October 22, 2008
Time for a bit of R&R. I find myself starting posts that I never finish. About halfway through it’s hit the “save” button. The doldrums have set in.
I’ll be back before the American elections. In the meantime I think my beagle just left some lawn chocolates in the backyard.
Stay well.
October 21, 2008
It’s not the self-serving, faux suspension McCain tried last month.
The Obama campaign has told reporters that he’ll be taking Thursday and Friday off. He’ll be going to Hawaii to be with his failing grandmother who, it appears, is not doing at all well.
Few realized it but Obama left his campaign for a week in August, again to spend time with his grandmother.
On Saturday the Illinois senator is scheduled to resume his campaign events. At this point so close to the November 4th election there’s no way to tell whether the suspension will have a substantial impact on this close race.
October 21, 2008
October 20, 2008
If there’s been one trait that has distinguished Condoleeza Rice’s eight years of service with the Bush administration, it’s her ability to completely ignore reality and spin whatever fantasy best suits the boss – and do it with a straight face.
Her latest, according to BBC News, is to proclaim that the policies of George w. Bush have left the Middle East a better place.
Asked to assess the outgoing US administration’s legacy, she said she was especially proud of the situation in the Palestinian territories.
She insisted that what she called a US-inspired “freedom agenda” had taken hold in the Middle East.
Ms Rice also said Iraq had become a “good Arab friend” of America.
“The Middle East is a different place and a better place,” Ms Rice told BBC Arabic TV.
Iraq, far from being destroyed, was fully integrated into the Arab world, she said.
There you have it. Iraq is now fully integrated into the Arab world. When did Tehran turn Arab?
October 20, 2008
I carry no brief for any Liberal insider, no preference for who ought to become the next leader of the LPC. None, I’m neutral.
I wanted Dion to step down solely on performance reasons. I read a post the other day that described Mr. Dion as a person best suited to serve as Prime Minister but ill-suited to becoming elected Prime Minister.
The fury and outrage of Dion loyalists is profound. I realize that, in any party, there are people who are more closely attached to an individual than to the party. I confess to a bit of that myself when I was young and Pierre Trudeau was our leader. Maybe it’s something one grows out of, who knows?
Not all of our party’s leaders have been iconic. Some, such as Mr. Chretien, caught an awful lot of breaks. Brian Mulroney, after all, left the PCPC in a shambles when Mr. Chretien stepped in and the right remained terminally divided during the Chretien years. I liked Mr. Chretien and happily supported him but I never overlooked the role that circumstances not of his or our party’s making had in his success.
So, now we must seek a new leader. Good, I hope we can focus on finding someone who will unite and motivate the party as Mr. Dion never managed to do. We have to ensure that the next leader has the aptitude for the job, an ability to connect with voters outside today’s narrow Liberal realm. That will be a leader with vision, political acumen, solid communication skills and the charisma essential to motivate voters who stayed away from the polls last week or who voted for Mr. Harper because they saw no viable alternative.
We need a leader, now more than ever.
October 20, 2008
Japanese newspapers are reporting that diplomats in North Korea have been ordered to be on standby for some sort of major announcement and that there are plans to temporarily ban foreigners from entering the country.
Something’s up, just what isn’t clear. Speculation ranges from an announcement of Kim’s death to proclamation of a coup d’etat. So far nobody knows nothin’.
Kim hasn’t been seen in public since August. The government recently released a video showing Kim inspecting some facility but the trees in the background were in full leaf which Gwynne Dyer notes means the video wasn’t taken anytime recently.
October 20, 2008
Unlike government giveaways, infrastructure projects are an investment, the sort of thing designed to reap big dividends in years to come. They’re also a means to introduce major technology shifts.
Why restore obsolete or unproductive infrastructure? Maybe in the future the rising cost of fuel will mean you won’t need three highways in some places but only one. Restoring all three, therefore, would plainly be little more than a glorified, make work project.
However, past experience shows this sort of depression-era infrastructure spending can, by its very size, allow governments to introduce new technologies and major changes that would otherwise have been impossible.
Look at Germany in the 30’s. Monster that he was, Hitler’s Nazi government brought that country back to life through some key pre-war infrastructure projects ranging from public housing to autobahns. Similar benefits came to Americans from Roosevelt’s interventions which are neatly summarized in this from Newgeography.com:
“Together with a plethora of well-built public schools, libraries, post offices, parks, water systems, bridges, airports, hospitals, harbors, city halls, county courthouses, zoos, art works and more, New Deal initiatives spread the wealth and enriched the lives of uncounted Americans.”
http://www.newgeography.com/content/00170-excavating-the-buried-civilization-roosevelt%E2%80%99s-new-deal
Most of North America is well overdue for a serious makeover. There’s the essential infrastructure decay that needs fixing – water and sewer systems in many Canadian cities, for example. But there are also opportunities to get our nations aligned for the 21st century realities. I’ll give you an example.
Rail transport. We know that rail is up to five times more fuel efficient for transporting freight over great distances than long-haul truck transport. Unfortunately the rail system we have today isn’t up to the job. What if the government was to commit to a mega-project to construct a new, high capacity railway system for the 21st century? Use rail in lieu of trucks. Not only would it reduce fossil fuel consumption but it would make the transport of goods far more affordable. Trucks would be used for short and medium-haul delivery, not inefficient cross-Canada transport.
I’m sure there are several other equally sound ideas for overhauling and modernizing Canada’s infrastructure to meet the changes we’ll face this century. Let’s identify them, see what can be done and what rewards we’ll reap from them in the future.
If you see this as just standard, socialist babble, take a look at the 401 highway from Windsor to Montreal. Read about the old, pioneer path 2-lane routes it replaced and then learn about the role this one superhighway played in Ontario’s economic rise in the postwar decades. Once you’ve digested that, you can come back and rail on about socialism. Look at the expansion and development of secondary airports and microwave communications and the role they played in opening up Canada’s north and then you can bleat anti-socialist mantras.
We all pretty much realize that a real future lies in so-called green industries, everything from carbon capture technology to alternative, clean power projects. Those are industries that will create jobs and wealth. What better time to kickstart things like that?
Of course it will take a government with real vision to recognize the opportunities and exploit them for the benefit of the country. I doubt very much that’s within the scope of the one-dimensional administration we have today.
October 20, 2008
It’s sad really to see a guy who’s built this legendary image based on an ordeal in a North Vietnamese POW camp four decades ago show just how little that truly matters – to himself. Here’s a hint – if it doesn’t matter to John McCain, it shouldn’t matter to anyone else either.
And it doesn’t matter to John McCain. Heroes don’t dive into the gutter. I’ve had the privilege of meeting and knowing a few real heroes. They’re all dead now. One was a true “Knight of the Air,” two others were ground pounders. They all had one thing in common. They didn’t try to wear their heroism on their sleeve – they were extremely private – and they always stood tall.
John McCain has traded on his heroism. He’s exhausted it, reminding all who’ll listen of it with an implied suggestion that someone owes him the presidency because of an event largely beyond his control forty years ago.
Heroism doesn’t wear well for very long when it’s flown like a flag in public. Maybe that’s something real heroes instinctively understand. There’s something disingenuous in tossing it up in the air for people to watch again and again.
But when you couple the political marketing of heroism with slimeball, gutter politics, the aura combusts like white phosphorous exposed to oxygen. All you’re left with is ashy residue. And I guess that’s an apt metaphor for John McCain, 2008.
This campaign will cost John McCain more than his last shot at the US presidency. He will have also forfeited his dignity and his integrity. He won’t be the first hero to turn bum and he won’t be the last. At least he won’t have to spend time in the Crowbar Hotel like his fellow Vietnam hero and Republican compatriot, the former senator Randy “Duke” Cunningham.
October 19, 2008
Just a couple of weeks left before the American elections and John McCain is running hard to narrow his Democratic opponent’s considerable lead.
The McCain campaign seems to be out of ideas, nothing appears to be getting traction, and so their last-ditch effort may be to fall back on smear, the deliberate exploitation of outright lies and treacherous distortions, to make gullible American voters fearful and distrusting of Obama.
There’s a pretty good analysis of this in Talking Points Memo:
“…McCain’s final strategy relies on two pillars. The first is aggressively playing to voters’ fears of electing a black president. Make no mistake: not just his campaign in a general sense, but McCain himself and his top handful of advisers, are banking on the residual racism in a changing America to get them over the finish line. The second is an aggressive use of innuendo to convince casual voters that Obama is in league with Islamic terrorists bent on killing Americans.
Many people have asked whether enough Americans really care any more about the cultural convulsions of the 1960s. The answer? It doesn’t matter. For the McCain campaign, Bill Ayers has nothing to do with 60s radicalism. Ayers is nothing more than a tool that permits McCain, Palin and all their surrogates to use the noun “terrorist” in polite company in the same sentence as “Obama,” over and over and over again. It allows them to cobble together a ‘respectable’ version of those Obama smear emails they can push in commercials and robocalls and surrogate talking points every hour of every day.
Stripped down to its components McCain’s message to voters is this: “Don’t forget. He’s definitely black. And he may be a terrorist.” That’s the message. The nuts and bolts is a concerted effort to keep Democrats from voting — through intimidation, by striking new voters from the rolls, which is going to happen to lots of them, clogging polling stations to create delays that keep late day (predominantly) Obama voters from voting altogether. Smears in the air and voter suppression on the ground.
Many people say, well … all this stuff just hasn’t worked. But the truth is that the really corrupt and vicious part of McCain’s effort only comes now because it’s only in the last couple weeks that you can pull stuff that the press won’t get to call you on before election day — after which it doesn’t matter. Will it take Obama down? So far McCain’s gutter campaign has hurt him more than helped. But there’s no reason to be sure it will continue that way.”
Obama has one advantage that will let him fight back – money and lots of it. He’ll need it to wage a last-ditch media campaign of his own that just might bury McCain in his own trash.
October 19, 2008
The Pakistan news agency, Dawn, gives a pretty good indication of where this is going:
..Islamabad is looking forward to bolstering ties with Beijing in a big way.
The president’s decision to visit Beijing after every three months and agreements for the setting up of two nuclear energy plants, launch of a satellite and heavy investments by Chinese corporations in several other projects are some of the signs.
According to the foreign minister, the president would visit China every three months for “promoting economic integration between the two countries, enhancing their connectivity, optimally utilising the economic complementarities; and promoting trans-regional economic cooperation”.
“President Zardari wants to give a new dimension to China-Pakistan relations, basing them on enhanced economic cooperation,” the foreign minister said.
In the energy sector, Mr Qureshi also saw a role for China in the gas pipeline project between Iran and Pakistan. “I see a role for China whether China joins the projects at some later stage or invests in it.”
Another Pakistani news service, PakTribune, has this from Zardari:
The President pointed out that Pakistan has been following China’s progress and “we take pride in their success, because we are like a family.”
“Chinese and Pakistani people are like a family”, he said. “We see their progress with pride and are happy to see our friends strong. If China is strong, we are strong.”
There has been a groundswell of anti-Americanism building in Pakistan since before the ouster of Pervez Musharraf. The Zardari government seems to be riding that wave with real success. There are real economic, military and security questions that will come out of the closer bonds being forged between Islamabad and Beijing.
The Mound of Sound 