December 2008
2 posts
Vancouver City Manager Judy Rogers dumped. Rogers was an emotional enabler to former mayor Sam Sullivan’s worst instincts, most notably during the Civic Strike of 2007. Funnily enough, Sullivan upped her salary to $292k - a 62% raise.
Stephen Harper may not be done yet, but you can hear the knives sharpening.
November 2008
15 posts
Anatomy of a meltdown: Ben Bernanke was slow on the uptake on this, the biggest economic crisis in modern history.
From the Dept. of Rash Promises….
Item #2564 entered as evidence to explain why the conservative movement in the United States, and elsewhere, in collapsing: The root of the global economic crisis is the War on Christmas.
The caches that included Iranian weapons thus represented just 2 percent of all caches found. That means Iranian-made weapons were a fraction of one percent of the total weapons found in Shi’a militia caches during that period.
And another Iraq bugaboo - that Iran was flooding the country with “advanced weaponry” - is laid to rest.
A commenter on this Tyee piece, who I believe is in the know, further undermines BC Lee’s story.
Oh my. This could land Councillor Lee in a lot of hot water, quite possibly legal.
Update: And Global TV doesn’t look particularly good either.
The most important element in the hubbub around the City of Vancouver’s decision to “loan” private developer Millenium Developments $100 million is how we got into this position in the first place. There is a long line of decision-making that favours high-reward but high-risk ventures - starting with tapping Millenium for the project in the first place - and subsequently failing...
Oh goodie, we’ve enter the farce stage of scandal. Particularly hilarious because there remains nothing beyond circumstantial evidence that this “leak” was the source used in Gary Mason’s original article. That it wasn’t is something which he says in not so many words.
Wikipedia’s list of the top British Columbian scandals. Surely “Memo-Gate” will soon make the list?
“Any money that may have been loaned is fully secured by the real estate and by other assets as well,” Malek told The Tyee. “There is absolutely no exposure for the taxpayer. None.”
I see. So…if your project is so secure, why couldn’t you borrow the money from a bank?
“The City of Vancouver has agreed to lend up to $100 million to bail out the financially troubled company building the athletes village for the 2010 Olympic Winter Game…[a]t a mayoralty debate earlier Thursday morning, Coun. Peter Ladner, who is the chair of the city’s finance committee, refused to answer reporters’ questions about the loan”
Nice. And approved...
Let the brown-nosing begin.
The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very...
First, race is the single most important and consequential issue in all of American history.
That is the central idea, which I endorse, of an excellent post by Obsidian Wings contributor publius. Well worth reading.
October 2008
33 posts
The Onion predicts “Joe the Plumber” in 1993.
Meet Allan West, formerly Lt. Col. Allen West, GOP candidate for Congress.
The problem isn’t lack of education—it’s that of a self-isolating political subculture gone rancid.
Author George Packer, after reading Jon Swift’s “year in review”, posits the similarities between the right-wing blogosphere and the conspiracy-theory prone coffee shop culture in Baghdad.
The final draft [of the US-Iraq SOFA], dated Oct. 13, not only imposes unambiguous deadlines for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by 2011 but makes it extremely unlikely that a U.S. non-combat presence will be allowed to remain in Iraq for training and support purposes beyond the 2011 deadline for withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces.
Ouch. So much for creating your own reality.
The Wingnutosphere Year in Review
Snarkilicious
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says the current financial crisis has uncovered a flaw in how the free market system works and that has shocked him. Greenspan told the House Oversight Committee on Thursday that his belief that banks would be more prudent in their lending practices because of the need to protect their stockholders had proven in the latest crisis to be wrong....
It’s just objectively true that there is no country in the world — anywhere — that threatens to attack and bomb other countries as routinely and blithely as the U.S. does. What rational leader wouldn’t want to obtain nuclear weapons in a world where the “superpower” is run by people like Dan Coates and Chuck Robb who threaten to attack and bomb whatever countries they want? Even the Coats/Robb...
Gordzilla’s Miraculous Magical Medicinal Recession Cure!*
*Pony not included. Homeless need not apply.
Canada ranked 13th for press freedom (though in a sense tied for 4th), while the United States is 36th, beaten by the likes of Mali and Ghana.
Gregor v. Peter, Round XXMI. Illuminating if only for the fact moderator and Globe scribe Gary Mason considers the residents of the Downtown Eastside as requiring “normalizing”. If only a modern equivalent to Van Diemen’s Land existed, Gary!
The committed communists of the OECD have released a study on the growing gap between rich and poor - and how that’s not a good thing - in it’s member countries that has achieved a great deal of press today. This is the main page, and it’s well worth spending some time having a look-i-loo. Canada is [now] a titch above the median, while only Mexico and Turkey are more unequal...
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer prize winning author (blah blah blah) and this is fairly incendiary in tone, offers no alternative vision, etc. But I’m posting this because it raises a singularly important point, the gist of which - that the United States and much of the Western world have so fallen into the religion of the free market that we have, for all extents and purposes, eliminated any...
During the 2004 presidential election one in four registered Ohio voters turned up at the polling booth only to discover that their names were not on the voter roll, an exclusion rate of 25%.
Peter Tatchell, on voter suppression in the United States, warning Democrats not to place faith in the Obama’s high polling numbers.
Modern American economics explained:
Socialism: raising the top tax rate from 35% to 39%.
Free-Market: nationalizing the banks, massive investment in insurance agencies, limiting certain types of trades, raising the debt ceiling, and promoting government investment into stocks and bonds.
But it’s always been weird to hear military officers moot suggestions for dealing with “root causes” of insurgencies by massive government jobs programs, increasing the capacity of the state and so forth, since if you ever suggested in the U.S. that people should deal with crime by, say, getting the goverment to give poor people jobs you’d be considered some sort of...
Excellent overview on using fears of voter fraud to suppress the vote in the United States.
Green is the new al-Qaida. Is it responsible to wildly speculate? It would be irresponsible not to! I mean, can Adrienne Carr account for her whereabouts that day? Hmmm?
Meanwhile, Paul Krugman, fresh from polishing his brand new Nobel Prize, recommends President Obama not worry about the deficit and follow FDR’s footsteps. This strikes me as infinitely more relevant advice.
Warren Buffet might think it’s a grand time to buy, and from the perspective of the world’s richest man he’s probably right, but I think the median income earner doesn’t have the extra cash lying around to scoop up bargain-priced stock.
I wasn’t at the Scranton event, but I have to say the Secret Service is in dangerous territory here. In cooperation with the Palin campaign, they’ve started preventing reporters from leaving the press section to interview people in the crowd.
So says Dana Milbank of the Washington Post.
Ah, okay, this deserves to be pondered far and wide: Is there a correlation between Tuesday’s low turnout and the new voter ID rules? So far, it’s anecdotal, but such laws are widely associated with voter suppression efforts south of the border. And honestly, was voter fraud such a problem in this country it required changing the law?
The Pinochet Principle and why Donald Rumsfeld won’t be visiting Euro Disney.
I see minimal downside to strengthening economic relations with the EU. It might even mean cheaper cheese.
Today’s Globe editorial intones the Grits are no longer the “natural governing party” because they “moved to the left”. This strikes me as a bit, er, unsupported by the data. They lost a titch to the Tories in the popular vote, but more to the other left-wing and, dare I say, separatist parties.
The Love Boat veers hard to starboard, with John Ashcroft as Captain Stubing. Strangely, Isaac is missing on this episode.
Some things are beyond parody.
The Canadian election offers lessons for Broon. For example, don’t have one.
Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert provide an in-depth piece on Governor Palin’s ties to the Alaskan Independence Party.
Waterboarding was explicitly approved. The news here is the paper trail.
“All maverick’d up” - the Sarah Palin sound board.
Can you imagine Palin as President?
Jonathan Manthorpe makes a point about the Tories that I really never grokked before: They really don’t take foreign policy seriously.