Andrew Malcolm

This guy keeps showing up on my radar in various wankerous ways. Here's hoping that when the Times needs to trim some fat they look his way.

Blog Spring Cleaning

A couple of small changes here. I realized the feed info in the right sidebar was outdated, so if you want to subscribe to the blog, that's been updated.

Also, at the very bottom of the page you can see a feed of items I've flagged from Google Reader - posts I thought were interesting.

Cheap Tickets

I can't say I've been paying very close attention to ticket deals, but did notice in the Sunday paper yesterday that there are some pretty amazing deals for Vancouver-Amsterdam and Vancouver-London. Apparently Hawaii is cheap right now too.

Quite a Distinction

Woo-hoo! Sequim has made international headlines for being one of the 10 most mispronounced places in the world. It's skwim, if you were wondering. Not difficult to pronounce, just seldom pronounced correctly by outsiders.

Google Reader Gets Social

I've been using Google Reader for quite a while for all my blog-reading needs. They've been adding lots of new features, most of which I haven't yet taken advantage of. But this sounds cool. Being able to share items with friends, coupled now with being able to comment on them with your friends, is basically turning it into a blog-centric social networking tool, which I like.

Douthat to the NYT

This is great news. Ross Douthat is one of the best conservative bloggers out there, period. He's intellectually honest and always interesting, and is a truly modern face for conservatism. He's worlds better than the disaster that was William Kristol. Conservatives should embrace Douthat just as they should reject the tired Limbaugh/National Review variety of conservatism.

Ponnuru

Ladies and gentleman, I bring you American conservatism today:

The other day when I turned on the tv, the channel was set, as it often is, to Noggin, the toddler network. There was a cartoon image of our president with an announcer saying something like, "Noggin congratulates President Obama. And now here are some things that he likes." I flipped the channel before finding out whether abortion and taxes made the list.

Lovely people over there at The Corner.

The Baltic Dry Index

Nothing says "Friday night" like the Baltic Dry Index.

So, the market's been all over the place. You're a-feared. It's a bit unfortunate that people pay such close attention to the daily action of the market; for one thing, the Dow Jones falling 200 points is a lot less important than things like job losses and retail sales. And investors are so crazy right now that the market is rising and falling dramatically on the smallest pieces of news. I've heard estimates that the US markets are about 30% undervalued simply because people are so panicked.

It's pretty hard to look at the stock market fluctuations and assess where we're at - like if we've bottomed out or are starting to recover. It doesn't get much (or really, any) attention in the mainstream media, but there's another index that economists pay close attention to. It's the Baltic Dry Index, and it basically tracks the cost of shipping raw materials by sea. The higher the BDI, the higher the demand is for shipping vessels to transport raw materials like coal, iron and grain. It's considered a leading indicator because increased movement of such materials is a precursor to increased growth and production. And the good news is that the BDI has been steadily climbing for a while now. Here's a look at the last 3 months:





Nice - we haven't seen that shape for a while. And unlike a good deal of current stock market activity, the BDI is a cold, hard measurement of real movement and growth, not just investor sentiment. It's just one figure among a lot of bleak news, but it's reassuring.

A Great Dane Walking a Beagle

Because it's the weekend

The Mysterious Case of the Homeless Guy with the Cellphone

This is a good example of what I'm talking about. This is what conservative bloggers were pissed about today. Michelle Obama goes to volunteer in a soup kitchen. While she's there, an apparently homeless guy takes a picture of her with his cellphone. LA Times writer Andrew Malcolm captures the moment and posts this:

It doesn't detract from the first lady's generous gesture or the real needs she seeks to highlight to ask two bothersome journalistic questions about these news photos:

If this unidentified meal recipient is too poor to buy his own food, how does he afford a cellphone?

And if he is homeless, where do they send the cellphone bills?

Bloggers like Michelle Malkin and Kathy Shaidle ran with it, apparently outraged at the idea of a homeless man having a phone. Here's nice little bit from Shaidle:

Today's "poor" are the rich Jesus warned you about: fat, slovenly, wasteful of their money and other people's.
...
He spends all his (our) money on cellphones and, most likely, tattoos and drugs and booze and other crap, and has no money left for a home and food. And why should he bother? We pay for his shelter and food anyhow.

Um...so Jesus warned us about rich people, but he really meant poor people with phones? I gotta say, if you're a Christian and the thing that really works you into an angry lather is that some homeless guy has a phone, you need to re-read the gospels and figure out what Jesus was really about.

As for Mr. Malcolm's "bothersome journalistic questions," man, I guess you all are too elite to have heard of pay-as-you-go phones. And you must not understand that for a homeless person to pull himself out of poverty, get a place to live, and try to find work, it really helps to have contact information.

Tigerhawk, the Engine of America

So, TigerHawk posted this whiny YouTube video:



I'll just quote liberally from Brad's great summary and takedown:

For those of you who don’t have the stomach, I’ll boil it down for you:

* I, Tigerhawk, am a hard-working guy who makes a lot of money.

* I and others of my kind work harder than any of you out there and we are better than you are because you’re lazy.

* But despite the fact that we’re superior to all of you, you’re all being ungrateful to us… indeed, you want to raise our taxes!

* Because of this, my feelings hurt.

I agree with Brad that there's this weird undertone of anger and resentment towards poor people and the middle class among TigerHawk and his cohort. It always strikes me when I'm talking about the economy with someone and they only want to blame the mortgage defaulters and the labor unions for the current mess, ignoring the bankers and investment executives who were more concerned about their bonuses than having a sound business model. There's blame all around.

If you watch the video above, TigerHawk basically says straight up that because he is a hard-working wealthy man he is more important than people making less than $250k and that they are showing insufficient gratitude towards geniuses like him. So now you've got folks like him "going Galt" by doing what...not tipping waitstaff!. Yeah, stick it to the working class people serving you!

I completely agree with Brad's conclusion:

Tigerhawk, if it makes you feel better, I have nothing against rich people. If you’re a successful person who has contributed something to society, then more power to you.

But please. Do not ask me to feel sorry for you. You’re rich. Again, I repeat: you’re rich. And because you’re rich in the United States, you have to pay less taxes than rich people in every other industrialized country in the entire world. You also have an entire political party (the Republicans) and a large swathe of another political party (the Democrats) who are lining up to kiss your ass on a regular basis. Rich people in this country have it better than rich people in every other country in the world. You’d think they’d be a little more grateful for this fact instead of being perpetually resentful whiners.

Gordon Brown on Prop 8

I look forward to the day when one of our leaders stands up and says something like this:

Gordon Brown has condemned California's ban on gay marriage as "unacceptable" and warned people to be vigilant against all forms of discrimination...

Mr Brown said "this attempt to undo good that has been done is unacceptable".

He added: "This shows why we have always got to be vigilant, always got to fight homophobic behaviour and any form of discrimination."

He also praised equality campaigners in the UK for "changing opinion" about same-sex unions.

I hope Obama will be the American leader who firmly stands up for equal rights. There's a long way to go, but then again, it wasn't until Obama was elected that you could even imagine a US president saying something like "our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters."

Correlation

Brilliant.

(Via Ben Goldacre)

Boneshaker Almanac

This looks good. Is it available locally, anyone know?

Losing It

Seriously, wingers are losing their shit. Just a few examples:

- Limbaugh, the winger Godfather, says he hopes the Obama recovery plan will fail.

- Glenn Beck thinks America is in its death throes and that we should all start building bunkers.

- Jim Cramer thinks Obama is a bolshevik and that Pelosi is the general secretary of the Communist Party.

- Malkin is enamored with the whole Going Galt joke, though it's not clear what talent she could possibly withdraw.

If you follow that last link, you'll see that Malkin claims that American taxpayers are fed up with Washington's "confiscatory policies". Really? Considering that 95% of taxpayers will be getting tax cuts, I very much doubt that. Perhaps not coincidentally, Obama's approval ratings are sky-high. Maybe Beck and Cramer et al. are pissed off because they make more than $250,000? In their view, the patriotic thing is to have the tax burden on the poor and middle class and any suggestion otherwise is "bolshevik".

Going Galt

Ha ha, yes, only a wingnut strike will save us now!

The only thing funnier than right-wingers getting all their ideas from Rush is right-wingers getting all their ideas from Ayn Rand.

Chapters Shortcovers

Seems like Chapters is doing some pretty interesting stuff: letting you purchase books by the chapter, share various content with friends, upload your own material, get material on your mobile. Hopefully this will help them compete with Amazon.

Ridley

These Ridley Vintage Motorbikes are awesome. I'm just having a tough time deciding. The MP or the Twin?

On the Offense

Obama has been good the past couple of days:

President Obama scolded critics of his economic plan on Friday, calling it “inexcusable and irresponsible” to delay the passage of the stimulus legislation in the Senate as he named a new White House economic board to help him respond to the recession...“This is not some abstract debate. It is an urgent and growing crisis that can only be fully understood through the unseen stories that lie underneath each and every one of those lost jobs,” Mr. Obama said. “Somewhere in America, a small business has shut its doors; a family has said goodbye to their home; a young parent has lost their livelihood, and doesn’t know what’s going to take its place.”

Krugman on the Stimulus

Here.

And here:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

A Kid Takes a Trip to the Dentist

This is so funny.

Oh K-Lo

This piece by Kathryn Jean Lopez on the inauguration contains a real doozy:

We’re a nation not just where you are free to believe or not to believe; we’re a nation founded for Him — so we could praise Him, so we could do His will. Warren began his prayer as a gentle reminder to those privileged with seats and every Joe sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial...

Um, no. That's about as fundamental a misunderstanding of America's founding as you could possibly have.

On another note, and leaving aside the controversy surrounding Warren's invitation to give the prayer (I'm happy to have a diversity of people and beliefs up there), did anybody else find Warren's delivery really weird? Among some evangelicals there is a particular way of talking that suggests the speaker doesn't really believe a word he's saying - an odd combination of fake enthusiasm and smugness. It certainly doesn't work for me.

About that CBO report...

On the bus-ride home last night I was listening to a news podcast (don't remember which one at the moment, but it might've been the Anderson Cooper video podcast) and someone mentioned that a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report had been released last Tuesday slamming the proposed stimulus bill as ineffective, but that it didn't get any coverage because it came out on inauguration day. This story has now been widely carried by all of the major networks and has become a right-wing talking point, the repeated point being that the CBO has supposedly criticized the stimulus plan on terms of not enacting spending soon enough. Well, guess what. There was no such report. These accusations were apparently based on a leaked portion of a simulation that had been done on one portion of an earlier stimulus draft. The full CBO report has now been released and reports that two-thirds of the proposed spending will happen in the next 18 months. What are the chances that the major networks will issue a correction? Any chance of some honestly among Republicans?

The State of Economics

Will Wilkinson makes some fair points:

What arises in my mind is the strong suspicion that economic theory, as it is practiced and taught at the world’s leading institutions, is so far from consensus on certain fundamental questions that it is basically useless for adjudicating many profoundly important debates about economic policy. One implication of this is that it is wrong to extend to economists who advise policymakers, or become policymakes themselves, the respect we rightly extend to the practicioners of mature sciences. There is a reason extremely smart economists are out there playing reputation games instead of trying to settle the matter by doing better science. The reason is that, on the questions that are provoking intramural trashtalk, there is no science.

Macroeconomics, in its current form, seems basically inseparable from politics. You see this in the current debates on the stimulus package, with right-wing economists arguing against and left-wing economists arguing against. What little empirical evidence gets introduced can seem cherry-picked. Whenever you see people neatly dividing into two groups, it's got to be more ideology than science.

Gitmo Reoffenders

So, a few days before Obama took office, the Pentagon released some numbers about Guantanamo inmates returning to terrorist activities after being released. Obama had publicly pledged throughout the campaign that he would close Guantanamo, and so the release of these numbers seemed timed to make the closure a more difficult proposition for Obama. There are a number of weird things about this - namely, that Obama had nothing to do with the released prisoners, since they were released under the Bush administration, and anyway, Obama isn't simply planning to let everyone go. The plan is just to close Guantanamo, end torture, extradite where possible, and pursue any prosecution in an above-board manner.

But now it's sounding like the numbers in the Pentagon report may not even be valid. To give one example, they consider a released inmate to be "suspected of returning to terrorist activities" if the said person has made anti-American comments since release. That's pretty weak. And if we've got the Pentagon deliberately fudging numbers in order to sabotage Obama, that's a big deal.

Shut Up & Sing

I caught the tail-end of this Dixie Chicks documentary on TV, and it made for a pretty interesting reflection on the last 8 years under Bush. It's sobering to think that it was only a few years ago that someone could have their career jeopardized and life threatened because of not liking Bush. And yet by the end of his presidency you're hard-pressed to find anyone who'd express kind words about his leadership. What a surreal few years.

Protesting Prop-8

As many of you know, California last week passed a proposition outlawing same-sex marriage, overturning an earlier proposition that had allowed thousands to finally marry. Tomorrow (Saturday) there will be protests in many major cities as people stand together for gay rights and equality, and to stand against bigotry. It's not limited to American cities. There will be a rally in downtown Vancouver at 10:30 AM. Check the same site to find out what's happening in your area.

On a related note, the Mormon Church put up a huge amount of money to sponsor Prop 8, and they are now deservedly getting a lot of flak for it. If you can't attend a protest tomorrow, another great way to stand up for equality is to write a letter to your nearest LDS church, shaming them for their bigotry and hatred.

Google Flu

This is cool. Google has launched a tool for tracking flu outbreaks, based on search query trends. Because the searches tend to be related to emerging symptoms, Google claims that it can locate flu hotspots up to two weeks faster than using existing techniques.

Unfortunately, it only works for the US at the moment. And one quibble: why don't the color schemes of the two graphs match?

President-Elect Obama

What a night! Heather and I are toasting Obama. I'm tired right now, but it will be great to wake up in the morning and realize what happened.

And there's some great stuff on the down-ticket votes for Washington: Darcy Burner wins, Gregoire wins, death with dignity wins, Eyman loses. It looks like Prop 8 in California will lose, hopefully (the anti-gay proposition).

I'm so happy for the US. I feel so lucky to have been able to vote in this election and to see this outcome.

NBC's "live" coverage

A lot of people have complained about the fact that NBC isn't broadcasting a lot of the key Olympic events live. I'm really glad to have CBC coverage here. But what makes NBC's coverage even worse is that it always says "Live" in the upper right corner regardless of whether it's taped or not. So I'll see an event on CBC, then a couple of hours later see it broadcast on NBC "live." That's pretty bad.

Drilling in the ANWR

What with gas prices being high, the issue of drilling in ANWR has come back to prominence, particularly because McCain's lack of support for the idea has angered many Republicans. In particular, The Corner has been harping on this for a few days. There's one thing about the discussion that's particularly bizarre, and while I've been proscrastinating on posting about this, Ana Marie Cox noticed too:

One of the helpful myths that keeps that idea alive irks me to distraction: The idea that it's okay to drill in ANWR because it isn't pretty. (Jonah Goldberg is a real leader in this field, having mined this particular "mosquito-plagued tundra" since 2001.)

Bush was a big part of this too, arguing that ANWR is a "great white nothing." But the more recent discussion gets even weirder. The Cornerites have been falling overthemselves in contrasting ANWR and the Grand Canyon. This initially came up because McCain said he opposed drilling in ANWR for the same reasons he would oppose drilling in the Grand Canyon: because they should both be kept pristine. Fine, good answer. But then the Cornerites threw up a million posts discussing how many visitors ANWR gets compared with the Grand Canyon, etc. Are they stupid, or just disingenuous? Whether ANWR is a nice tourist attraction is not only not the point, the whole idea is that ANWR should be as free as possible from human intrusion and development.

The other thing that gets me is that even most supporters of drilling in ANWR now acknowledge that such a drilling scheme would only go a very small way towards shoring up America's oil supply, but they still think it should be done. Why? My guess is that they now see the whole ANWR controvery as a right-versus-left issue and that they simply want to win the argument.

Scientology and Free Speech

C4 had an interesting report on a disturbing trend in the UK. Police are cracking down on critics of Scientology. One man was prosecuted for using the word 'cult' in a placard, but he won the case. You still can't use the words 'evil' or 'brain-washed' without fear of arrest.



Via Ben Goldacre.

Cycling Route Planner

A cycling route planner for Greater Vancouver is now in beta-testing. Check it out. Other than a few bugs, it seems to do a good job. Has some nice adjustable parameters like maximum slope and speed, and inclusion or exclusion of major roads.

Obama channels Cuomo?

Yeah, Fox News isn't even trying anymore.

Via Sullivan.

Meet Thomas Sowell, Wanker

Every once in a while I hear someone refer to Thomas Sowell as one of the great political and economic thinkers of our time. Now, I'm no expert on Sowell, but this garbage tells you a lot about him:

At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third party candidate to show our displeasure — at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job.

Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America.

On the contrary, he has paid a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him. The choice between him and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer.

Obama aids and abets people who hate America? What a disgusting, idiotic wanker Sowell is.

Anatomy of a Slander

Meet Larry Johnson, wanker.

Words for Lieberman

Good for Obama.

Obama's Nomination Victory Speech

Worth watching if you have a few minutes.

Skydiving Record

According to this Globe and Mail article, Michael Fournier, the Frenchman attempting to break the skydiving record, should have been back on the ground by 7 AM this morning if everything went according to plan. Searching around and I don't see any word yet.

Update: Ah-ha - postponed till tomorrow.

Finally

McCain rejects Hagee's extremism and his endorsement. And then tries to turn the focus back on Obama.

John McCain's Spiritual Advisors are Insane

Discuss.

Decemberists Mania

I think it's hilarious that right-wingers actually believe believe this.

The Market Hates Obama?

Quick, somebody give Larry Kudlow a lesson in correlation versus causation.

Vancouver in 1907

The earliest film footage of Vancouver has recently been rediscovered and cleaned up. You can see a preview at The Province website or order a copy of the DVD here. It looks pretty cool. The filmmaker attached his camera to the front of a downtown streetcar and just let it run basically. The city, although very young in 1907, seemed like a pretty happening place.

He's Eating My Brain

A Saanich man survives a Grizzly attack by playing dead. I love the fact that he fits in a complaint about road maintenance.

Obama in Portland

An estimated 50,000 people turn out. Doesn't hurt that it's a gorgeous day here in the Northwest.

Bicycling on Burrard Bridge

So yesterday I had to pick up my bike at a bikeshop at the intersection of Burrard and Pacific, and afterward I headed back Southbound across the Burrard Bridge on my bike. If you've walked or biked on that bridge, you know that cyclists and pedestrians are forced to share a very narrow walkway, and that said walkway is separated from traffic by a ledge of maybe 6 inches or so. Just after the halfway point of the bridge, as I was cycling alongside pedestrians on a sunny late afternoon, a jogger alongside me blindly moved from the pedestrian lane to the cycling lane in order to pass some walkers, failing to look behind him for cyclists. I was able to quickly swerve and he brushed my handlebars, and I didn't lose stability. But if his timing or my timing had been slightly different, I likely would have been body-checked into traffic. Since then, I've been fuming about how a careless jogger could have been responsible for me sustaining serious injuries or being killed.

I know that Vancouver has plans to put bicycle lanes on the Burrard Bridge sometime after the Olympics, but it's absolutely unacceptable that the current situation will be maintained in the interim. Since I'm fairly new to the city and luckily don't have to cross that bridge very often, I don't know how frequently such accidents occur, but a few seconds' Googling brought up this story:

Every day, hundreds of people cycle over the shared path on the Burrard Bridge, one of Vancouver's busiest. Jane Lister was one of them, until her commute home from work one day.

Halfway across the bridge, she swerved to avoid some pedestrians.

"My first memory is the sensation of a tube being pulled from my throat. I broke all the ribs on my left side, and had punctured and collapsed lungs. I fell into a mini van, and my head kind of got trapped between the car and the curb."

It may sound like just another accident between a cyclist and a car, but - in this case - neither was to blame. Instead, the problem was cyclists, pedestrians, dog-walkers and runners forced to share the same narrow path.

Her scenario was exactly the same as mine, except she was thrown into traffic and nearly killed. I agree that the blame is primarily due to the shared path, but a cyclist shouldn't have to suddenly swerve to avoid pedestrians on a shared path. Pedestrians need to stay on the pedestrian side of the walkway. But the city is responsible. Jane Lister sued the city and got a settlement. The city had been aware of the problem and hadn't done anything to remedy it. That was more than four years ago.

Polar Bears

Hey look, the US made the right decision.

Bullshit

I have to say, this is refreshing. Best bit:

“He’s the guy who’s weakened us. He’s the guy that’s increased the number of terrorists in the world. His policies have produced this vulnerability the United States has. His intelligence community pointed that out not me. The NIE has pointed that out and what are you talking about, is he going to fire Condi Rice? Condi Rice has talked about the need to sit down. So his first two appeasers are Rice and Gates. I hope he comes home and does something.”

Thanks, Joe.

Unassailable

It's all over except the concession. The MSM pundits are finally recognizing the fact that Obama's lead is unassailable. I predict Clinton withdraws by early next week.

NC and Indiana

It looks like Obama has won North Carolina by a very large margin and that Clinton will likely take Indiana with a very small margin, giving Obama a net pickup of delegates. This should be the moment Clinton sees the writing on the wall, but who knows at this point. It would be wonderful if she announced her withdrawal by the end of the week. Time for the real campaign.

Ben Stein

It's not every day that I get to agree with John Derbyshire, but he's right that this exchange between Ben Stein and a fellow creationist is shameful and appalling:

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

Uni

In one fell swoop, BC suddenly has eleven universities. The new universities are Capilano University, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, University of the Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island University, and Kwantlen Polytechnic University. This seems like a great move to me, though somewhat at odds with educational funding cuts.

Shift Focus

I think this is a good strategy by the Obama team and probably should've been done earlier. Start targeting McCain, and leave Clinton to figure out that she can't win.

Saltbreakers

Though I'm a huge Laura Veirs fan, having seen her several times and owning three of her previous CDs, it's taken me this long to pick up Saltbreakers. My first impression is that it's very good - on par with the magnificient Carbon Glacier. She's in fine form. If anything, it might be even better than Carbon Glacier. While I love CG, it's pretty down-tempo and I have to be in the right mood. Saltbreakers has a groove that I didn't detect quite as much before.

Billy Gohl

This comic serial set in Grays Harbor, Washington seems kind of cool. Though I have to say, the author's introduction makes him seem like a bit of a poseur.

Superdelegates and Plain Old Delegates

Clinton:

We talk a lot about so-called pledged delegates, but every delegate is expected to exercise independent judgment.

In other words, Clinton is trying not only to woo superdelegates, but to convince all delegates that they should support her regardless of the vote counts in the states they represent. She really is trying to destroy the party.

Via.

My Nightmare Flight

Trans-Atlantic Ryanair:

And Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Ryanair, the Irish no-frills carrier, has said he plans to start a new airline that will fly from secondary European markets like Liverpool or Birmingham to a half-dozen American cities like Baltimore or Providence, R.I., for a base fare as low as 10 euros, or about $16 at $1.59 to the euro.

Canada and Sovereignty

There are a couple of interesting articles in today's Globe and Mail having to do with the Canadian Arctic. The first concerns possible sale of MDA's geospatial unit to a US company and the potential implications for Arctic sovereignty. In short, the company is responsible for the Radarsat-2 technology, which allows Canada to detect any intrusion into its Arctic waters by vessels larger than three meters. Considering that the US is one of the countries challenging Canada's sovereignty in its Arctic waters, selling the MDA unit to an American weapons maker doesn't seem the least bit sensible. Quote one:

"The Prime Minister talks about sovereignty - use it or lose it. And yet we have a tool that is excellent for Arctic surveillance, monitoring of our internal waters that are contested by the Americans and other countries, and now we're going to sell this asset to an American company," [former commander of the Northern Area] Mr. Leblanc said.

"The American government takes sovereignty very seriously, and when it's in their national interest to cut off access to information, they do it. So even though the company that's buying the system has pledged to continue to provide data from the satellite, if it was not in the national interest of the U.S. to provide that information at some point, you can bet a month's salary it won't be provided."

Quote two:

"In my view it's ridiculous," Prof. Huebert [of the University of Calgary] said. "We've never thought strategically and it just astonishes me that we're probably the only country that we know of with this type of technology, and we [don't] understand its significance," he said.

The second article is to do with Operation Nunalivut, part of Canada's mission to strongly assert its sovereignty in the North.

This year's Operation Nunalivut - Inuktitut for "the land is ours" - will send three patrols between the Eureka weather station about midway up the west coast of Ellesmere Island and CFB Alert on its upper tip, the most northerly habitation in the world. The patrols set off later this week and are scheduled to rendezvous back in Eureka on April 13.

All but a handful of the patrollers will be Canadian Rangers, a largely aboriginal reserve force skilled in the ways of the land that guides the regular forces through the treacherous sea ice and ever-shifting weather.

Here's a third G&M article that has nothing to do with the Arctic, but gives an interesting and frustrating example of Canadian companies being forced to break Canadian laws when using software tools including various Google services, due to draconian US anti-privacy legislation.

Typical Right Person

Even Fox News is sick of itself.

Via TPM.

Acceptance

I hope so.

It's Over for Clinton

Referring to this New York Times article on the extremely long shot Clinton now has, M.J. Rosenberg asks:

The New York Times has pretty much declared the battle for the nomination over. It analyzes the numbers and concludes that, barring some shocking turn of events, Obama will be nominated.

So why not just pull the plug on this thing after the next round of primaries. After all, if Clinton is going to turn this around, she has to do it in Pennsylvania, Oregon, North Carolina etc. If by some miracle, she actually pulls ahead in elected delegates and the popular vote, keep the battle going. If not (and the Times' makes clear that ain't going to happen) the super delegates should simply declare their choice and the nomination can be decided.

Rosenberg makes some points that I definitely dispute, such as the argument that a long nomination will hand the election to McCain. I think the primary advantage of Clinton staying in for the time being is that McCain is getting very little coverage. But for that Democratic lime-light strategy to work, Clinton is going to need to change tactics in the next few weeks - and already shows some signs of doing so. She seems to realize that the kitchen-sink approach was a big mistake, and hopefully she won't reprise that for Pennsylvania. She needs to start giving some subtle props to Obama, such as she did regarding his speech. In other words, she should stay in for now but subtly change her campaign from a Clinton campaign to a Democratic campaign.

The thing is, it's difficult to tell whether her campaign folks really understand that it's over. Judging from Mark Penn's quotes in the NYT article, they think that they're in a perfect position to clinch the nomination. And that's a scary type of delusion.

McCain's Gaffe

Apparently his Sunni/Shiite slip-up just proves how much foreign policy experience he has. That's how it works in media bizarro world:

BRZEZINSKI: Lieberman was there.

TODD: The thing is -- yeah, exactly. The thing is, this is the second time that he's done it. You know --

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.

TODD: -- this was not a one-time slip and so, you know, this just shows you how much bank -- how much of the foreign policy experience stuff he's got in the bank, because had Clinton or Obama done something like this, this would have been played on a loop, over and over, and would have absolutely hurt them politically.

Todd is, of course, correct that if Obama or Clinton had made this mix-up that it would be all over the media. But it sure doesn't indicate how great McCain is on foreign policy. It indicates that in our modern American media, Everything is Good for Republicans.

Obama's Speech

My first impression is that it's one of the most impressive and important speeches of our time. I've certainly never heard a speech from a politician, American or otherwise, dating from my lifetime, that is in this caliber. It's simple and forthright in the sense of being completely devoid of the condescension and pandering that characterize most speeches by American presidential candidates. But it's complex in the underlying issues and in the challenges Obama is laying out. He didn't choose the easy route, that's for sure. He could've repudiated Wright, distanced himself from the church, and gone out of his way to appeal to white voters while hoping he didn't alienate many black voters. But instead he said, in essence, "Not only do I not repudiate Wright as a man, but he's as close to me as my own grandmother," while making clear that he found many of Wright's views repugnant. It was bold, and he pulled it off. He also pointed out that Wright's anger is an anger worth understanding, and segued from that politically risky discussion into the passage that is, along with the passage about his grandmother, the rhetorical centerpiece of the speech:

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

This is brilliant. He takes the Wright issue, which was supposed to racially divisive and hurtful to his chances among white voters, and turns it in to something that middle- and lower-class white voters can understand and sympathize with. He takes that even further by pointing out Wright's essential conservatism:

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The reactions to the speech as a whole have been almost overwhelmingly positive in the liberal and conservative blogospheres, save for some crusty Cornerites like Derb and KLo who would gripe no matter what Obama said. You can almost sense people exhaling and thinking, "Alright, let's move on." Obama did exactly what he needed to do with this speech. Whether it will resonate with middle America, I don't know. But I'm glad this all happened in March, because November is a long way away.

If I have time later, I might gather up a sampling of the blogger reax. For now I just want to take issue with David Kurtz here:

The text is one thing. Delivery is another. And Obama doesn't seem to have his A game today.

Viewers who were expecting Obama's usual soaring rhetoric might have been disappointed. But that was very much necessary, and Obama played it exactly right: it was a dispassionate, candid discussion of race, religion and politics, which you don't often find from people of any race, creed or clique. It was a refreshing, heartening speech. And it was a great counterbalance to the rage and rhetoric of Wright.

Video highlights here.

Full transcript here.

Full video here:

Pelosi Wants Genocide, Says Rubin

Michael Rubin is a very Serious Thinker.

Obama on Wright

Required reading for anyone who thinks that Obama is an America-hating extremist Christian/Muslim/Zoroastrian. Pretty unequivocal stuff there. Your turn, Cornerites.

PS This whole thing is incredibly stupid.

Turn signal jacket for bikers

Nice.

Mona Charen is an Ass

Here:

One can have sympathy for his psychological predicament . But that sympathy certainly does not extend to electing him president of a country that I sincerely believe he does not love.

Extremist Muslim Christian!

First right-wingers (with the help of Clinton) were going on about Obama being a secret Muslim. Now they're going on about him belonging to an extremist Christian church. I wish they'd at least be consistent. I'd like to be the first to suggest that Obama is a secret extremist Jew.

Olbermann to Clinton

I second every bit of this special comment.

Marketing with Spitzer

Um, this is an interesting marketing tactic, to say the least.

The ad copy reads: “At Virgin Mobile, you’re more than just a number. When you call us we’ll treat you like a person, not a client. Whether you’re #9 or #900, you’ll get hooked up with somebody who’ll finally treat you just how you want to be treated.”

Virgin Mobile comparing itself to an expensive brothel. Hmm.

Via Wonkette.

BBN

BBN Technologies has been awarded a $13 million grant from DARPA for research on "rapidly processing information in foreign languages." It sounds like they'll primarily be working with Arabic text and speech as part of the ongoing GALE project. Their work includes distillation of text and speech, or automatic summarization, which is my particular passion and research interest.

Growing Liberal

It looks like the idea that people grow more conservative as they get older is just a myth, according to researchers at the University of Vermont. On several major issues, people even tend to become more liberal as they age, specifically regarding gender equality and tolerance of viewpoints such as atheism and communism. Areas in which people do tend to become more conservative are viewpoints concerning extramarital and premarital sex.

The study also acknowledges that some changes towards more liberal viewpoints can be attributed to older people starting from a more conservative position originally than young people today. For example, older people today have made much more dramatic changes in a liberal direction regarding race relations than have young people, because the older generations may have grown up under segregation and outmoded stereotypes.

This helps put to rest the view, common among many on the American right at least, that liberalism is a phase that is grown out of. One particularly loathsome cliche is "If you are a Republican when you're young, you don't have a heart. If you're a Democrat when you're old, you don't have a brain." It's clear many people find that experience and reflection help to liberalize their worldviews.

Ferraro

Not only does she not retract her offensive comments, she reiterates them and claims to be the victim of racism. The Politico does some research and finds that Ferraro made some very similar comments about Jesse Jackson in 1988.

Meanwhile, Clinton finally grudgingly distances herself from Ferraro's comments. If you had any doubts that the Clinton campaign is trying to make this about race, they should be erased now. If Nixon were here he'd be smiling to think that Democratic Party is using the Southern strategy on itself.

Obama takes Mississippi...

...in a primary split along race lines.

Spitzer

Obviously Eliot Spitzer acted very stupidly in all of this, but Jane Hamsher asks a lot of good questions about the investigation. Something is indeed very strange in all of this.

Cross-Border Meddling

With the NAFTAgate controversy in the rear-view mirror, it's interesting to read about occasions where the US interfered with Canadian elections. Unfortunately the article is behind a wall, but if you can pick up the G&M paper version before the end of the day it's an interesting, short read.

Clinton Talks Up McCain Some More

This is getting to be unbelievable.

“I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant’s bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

“I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,” she said.

Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a “distinguished man with a great history of service to our country,” Clinton said, “Both of us will be on that stage having crossed that threshold. That is a critical criterion for the next Democratic nominee to deal with.”

I can't remember anything like this before. So Clinton has obviously adopted a deliberate strategy of talking up the opposing party's candidate and talking down the other Dem nominee, quite clearly saying that if she doesn't get the nomination then she'll take the party down with her. I can't believe that no one in the DNC is stepping in to say anything. Absolutely shameful on the part of Clinton.

Via TPM.

Rich States, Poor States

Andrew Gelman has been doing some interesting analysis on correlating voting behaviour with income, and has a forthcoming book on the subject. This post on rich vs poor states and rich vs. poor voters is fascinating. The basic story is that if you look at rich states vs. poor states, the rich states tend to vote Democratic and the poor states tend to vote Republican. But if you look at individuals, rich individuals tend to vote Republican and poor individuals tend to vote Democratic. Also, within rich states the correlation tends to break down. So in a state like Connecticut, voting behaviour will be much less tied to income than it will be in Alabama.

NAFTAgate Revisited

Wow. Well, according to the Globe and Mail, NAFTAgate started with a comment by Harper chief of staff Ian Brodie, who remarked to a roomful of colleagues that a Clinton campaign member was telling the Canadians to take Clinton's anti-NAFTA rhetoric with a grain of salt. So...somehow this turned into an Obama scandal. I'm gonna enjoy hearing how that happened.

As Josh says, the moral of the story is that "friendly governments should not interfere in our elections".

This other G&M piece from Wednesday points out the harm this scandal could do to Canada. It should be obvious, but diplomacy requires discretion and Harper seems to surround himself with aides who lack that particular quality. This could most certainly damage Canadian relationships in the short-term, and most certainly in the long-term if, say, Obama is president and Harper remains PM.

Kitchen Sink

Contrary to a lot of the CW, I don't think a long drawn-out battle between Clinton and Obama is a bad thing in and of itself. There are plenty of precedents for the out party having a long nomination process and still doing well in the general. Plus, it gives the Dems lots of media attention at a time when the GOP side has sunk into the background a bit, what with McCain already clinching it. But Clinton's strategy is now quite clearly to either win the nomination or take the entire party down with her. Via Sullivan, I noticed James Fallows flagging this bit about Clinton's rhetoric:

In a live CNN interview just now, Sen. Clinton repeated, twice, the "Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience, I have a lifetime of experience, Sen. Obama has one speech in 2002" line. By what logic, exactly, does a member of the Democratic party include the "Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience" part of that sentence?

Is there any precedent for a serious candidate for party nomination to claim that a member of the opposing party would be a better candidate for president than would a member of their own party? Imagine Obama gets the nomination, which is still very likely even after Ohio and Texas. We now have Clinton, one of the powerhouses of the party, on record repeatedly stating that McCain is a better candidate. How can Howard Dean or others not step in at this point and admonish her?

Exits

Some surprising and encouraging exit polls for Texas and Ohio. And probably not reliable, though. Here's hoping.

It's in the LA Times

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: Why does Obama spend all this time talking about issues like healthcare when he should be talking about how he's an unapologetic liberal fascist terrorist?

Moveable Border

The citizens of Berwick-Upon-Tweed want to rejoin Scotland.

Broadway Bomber

Looks like they found him, in Surrey and with severe burns.

Somehow I managed to sleep through the explosion, despite being only six blocks away.

A Man for All Seasons

Last night I saw, with my wife and in-laws, Pacific Theatre's production of A Man for All Seasons, and I highly recommend it. I especially thought that Chris Humphreys and Ron Reed did great jobs as King Henry/Cromwell and Thomas More, respectively. The script was excellent - thought-provoking and powerful. The one strange conceit was updating it to the 1950s, but I thought it worked. It wasn't the kind of update where you tell the original story in a modern framework through modern characters (like Hamlet with gangstas or something), but rather offering the pretense that Henry VIII's reign and the Church schism, and all the surrounding relevant events, actually did happen in the 1950s. Somehow it was easy to believe.

This is the second production by Pacific that I've seen in the last couple of months, after Dan Amos's stellar one-man version of It's a Wonderful Life, so I think a subscription might be in order. Apparently they have a current deal where you can see four shows for $55, which is pretty amazing.

Endorsement

Regardless of whether there's an explicit endorsement, dropping out before Tuesday could be a tacit endorsement of Obama. Dana Goldstein:

Intuitively, it makes sense that Edwards supporters would trend toward Obama. Both candidates ran as the anti-Clinton. Edwards even spoke about his own affinity toward Obama's "change" message at the last New Hampshire debate.

The two candidates are far more similar to each other than either is to Clinton. But it's not clear how Edwards supporters will break:

But some polling suggests otherwise. A Jan. 24 Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg News poll found that nationally, Edwards voters prefer Clinton to Obama by a slight margin. She could have an edge among those who are attracted to Edwards' focus on the economy. "Hillary talks about the economy more than Obama, and she's connected to the Clinton presidency, which people view as successful on the economic front," Teixeira said.

Edwards

John Edwards should be making an announcement any time now (I'm not near a TV, so it could be happening). It'll be interesting to see if he makes an endorsement, but I'm skeptical that he will. I wouldn't be surprised if he waits until after Super Tuesday so as to be confident of the nominee, then aiming for a VP slot with the presumptive nominee.

First Canada Blogging

No revelations about Ron Paul's bigoted past could possibly convince the True Believers. Read the comments here. Either many of his followers are willfully ignorant or they're straight-up racists. Scary bunch.

Great News

John Howard's government has been defeated at the polls, and Kevin Rudd will be the next Prime Minister.

Rudd has named global warming as his top priority, and his signing of the Kyoto Protocol will leave the U.S. as the only industrialized country not to have joined it.

Rudd said he would withdraw Australia's 550 combat troops from Iraq, leaving twice that number in mostly security roles. Howard had said all the troops will stay as long as needed.

Good news for everyone, not just Australians.

Chris Hedges

Says The Corner:

Who is Chris Hedges? Not only was he a New York Times reporter for 15 years, he was its Middle East bureau chief in the 1990's. Yikes.

Adds Instapundit:

Yeah, kind of makes you wonder what's going on with their current reporting staff that we won't find out for years.

Yeah - for example, maybe we'll found out that Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper were neoconservatives working for the administration.

In general, I find it very funny when the Bush Right attack the NYT, as the Times has been such a friend of the hawks.

Kindle Sold Out

Apparently the Kindle sold out in less than six hours. This definitely seems like an intentional shortage, and Amazon isn't disclosing how many were actually prepared to sell as of the launch. But it seems unlikely that after three years of preparation they would inadvertently have a shortage immediately after the launch. My guess is that the engineered shortage is partly in response to all the negative coverage of the past few days. They're trying to change the optics and create a sense that it's a cool, must-have gadget.

Right-Wing Obsession

Via Eschaton and Sullivan, we see which Conservapedia pages are the most viewed:

Most viewed pages

1. Main Page‎ [1,903,406]
2. Homosexuality‎ [1,548,733]
3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [516,892]
4. Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [420,349]
5. Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [387,906]
6. Homosexuality and Domestic Violence‎ [354,376]
7. Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [346,289]
8. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [331,232]
9. Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [279,922]
10. Homosexuality and Syphilis‎ [265,186]

Amazon Kindle

Amazon has launched its e-book reader, Kindle. While the electronic-paper technology looks very cool, and the Sprint partnership sounds like an interesting way of delivering the content, I just can't believe how ugly the thing looks. It's been getting grief in a lot of corners for not accepting pdf formats and for being generally expensive, but I just can't believe that somebody would design it to look like this. Now, Amazon is not Apple and doesn't have much experience with designing products like this, but they spent enough time and money that they should have got it right. It looks like something from another era. A lot of people wouldn't think about paying such a steep price if it were a flashy piece of kit, but in the iPod and iPhone age it's just plain hideous.

Pipe Dream

To the three bagpipers playing on the castle esplanade at 8 AM this morning: what the bloody hell were you thinking?

Ron Paul and War

When John Derbyshire has become the voice of reason over at The Corner, you know things there have become pretty dire.

Phones

It sounds like a Google phone announcement is imminent.

I'm sure Google's announcement is deliberately timed to steal some fire from the UK iPhone launch this week. Speaking of which, The Guardian has a piece about UK hackers preparing to unlock the iPhone as soon as it's released. Even though the iPhone has garnered plenty of rave reviews, I can't help but think that Apple has badly misstepped by creating a dynamic where hackers and tech-heads are allied against them. I'm not sure they'll be able to go back to being the geek's favourite brand very easily, especially if the Google phone is a lot more open.

Double-Standard on Troops

It's interesting that right-wingers who insist that any mention of those US troops denigrating the armed forces via illegal and immoral acts is somehow unpatriotic are the same folks who believe that any illegal and immoral acts by UN peace-keepers reveal the UN to be an evil institution. Apparently Glenn Reynolds thinks it's okay to disparage the entire institution if the institution is the UN, but not if it's the US. If the peace-keepers had been American soldiers, you can bet he wouldn't have posted on it.

The Week in Clinton

It's been interesting to see the sort of slow-burning change in perceptions of Hillary Clinton's performance in the last debate over the course of this week. The immediate response among most analysts seemed to be that she performed well and that Obama and Edwards missed an opportunity to really market themselves as distinct alternatives, and that she may have tripped a bit on the immigration question, but that overall she should've been happy. As the week went on, that characterization gave way to her having received a beat-down by her opponents and really seriously stumbled in the debate. I think this was partly due to bloggers and MSM writers wanting to liven up the race by making it seem as if Clinton was really on the ropes rather than firmly in the lead, but possibly also due to a poor choice of response by Clinton's team: trying to make her seem the victim of her Democratic opponents.

Now the consensus is that Obama actually did very well and that his tone in the debate was well-received by viewers. Maybe that's true, but it's just strange that the story has fundamentally changed over the course of a few days.

Chatter

So this is the talk of the political blogosphere at the moment. Keep refreshing that LA Times website.

Update: I have no idea what the scandal involves, but if you want to do some detective work on Ron Rosenbaum's teasing post, you can start here, here, and here.

Update II: A lot of the rumours are about the Clintons. I'm very skeptical of these, as the Clintons would be extremely stupid to be involved in such behaviour with Hillary aiming for the presidency, especially after everything they went through in the Lewinsky affair.