The "cult" of Obama.

Day 649

Of Barack Obama's planned back-to-school national TV address this Tuesday to American schoolchildren, Mark Steyn, right-wing pundit, told Rush Limbaugh, "Obviously we're not talking about the cult of personality on the Kim Jong-il, Saddam Hussein scale, but I don't see that it's part of American education to get grade-school kids to write letters to themselves about things they can do to help the president."

The MSM and the blogosophere are feasting on "the school speech," leaving scant room to get a slur in edgewise. The link below nicely covers that waterfront.

In this Oval Office photo soon after the Jan. 20 inauguration, Obama reacts to the son of one of his staffers who asked if the new president's hair is similar to his own. Perhaps in part because he met his own father only once, Obama has a preoccupation with parenting, children and education. Parental responsibility is a theme running through many of Obama's speeches since he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. On Father's Day last year, Obama was critical of absent fathers. "Any fool can have a child," Obama told the congregation of a Chicago black church (below). "That doesn't make you a father." His usual formulation on this topic is, "It takes courage to raise a child." In his planned speech to schoolchildren this Tuesday, Obama will focus on this topic again, with a message that school work is of great importance; that parents must reinforce in the home the work in the school; and that teachers are "unsung heroes." Given that U.S. students rank about 20th in each of literacy and numeracy, it would seem appropriate that the best-known of Americans be an advocate of education's virtues. Yet self-described conservatives throughout the U.S. have demanded their children not be subjected to Obama's innocuous speech.

Four things:

1. Barack Obama (a.k.a. "The One," "The Messiah," et al) has been dealing with this cult thing since his breakout DNC speech in 2004. He is young, telegenic, unusually articulate, self-deprecating, African American, the first president with young children since JFK. And he came to office amid a global financial crisis and economic downturn unmatched since the Great Depression, and U.S. wars in two countries to resolve. If Mark Steyn ascended to the U.S. presidency under those circumstances, he too would command more than the usual attention granted a chief executive in the early years of his administration.(1) (I should look it up, but I think the term is "honeymoon.") Obama has said, frequently, "I am a blank slate." He has observed, without complaint or pride, that "People project on me whatever they choose, quite different things, sometimes opposing hopes and values." Also, repeatedly, "I'm going to disappoint people." In his first presidential press conference last spring, Obama was asked about the apparent laggard progress in selecting the White House dog promised to Malia and Sasha. "We're looking for a rescue dog," Obama said. "Probably a mongrel, like me." (2) Oddly self-effacing for a cult leader.

2. A cult of personality develops around every U.S. president. In his first record album, in the 1970s, the brilliant stand-up comedian Robert Klein noted that the only thing Americans knew of James Abram Garfield, the 20th president, was that he was assassinated, dying of gunshot wounds six months after taking office in 1881. "There it is on the cereal boxes, 'George Washington, victor of the Revolutionary War, Founding Father, first president, pioneer in modern farming.' What does Garfield get? 'Shot by a disappointed office seeker.'" Garfield was not obvious chief executive material. He was selected as the G.O.P's presidential nominee on the 36th ballot as a compromise, the 1880 convention being deadlocked over Ulysses Grant, seeking a third presidential term, and James Blaine. Latter-day obscurity thus suits Garfield. Yet among my packrat possessions is a 768-page biography of the man to hold the White House for the second-shortest span (trailing only William Henry Harrison, who died 44 days into his presidency). Published 1881, it bears the title Our Martyred President. In the custom of the day, the title page offers an extended title that begins: "As a man, the noblest and purist of his times, as a citizen, the grandest of his nation, as a president, the idol of fifty millions of people." In truth, Garfield was barely known among Americans - not unusual for presidents prior to the era of mass media. Washington, Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson, as war presidents, were rare exceptions as widely known figures. 

3. Americans have a curious regard for their presidents. Jimmy Breslin said, "The office of President is such a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy, that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit." Thus every president worth remembering has been a polarizing figure, and it's amusing to read that a Hillary Clinton or an Obama is somehow new in this respect. Worshipping fans and ardent enemies are every president's lot. Thomas Jefferson developed something close to a loathing for President Washington, whom the pamphleer Samuel Adams came to regard as a vile traitor. In the 1940s a photo or engraving of FDR had pride of place in kitchens and dining rooms of hundreds of thousands of American homes. On a 1945 business trip, my father expressed his sympathy over the recent death of FDR to the fellow next to him in a Syracuse, N.Y. tavern. "That bastard, may he rot in hell," was the response. Those who imagine that Obama seeks adulation have it wrong. The adulation has sought him, and in turn generated an inevitable backlash. What that has to do with the man's values, policies and methods might possibly be relevant, but only in the same degree as it has been for his 42 predecessors. (3)

4. Steyn is disengenuous in raising then dismissing his own comparison between Obama and two stock characters from the pool of world bogeymen. He obviously means for us to think of Obama as a ruthless totalitarian, possibly genocidal save that it's America he's running and not a developing-world nation vulnerable to the predations of a Castro or Pol Pot. This is the contemporary right's problem of the moment, how to take down a progressive president without being clumsy about it. Karl Rove had a knack for this, because he used puppets. Currently it's leading G.O.P. and other right-wing figures soiling the carpet for lack of surrogates of untraceable provenance and motive. What the G.O.P. and its Hate Radio enablers don't grasp is that 52% of Americans voted for this supposed kindred spirit of Saddam last Nov. 4. To malign Obama - certainly at this early stage of his presidency - is to insult the intelligence of the more than 100 million Americans who cast ballots for the Democratic nominee. Folks don't generally take to being told they were chumps. Steyn could so easily have made his point effectively by citing the personality cults of leaders widely admired in the West - Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan. Each of whom, as it happens, were far more calculating about their public personas than Barack Hussein Obama, who repeatedly rejected sound advice to change his name. And has since alienated pro-life zealots while serving in the Illinois senate with his lukewarm support of a woman's right to choose, organized labour with his qualified advocacy of free trade, teachers with his admonitions to school boards to weed out "bad teachers" (not "mediocre," always "bad"), and gays and lesbians with his rejection of same-sex marriage. That's a sizeable portion of the Democratic base - women, labour, teachers' unions, the LGBT community.

Americans chose Obama because at a dire moment it seemed that a thoughtful, nuanced and not easily caricaturized person was needed for the job. The right prefers not to dwell on the flaws in Obama's policies, which the president gives every indication of eagerness to correct, regardless of the source of criticism. Instead, the right defaults to character assassination, obliging progressives by giving the electorate the impression that conservatives are afraid of the future, doubtful of their country's ability to change with the times and even the widsom of trying to do so. And the right always makes it personal. In each of last year's three presidential debates, Obama lavished praise on McCain's war record and public service. If McCain had even one nice thing to say about his adversary I missed it. Pretty much the same hauteur George H.W. Bush revealed in his debates with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.

And so conservatives will go on failing as they cater to their dwindling base. The demographics are against them. Americans for whom English is not their mother tongue, and who tend to vote Democrat, will be half the U.S. population before long. But the G.O.P. will have to be reduced to complete irrelevance, it appears, before the necessary reinvention commences. The self-parody in which the G.O.P. and the right are engaged should have run its course long ago, when Clinton, post-impeachment, left office with higher public-approval ratings than the sainted Reagan. America needs a vast right-wing conspiracy of intellectually vigourous and genuinely compassionate conservatives whose high card is visionary policies, not the knee-jerk trashing of imagined enemies of the republic.

Notes:

1. Being foreign-born (Canada), Steyn would be disqualified from the presidency.

2. The Obamas ultimately received as a gift from Sen. Ted Kennedy a Portuguese water dog, named Bo.

3. Obama is the 44th president, but the 43rd person to hold the office. Grover Cleveland twice served in the White House, and is counted as the 22nd and 24th presidents.

Related

* NYT: Round-up of blogosphere commentary on Obama's speech to American schoolchildren this Tuesday.

* The Atlantic: Derek Thompson, "What's So Bad About Obama's Education Speech?"

"President Obama's planned Sept. 8 speech to the nation's students has sparked what I'd call an automated controversy. The controversy isn't that Obama has announced something controversial, but rather than he's announced something. Full stop. He would like to speak to children about "the need to work hard and stay in school," according the AP, and conservatives are screaming as though playing the tape backward will unveil the subliminal message "Capitalism is deeeaaddd" or "Organize your communityyyy" or something. I'm sorry, I've recently pledged to avoid offering caricatures of the opposition, but this time I'm really struggling to find an opposition that doesn't caricature itself."

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

Least informative corporate press release of the year?

Day 646

In his NYT blog, economics columnist Floyd Norris draws our attention to this beaut of non-informative corporate "communication," released by Citgroup Aug. 31. Here it is in its entirety, minus the boilerplate:

"CITI HOLDINGS UPDATE: CITI SELLS THREE CREDIT CARD PORTFOLIOS

"New York — Citi today announced the sale of its entire ownership interest of three North American partner credit card portfolios representing approximately $1.3 billion in managed assets. The cards portfolios were part of Citi Holdings. Terms of the deals were not disclosed. Citi will continue to service the portfolios through the first half of 2010 at which time the acquirer will assume all customer servicing aspects of the portfolios.

"The sale of these card portfolios is consistent with Citi’s strategy to optimize the assets and businesses within Citi Holdings while working to generate long-term profitability and growth from Citicorp, which comprises its core franchise. Citi continues to make progress on its strategy and will continue to pursue opportunities within Citi Holdings that create the most value for stakeholders."

Norris has "a few unanswered questions," including:

1. Who is the buyer?
2. Which card portfolios are being sold?
3. What is the price?
4. Is there a profit or loss?

"I can’t remember," says Norris, "a deal announcement when a company said it had sold undisclosed assets to an undisclosed buyer for an undisclosed price, resulting in an undisclosed profit or loss."

Bear in mind Citigroup, by dint of federal rescue, now is a ward of the Obama administration As such it should be bound by the new transparency Barack Obama campaigned on. PS: Norris notes American Banker separately reports the buyer as US Bancorp, not the Gambino family.

HT: BusinessInsider.com.

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

Today's top news, Monday, Aug. 31.

Day 645

Bill Clinton tells adoring, capacity crowd at CNE he hopes U.S. will follow Canada this year in adopting universal health care. "I hope [late U.S. senator Ted Kennedy's] lifetime dream that America finally will follow Canada, and every other advanced nation in the world, in providing affordable health care to all of our people will pass," former U.S. president tells audience of 12,000 Saturday at CNE's BMO Field. Photo: Darren Calabrese, CP.

Why Canada was late entering recession, is early to emerge. Analysis shows without reliance on exports, Canada might have dodged this downturn, as it did the post-9/11 slump. Sum total of recessionary damage: 414,000 lost jobs, first export deficit in decades, massive hangover in future from deficit-financed stimulus.

Incredibly, devastating global downturn too short-lived to result in meaningful reforms in financial-markets behaviour or new system for worldwide coordination to avert next catastrophe. We could quote an anti-capitalism hippie weirdo freak on this, but warning comes from expert at one of world's most venerable investment banking firms. In note to clients, Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman, writes:

"The crisis is of historic proportions by many metrics. Yet in some ways it was not strong enough to force a restructuring of the world economy...The failure to take advantage of the crisis to put economies on a more balanced footing will have far reaching consequences..."

New Japanese government takes office today amid uncertainty. After breaking decades of near-monopoly rule by LDP, Yukio Hatoyama-led Democrats take office with little governing experience. Israel meanwhile indicts former PM Olmert on fraud charges. Olmert’s three predecessors in office faced corruption allegations.

Opel saga taking bad turn for Magna. GM stalling for time, as I've previously surmised, in hopes of clinging to Opel-Vauxhall once new German government elected late next month. Sources speculate German Chancellor Merkel (left) snookered by Detroit. Further evidence "new GM" refuses to focus on key N.A. market is $293-million deal to flesh out its Chinese offerings, adding trucks to its Chinese line-up of cars and minivans.

Green shoots: IPO boom in offing. Hyatt Hotels and Dollar Stores among giants poised to tap equity markets this year, after two years of pent-up demand while markets slumped.

Scotiabank and BMO chief executives detail their strategies in a global market still fraught with uncertainties.

In stunning reversal, Florida posts net drop in population latest 12-month period. Sunshine State, fourth-largest, has only known growth over past century. But lately hard hit by foreclosures, job losses, and net out-migration. William Frey, demographer at Brookings Institution, tells NYT:

“I don’t know if you can take a whole state to a psychiatrist, but the whole Florida economy was based on migration flows.”

Small but discernible exodus of Facebook users. Commercialism, arrogance, and privacy fears have turned many users against the social-networking site for adults. Facebook defector Leif Harmsen tells NYT:

“The more dependent we allow ourselves to become to something like Facebook — and Facebook does everything in its power to make you more dependent — the more Facebook can and does abuse us. It is not ‘your’ Facebook profile. It is Facebook’s profile about you.”

Reading blogs ranks second only to social-network visits among adult Internet users. Close to 40% of Web users are regular blog readers. (See chart at left.)

In San Francisco marathons, runners shunning Nike and other special-purpose shoes for thin togs that literally fit like a glove or going barefoot. They point to studies showing expensive running gear has little effect on performance.

EU members as, and sometimes more, productive than U.S. despite more generous EU holidays. Against average of 25 days off in U.S, EU average is 34.4 days, with the most pocketed in Lithuania (41), France and Finland (40 each). Yet OECD finds Belgium (30) and the Netherlands (28) are almost 2 percent more productive than the US, while Luxembourg (32 days) is whopping 27% more efficient. Even France is just 2% less productive, despite 37-hour work week.

Newsweek wonders if the epidemic of proven and alleged plagiarism - from Harvard students to debut novelists (Kaavya Viswanathan's How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got A Life) to high-profile pundits (Maureen Dowd) - is an unavoidable tic. "Could they be guilty of psychological sloppiness rather than fraud? Could the real offense be disregard for the mind's subliminal kleptomania? And if it is real, is unconscious copying (or "cryptomnesia" to those who study the phenomenon) preventable?"

Ted Kennedy's written message to Pope Benedict XVI, conveyed by Obama on Vatican visit several weeks ago, partially revealed during late senator's funeral Saturday:

“Even though I am ill, I’m committed to do everything I can do to achieve access to health care to everyone in my country. This has been the political cause of my life.” 

 

Funeral procession for late U.S. senator Ted Kennedy makes its way to Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday.

___________________

Quote of the day

"I think it's a real city of the future. I think having that big windmill ... is a signal to people from all over the world that make the journey from the airport [to] downtown that you're interested in the future. I like it because it's a diverse city. I like it because it's a friendly place." -Bill Clinton, asked during the Q&A session of his CNE appearance Saturday what he best liked about Toronto, where he has been a frequent visitor since retirement from the presidency in 2000. Toronto's one power generating windmill, a demonstration project that most days produces enough power to heat a birdhouse, is near BMO Field, where Clinton spoke. 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

Enjoy your weekend.

Day 642

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

Was it something I said?

Day 642

How to disappear at work.

 

 

 

HT: New York Times.

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.

Rupert Murdoch, you have blood on your hands.

Day 642

Americans die needlessly from lack of health-care coverage. Medical errors kill thousands of Americans a year for lack of health-care reform. A staggering 46 million Americans - the entire population of Spain - have no health coverage. An estimated additional 100 million-plus Americans - one-third of the population - are inadequately insured. More than 10,000 Americans drop their health insurance every day due to unaffordable premiums. Catastrophic illness is the leading cause of U.S. personal bankruptcies. America alone among industrial nations lacks the universal health care that Britons have enjoyed for 64 years.  

What's standing in the way of enactment of the U.S. health-care reform proposals under careful negotiation on Capitol Hill is an orchestrated campaign of disinformation by the medical-industrial complex. These profit-seekers stand to lose their fat profits, and be subjected for the first time to genuine competititon and accountability, if the proposed healthcare reforms become law. As they have in Britain, France, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Belgium, Iceland, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Norway, New Zealand, Spain and Switzerland, where medicine is not regarded primarily as a business but as a fundamental human right. 

And where, overwhelmingly, do those Americans most likely to believe the lies get their "news"...

...that reform means a government takeover of healthcare (under the proposed reforms, if you're happy with your doctors and insurance, by all means keep them, your circumstances won't change an iota)

...that government will decide who lives and dies (actually, it's private insurers that do that, by denying coverage, as do doctor-owned hospitals, by charging exorbitant fees for bedpans to heart surgery that patients' families ultimately cannot continue to pay for; the proposed "public option" would remove money from these traumatic decisions),

...that government will provide free healthcare to illegal immigrants (not a chance; no one has proposed this),

...that the commonplace ritual of end-of-life consultations are "death panels" (something else hospitals charge for - the privilege of talking with your dying mother's medical team, which the reforms propose to have Uncle Sam pay for instead of you, the total extent of proposed government involvement in that gut-wrenching decision)

...that the wildly popular U.S.-government-run Medicare is not actually a government program ("Keep the government's hands off my Medicare!" is a common refrain among seniors at the recent town-hall meetings - yes, there are Americans who don't know that Medicare, Medicaid and the VA, all vastly more cost-efficient than private care, are government-created and run)

...that "Obamacare" will bankrupt the country. (The absence of Obamacare will bankrupt America. Healthcare costs account for 16% of U.S. GDP, only 10% in Canada, even less in Japan, and average health outcomes are better in every nation with universal care than in the U.S. Among his few directions to Congress, Obama has required that the reform bill he signs must restrain costs, now soaring toward 18% of GDP within a few years, and 50% by mid-century, a grisly scenario in which taxes will soar and government services, including even spending on the military and national security, will have to be drastically cut.)

Where do the tragically misinformed get their "news"?

They get it from the Fox News Channel.

Sure, the dangerous myths are spread by G.O.P. lawmakers. By Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and the other multimillionaire yakkers of Hate Radio. And by the same crazed libertarians who wish to destroy government in all its forms in the U.S. - the Timothy McVeigh crowd.

But most Americans, like most Canadians, still get the bulk of their information from traditional TV network news. And in the case of self-identified Republicans and the looney right, that's Fox - conduit for every fresh falsehood and wacko notion that comes down the pike or that Fox can conjure up on its own.

Rachel Maddow of Fox rival MSNBC has the stats that tie the wilfully misinformed to Fox, courtesy of recent independent polling commissioned by the left-wing Daily Kos, among the most venerable of political websites. There aren't many dots to join here, folks. Especially when you see the same untruths fed daily to readers of Murdoch's New York Post.

Murdoch is an American by convenience (he would lose his lucrative U.S. TV licenses otherwise); an Aussie by birth, breeding and choice well into late middle age; a Londoner by cultural preference; and a longtime kissing cousin of Communist Chinese apparatchiks in order to retain his profitable Asian satellite franchises. He's no man to be heavily influencing the outcome of America's most important public-policy decision of modern times.

Why does Murdoch counsel Americans against their own best interests? Is he an extreme right-wing, anti-government idealogue?

Not at all. Murdoch was an early backer of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. That was when she was the "prohibitive favourite" and Murdoch did what business does, take a pre-emptive financial stake in the presumed winner with whom they'll have to deal later. 

No, Murdoch does it for the money. Fox and its News Corp. parent maintain an iron grip on what H.L. Mencken described as the "booboisee," from which it milks immense profits. Which leaves the competition fighting among themselves for a slice of the rest of the audience. It's the Rovian approach to media riches: identify a niche, cater relentlessly to it, ignore everyone else - everyone else happening to be the majority of Americans, three-quarters of whom tell pollsters they want universal health care. But even conservative Democrats listen to the Fox-fuelled voices of protest, and are unduly swayed by them.    

Here's the damning video:

Today's top news, Friday, Aug. 28.

Day 642

Finally, Canadian caregivers unite in effort to squash U.S. healthcare myths about Canada. The top video below is among most prominent U.S. attacks on Canadian medicare, financed by U.S. medical-industrial complex. Second video is belated but welcome response from Canadian docs, clinicians, citizens who've had it with slagging of Canadian system.

Related: Veteran medical reporter Andre Picard of the Globe, frequent critic of Canadian system's shortcomings, offers reminder of why Canadian system fundamentally a blessing.

Canadians now optimistic about economic recovery - a sharp, positive swing in consumer sentiment.  

More good news for Ontario auto sector. Star's Tony Van Alphen quotes unnamed company sources saying production of compact Corolla at Cambridge, Ont. will be accelerated later this year to compensate for lost production with imminent closing of California joint venture with GM. Corolla was biggest winner in recently ended U.S. "cash for clunkers" program. Cambridge and Woodstock plants, where Toyota employs total of 3,000 workers, are spared despite recent decision by world's biggest automaker to scale back production in Japan. Toyota earlier this month forecast staggering fiscal-year loss of $4.8 billion (U.S.) due to massive overcapacity in weak global market. (Photo: Toyota's flagship Canadian assembly plant in Cambridge, now in its 22nd year.)  

Some Canadian banks actually showing record profits amid recession and global financial crisis. A boost to national pride, to be sure. But might also focus attention on proliferating fees by which bank customers are shouldering the cost of global financiers' reckless greed. Scotiabank reports near 8% drop in quarterly profit, but beats Street expectations.  

Still more green shoots: U.S. economy shrinks less in 2Q, first-time jobless claims fall again.

With 6.7 million U.S. jobs lost in recession, and total 15 million unemployed, surprising comeback in popularity and status of physical-labour jobs. They seem more real, tangible, than deskbound corporate paper shuffling.

Big drop in solar-panel prices brings residential energy efficiency within reach of more homeowners. Panels have plunged 40% in price since last summer, due to recession and big increase in production. While not yet an upfront bargain, long-term payoff from solar-energy homes now increasingly practical option.

Always iffy proclamations of coal "renaissance" cast into further doubt by abundance of cleaner natural gas to supplant coal as U.S. leading fuel for electric-power generation. And power demand will soar even further next decade with prevalence of hybrid and all-electric cars.

U.N.'s chief climate-change agency attempts to quantify cost of reversing global heating. Estimated cost of $40 billion (U.S.) to $170 billion (U.S.) per year to 2030 is a wide range because of unknownable behavioural response of individuals and institutions to crisis. If uptake of electric cars and above-mentioned solar panels is high, for instance, cost of combatting global heating will be lower. Count on remaining global-warming denialists to cite U.N.'s higher figure, and governments to be laggard in constructive programs for averting catastrophe.

Profits barometer: Upgraded profit forecast from Williams-Sonoma (namesake chain and Pottery Barn) points to upswing in consumer sentiment on pricey housewares and furnishings. PC weakness continues with poor results from Dell and Acer, but Dell exceeds Street expectations. Global spirits leader Diageo (Johnny Walker, Guinness) posts higher profit, despite its premium-priced portfolio, but lowers expectations for full year. Lousy Aer Lingus results may make Irish flag carrier more amenable if a second Ryanair takeover bid emerges.

Troubled CanWest lucks into soaring ratings at 50%-owned TEN, its Australian TV network, whose $600-million sale proceeds of could stave off insolvency. But bondholders are squawking over where the proceeds go. They need to have a chat with Aspers' bankers, who've redefined meaning of patience.

Speaking of Manitoba, retiring premier Gary Doer to be named today as Canada's next U.S. ambassador. Globe's Jeffrey Simpson lauds Doer as rare statesman to retire at top of his game. Bill Davis did it. But think Chretien, Klein, Thatcher - all pushed from power by their own parties.

Star's Christopher Hume bemoans low Canadian voter turnout. In recent, disputed Afghan vote, turnout was miserable 30%. Last time Mississauga voted, turnout was 26%.

On 100th anniversary of girls storming a U.K. Boy Scout gathering demanding their own, similar organization, Britain's Independent canvasses JK Rowling, Emma Thompson and other former Girl Guides for the lasting benefits of their youthful Guiding lessons. A gender-enlightened Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Guides as well as the Scouts, wrote in Scouting for Boys (1908): "Girls as well as boys may well learn scouting when young, and so be able to do useful work in the world when they are older."

Globe contributor makes case for the F-word - or "F bomb," as she calls it. She's in good company with late June Callwood, among the most saintly characters any city ever blessed with, a staunch advocate of occasional profanity. They don't teach that in Guides or Scouts. Nor, at least in my experience, Wolf Cubs. We might get it from expulsions of MPs in Question Period.

____________________

Quote of the day

"The battle that's going on in the United States taps into Canadian emotions.” -Roy Romanow, former premier of Saskatchewan, birthplace of Canadian medicare, and erstwhile head of one-man federal inquiry on fixing what ails it.

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

GR instruction manual. 7. a. Enlarging the photos.

Day 641

A friendly reminder from Gus, who recently added photo editor to his mascot duties, that images on this site often run at a fraction of their original size. Simply click on the image to enlarge.

 

The photo below appears to be photo-shopped, but it's the real thing. The folks on the beach, some with binoculars, are plane-spotters at one of KLM's resort destinations, where there's not much to do other than sunbathe and get an unusually close look at the underbelly of an enormous jetliner making its final descent.

 

The 1920 image above is early Soviet propagandist art. On close inspection, you see only a hint of the transition from traditional representational art of the previous century to the severe, and more familiar, Kremlin-approved posterwork shorn of czar-era architectural icons that are still plainly evident here.

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

A well-deserved backhanded compliment.

Day 641

One never wants to say "I told you so." Playground stuff.

Still, when some portion of the world catches up with you, suddenly recognizing the lunacy and mendacity you identified years ago for what it is, what do you do?

This is Paul Krugman's dilemma. Shared by the likes of Josh Marshall and Eric Alterman. Krugman notes in his blog today that MSM columnist Steven Pearlstein "has an outraged column about

"...the lies, distortions and political scare tactics that [Michael] Steele and other Republicans have used to poison the national debate over health reform."

"The raw dishonesty of the modern GOP appears to be a revelation to Pearlstein, Joe Klein, and others," Krugman writes. "I thought it was obvious at least as far back as the 2000 election campaign. (If I’d really been paying attention, it would have been obvious much earlier.)

"I welcome Pearlstein and Klein to the reality-based community — better 9 years late than never. And in a way they have an advantage: having fought this thing for so long, I just can’t muster the same sense of shock."

Actually, Krugman still manages to keep hitting same note of outrage in sufficiently different ways to keep me engaged.

And while nine years might be better than never, what a spectacular price we've paid from the MSM giving evil-doers in our midst a free pass. Alterman documents in his must-read Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy and What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias in the News the MSM ridicule of candidate Al Gore in 2000 that raised the curtain on this lost decade.

Gore's failing, what disqualified him from the presidency, was that he was too smart and let you know it. Rarely took time to chat up "the boys on the bus." The food and hi-jinks on his zoo plane (the press plane) were no match for the lavish spreads the Bushies laid out, and for Bush's delightful mimicry of leading political figures. (And reporters.)

Obviously Bush was the man to lead America into the 21st century. The mind reels.

I don't especially enjoy the company of Johnny-Come-Latelies. It isn't that they mocked me (and worse, doubted my patriotism), it's that they abetted a giant step backward in social progress. Yes, that is a bit precious. But think of what's at stake.

A lost decade - okay, eight years - to make a genuine start of curbing climate change, which requires a massive culture change. To devise some means of intervening to prevent genocide. To honour a unanimous Canadian parliamentary commitment to eradicate child poverty, dating from 1990. (Currently about one million Canadian children live below the poverty line.)

We spent the decade, instead, with getting and spending. Culminating in an easily foreseeable crash, a further hindrance to the urgent need to get on with health-care reforms and experiments in higher-quality, more cost-efficient care in both Canada and the U.S. And raising education standards as our two nations watch helplessly while our industrial heartlands are hollowed out.

The Rip Van Winkles have much to answer for. Or, as I once told David Frum, on the Iraq war, "You have blood on your hands." Frum, realizing things got out of hand, is leading a one-man mission to reinvent the G.O.P. as that "kinder, gentler" party Peggy Noonan instructed G.H.W. Bush to pledge himself to. Which died when a more convincing progressive than G.H.W. Bush defeated Poppy in 1992, and Rovian calculus of milking the wretchedly angry among us became a narrowly winning strategy.

It's fun to watch Frum, in his adopted homeland, with his recently launched newmajority.com Ground Zero of the new, more compassionate G.O.P. - which no one pays attention to. Frum is, after all, tainted with the incompetence of his former boss Dubya, which the Oxford editors will soon be accepting as a synonym for incompetence in a wide variety of fields rather than limited to one. What's most fun is the facile name, newmajority. Frum, to the extent he has followers, is in a pitifully small minority in his party of hard-right dead-enders. But he boldly labels himself in the vanguard of a "new majority," as Lenin was pleased to have his ragtag following tagged as Bolsheviks (majority) when they constituted nothing of the kind. I know Murdoch kept a bust of Stalin in his dorm room, but that was a joke. Who knows? By the time someone lets David in on his unintended irony the name will have achieved too much "brand equity" to change.

Krugman has reason to wonder what magic pill the newly enlightened recently took to awake them finally to the entirely preventable horrors that enrage them, but did not disturb their sleep until now.

It's just possible that there is some kind of social-justice pain threshold. It was okay with the MSM when a mere 32 million Americans - the entire population of Canada - suffered without health-care coverage at the time Bill Clinton took office. But the 46 million Americans lacking coverage today, that apparently is less acceptable. Still further beyond the pale is the inadequate coverage suffered by an additional 100 million or so Americans. Which might include the friends and family of Steven Pearlstein and Joe Klein.

Anyone who's canvassed the CliffsNotes guide to U.S. history should know there's not a dime of difference between a Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and a Westbrook Pegler or Father Coughlin. So, knowing how those retrograde voices tried to hold us back from a more truly prosperous society in the 1930s and 1940s, why do we suffer their descendants today as mere comics? Which, by the way, always is the apology for Limbaughs, O'Reillys, Becks and so on. "They're entertainers, David, it doesn't matter." Uh huh. And that's why United States Senators this spring and summer have been vetting their pronoucements in advance with Rush Limbaugh. Just as LBJ consulted with Red Skelton on cabinet appointments. Didn't he? 

Krugman reminds that it was always thus with the forces of self-centeredness, and sends us to Rick Perlstein, "our premier historian of the rise of modern movement conservatism" for some remedial lessons on how for these folks afraid of the future, crazy is a pre-existing condition."

Above image: Boris Kustodiev's 1920 painting Bolshevik. Courtesy Wikipedia.

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

Today's top news, Thursday, Aug. 27.

Day 641

Alberta braces for $6.9-billion deficit, $2.2 billion worse than predicted in April budget. Finance minister says "real kick in the head" for Alberta economy. As earlier noted in Top News, 50% plunge in natural gas prices - the major source of Alberta government resource revenues, not oil - will be big blow to Wild Rose Country, already in recession. B.C., trailing only Alberta in natural-gas production, has reported 6X jump in deficit forecast of last February, and premier has warned government spending cuts loom. Alberta sure to follow in austerity measures.

Green shoots I: Decline in Canadian corporate profits is tapering off. Down 6.4% in Q2, compared with drop of 14.1% in 1Q and 19.2% in 4Q 2008. 

Green shoots II: U.S. employer poll points to much stronger hiring expectations in 2010 than previously forecast. German business confidence also up strongly.

Green shoots III: Air-traffic recovery now anticipated. IATA says "fragile" recovery underway, after months of fretting by IATA and its airline members that weak passenger volumes threaten massive industry losses.

CAE, world-leader in aircraft simulators, wins $100-million in contracts from European and U.S. military clients. Montreal-based firm benefits from diversified product line-up, as civilian-aircraft side of the business has been weak.

TD beats expectations, both profits and lending are up. Royal Bank underwhelms with 24% profit jump, much lower than Street estimates. National Bank reports profit rise, to $303 million. So far, all reporting banks - including BMO yesterday - are showing higher earnings. CIBC, meanwhile, confronting potentially huge credit-card defaults.

NHL in stunning volte-face says in its bid for Coyotes, it's prepared to relocate the team. Bettman's beef with Balsallie's bid was the RIM co-CEO's plan to relocate struggling franchise from Phoenix desert to hockey friendly Hamilton. Not that New York-based American CEO of Canada's national game has ever been accused of an abundance of competence. But Bettman's hypocrisy and plankheadedness is a combination to take one's breath away - as Globe's Stephen Brunt chronicles today.

U.S. "cash for clunkers," now winding down, a boon mostly for foreign makes. Only two domestics, both Fords, make the top 10 new vehicles for which motorists traded in aging gas-guzzlers.

Spectacular industrial accident Monday at Russian hydro-electric dam a sign of crisis in decaying Soviet-era infrastructure throughout world's largest nation.

Monday's breach at Russia's biggest hydro-electric facility, Sayano-Shushenskaya in Siberia, has cost 17 lives with another 58 workers missing. S-S alone accounts for 15% of Russian hydro power, and will cost an estimated $1.3 billion (U.S.) to repair. Kremlin is angry over West depicting accident as "a second Chernobyl," but concedes national power infrastructure is aging and more accidents loom without massive investment in repair and replacement.

 

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Quote of the day

 

"I've given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can't divorce a book." -Gloria Swanson

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.