bush plans to 'cut and run' from Iraq after the Midterms

THERE are signs that the Bush Administration will change course in Iraq after the US mid-term elections on November 7...

Tough luck for all the soldiers who die between now and November 7, huh?

The Bush Failure on North Korea

Talking tough is great if you can make it stick and back it up; it is always and necessarily cleaner and less compromising than sitting down and dealing with bad actors. Talking tough and then folding your cards doesn't just show weakness it invites contempt. And that is what we have here.

The Bush-Cheney policy on North Korea was always what Fareed Zakaria once aptly called "a policy of cheap rhetoric and cheap shots." It failed. And after it failed President Bush couldn't come to grips with that failure and change course....

Doctor Octagon

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