If you're a Boomer, you still haven't figured out what your kids, much less your grandkids, are listening to now.
Guess what? You're never gonna get it - just as our parents, thank God, didn't get it in our turn.
But that doesn't mean the succession has to deny us our own "stuff". Check out this from the recently departed Gerald Levert, "Shotgun". You'll need your Bass seriously pumped for this:
Yep, it's the Funk Brothers again
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Bootsy and Motown
Canadian as I am (from that part of Canada that fought for our freedom in 1812-14) I still grew up less than 10 miles, in a straight line, from Hitsville, USA, a rented house that grew to become Motown. Not the California Motown since the 80's, but the real Motown, the Detroit Motown, the "Motor City" town.
Here's one of my favourite hits performed by the great, Bootsy Collins
Yeah, Funk Brothers!
Sorry, but if this song doesn't get your frame hauling just a tad, call somebody straight away because - you're dead. And then, there's this:
And again, Funk Brothers
Bootsy collins.do you love me
Uploaded by zorore0
Here's one of my favourite hits performed by the great, Bootsy Collins
Yeah, Funk Brothers!
Sorry, but if this song doesn't get your frame hauling just a tad, call somebody straight away because - you're dead. And then, there's this:
And again, Funk Brothers
Bootsy collins.do you love me
Uploaded by zorore0
Champagne & Reefer
Does it really get much better than this?
They turned my life to Blues when I was 15 and I've been a Stones devotee ever since. You purists, I've heard it all before and thank you muchly for the same ole grind 40-years later but I'm sticking with these guys.
Scorcese's documentary "Shine A Light" is decent enough fare. I really believe he tried.
But there was one moment in the documentary when I think he really nailed it - when he recorded The Stones and Buddy Guy singing "Champagne & Reefer."
Now I must confess to having 38-Stones CDs (no "Goat's Head Soup" thank you anyway) and half a dozen Buddy Guy including the legendary "Lightning in a Bottle." But one of the greatest songs in Scorcese's documentary surely must remain "Champagne & Reefer"
Check it out for yourself
Damn It, I Just Don't Look Good in Sackcloth & Ashes
I fired up my two-wheeler Beemer today and sallied forth into the cold, cold Great Outdoors.
I don't own a Hummer or an SUV of any description, not even a big-ass 300-series pickup. When I drive at all it's a somewhat fuel-miserly 1999 VW that I nurse along with a light, fuel-saving foot.
My house is comfortably small, built with all the modern energy-saving technologies this side of solar panels. I'm waiting until they go up a bit in quality and come down a tad in price. I compost and I recycle and shy away from excessive packaging, I bulk shop and all that good stuff. I keep my house cool enough to hang meat and I just renovated with energy-efficient windows.
And yet I know that I'm an environmental sinner. I can't give up the bike or riding it whenever I can. It's how I holiday. A couple of years ago I rode out to see my elderly Dad in Ontario (I took the 401 out and explored far northern highways on the return trip - awesome). A year after that I rode down to Cabo san Lucas at the bottom tip of the Baja. I love to ride the Pacific coast roads through Oregon and Northern California.
I like to ride alone. There's a powerful serenity, a genuine inner peace, that comes from hours in the saddle wending one's way through back roads and, sometimes, marginal paths or no road at all. One's mind rests while it's simultaneously constantly alert. There's no place for daydreaming. That will only leave you heading for a ditch - or worse. Riding solo also affords an opportunity to restore one's acquaintance with self-reliance, something that's been nearly suffocated out of modern life.
I crashed my first motorcycle at the age of 15 and did in a few more in the years after that. I have seen the inside of the big white taxi cab with the flashing red lights. Somehow, after four decades, I figured out there's not much point in finding out how far a motorcycle will lean over or how fast it can go - until it doesn't. You can't stop doing those things but you can learn to stop doing them in time, before you reach the point of departure.
So, carbon footprint or no, I'm going to keep on sinning in the arms of the magnificent Gelande Strasse. I've given up flying for recreation. If I'm going to part with a dollar to Air Canada you had better be a relative, you had better be a close relative and you had better be dead. The bike stays.
When I was young, death was an issue. I made it through those years but a bunch of my contemporaries weren't so lucky. When I went down to the states for my undergrad it was even worse. Vietnam really made young people, at least American young people, aware of their mortality.
Then you make it through and hit 30. Once you've gotten through the reckless teens and casual 20's, you're pretty well positioned to slide through at least until you reach 50. And that's when the old mortality business returns with a vengeance.
Once you get to 50, your parents and those of their generation, begin to expire - in droves. But even worse, your own contemporaries are suddenly dying again just like they did when you were young and drunk and stupid. Your kind begin sliding away as a result of decades of hard living and bad habits. They get caught by weird diseases like dimentia. Some take their leave by their own hand. People are going but they're not having the kind of fun they used to have on the way out when you were young. And as you watch them depart this mortal coil, you wonder when your number is going to come up.
That's one of the reasons I ride today. I ride across Canada or into Mexico or just down to Santa Monica because I don't know if I will even be able to ride to any of those places in five years or ten years. I know that if I pass up these opportunities, these modest, even humble adventures, I may well be miserable for it when that day arrives that they're no longer an option open to me. Damn but I dread that day. I hope I'm able to throw a leg over a bike for another 30-years at least.
(photo - above, the mighty GS - Gelande Strasse. Below, my buddy, "Mike")
I don't own a Hummer or an SUV of any description, not even a big-ass 300-series pickup. When I drive at all it's a somewhat fuel-miserly 1999 VW that I nurse along with a light, fuel-saving foot.
My house is comfortably small, built with all the modern energy-saving technologies this side of solar panels. I'm waiting until they go up a bit in quality and come down a tad in price. I compost and I recycle and shy away from excessive packaging, I bulk shop and all that good stuff. I keep my house cool enough to hang meat and I just renovated with energy-efficient windows.
And yet I know that I'm an environmental sinner. I can't give up the bike or riding it whenever I can. It's how I holiday. A couple of years ago I rode out to see my elderly Dad in Ontario (I took the 401 out and explored far northern highways on the return trip - awesome). A year after that I rode down to Cabo san Lucas at the bottom tip of the Baja. I love to ride the Pacific coast roads through Oregon and Northern California.
I like to ride alone. There's a powerful serenity, a genuine inner peace, that comes from hours in the saddle wending one's way through back roads and, sometimes, marginal paths or no road at all. One's mind rests while it's simultaneously constantly alert. There's no place for daydreaming. That will only leave you heading for a ditch - or worse. Riding solo also affords an opportunity to restore one's acquaintance with self-reliance, something that's been nearly suffocated out of modern life.
I crashed my first motorcycle at the age of 15 and did in a few more in the years after that. I have seen the inside of the big white taxi cab with the flashing red lights. Somehow, after four decades, I figured out there's not much point in finding out how far a motorcycle will lean over or how fast it can go - until it doesn't. You can't stop doing those things but you can learn to stop doing them in time, before you reach the point of departure.
So, carbon footprint or no, I'm going to keep on sinning in the arms of the magnificent Gelande Strasse. I've given up flying for recreation. If I'm going to part with a dollar to Air Canada you had better be a relative, you had better be a close relative and you had better be dead. The bike stays.
When I was young, death was an issue. I made it through those years but a bunch of my contemporaries weren't so lucky. When I went down to the states for my undergrad it was even worse. Vietnam really made young people, at least American young people, aware of their mortality.
Then you make it through and hit 30. Once you've gotten through the reckless teens and casual 20's, you're pretty well positioned to slide through at least until you reach 50. And that's when the old mortality business returns with a vengeance.
Once you get to 50, your parents and those of their generation, begin to expire - in droves. But even worse, your own contemporaries are suddenly dying again just like they did when you were young and drunk and stupid. Your kind begin sliding away as a result of decades of hard living and bad habits. They get caught by weird diseases like dimentia. Some take their leave by their own hand. People are going but they're not having the kind of fun they used to have on the way out when you were young. And as you watch them depart this mortal coil, you wonder when your number is going to come up.
That's one of the reasons I ride today. I ride across Canada or into Mexico or just down to Santa Monica because I don't know if I will even be able to ride to any of those places in five years or ten years. I know that if I pass up these opportunities, these modest, even humble adventures, I may well be miserable for it when that day arrives that they're no longer an option open to me. Damn but I dread that day. I hope I'm able to throw a leg over a bike for another 30-years at least.
(photo - above, the mighty GS - Gelande Strasse. Below, my buddy, "Mike")
Britain's Economic Ice Age
It's something every Canadian kid understands. Sure the water feels cold when you gingerly put a toe in but it's not until that water reaches the equator that you fully grasp just how cold, cold can truly be.
Brits seem to be getting the idea that they're just beginning to get immersed in the cold water, that they're going to get in a lot deeper and that water is going to get a lot higher before they ever see dry land again.
Like their American counterparts, the Brits got a bad case of dormophrenia or house madness. By some accounts, Britain's housing bubble was almost twice as inflated as America's and, like America, Britain became insanely dependent on and, hence, vulnerable to its financial sector as its economic engine of prosperity. Today the pound sterling tumbled to $1.36 US, its lowest point in 23 years and no one knows where the bottom will be found.
The Brit newspaper The Independent says it's time the Brown government, and all Britons for that matter, came clean:
Yes, the downturn is global. But it was the failure of Mr Brown as Chancellor to curb the excesses of our financial services sector in the boom years that lies at the root of our particular troubles. The liabilities of our stricken banking sector are more than four times the size of our national output. That is why the value of the pound is slumping so dramatically on international currency exchanges.
Foreign investors increasingly doubt the ability of British taxpayers to meet those liabilities if called upon to do so. David Cameron's prediction that Britain could be forced to turn to the International Monetary Fund for help looks extreme, but certainly not impossible.
...But the true root of this crisis was not excessive Government spending; it was the stupid lending and irresponsible risk-taking of our hubristic banks.
Stupid lending. Irresponsible risk taking? Does that sound familiar? Even poor Ireland is again, well, poor. The Celtic Tiger revolution that saw the Irish economy become the most open and vibrant in the European Union is crashing down. One account this past week predicted that Irish real estate could drop up to 80% in value before this is over.
Does anyone remember when Stephen Harper used to ridicule Canada as a Northern European-style welfare state that was punished by higher taxes and lower growth causing a lower standard of living than our enlightened, adventuresome neighbours to the south? Compared to the United States and England, Canada looked downright backward to Steve.
Canada is indeed lucky. We were backward with our banks, our entire financial sector for that matter. Successive Liberal governments resisted the financial sector's demands for permission to have their own Mardi Gras north of the 49th. We're also lucky that we remained such lowly hewers of wood and drawers of water with a hefty resource base that has and will do much to insulate us from the worst of the travails facing our Anglo-Saxon cousins.
Brits seem to be getting the idea that they're just beginning to get immersed in the cold water, that they're going to get in a lot deeper and that water is going to get a lot higher before they ever see dry land again.
Like their American counterparts, the Brits got a bad case of dormophrenia or house madness. By some accounts, Britain's housing bubble was almost twice as inflated as America's and, like America, Britain became insanely dependent on and, hence, vulnerable to its financial sector as its economic engine of prosperity. Today the pound sterling tumbled to $1.36 US, its lowest point in 23 years and no one knows where the bottom will be found.
The Brit newspaper The Independent says it's time the Brown government, and all Britons for that matter, came clean:
Yes, the downturn is global. But it was the failure of Mr Brown as Chancellor to curb the excesses of our financial services sector in the boom years that lies at the root of our particular troubles. The liabilities of our stricken banking sector are more than four times the size of our national output. That is why the value of the pound is slumping so dramatically on international currency exchanges.
Foreign investors increasingly doubt the ability of British taxpayers to meet those liabilities if called upon to do so. David Cameron's prediction that Britain could be forced to turn to the International Monetary Fund for help looks extreme, but certainly not impossible.
...But the true root of this crisis was not excessive Government spending; it was the stupid lending and irresponsible risk-taking of our hubristic banks.
Stupid lending. Irresponsible risk taking? Does that sound familiar? Even poor Ireland is again, well, poor. The Celtic Tiger revolution that saw the Irish economy become the most open and vibrant in the European Union is crashing down. One account this past week predicted that Irish real estate could drop up to 80% in value before this is over.
Does anyone remember when Stephen Harper used to ridicule Canada as a Northern European-style welfare state that was punished by higher taxes and lower growth causing a lower standard of living than our enlightened, adventuresome neighbours to the south? Compared to the United States and England, Canada looked downright backward to Steve.
Canada is indeed lucky. We were backward with our banks, our entire financial sector for that matter. Successive Liberal governments resisted the financial sector's demands for permission to have their own Mardi Gras north of the 49th. We're also lucky that we remained such lowly hewers of wood and drawers of water with a hefty resource base that has and will do much to insulate us from the worst of the travails facing our Anglo-Saxon cousins.
Pope Re-Instates Holocaust Denier
Joe "The German" Ratzinger, who also goes by the stage name of Pope Benedict Ex Vee Eye or Benedict XVI, has nixed the excommunications of four unruly Catholic Bishops, one of whom said just last week that he doesn't believe the Nazis sent Jews to gas chambers.
Bad Boy Brit Bishop Richard Williamson, was one of four "shake and bake" Bishops of the Society of St. Pius X. They were turfed by the Vatican when society founder Archbishop LeFebvre consecrated the quartet as Bishops in 1970 without papal sanction.
Jewish groups have condemned the re-hirings. Hmmm, wonder what that's all about?
Bad Boy Brit Bishop Richard Williamson, was one of four "shake and bake" Bishops of the Society of St. Pius X. They were turfed by the Vatican when society founder Archbishop LeFebvre consecrated the quartet as Bishops in 1970 without papal sanction.
Jewish groups have condemned the re-hirings. Hmmm, wonder what that's all about?
America's Problem Isn't Liquidity - It's Insolvency
America's problem isn't finding a way to free up credit. It isn't the federal government's debt. The problem is that the country, and especially the private sector, is hopelessly debt-bound. The country is insolvent, it's broke, it's bankrupt.
Ed Kemp writing in Reuters makes a compelling argument that America's efforts to rescue the country through trillions of dollars of bailouts and stimulus spending can't work because those measures don't shrink what's squeezing the life out of America, the mountain of debt weighing down on its chest.
The United States and the United Kingdom stand on the brink of the largest debt crisis in history.
While both governments experiment with quantitative easing, bad banks to absorb non-performing loans, and state guarantees to restart bank lending, the only real way out is some combination of widespread corporate default, debt write-downs and inflation to reduce the burden of debt to more manageable levels. Everything else is window-dressing.
Kemp notes that America's fiscal house began falling apart around 1970. From 1975 to 2997, total US output, gross domestic product or GDP, has increased just under eight fold. In that same interval, however, rose 20 fold, two and a half times faster than the growth in GDP. In the result, total debt, public and private sector, soared from 155% of GDP to the astonishing 355% where it stands today.
...the real debt explosion has come from the private sector. Private debt outstanding has risen an enormous 22 times, three times faster than the economy as a whole, and fast enough to take the ratio of private debt to GDP from 117 percent to 303 percent in a little over thirty years.
For the most part, policymakers have been comfortable with rising private debt levels. Officials have cited a wide range of reasons why the economy can safely operate with much higher levels of debt than before, including improvements in macroeconomic management that have muted the business cycle and led to lower inflation and interest rates. But there is a suspicion that tolerance for private rather than public sector debt simply reflected an ideological preference.
...By 2000-2007, total debt was rising almost twice as fast as output, with the rapid issuance all coming from the private sector, as well as state and local governments.
This created a dangerous interdependence between GDP growth (which could only be sustained by massive borrowing and rapid increases in the volume of debt) and the debt stock (which could only be serviced if the economy continued its swift and uninterrupted expansion).
...the necessary condition for resolving the debt crisis is a reduction in the outstanding volume of debt, an increase in nominal GDP, or some combination of the two, to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio to a more sustainable level.
...having governments buy distressed assets from the banks, or provide loan guarantees, is not an effective solution. It does not reduce the volume of debt, or force recognition of losses. It merely re-denominates private sector obligations to be met by households and firms as public ones to be met by the taxpayer.
This type of debt swap would make sense if the problem was liquidity rather than solvency. But in current circumstances, taxpayers are being asked to shoulder some or all of the cost of defaults, rather than provide a temporarily liquidity bridge.
Avoiding Depression
Trying to cut debt by reducing consumption and investment, lowering wages, boosting saving and paying down debt out of current income is unlikely to be effective either. The resulting retrenchment would lead to sharp falls in both real output and the price level, depressing nominal GDP. Government retrenchment simply intensified the depression during the early 1930s. Private sector retrenchment and wage cuts will do the same in the 2000s.
Shrinking the Real Beast
The solution must be some combination of policies to reduce the level of debt or raise nominal GDP. The simplest way to reduce debt is through bankruptcy, in which some or all of debts are deemed unrecoverable and are simply extinguished, ceasing to exist.
But widespread bankruptcies are probably socially and politically unacceptable. The alternative is some mechanism for refinancing debt on terms which are more favorable to borrowers (replacing short term debt at higher rates with longer-dated paper at lower ones).
The final option is to raise nominal GDP so it becomes easier to finance debt payments from augmented cashflow. But counter-cyclical policies to sustain GDP will not be enough. Governments in both the United States and the United Kingdom need to raise nominal GDP and debt-service capacity, not simply sustain it.
There is not much government can do to accelerate the real rate of growth. The remaining option is to tolerate, even encourage, a faster rate of inflation to improve debt-service capacity. Even more than debt nationalization, inflation is the ultimate way to spread the costs of debt workout across the widest possible section of the population.
Could Kemp possibly have this right? Are the governments, especially the American and British administrations, simply squandering trillions of dollars in bailouts and stimulus spending?
If Kemp is right, America has a near lethal addiction to debt, one that its foreign lenders have been willing to keep supplied. One flaw in his thinking is that he's looking at solutions to clean up the mess that's accumulated since the Nixon days. What he doesn't address is what an America, freed of debt addiction, would look like. How is America to function, how are its people to live, if they have to operate on a reality budget, if they have to live within their means?
Suddenly Stevie Harper's grand vision of America the Beautiful doesn't look nearly as grand any longer.
http://www.alternet.org/story/122302/the_u.s._and_uk_are_on_the_brink_of_debt_disaster/?page=1
Friday, January 23, 2009
Most Canadians Support Deficit Spending
Nothing too surprising there. CanWest reports that 53% of Canadians believe the feds must run a deficit between 30 to 40-billion dollars to stimulate the economy. 41% are opposed to deficit spending by the Harper government.
Not surprisingly, opposition to budget deficits is highest in provinces where Harper's Conservatives gain much of their support - Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
In other words, it looks like Steve is turning on his base. Jeebus that's gotta hurt, especially for a guy who's been such a meticulous practitioner of wedge politics.
Strangely enough, CanWest doesn't seem to have asked its pollster, Ipsos Reid to compile stats according to party affiliation.
Not surprisingly, opposition to budget deficits is highest in provinces where Harper's Conservatives gain much of their support - Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
In other words, it looks like Steve is turning on his base. Jeebus that's gotta hurt, especially for a guy who's been such a meticulous practitioner of wedge politics.
Strangely enough, CanWest doesn't seem to have asked its pollster, Ipsos Reid to compile stats according to party affiliation.
How To Ditch a Jetliner
These two clips, courtesy of The Guardian, show US Airways 1549 coming down in New York's Hudson River. The first clip shows how gently the pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, set the plane down, slightly nose high, which probably explains how the aircraft was able to shed its engines without tearing off the wings and breaking up the fuselage in the process.
The second clip shows the aircraft afloat, drifting down river (rather quickly in fact) while the emergency exits are opened and the passengers escape out onto the wings. The crew wisely kept the rear exit doors closed which probably kept the aircraft from sinking and taking passengers down with it.
The
The second clip shows the aircraft afloat, drifting down river (rather quickly in fact) while the emergency exits are opened and the passengers escape out onto the wings. The crew wisely kept the rear exit doors closed which probably kept the aircraft from sinking and taking passengers down with it.
The
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Is The Era of Authoritarianism Coming to a Close?
Barack Obama's committment to transparency and accountability in government may call the curtain down on the era of authoritarianism and the oligarchs who thrived on it.
Stephen Harper promised Canadians transparency and accountability when that suited him but, once in power, quickly reneged and instead imposed a system of government as authoritarian, secretive and uncommunicative as any in postwar Canadian history.
Stephen Harper didn't govern Canada, he didn't lead the Canadian people. Stephen Harper ruled us. He rules the Canadian people just as he rules his caucus - with an iron hand and sealed lips. With the collaboration of a pitiful national media, he simply gagged critical government departments such as National Defence and the Environment Ministry. Our media sat by like complacent stooges as he installed political commissars in the Prime Minister's Office to clamp down on communications between citizen and government and to skew and politically filter what little information the public was able to get from its government. That's despotic, tyrannical and yet we sat by and allowed it to happen - allowed it to happen to us.
Transparency and accountability are fine - for those who would lead - but they're anathema to those who seek, instead, to rule. That's why Harper wasted no time ditching both promises. Information became something that flowed from the citizen to their government, not from the government to the public. That is what suits authoritarian rule. That is the guiding principle behind such odious legislation as America's Patriot Act. It's all about degrading individual freedoms and rights while expanding government powers and secrecy, all in the name of collective security.
Barack Obama has proclaimed the era of authoritarianism at an end in America. We should finally stand up and demand an end to it in our own country as well.
Stephen Harper promised Canadians transparency and accountability when that suited him but, once in power, quickly reneged and instead imposed a system of government as authoritarian, secretive and uncommunicative as any in postwar Canadian history.
Stephen Harper didn't govern Canada, he didn't lead the Canadian people. Stephen Harper ruled us. He rules the Canadian people just as he rules his caucus - with an iron hand and sealed lips. With the collaboration of a pitiful national media, he simply gagged critical government departments such as National Defence and the Environment Ministry. Our media sat by like complacent stooges as he installed political commissars in the Prime Minister's Office to clamp down on communications between citizen and government and to skew and politically filter what little information the public was able to get from its government. That's despotic, tyrannical and yet we sat by and allowed it to happen - allowed it to happen to us.
Transparency and accountability are fine - for those who would lead - but they're anathema to those who seek, instead, to rule. That's why Harper wasted no time ditching both promises. Information became something that flowed from the citizen to their government, not from the government to the public. That is what suits authoritarian rule. That is the guiding principle behind such odious legislation as America's Patriot Act. It's all about degrading individual freedoms and rights while expanding government powers and secrecy, all in the name of collective security.
Barack Obama has proclaimed the era of authoritarianism at an end in America. We should finally stand up and demand an end to it in our own country as well.
The West's Dying Forests
Along the West coast of North America from California to British Columbia, trees are dying faster, almost twice as fast as they did only three decades ago. It's a phenomenon that has wide-ranging implications for the region, its inhabitants and for the global environment. From The Guardian:
Trees in the western United States are dying twice as quickly as they did three decades ago and scientists think global warming is to blame.
In their surveys, ecologists found that a wide range of tree species were dying including pines, firs and hemlocks and at a variety of altitudes. The changes can have serious long-term effects including reducing biodiversity and turning western forests into a source of carbon dioxide as they die and decompose. That could lead to a runaway effect that speeds up climate change.
The forest survey, carried out by a team of scientists led by van Mantgem, is published tomorrow in the journal "Science." It showed that death rates of trees overall had more than doubled since 1955. In the Pacific north-west and British Columbia, deaths had doubled in 17 years. In California, the death rate took 25 years to double.
The data for the research was gathered by several generations of scientists counting trees over more than 50 years. It included forests in Oregon, Washington, California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and south-western British Columbia. All were older than 200 years, with many being established more than 500 years ago. Death rates in old forests tend to be more stable since they mostly contain very old trees.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/22/trees-death-global-warming
Porsche - Playing the Market in Wolfsburg
BBC News has a fascinating story about the legendary Porsche automaker and how it became a "a hedge fund with a carmaker attached."
It seems Ferdinand Porsche's namesake, known for its iconic sports cars, has been furiously playing the stock markets. Last year Porsche made six times more on the market than it did on its car business.
Why?
It's been playing the market to get enough money to achieve its life long dream of getting total ownership of Dr. Ferdinand's other brainchild, Volkswagen. Right now Porsche owns or controls nearly three quarters of the outstanding shares of VW.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7843262.stm
It seems Ferdinand Porsche's namesake, known for its iconic sports cars, has been furiously playing the stock markets. Last year Porsche made six times more on the market than it did on its car business.
Why?
It's been playing the market to get enough money to achieve its life long dream of getting total ownership of Dr. Ferdinand's other brainchild, Volkswagen. Right now Porsche owns or controls nearly three quarters of the outstanding shares of VW.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7843262.stm
At Least There'll Be Enough Porta-Potties
It's hardly the best way to recall the momentous day but, according to McClatchey Newspapers, Obama's inauguration day also turned out to be "the largest temporary toilet event in the history of the United States."
Most of the blue beacons were provided by Don's Johns of Chantilly, Virginia. According to McClatchey the johns didn't get nearly the workout planners had expected. Which is probably good news as it ensures there'll be plenty of surplus available for the 200,000 anti-abortion protestors who'll march on Washington today to demand that Obama move to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Observers (okay, just me) predict that a gang that large that thinks it has the slightest chance of getting that point across to Obama is so full of it they might just be able to fill the unused capacity of all those porta-potties.
Most of the blue beacons were provided by Don's Johns of Chantilly, Virginia. According to McClatchey the johns didn't get nearly the workout planners had expected. Which is probably good news as it ensures there'll be plenty of surplus available for the 200,000 anti-abortion protestors who'll march on Washington today to demand that Obama move to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Observers (okay, just me) predict that a gang that large that thinks it has the slightest chance of getting that point across to Obama is so full of it they might just be able to fill the unused capacity of all those porta-potties.
Gaza, Afghanistan & Iraq - The Same Old Story
What does Israel's failed war in Gaza have to do with the West's war in Afghanistan and the American misadventure in Iraq? All of these conflicts illustrate how readily overwhelming military superiority can be undermined by bad political leadership.
Not one of these wars had the critical political deliberation required before they were launched. That meant that only the simplest military objectives could be achieved - the immediate, tactical victories - while the meaningful objectives, the political and strategic purposes languished, obscure and ill-defined.
The old adage holds that war is simply an extension of politics when diplomacy fails. War is the application of state violence to achieve a political outcome. We can quibble over the fine points of these definitions but they're essentially true.
All other things being equal, good political leadership can win wars while bad political leadership can lose wars. We have more than two millenia of recorded history demonstrating that.
In Afghanistan, Washington's focus was on exacting revenge for the 9/11 attacks. The goal was to drive the Taliban out of power, to destroy al-Qaeda and to decapitate its leadership. The tactical part was easy. American air power was all that was needed to tip the scales in favour of the Northern Alliance warlords whose rout of the Taliban outpaced the Pentagon's ability to keep up. The strategic goals of destroying al-Qaeda and killing its leadership turned into a dismal and, by all accounts, needless failure.
The Afghan war ought to have been conclusively decided by 2003. Its Achilles' Heel was bad political leadership from the White House. Instead of winning the winnable victory in Afghanistan, the Bush administration decided to shift military resources out of the Afghan theatre in preparation for a needless invasion and conquest of Iraq. Five years later, that fateful neglect continues to play out in the quagmire of today's Afghanistan with its corrupt government, flourishing drug trade and resurgent Taliban insurgency
The same bad political leadership that dropped the ball in Afghanistan perpetrated the disastrous, even negligent decision-making that turned into the Iraq debacle. On last night's Daily Show, the New York Times' David Sanger appeared promoting his book, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power. Sanger's book is a 490-page inventory of the enormous mess Obama inherits resulting from the Bush/Cheney war of whim in Iraq. It details all the threats that were allowed to grow while America was stuck in and focused on Iraq.
The Iraq war suffered from such an enormous vacuum of political leadership that not one of the key, domestic problems that beset the new Iraqi state has been resolved. You have the Sadr/Mahdi versus Maliki/Badr Shiite struggle, the Shiite versus Sunni struggle, the Arab versus Kurd struggle and they're not going away by themselves.
Bad political leadership failed to foresee that both Shiite and Sunni would resist occupation, that Iraq wasn't ready for secular democracy, that Iran would be the real winner, that the Kurds wouldn't be complacent to American dictates, that the occupation would play straight into the hand of Islamist extremists including al-Qaeda. The US military was readily able to deliver a stunning tactical victory but was completely unprepared and ill-led to achieve a strategic win.
Look at it this way. The invasion launched a war to topple Saddam. That was supposed to be it. Saddam gone, American stooge government in. But the war to topple Saddam rapidly turned into a war against the Sunni resistance (Rumsfeld's "dead-enders") that morphed into a war against the Shiite militias and a Sunni/Shia civil war that evolved into a war against terrorists when al-Qaeda and other Islamists beganto arrive for the party. Not one of these follow-on wars was foreseen by the political leadership and that's how what was to have been a 60-day conquest has turned into a 6-year disaster.
That war needed to be over by 2004 at the latest but that would have meant flooding Iraq with enough troops to stabilize the country for a handover to a viable central government.
Then we have the Gaza war led by that incompetent author of the Lebanon disaster, Ehud Olmert. Bad political leadership ensured that Israel had lost that war before the first tank rolled into the Gaza Strip.
The tactical victory was easy. Israeli troops, backed by artillery, tanks, attack helicopters and jet fighters, suffered extremely light casualties as they drove through Gaza pretty much at will. The problem was once they achieved the tactical objective, they had no strategic objective they could accomplish unless Hamas, its entire leadership and all of its fighters had been willing to make a suicide charge into the Israeli guns. And so, with the new guy showing up for work in Washington, the Israeli forces had no choice but to di di mau out of Gaza.
What did Israel accomplish from this folly? Sweet Fanny Adams, that's what. It undermined its Palestinian ally, Abbas and Fatah. It drew international sympathy to the suffering and hopeless plight of the Gazan Palestinians. It probably handed a dandy political victory to Hamas and certainly left it in control of Gaza.
If there is a lesson to this it's that we in the West can no longer afford this incompetence from our political leadership. No more unwinnable wars. No more wars on the cheap because quick & dirty doesn't work. We need to understand that even successful military campaigns can trigger blowback but when we wage unsuccessful wars that's a certainty.
Not one of these wars had the critical political deliberation required before they were launched. That meant that only the simplest military objectives could be achieved - the immediate, tactical victories - while the meaningful objectives, the political and strategic purposes languished, obscure and ill-defined.
The old adage holds that war is simply an extension of politics when diplomacy fails. War is the application of state violence to achieve a political outcome. We can quibble over the fine points of these definitions but they're essentially true.
All other things being equal, good political leadership can win wars while bad political leadership can lose wars. We have more than two millenia of recorded history demonstrating that.
In Afghanistan, Washington's focus was on exacting revenge for the 9/11 attacks. The goal was to drive the Taliban out of power, to destroy al-Qaeda and to decapitate its leadership. The tactical part was easy. American air power was all that was needed to tip the scales in favour of the Northern Alliance warlords whose rout of the Taliban outpaced the Pentagon's ability to keep up. The strategic goals of destroying al-Qaeda and killing its leadership turned into a dismal and, by all accounts, needless failure.
The Afghan war ought to have been conclusively decided by 2003. Its Achilles' Heel was bad political leadership from the White House. Instead of winning the winnable victory in Afghanistan, the Bush administration decided to shift military resources out of the Afghan theatre in preparation for a needless invasion and conquest of Iraq. Five years later, that fateful neglect continues to play out in the quagmire of today's Afghanistan with its corrupt government, flourishing drug trade and resurgent Taliban insurgency
The same bad political leadership that dropped the ball in Afghanistan perpetrated the disastrous, even negligent decision-making that turned into the Iraq debacle. On last night's Daily Show, the New York Times' David Sanger appeared promoting his book, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power. Sanger's book is a 490-page inventory of the enormous mess Obama inherits resulting from the Bush/Cheney war of whim in Iraq. It details all the threats that were allowed to grow while America was stuck in and focused on Iraq.
The Iraq war suffered from such an enormous vacuum of political leadership that not one of the key, domestic problems that beset the new Iraqi state has been resolved. You have the Sadr/Mahdi versus Maliki/Badr Shiite struggle, the Shiite versus Sunni struggle, the Arab versus Kurd struggle and they're not going away by themselves.
Bad political leadership failed to foresee that both Shiite and Sunni would resist occupation, that Iraq wasn't ready for secular democracy, that Iran would be the real winner, that the Kurds wouldn't be complacent to American dictates, that the occupation would play straight into the hand of Islamist extremists including al-Qaeda. The US military was readily able to deliver a stunning tactical victory but was completely unprepared and ill-led to achieve a strategic win.
Look at it this way. The invasion launched a war to topple Saddam. That was supposed to be it. Saddam gone, American stooge government in. But the war to topple Saddam rapidly turned into a war against the Sunni resistance (Rumsfeld's "dead-enders") that morphed into a war against the Shiite militias and a Sunni/Shia civil war that evolved into a war against terrorists when al-Qaeda and other Islamists beganto arrive for the party. Not one of these follow-on wars was foreseen by the political leadership and that's how what was to have been a 60-day conquest has turned into a 6-year disaster.
That war needed to be over by 2004 at the latest but that would have meant flooding Iraq with enough troops to stabilize the country for a handover to a viable central government.
Then we have the Gaza war led by that incompetent author of the Lebanon disaster, Ehud Olmert. Bad political leadership ensured that Israel had lost that war before the first tank rolled into the Gaza Strip.
The tactical victory was easy. Israeli troops, backed by artillery, tanks, attack helicopters and jet fighters, suffered extremely light casualties as they drove through Gaza pretty much at will. The problem was once they achieved the tactical objective, they had no strategic objective they could accomplish unless Hamas, its entire leadership and all of its fighters had been willing to make a suicide charge into the Israeli guns. And so, with the new guy showing up for work in Washington, the Israeli forces had no choice but to di di mau out of Gaza.
What did Israel accomplish from this folly? Sweet Fanny Adams, that's what. It undermined its Palestinian ally, Abbas and Fatah. It drew international sympathy to the suffering and hopeless plight of the Gazan Palestinians. It probably handed a dandy political victory to Hamas and certainly left it in control of Gaza.
If there is a lesson to this it's that we in the West can no longer afford this incompetence from our political leadership. No more unwinnable wars. No more wars on the cheap because quick & dirty doesn't work. We need to understand that even successful military campaigns can trigger blowback but when we wage unsuccessful wars that's a certainty.
The Bar Has Definitely Been Raised
Poor Stephen Harper and, to a lesser extent, poor Iggy. Both must be feeling a bit like the sap who shows up in a pirate costume only to find it's actually a black tie affair.
The pirate costume is the mantle of the Bush administration. The black tie outfit is the new reality, the Obama administration. Folks who once backed the invasion of Iraq are laying low right now. Gitmo and enhanced interrogation techniques are so yesterday. The bar that the Frat Boy set easy low for the limbo party is no more. It's now a high jump bar again so everybody better ditch the Hawaiian shirts and put on their track shoes.
Poor Stevie Harper. He so wanted to bring the Reagan Revolution to his native land, hit us with it right between the eyes before we could do anything about it. But all that hinged on somebody keeping that dark farce playing to packed crowds in the theatre halls of Pennsylvania Avenue. Whoopsie!
A bit of Steve must've died as he watched his American Idol hop the last chopper out of the White House before the mob arrived with the pitchforks and torches. I'll bet in his pointy little mind he had an image of the Gipper weeping.
The era of rank ideology evaporated overnight. Sorry Steve. When it comes to mental flexibility, Steve has chronic osteoporosis of the brain. His brittle little mind is on rails, tightly tied down, not a hair out of place. He truly doesn't have a B Game at the very moment when that's the only game in town. Jim Travers offers these insights in today's Toronto Star:
Whatever Harper was doing up here, Bush was doing more of it down there. While the Prime Minister, like his Liberal predecessors, was trying to ignore the human and legal rights of one Canadian that were being denied at Guantanamo Bay, the president was keenly defending and justifying the U.S. abuse of hundreds of prisoners. Canadian opposition to the Afghanistan mission was a mere peep compared to the screams against the war in Iraq.
When only a few academics and journalists here worried about eroding democracy and the concentration of control in the Prime Minister's Office, a U.S. public debate was roiling over the Bush administration's determination to remove constitutional checks, tipping the balance of power in the president's favour.
For a federal government with a more or less parallel U.S. agenda, political cover that broad is priceless. Among other things, it reinforces the me-too logic of economic, social and foreign policies arcing across the spectrum; from the lethal combo of low taxes and high spending to climate change foot-dragging and big-stick solutions to problems begging more subtle answer.
Much of what the new president told America in his sobering inaugural address resonates with similar urgency in Canada. Fear is no excuse for injustice, greed can't be a synonym for free markets, and dumping the planet's problems on the next generation is not an acceptable option.
Obama is a phenomenon – a seductive mix of upright character, soaring intellect and stirring rhetoric – that Canadian leaders can't and shouldn't try to duplicate. They can, and should, rise to his challenge of restoring principles to policies and to politics.
How We Lost Afghanistan
We lost Afghanistan? Yeah, that's right. We lost Afghanistan because we chose to lose, or at least Washington chose to lose it.
We lost Afghanistan in 2002 when no one could be bothered to send Western troops into Tora Bora to destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership. We, or at least Washington, cemented the loss in 2003 when it chose to deploy the massive American military force needed in Afghanistan to Iraq instead.
The New York Times has an enlightening explanation for the resurgence of the Taliban:
The Taliban are everywhere the soldiers are not, the saying goes in the southern part of the country.
And that is a lot of places.
For starters, there is the 550 miles of border with Pakistan, where the Taliban’s busiest infiltration routes lie.
“We’re not there,” said Brig. Gen. John W. Nicholson, the deputy commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. “The borders are wide open.”
Then there is the 100-mile stretch of Helmand River running south from the town of Garmser, where the Taliban and their money crop, poppy, bloom in isolation.
“No one,” General Nicholson said, pointing to the area on the map.
Then there is Nimroz Province, all of it, which borders Iran. No troops there.
And the Ghorak district northwest of Kandahar, which officers refer to as the “jet stream” for the Taliban fighters who flow through.
Ditto the districts of Shah Wali Kot, Kharkrez and Nesh, where the presence of NATO troops is minimal or nil.
“We don’t have enough forces to secure the population,” General Nicholson said.
A force of about 20,000 American, British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers have been trying for years to secure the 78,000 square miles of villages, cities, mountains and deserts that make up southern Afghanistan. The region is one of the two centers of the Taliban insurgency, which has made a remarkable resurgence since being booted from power in November 2001.
It is perhaps in Kandahar, one of the provincial capitals, where the lack of troops is most evident. About 3,000 Canadian soldiers are assigned to secure the city [the entire province in fact], home to about 500,000 people [actual population 890,000]. In a recent visit, this reporter traveled the city for five days and did not see a single Canadian soldier on the streets.
The lack of troops has allowed the Taliban to mount significant attacks inside the city. Two clerics who joined a pro-government advisory council, for instance, have been gunned down in the past two months, bringing the total assassinated council members to 24. Over the summer, a Taliban force invaded Kandahar and stormed its main prison, freeing more than 1,200 inmates.
But whether extra troops will have the desired impact is unclear. Adding 20,000 new troops to the 20,000 Western soldiers already here — in addition to an equal number of Afghan policemen and army personnel — would bring the total to 60,000. The six provinces that make up southern Afghanistan have a population of 3.2 million. In that case, the ratio of troops to population would just match that [minimum] recommended by the United States Army's counterinsurgency manual: 50 people per soldier or police officer.
Where this article is right is that Western forces are not remotely strong enough to secure the Afghan people against the Taliban. Beyond that, it's wrong in several respects.
The article implies that, at this late stage, another 20-30,000 troops will rectify the rot that's set in over the past seven years. That's nonsense. The Taliban are astonishingly resilient and their insurgency has morphed to incorporate new players (everything from once hostile warlords to student nationalists) and spread far beyond the traditional southern homeland of the Pashtun Taliban into eastern and northern provinces. More troops will not defeat the dual scourge of warlordism and tribalism nor will they cleanse the central government and its security services of the rampant corruption that predates lowly Afghans and drives them into the arms of the insurgents.
In other words, an extra 20-30,000 troops represents a bandaid solution that does nothing to staunch the other mortal wounds from which Afghanistan is bleeding out. It is, at best, a military response to a conflict we freely and regularly admit cannot be won militarily.
Petraeus knows that the Afghan conflict is a political war for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. More soldiers won't win back their essential support for the Kabul government. When a critical mass of the populace sees their central government and its Western defenders, not as liberators, but as occupiers and oppressors, a few tens of thousands of extra troops aren't much of an answer.
We lost Afghanistan in 2002 when no one could be bothered to send Western troops into Tora Bora to destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership. We, or at least Washington, cemented the loss in 2003 when it chose to deploy the massive American military force needed in Afghanistan to Iraq instead.
The New York Times has an enlightening explanation for the resurgence of the Taliban:
The Taliban are everywhere the soldiers are not, the saying goes in the southern part of the country.
And that is a lot of places.
For starters, there is the 550 miles of border with Pakistan, where the Taliban’s busiest infiltration routes lie.
“We’re not there,” said Brig. Gen. John W. Nicholson, the deputy commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. “The borders are wide open.”
Then there is the 100-mile stretch of Helmand River running south from the town of Garmser, where the Taliban and their money crop, poppy, bloom in isolation.
“No one,” General Nicholson said, pointing to the area on the map.
Then there is Nimroz Province, all of it, which borders Iran. No troops there.
And the Ghorak district northwest of Kandahar, which officers refer to as the “jet stream” for the Taliban fighters who flow through.
Ditto the districts of Shah Wali Kot, Kharkrez and Nesh, where the presence of NATO troops is minimal or nil.
“We don’t have enough forces to secure the population,” General Nicholson said.
A force of about 20,000 American, British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers have been trying for years to secure the 78,000 square miles of villages, cities, mountains and deserts that make up southern Afghanistan. The region is one of the two centers of the Taliban insurgency, which has made a remarkable resurgence since being booted from power in November 2001.
It is perhaps in Kandahar, one of the provincial capitals, where the lack of troops is most evident. About 3,000 Canadian soldiers are assigned to secure the city [the entire province in fact], home to about 500,000 people [actual population 890,000]. In a recent visit, this reporter traveled the city for five days and did not see a single Canadian soldier on the streets.
The lack of troops has allowed the Taliban to mount significant attacks inside the city. Two clerics who joined a pro-government advisory council, for instance, have been gunned down in the past two months, bringing the total assassinated council members to 24. Over the summer, a Taliban force invaded Kandahar and stormed its main prison, freeing more than 1,200 inmates.
But whether extra troops will have the desired impact is unclear. Adding 20,000 new troops to the 20,000 Western soldiers already here — in addition to an equal number of Afghan policemen and army personnel — would bring the total to 60,000. The six provinces that make up southern Afghanistan have a population of 3.2 million. In that case, the ratio of troops to population would just match that [minimum] recommended by the United States Army's counterinsurgency manual: 50 people per soldier or police officer.
Where this article is right is that Western forces are not remotely strong enough to secure the Afghan people against the Taliban. Beyond that, it's wrong in several respects.
The article implies that, at this late stage, another 20-30,000 troops will rectify the rot that's set in over the past seven years. That's nonsense. The Taliban are astonishingly resilient and their insurgency has morphed to incorporate new players (everything from once hostile warlords to student nationalists) and spread far beyond the traditional southern homeland of the Pashtun Taliban into eastern and northern provinces. More troops will not defeat the dual scourge of warlordism and tribalism nor will they cleanse the central government and its security services of the rampant corruption that predates lowly Afghans and drives them into the arms of the insurgents.
In other words, an extra 20-30,000 troops represents a bandaid solution that does nothing to staunch the other mortal wounds from which Afghanistan is bleeding out. It is, at best, a military response to a conflict we freely and regularly admit cannot be won militarily.
Petraeus knows that the Afghan conflict is a political war for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. More soldiers won't win back their essential support for the Kabul government. When a critical mass of the populace sees their central government and its Western defenders, not as liberators, but as occupiers and oppressors, a few tens of thousands of extra troops aren't much of an answer.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Steve Bell's Parting Shot
One guy who's gotten a lot of mileage out of the Bush years is The Guardian editorial cartoonist Steve Bell. Here's Steve's farewell to Bush and his Dick.
Obama Might Have Palestine Figured Out
Hamas won't like it. Israel won't like it. That sure sounds like a way forward to me.
A rough idea of President Obama's initiative for peace in Palestine is emerging. The thrust of it seems to be to isolate Hamas in Gaza for now, clear the West Bank as a Palestinian homeland, create a vibrant economy and society in the West Bank and wait for the Gazans to sign on to a winning deal.
It will probably entail concessions from Israel, in particular clearing out all illegal settlements in the West Bank. The settler population is now estimated at upwards of 430,000, 40% of which arrived during the Bush Jr. administration
That will probably give the Israelis fits but, if there's to be any hope of lasting peace, that's pretty much unavoidable. Many Israeli papers have not warmly greeted the Obama inauguration. They seem to be getting the idea that the carte blanche thing is rapidly coming to a close.
Obama will have to tread carefully to resolve the Fatah-Hamas split. While Hamas was weakened by the Gaza war, many think Fatah suffered the greatest loss of Palestinian support. That may just create an opening for a genuine, national unity government for the Palestinian people.
A rough idea of President Obama's initiative for peace in Palestine is emerging. The thrust of it seems to be to isolate Hamas in Gaza for now, clear the West Bank as a Palestinian homeland, create a vibrant economy and society in the West Bank and wait for the Gazans to sign on to a winning deal.
It will probably entail concessions from Israel, in particular clearing out all illegal settlements in the West Bank. The settler population is now estimated at upwards of 430,000, 40% of which arrived during the Bush Jr. administration
That will probably give the Israelis fits but, if there's to be any hope of lasting peace, that's pretty much unavoidable. Many Israeli papers have not warmly greeted the Obama inauguration. They seem to be getting the idea that the carte blanche thing is rapidly coming to a close.
Obama will have to tread carefully to resolve the Fatah-Hamas split. While Hamas was weakened by the Gaza war, many think Fatah suffered the greatest loss of Palestinian support. That may just create an opening for a genuine, national unity government for the Palestinian people.
Harper, Looking More Than Foolish, "Reconsiders" Khadr.
Apparently realizing just how incredibly stupid they look, the Harper government is pulling its thumb out and taking a close look at the Tory political liability also known as Omar Khadr.
Apparently awakened by the dawn of a new day in Washington, Harper DefMin Peter McKay says the government is "reassessing" its position on Khadr, the child soldier who continues to be held in Guantanimo.
From The Globe and Mail:
Ottawa appears to be hedging its bets, preparing for a possible request from Washington to take Mr. Khadr back. The issue the Conservative government has wished for so long to avoid may well end up surfacing during the first meeting between Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Canada's Incredibly Sheepish New Government looks like it's waiting for Obama to tell it to jump and to clarify just how high that jump should be. Funny how the Ottawa John Wayne gang turned into cloned Urkels with the arrival of the Democratic president. Kind of makes you think they were Washington stooges all along, doesn't it?
Apparently awakened by the dawn of a new day in Washington, Harper DefMin Peter McKay says the government is "reassessing" its position on Khadr, the child soldier who continues to be held in Guantanimo.
From The Globe and Mail:
Ottawa appears to be hedging its bets, preparing for a possible request from Washington to take Mr. Khadr back. The issue the Conservative government has wished for so long to avoid may well end up surfacing during the first meeting between Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Canada's Incredibly Sheepish New Government looks like it's waiting for Obama to tell it to jump and to clarify just how high that jump should be. Funny how the Ottawa John Wayne gang turned into cloned Urkels with the arrival of the Democratic president. Kind of makes you think they were Washington stooges all along, doesn't it?
Khadr's lawyer is optimistic that Obama will end the military tribunal proceedings against his client. "I cannot believe that the Obama administration really wants its legacy to be that the first thing it did was put on trial a child soldier," said Lieutenant-Commander Bill Kuebler.
(Photo caption - Peter McKay demonstrates new cost-cutting, no pants uniforms for Canadian Forces )
Obama Introduces Transparent, Accountable Government - Same Thing Once Promised by Harper
Remember when Stevie Harper pulled our leg by promising us transparent, accountable government? Instead he pulled a shroud over the federal government, gagged sensitive departments including National Defence and the Environment Ministry, appointed political commissars to the Prime Minister's Office to filter and skew information Canadians could get and threw an iron-fisted veil of secrecy over his administration.
Barack Obama promised the American people transparent, accountable government. It took him precisely one day to deliver. From The New York Times:
Every governmental agency or department should know, Mr. Obama said, that his administration stands not “on the side of those who want to withhold information but those who seek to make it known.”
Some of the changes he discussed will be made through executive order, and others by changes in regulations.
In his first day in office, Obama plainly hit the floor running. It's safe to say he achieved more governance before dinner time in Washington today than Harper has managed in nearly three years. Reminds me of one of my favourite passages from Shakespeare:
"Yea, there thou makest me sad and makest me sin in envy that my Lord Northumberland should be the father to so blest a son; a son who is the theme of honour's tongue; Amongst a grove the very straightest plant, who is sweet Fortune's minion and her pride; whilst I, by looking on the praise of him see riot and dishonour stain the brow of my young Harry."
-Henry IV, Part I.
Sorry, Steve, I couldn't resist.
Barack Obama promised the American people transparent, accountable government. It took him precisely one day to deliver. From The New York Times:
Every governmental agency or department should know, Mr. Obama said, that his administration stands not “on the side of those who want to withhold information but those who seek to make it known.”
Some of the changes he discussed will be made through executive order, and others by changes in regulations.
In his first day in office, Obama plainly hit the floor running. It's safe to say he achieved more governance before dinner time in Washington today than Harper has managed in nearly three years. Reminds me of one of my favourite passages from Shakespeare:
"Yea, there thou makest me sad and makest me sin in envy that my Lord Northumberland should be the father to so blest a son; a son who is the theme of honour's tongue; Amongst a grove the very straightest plant, who is sweet Fortune's minion and her pride; whilst I, by looking on the praise of him see riot and dishonour stain the brow of my young Harry."
-Henry IV, Part I.
Sorry, Steve, I couldn't resist.
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