One Nation Under God

Camp counselors rally the children around a cardboard cutout of George W Bush. Scary

Income Trust Anger II

Income trust investors are taking their case for special tax breaks to Parliament Hill this week. Expect to hear about lots of sob stories about the poor little energy trusts that could no longer meet ends meet when their favored tax status was eliminated. All those impoverished international investors who are pulling their money out of Canadian income trusts and putting them into Australia and the United S- oops those countries eliminated their income trusts a long time ago. Never mind.

New Sheriff in Town

Nancy Pelosi, the 52nd Speaker of the House of Representatives takes her seat earlier this week. Early indications are that the Democratic majority plans to hold the Bush administration accountable for its disgrace and failure in Iraq, and to provide oversight going forward.

From Face the Nation on Sunday morning:

If the president chooses to escalate the war, in his budget request we want to
see a distinction between what is there to support the troops who are there now.
The American people and the Congress support those troops. We will not abandon
them.

But if the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have
to justify it. And this is new for him because up until now the Republican
Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no
conditions. And we’ve gone into this situation, which is a war without end,
which the American people have rejected.

Read: Fiasco

Just finished Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. This book is difficult to put down; a devastating critique of the Bush administration and senior military establishment from a star journalist at the Wall Street Journal. The book adds substantially to the debate on Iraq: it is not simply a rehash of available public information. As the Pentagon correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Ricks has filled the book with candid interviews and research from inside the military.

Fiasco describes the disgraceful history of the invasion of Iraq, from 2002-2006. He briefly covers the false premises that led to war: the bogus linkage between Saddam and al-Qaeda; the false claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which was cooked up by pressuring the intelligence community for worst case scenarios. However most of the book is devoted to the occupation.

Ricks describes in riveting detail the results of an administration of incompetent neocons. Having sold the war as a cakewalk, the Bushies and their pets in the military establishment then proceeded to hamfistedly botch the occupation: by wasting piles of money and time looking for nonexistent WMDs, by not providing sufficient troops on the ground to prevent the country from slipping into looting and chaos; by appointing an incompetent civilian administration of Republican loyalists; and by enraging Iraqis with a brutal, torture filled occupation.

This book is important because it shows that elections do matter, even if you don't like both choices. This should put to bed the conventional wisdom that generally conservatives are generally hard headed, whereas liberals are pie in the sky idealists. Republicans and Democrats are not the same, despite the fact that they both slosh in massive donations and are both beholden to moneyed special interests. An Al Gore administration most definitely would not have disgraced and endangered the United States with this trillion dollar quagmire.

Dempsters

Dempsters landed themselves in hot water with a lot of unwanted media attention this month when Morwenna White received an excessively packaged bagel and started an online petition to reduce packaging. Check out the comments section of this particular blog; it looks like Dempsters responded to the blogger.

But you know, he made the trains run on time.

The National Post and cronies displayed their fondness for authoritarianism this week, in the aftermath of Augusto Pinochet's death.

Pinochet seized power with the help of the CIA on September 11, 1973 and overthrew the elected president Salvador Allende. What followed was a 17-year orgy of violence which resulted in 3,000 deaths, and 30,000 people tortured and murdered for their political beliefs. He died on December 10 under indictment for his crimes.

In an editorial titled "Pinochet's mixed legacy", the Post credits him for "deregulating and privatizing much of the Chilean economy, thereby allowing the nation to become one of South America’s rare economic success stories."

Said David Frum, failed Bush speechwriter, and ex-National Post columnist in his National Review diary (Dec 11):

"Pinochet and his generals unleashed a spasm of cruelty and violence
unprecedented in the country's history. As it happened, they also instituted
some sensible economic policies. For that reason, many conservatives hesitate
today to criticize Pinochet personally or the Pinochet regime."

How nice. What's next, an article on Pol Pot: Brutal Dictator, but he made excellent brownies.

This love-in is not limited to Canadian conservatives, though. In 1999 while Pinochet was under arrest in Britain and facing extradition to Spain, Margaret Thatcher visited her old friend and thanked him for "bringing democracy to Chile".

Dick Cheney's Google Searches

Vanity Fair has posted a history of Dick Cheney's Google searches

Here's a sample
...
birdshot pellet removal
quail hunting "involuntary manslaughter"
hunting accident manslaughter
hunting accident manslaughter pleas
firearms disposal
..

The Next Prime Minister of Canada

Stephane Dion surged from fourth place to become leader of the Liberal Party of Canada yesterday in a stunning win. Dion listed environmental sustainability as the most important issue facing Canada. And as former environment minister he is familiar with the climate crisis. Stephane is a highly intelligent leader. Will he make a difference?

Realistically, Jack Layton will not become PM. And anybody has to be better than the current government which is led by nutbar oil patchers who believe climate change is a leftist plot to steal Alberta's oil wealth. Harper's government has blatantly reneged on Canada's Kyoto commitments and slashed funding for Kyoto programs. and now promises to do something about climate change ... by the year 2050.

The rise of climate change as a campaign-defining issue is encouraging. Sites such as climateliberal.ca show that Liberals get the message that Canadians are very concerned about the climate crisis. Unfortunately there is an elephant in the room. A big nasty, CO2 farting elephant. Liberals did not make a significant dent in the problem during their three consecutive majority governments. So it begs the question: Is the new-found enthusiasm for sustainability merely another Liberal ploy for votes, or a sign that they are taking the issue seriously?

From the No-Big-Surprise-There-Dept.

Christopher Lohse, a MSW student at Connecticut State University, published a study showing a direct correlation between psychosis and support for President Bush. Lohse interviewed psychiatric outpatients during the 2004 election. The more psychotic the patient, the higher the support for Bush.

Blame Canada

Canada's Conservative government continued its tradition of environmental disgrace and incompetence by opposing a ban on high-seas bottom trawling. Bottom-trawling is the so-called 'clear cutting of the oceans' method of fishing that is devastating the world's oceans. The UN proposal would ban bottom trawling in currently unregulated international waters.

Greenpeace has put together a South Park themed-video urging people to Blame Canada.

Income Trust Anger

Income trust investors expressed disappointment after Jim Flaherty lowered the boom on income trusts by announcing new tax measures. The income trust boom started to get out of control in the past few years, as corporations exploited an obscure loophole to avoid paying corporate tax.

A number of 45-year olds with million dollar portfolios will now have to work for a living instead of retiring at 50. One alternative to income trusts is known as a 'job'. It pays distributions every two weeks.