Panglossian Notes

The G20 be damned. What's on your roof? Yes that's the real question Leaders need to be dealing with in London

The guys at the Bugle couldn't stop writing jokes about this little incident - gads did I type "little":

60-foot penis painted on roof
BBC Radio 1
March 24, 2009

Technorati Tags: Great graffifi, Will everyone want one on their roof?, World Wide Problem?

Is this good news?

It seems that a majority of Americans don't blame the guy who was sworn in on January 20, 2009 for the unbelievable mess the US economy seems to have gotten itself into starting, let me see now, back in January 2008 or there about.

Washington Post-ABC News Poll
March 31, 2009

So I guess this is good news, but not for any political reason, rather, more generally, it means, I think, that a majority of those in the middle part of North America seem to have stumbled back into reality and aren't blaming a guy for something he couldn't have been responsible for because he wasn't in charge. I think this is a change from the last 8 years.

Does including a question like # 7 also say something about the perceptions the surveyors have of their compatriots? Hmm.

Technorati Tags: Good news

Something on my mind - G20

OK, the G20 is set for April the 2nd, cleverly planned to miss April Fools, of course, and leaders are starting to crowd into London, UK.

Our bright boy, Stephen Harper, accompanied by his Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, is set to arrive in the UK tonight.

Now I'm wondering whether it matters at all if Harper and his minister even show up. Would anyone notice if Canada wasn't there? I suspect no one would and our absence would likely leave welcome room around the crowded conference table.

Why have I even got this matter on my mind?

Well, because it seems to me that we, Canada, play remarkably little any more in the big game of global politics and governance and I believe we, as a really very successful and peacefully organized federation, have a considerable amount of expertise and finesse to add to any serious global debate.

However, I think it is indicative of the preferences of Harper's government which could easily be characterised as a lower order of Canadian government, happier with fewer responsibilities and no need for real ideas or interest in the world outside a cosy Canada/USA boundary, that we seem to be absent any contribution or agenda with  regard to the world as a whole.

Pity, as the old tea advertisement use to say.

Compare, for interest sake only, Kevin Rudd's PM web page (also notice his press conference with the host of the meeting ) with Stephen Harper's (sans mention of the London meeting on Stephen's site, though the adopt a kitty-kat thing is nice, eh):

Technorati Tags: Canada, Clueless?, Empty, Disinterested

A small suggestion for Obama

When announcing that you are going to potentially fiddle actual workers in your economy, as opposed to lavishing gifts subsides bribes funds on the phantom income crew over on Wall Street, maybe it would be better not to surround yourself with a mob of knowns, unknowns, unknown knowns and unknown unknowns. From my outside perspective it makes you look weak and it also annoys me, of course I don't matter, to see the toxi twins Geithner and Summers standing anywhere close to you.

Technorati Tags: A PLAN

The idiot from the Pontiac

I'm talking about Lawrence Cannon, Canada's latest embarrassment to occupy the Foreign Affairs portfolio. He represents the federal riding of Pontiac.

Seems Lawrence won't let Canada be "bullied" by Russia. Specifically Larry will defend us and whatever we Canadians think is our Arctic - even though no one quite knows what that maybe right now - from announcements made by Russia.

A finger jabbing in the air Lawrence defiantly bellowed to reporters in Montreal, I'm not sure whether it was in English, with French translation, or the other way around:

“Let's be perfectly clear here: Canada will not be bullied,”

Russia won't bully Canada in Arctic, Cannon vows
Steven Chase
Globe & Mail
March 27, 2009

Well this really warms my heart. After all there is nothing like a defiant blowhard sputtering about a none existent danger to work up the drooling knuckle dragging crowd.

I'm still trying to figure out what the gang of Harper (i.e. the Conservative Party of Canada) maybe up to in trying to pick fights with Russia. First it was bombers threatening no one and now a scary force dedicated to protecting Russia's own territory. Harper et al must believe, or know, that this type of antic appeals to the old Reform Alliance base from which the CPC was immaculately conceived.

As I wrote, anything to work up a sweat with the conservative reform alliance people.

Hey Larry, by-the-way what happened to Nanisivk, the base on Resolute and that Canadian fighting force designed to threaten the Arctic hares and polar bears, eh.

Technorati Tags: Arctic, BS and cheap trick, Canada, Confusing?

Early morning thinking before packing

I'm heading out to Berlin tonight to visit so as I step through my check list of socks and underwear I'm thinking:

Has Obama shown his tin ear - I mean the bonus/contract AIG FUBAR matter, of course. For a normally surefooted bipartisan guy he seems to have been able to step into most of the dog sh*t on main street. As I said, a tin ear? The true believers types, aka celebrity groupies, still seem in a trance when he speaks but he's starting to fray, I think.

Has Obama blown any chance to now get any new funds to fix the US self-imposed financial mess. I think so and I suspect he may have already - its too early - fixed the outcome of the 2010 Congressional elections, assuming of course that the GOP can mount anyone not certifiably unbalanced.

Why did he drag the pompous and arrogant Summers back into government? Which leads me to wonder if Obama has any aptitude for picking the right people to surround him. Which further leads me to wonder if Obama is only a newly packaged bundle of self-interest masquerading as the benevolent one on a mission to do "good".

Why do corporations have access to reorganization bankruptcy (Chapter 11) which is a license to break contracts - you know those ones with labour unions? Why wasn't AIG  forced into reorganization? Oops it was, wasn't it, just not officially. So, no official Chapter 11, so no breaking of contracts - yes, yes Summers we do know that contracts are sacrosanct in the USA.

Given that only Lehman Brothers could be allowed to go under, without the world as we know it coming to an end, who gained? Anyone now close to Obama? Anyone whispering in his tin ears? Anyone present when the original TARP fiasco was constructed?

I'd better get back to packing and make sure I've got everything my son asked me to bring over before I work myself into a full blown conspiracy, eh.

To relax and get focus again, I've re-read John R. MacArthur piece from yesterday's Harpers.org which closed with this paragraph:

"Obama, a moderate with far too much respect for the globalized financial class, is surely the unleft, unradical president. Which makes you wonder why left and right find common cause in saying otherwise.

Obama is Far From a Radical Reformer
John R. MacArthur
March 18, 2009
Harpers.org

I'll still keep thinking of Chapter 11 both specifically, in regard to AIG, and generally, as potentially having undermined the labour movement in the states, though I think I'll forget Obama and "change" for just a little while.

Technorati Tags: Bullshit??, Chaos, Confusing?, Conspiracy, Deceiver???, FUBAR, Paranoia

I'm glad Robert Fisk writes.

This article seems particularly relevant to be reading to-day as the former POTUS, number 43, has graced a selected group of strange Calgarians with his verbal prose.

"I invited Abdullah Almalki to breakfast in Ottawa but he only took coffee. And while I wolfed down my all-English breakfast in the Chateau Laurier Hotel (beloved of Churchill and Karsh of Ottawa fame), he sipped gingerly at his cup with much on his mind.

The West should feel shame
over its collusion with torturers
Robert Fisk
The Independent
March 14, 2009

I'd wax sentimental about my times in the Chateau - eating kippers for breakfast - or Karsh's house [an approximate google maps location] over on Copper Street just off Elgin Street - now condo's or apartments - but it's Paddy's day and I've more good whisky to be drinkin and outlandish e-mails to be sending.

The Age of Stupid

A new and different "Inconvenient Truth"? Maybe, finally, I hope, a move towards capturing our impending doom as a story to entrance even a twitter imagination.

Nice to hope, eh.

I doubt this new film "The Age of Stupid" is it but, but, but ... . [I'd link to the films website but it is a bloody pain-in-the-ass slow loading and far too much gadgetry and web.xxx bs for my liking, anyways I'll likely get out to see the film if it hits Ottawa]

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Stories do it, eh!

Irony, eh!

"How often our usage manages to accomplish, for a name or an expression, the precise negation of its originally intended meaning. To satirize the sycophants among his courtiers, King Canute sarcastically commanded the waves to keep their distance and allowed his own majesty to be wetted by the tides: now we give the name Canute to anyone in authority who foolishly attempts to ward off the inevitable. For the young scion of the Veronese house of Montague, only one girl in the whole world could possibly possess meaning, or be worth possessing: accordingly, we use the word Romeo to designate a tireless philanderer. In 18th-century England, John Wilkes was the leader of a radical political faction known as the Patriots. In Dr. Samuel Johnson’s Tory view, affiliation with that subversive party was “the last refuge of a scoundrel”: this now is construed as an attack on all those—most often Tories themselves—who take shelter in a too-effusive love of country.

Christopher Hitchens
Demons and Dictionaries
The Atlantic
March 2009

"“We cannot attract and retain the best and brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses, which are now being operated principally on behalf of the American taxpayers — if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury,” Liddy said.

AIG Chairman Edward Liddy
Letter to US Treasury

[Following on Todd Gitlin piece in TPMCafé]

Technorati Tags: Irony, Words, words, words

My morning laugh

WASHINGTON — American International Group is giving its executives tens of millions of dollars in new bonuses even though it received a taxpayer bailout of more than $170-billion (U.S.).

It seems AIG has contractual obligations to its so-called executive to pay them big, big bucks.

Of course the changeanator's skeleton crew at the US Treasury and Justice Departments will take this latest insult - anyone heard of trying force majeure? Oops sorry that's a French phrase isn't it.

Hey I thought someone down in D.C. was suppose to be building trust. No doubt the POTUS will modify the hacked up stump speech to scold the AIG Chairman Edward Liddy.

Now, I wouldn't expect Liddy to be named specifically in any dressing down that maybe delivered.

Why?

Because calling spades spades doesn't seem to be part of the modern myth of (the United States of) America. Heavens you could never identify a ne'er-do-well by name or question an incentive - or have those incentives now morphed into a simple labour contract similar to the type the UAW & CAW have with auto-makers, hmm - that insures the "best and the brightest" deliver turds.

I'd thought for awhile, back a few months ago, that the great unwashed could be sold bags of shit if the bags were gussied up and marketed just so-so. Damn, I've missed another opportunity to become a multi-millionaire. The "best and the brightest" of a particular ilk seemed to have cornered that large consumer market down in the states already.

Oh well, maybe there is some other nation's taxpayers, masquerading as consumers, to whom the little gift bags can be sold.

Technorati Tags: AP, Funny, Sarcasm