Abortion pill possible breast cancer cure?

And the religious right's incredibly shitty year gets even worse...

Right Wing and Right Wingier

Shannon Phillips does an excellent analysis in Vue of the real differences between Dinning and Morton and what both would likely do in power.

The Coming American Progressive Majority

Sidney Blumenthal makes an extremely convincing argument for an overwhelming pendulum swing to progressive politics coming.

While voters under 30 were the most favorable age group in 2004 for Kerry, casting 54 percent of their votes for him, Democratic House candidates in 2006 received 60 percent of their votes, compared with 38 percent for Republicans. Nationally, partisan identification breaks 38 percent Democratic to 35 percent Republican, but among those under age 30 the percentages are 43 to 31 in favor of Democrats. This pattern runs as strongly in the West as in the East, the Midwest and the Pacific states, a clear indication that the Western states are heading out of the Republican camp -- out of alliance with the deep South's Republican states and into coalition with the broad majority. In Wyoming and Arizona, where Republicans won elections for the House and Senate, the Democrats would have won by 16 and 15 points, respectively, if the elections had been conducted only among under-30s. In Montana, where Democrat Jon Tester won by 1 percentage point, fewer than 3,000 votes, his margin among under-30s, who were 17 percent of the electorate, was 12 points.

Bush has been the formative political experience for the youngest generation of voters, those 18 to 30. Studies of voting preferences show that the experience imprinted on a generation in its 20s largely determines its future political complexion. This generation is the most Democratic generation ever -- more Democratic than the youngest voting generations of the New Deal and the 1960s.

My Endorsement: Ted Morton

Do it Alberta Tories, go ahead, pick Ted Morton. Please.

Morton and his supporters have made the classic right wing mistake of overestimating the conservatism of the voting public. At least Canadians in points east have the excuse of distance for believing that Alberta is a monolithic block of right wing religious extremists. Those who actually live here mostly know that the overwhelming mainstream consensus is center right - with the emphasis on the center. Albertans are fiscal conservatives, or think they are - with pockets of class war populism in Redmonton, and an overwhelming majority of social moderates and progressives in urban areas. As one appalled Tory back-bencher said, this is Alberta not Alabama.

There's a strong strain of social conservatism in some parts of rural Alberta yes, but simple demographics are changing that inexorably and visibly. I've lived in Alberta - both rural and urban Alberta almost my entire life. I can count the number of Albertans under thirty I've encountered who give a tinkers damn about gay rights or abortion on one hand with a finger left over for Morton and his supporters - you can probably guess which one. The future of Alberta like that of the rest of Canada is young and urban.

They're largely an apathetic bunch, but crazy Ted and his focus on division, intolerance and absolutism would fire them up nicely.

Alberta's every thirty or forty years of switching the party in the one party state is a well known political phenomenon - less well known or at least less well acknowledged is that last time it happened, it was a progressive alternative trouncing an entrenched reactionary government. Lougheed's Progressive Conservatives were practically Liberals compared to the far right Social Credit government they replaced.

I support Ted Morton for leader of the Alberta PCs for the same reason I loved Stockwell Day's tenure leading the Alliance: he will kill his party stone dead. It's the first time I've ever agreed with Gary Mar about anything, but he happens to be 100% right about the damage Morton would do to the Tories.

The moderate and progressive vote would go to the Liberals and New Democrats - the corporate money would too.

Liberals and particularly New Democrats in Alberta should however, take careful note of the strong note of economic populism in Morton's campaign. The support he's garnered is as much to do with anti-elitist backlash, his angry slams against 'Calgary corporate lackeys' and Morton's one decent idea of re-addressing Alberta's resource royalty regime as his appeals to intolerance and bigotry.

New Democrats and other opponents of the Tories need to embrace the class war themselves. The success of the self described 'only conservative in the Conservative leadership race' and for that matter the economic populists among the Democrats swept into office this month south of the border have made it clear there are serious gains to be made in doing so.

And my final reason for my modest proposal of support for Snortin' Morton? Nothing spurs me to write more than intolerance, selfishness, cruelty, willful ignorance, and legislative appeals to the lowest common denominator.

With Morton in charge I'd be blogging every day.

Citizen Asper goes to the CRTC:

"Hi, I blew a flipping great wad of cash on some crappy newspapers a few years ago. Now I'm swimming in debt and hemorrhaging funds hand over fist. Could you bail me out with a shameless cash grab from Canadian cable customers? Thanks a bunch."

Takin' Care of Business

Canada has three national Anthems: O Canada, the Hockey Night in Canada theme music and this DOA covered BTO classic.
Talk - Action = Zero

Sunday Link Blast Nov 26

• Rafael Correa probable winner in Ecuador -
  Is the leftist surge in Latin America even debatable anymore?
  
  
• They're listening to you on the street -
  Surveilance culture in UK reaches new zenith.
  
  
• American Science Teachers Assoc. turn down free Inconvenient Truth DVDs -
  But they'll take $6 million from Exxon.
  
  
• Eating the Ocean -
  Total fish species collapse projection: 2048.
  
  
• There is no Iraqi State -
  Bush is right, it isn't Civil War. Its much, much worse.
  
  
• US environmental policy may be transformed by Supreme Court -
  Decision on EPA oversight of greenhouse gasses.
  

Death of American Movement Conservatism in 2008?

Even before the midterm two weeks ago, 2008 was always going to be problematic for the Republicans.

In the Congress the Republicans have to beat more than 14 Democratic incumbents to re-take the House in 2008 - they didn't beat even one this election. In the Senate 22 Republicans are up for re-election in 2008 while only 12 Democrats are - experts agree only a handful of House seats from either party are at all competitive. The Democrats will almost certainly hold the Senate and likely firm up their control, and the same result is probable in the House. This is simply electoral math not even counting what seems to be a strong and growing progressive shift in the American electorate that is likely to swing things even further to the Democrats.

Of course the Presidential race is the wild card - Bush is languishing in the polls but neither he nor his VP are candidates - the question is who will the Primary process deliver up from both parties? Clinton, Obama, Clark on the Democratic side - McCain, Romney, Giulliani on the Republican side - much depends on who is picked by the Primary process, a process that favors candidates who play to the two parties bases.

As a guess - McCain VS Obama seems a real possibility as McCain tacks hard right in preparation for the anti-deviationist frenzy of the Republican primary process and the Democrats make the hard calculations about the extent of the harsh anti-Hillary feelings in the American mainstream.

And of course, external factors such as oil prices, when, not if the housing bubble pops completely and just how bad Iraq gets in the next two years.

All three branches of the elected government in the US going Democrat in 2008 is the safest bet.

The Killer Inside Me

MC 900 Foot Jesus
Clearly inspired by the novel by Jim Thompson

Telus Officially Abandons Income Trust Conversion

Not that all they ever wanted was the tax dodge or anything...

So Georgie, what do you think of Pootie-Poot now?

Those who position themselves in opposition to Vladimir Putin have an alarming tendency to end up shot, poisoned or irradiated.

Uncle Vlad, or Pootie-Poot as the leader of the free world calls him, may be an ally in the war on terror due to his ruthless suppression of Muslims in Chechnya, but his seemingly equal ruthless willingness to resort to murder to silence his foreign and domestic critics should give the West pause.

Did the Globe and Mail Deliberately Misrepresent Bill Graham?

So when Harper proposed his - I'll admit it, strategically brilliant - motion recognizing the Québécois as a nation within a united Canada, every party except the Bloc Québécois supported it.

Gilles Duceppe of course, shat a brick. Some of the more fetishistically federalist Liberal MPs expressed reservations, but Jack Layton and Bill Graham both expressed support for the motion and Graham even crossed the floor to shake Harper's hand.

But on the cover of today's Globe and Mail, above the fold, Graham's reaction is portrayed very differently. His quoted reaction, explicitly to Harper's motion is:

"How could we ever support a motion on Quebec by a party that has zero commitment to Canada, which is blind to the greatness available for Quebckers within Canada?"

Wow. Harsh words about the motion and about Harper's Conservatives. Only one problem.

That quote was about the Bloc's motion not the Conservatives - which referred to Quebec rather than the Québécois and didn't include within a united Canada.

As to Harper's motion, Graham's actual reaction was:

"This is a matter that transcends all party politics,This is a matter on which the Liberal Party of Canada, which has had a great role in building this country, will be voting in favour of...We will not be voting for a concept dictated by the Bloc Québécois."

I'm having real trouble believing a mischaracterization that massive, front page above the fold could possibly be an accident.

Move Along, Nothing to See Here.

I noted back in early October how convenient low oil prices were for the Republicans just before the election - not that it helped enough in the end. I made a snide, cynical and offensively truthful remark about how the Republican Party and it's legislators are the greatest friends the oil industry ever had, friends who had made them billions upon billions of dollars - and wouldn't you do almost anything for that kind of friend?.

After dropping 84 cents in the three months leading up to the election, oil prices have risen 5 cents in the two weeks since the GOPs thumpin'.

The public is encouraged not to draw any irresponsibly obvious conclusions.

I Fought the Law

The Clash

Sunday Link Blast: Nov 19

• Houston Strikers trampled by Horse Police -
  And then abused in custody.
  
  
• NeoCons reduced to 'crazy screaming pantsless guy on street corner' status -
  Absolutely pathological.
  
  
• Back to Texas again, where it's 2006 and a Dallas school board is arguing 'Separate but Equal' -
  Sure we saved a classroom just for the white kids but the black and latino kids got books too.
  
  
• The Last Big Push -
  A final titanic effort to move Dick Cheney's drinks cabinet twenty inches closer to Baghdad.
  
  
• Criminal Profits from Crimes -
  "Here's how I did it, if I had done it, which I didn't."
  
  
• The Shades of Justice -
  The semiotics of sunglasses on CSI Miami.
  
  
• To the People of Northern BC, apologies from a Calgarian -
  Outrider's offices are just a few blocks from me too. But blame Campbell's so called Liberals for making it so easy to pull this crap. It's been that way here in Alberta forever.

It was never about Democracy

Stirling Newberry effectively demolishes the pretexts for the Iraq invasion in Rebooting the Dictator Software:

In fact, Iraq is the brittle point that the entire generational policy of borrow and squander economics has been tripping over again and again. In Bush Sr's day, we could not overthrow Saddam because we were too far in hoc from all the Reagan-Bush deficit spending. Today we couldn't spend the money to do nation building in Iraq, because we were busy bailing out everyone who lost a ton of money in the stock market.

The goal was to have big tax breaks for big Bush donors. But how to generate economic activity, if the money we were supposed to be using for a stimulus package was, instead, being sunk into Klimt paintings? The obvious answer was a war. But it had to be a war that would generate both jobs and oil. Greedy eyes turned towards Iraq, and saw a place that could be a lot like Texas - no water, lots of oil.

The neo-conservatives were rather late on to this particular bus, but they were, as the old expression goes, useful idiots. By prattling about Democracy they made it look as if this was an argument between unreconstructed pale-conservative imperialism, and a kinder gentler imperialism.

The March of the Sinister Ducks

The Sinister Ducks (Alan Moore)

The First Time I Met the Blues

The incomparable Buddy Guy

In Rona's defense...

...at least she's not Vic Toews. Olaf makes an excellent pitch for the honorable Minister of Justice deserving the Worst Minister in the Harper Government title more.

Jeffrey Sachs sees the light

In strong and vibrant democracies, a generous social-welfare state is not a road to serfdom but rather to fairness, economic equality and international competitiveness.

Jeffrey Sachs, the former free-market ideologue who advised Russia to opt for cut-throat capitalism has now accepted that the facts on the ground simply don't support the Washington Consensus. The road to stability, social justice and economic success is through a strong welfare state.