Creationism Rising

StandingAtAttention
CavemanVille


Well, it looks like Stockwell Day and his compatriots down South just might have to partake in a wee bit of revisionist thinking.

Because if dinosaurs walked the earth with men six, or even ten, thousand years ago that looks to be at least 18,000 years after God or, perhaps more likely, the Goddess made this.

Now that's what we call Intelligent Design.

In a purely artistic, rather than a functional, sense of course.

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Original Links Source: Rooks Rant.

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Bob & Doug Milobender

LooCooCooCooCooCooCooCoo
It'sABeautyWayToGoVille


Billmon has worked himself into a lather because a Canuckistani heavy-hitter named MDS Nordion, a company that makes medical radioisotopes, has managed to pull off a reverse N/CAFTA, lobby-assisted legislative swindle.

As a result, the US government is all set to sell Nordion a big whack of weapons grade uranium sans security restrictions.

"Now I bow to no man in my love for my would-be adopted mother country and her proud commercial traditions, but the idea that a medical company in the Great White North has enough weapons-grade uranium to recreate the Manhattan Project is frankly terrifying. Think about it: the Mackenzie brothers with nukes."

Now I can understand why Billmon might be a wee bit upset. After all, this means that if we don't straighten up and fly right one of those Big Apple mushroom clouds that Ms. Rice likes to talk about just might be generated by hosers rather than terrorists.

We do think Mr. Mon is a little off base, however, with respect to the identities of the potential hoseriferous, back bacon-sucking perpetrators.

Because if anybody is going to build a beauty of a fissionable take-off vehicle it will not be Bob and Doug.

Instead, we think that it is much more likely that Geddy Lee will be responsible, especially given the fact that just the sound of his voice is enough to cause certain Randians heads to explode.

Not to mention the fact that, as he ages and loses his hair, Mr. Lee is starting to look more and more like a certain comedian who once played Major Major Major in the Mike Nichols/Buck Henry cinematic take on the Joe Heller classic.

Which reminds me.....

Is it possible to play 4 rounds of 'The Beer Hunter' when you're two short of a two-four?

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The Team

NotThatChumThing
GasSniffingVille


In response to our previous post on the coming establishment of EnronNorth, reader 'public static' had this to say about the folks who are helping push the deal:

"I swear to work for those people you must have to huff gas until you pass out for 7 straight days..."

Which may or may not be true.

But, regardless, we figure that there is a group of folks in Victoria with a buzz on these days. And that would be the members of the 'Offshore Oil and Gas Team', a LINO flack/hack group whose job it is to open everything up for Mr. Nancy Kinder and his ilk so that they can work their big money, neandercon-inspired ponzi magic on all of us.

Seem far fetched?

Maybe.

But let's watch what happens to the Gasbag Team's budget, which is sure to be buried in Hansard but we're counting on Holman and/or Willcocks to dig it out, before we make the call for real.

Still, I wouldn't be averse to giving up short odds right now to get some action on a wager that the Gasbaggers' budget will go from the mid-sevens to something in the low eights in the coming year or two.

After all, what's 10 or 12 million dollars a year, a significant proportion of which will go straight down the gullets of high-priced lobbyists, media-monopolists and mid-level Martinis when you've got a province to sell off.

Ugh.

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A Kinder, Gentler Enron?

BeautifulBritishColumbia
It'sStill(Barely)ThereVille

Just getting back from holidays, so am a little wobbly and even less insightful than usual......

Didn't go south this year...... Except for short trips down to Pt.Roberts, where the border guards are still human, we just can't bring ourselves to do it.

Instead, we went native in the wilds of just-off-coast, left-sided Canuckistan (a.k.a British Columbia's Southern Interior).

Much of it is privatized, and I'm not just talking about our gas company which apparently has just been sold lock, stock and two billowing barrels to Kinder-Morgan which is fronted by, yes folks, that's right, that Richard Kinder just in case you were wondering where the hearts, minds and gubernacula of the Neandercons running the Good Ship Lollipop (ie. the S.S. Gordon Campbell) truly lie.

What really got to me on this holiday is the state of B.C.'s public campgrounds. Clearly, they are being run into the ground, quite literally, by the private contractors who now control them. The exception on this trip was a little place at Otter Lake which is tucked into a high valley between the Hozameen and Okanagan Mountain Ranges. It was fantastic - not because the company running the place is any great shakes (ie. all they really want their value-added for no value $6 a night reservation surcharge that makes their no capital investment-assisted, gravy train profit margin even richer than usual) but rather because the three young kids doing the actual work of running this little outpost really love both what they do and the people that come to visit them. Heck, one of them even brought us...... get this.....frozen chocolate-covered cherries when he found out that we were having a reunion of sorts with another family we semi-regularly head out into the woods with.

So, here's the thing.

Do you seriously think that Richard Kinder and his Ranger friends are going to give a hoot in hell about any of us peons, either the indigenous campers or the folks running 'our' campsites, when they buy up that all that ranch land up the road in the Bernie Ebbers firesale and then gobble up every bit remaining range and forest land from the Coquihalla to the Kootenays for their own private hunting and fishing reserves to be protected by razor wire, laser-guided attack dogs, Mr. Coleman's minions, and roving packs of 2nd line trigger happy punks on nitro-burning ATV's who couldn't quite make it with Kellogg Brown and Root?

I think not.

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A couple of random musings after being offline and almost totally in the grips of Canwest (not)Global's print media organ grinder monkeys for 10 days or so.....the Province is no longer my derriere polisher of last resort because the National Post, even sans Conrad the Marauder, is a truly vile pile of xenophobic spew filled to bursting with gutless, posturing wonderment....Gary Mason should change his name to John Obvious; I mean, who the the hell is he writing for, people in BC who know that real estate is overpriced, that labour relations are on the rocks, and that Vancouver's upcoming civic election is going to be interesting, or is he still pitching his job to fast Eddie G. months after he got the gig?

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A Modest Proposal

SockingItToThem
MovingToCenterVille

So, how's he going to do it?

How is B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell going to handle all those way right ideologues in his caucus and his party that are ready to pounce?

Is he going to play along to get along and just use the newly elected centrists like Ms. Taylor and Mr. Oppal as spin deflectors?

Maybe.

But even if he was able to hold off the redmeaters for his entire term Mr. Campbell must know that he will very likely be in even worse real trouble if he cedes the middle to Carole James.

So, what if he were to go the other way?

And if he wanted to, how could he do it?

Well, as a strong first step, we would like to suggest that Mr. Campbell could initially declare the turnaround of ICBC to be a great victory which demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that his vaunted best practices management approach really does work. After all, no matter how much the private industry shills whine, it is very clear that our auto insurance premiums are significantly lower than those in Ontario even after the McGuinty government moved in to try and reign in skyrocketing rates.

And this has been done while generating profits that some have estimated are approaching a billion dollars a year.

So, given all this success, Mr. Campbell could then take concrete steps to demonstrate that ICBC will absolutely, positively not be privatized. And he could score even more points with all the citizens of B.C. by dividing the profits evenly between policy holders (ie. giving us all truly significant rebates) and government programs that require a significant influx of one time funding (ie. how does $500 million for parks and longterm care beds in the first year sound?).

It would be one of those crazy W3's (ie.Win/Win/Win) situations for the Premier, his government's approach, and all of the people of British Columbia.

Which means that it should be a pretty easy thing for Mr. Campbell to do it, right?

Well, there is that little matter of the private multinational insurance companies who are waiting for their promised windfall in the wings (which is another W3 of a very different kind).

So, when it gets right down to it, the real nut-cutter might not be whether Mr. Campbell can stand up to the redmeaters but instead whether he can say no to his corporate backers?

Only time, and perhaps how the polls respond to the damaging revelations that are sure emerge from the Basi/Virk trial, will tell if he can do it.

_____
Heck, if things went the way of our modest proposal ICBC could even come completely clean and stop selling our liscensing information to the small guys too.
Update: Get ready for more of these modest proposal type deals to be posted at Rick Barnes' Politics in B.C. so that we can keep this place running on total immodesty (fully clothed variety, of course).

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You Mean There's No C-SPAN In Prison?

WaitingForGigot
Anti-BeckettVille

So, when Mr. Chalabi and her Cheney Administration sources are not available where, you might be asking yourself, does Judy Miller get her information?

Well, given that the publicity shy Ms. Miller is suddenly unwilling to talk to reporters, apparently only her NYT editor Bill Keller knows for sure.

Luckily though, Mr. Keller is more than willing to tell us:

".... Her time is also occupied with reading from the prison library and watching CNN and Fox News when other prisoners do not keep the shared television on hip-hop and rap music videos. "Those seem to be the favorite of the cell block," the editor (Keller) said.

Sheesh.

You'd think Ms. Miller might learn more about what's actually going on in America if she spent more time watching hip-hop and less time watching CNN and FOX.

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I Have Seen The Future Of Public Discourse...

There'sJustAMeaness
InThisWorldVille

.....And Its Name Is Bruce Springsteen.

Two of the greatest bands/musicians that I have ever known came to me by way of covers in bars.

And in both cases the year was 1978, a time on the Westcoast of Canuckistan when the musical pickings for a late adolescent from almost suburbia were pretty darned Slim Whitman indeed.

The first was played by a bunch of guys who moved in lockstep, from right foot to left foot, and sometimes wore televisions on their heads. I saw them at a place called the Surfside in Victoria, a not-quite, but almost, biker bar where you could get in if you were underage so that you could subject yourself, on 9 nights out of 10, to Jimmy Page and/or Journey wannabes. But these weird guys, the TV Heads, they played stuff I had never even conceived of before; super fast, super loud with slurred vaguely English-accent laden lyrics, and every song was over and done in less than 2 minutes. Can't even remember the name of the TV Heads now - but the stuff they were playing, it was the real thing.

The Ramones.

And by the end of that summer my friends and I had dropped the Zepplin and we were thrashing around, ripping out Blitzkrieg Bop and I Wanna Be Sedated in an egg carton-lined basement rec-room driving the Big W's parents crazy.

The second coming took longer to light.

The spark came from a weird, hold-over hippy collective that played up the hill in a place called Mother's Disco on lower Johnson St. They even had bongoes and a saxophone player for chrissakes, who was - get this - a girl. And the song I remember most was one about a kid who pines for another girl. A girl named Sandy who hangs around on a boardwalk late at night.

What you have to understand is that, at that point in my life at least, the only boardwalk I'd ever seen was made from rough hewn chunks of red cedar slapped down on a moss bog somewhere in the middle of the treacherous southern half of the Westcoast trail, back in the days when it really was treacherous and still open to all comers.

In other words, before I walked into that bar I had no inkling of the spirits in the night that roamed Bruce Springsteen's New Jersey shore.

But when I walked out I sure did.

****

Now, I never bought into that crap from Dave Marsh about the 'Future of Rock and Roll' and all that because nobody, not even Marsh, can possibly know when or where the next Kurt Cobain or even the next Sek Loso will pop up.

But the thing about Springsteen is that once he gives you that inkling, or more precisely that tingling (of the spine), he never lets you down.

Even when he speaks.

Now many a good hearted artist will inevitably sound like they have marbles in their mouth and/or rocks in their head when they try and articulate why they have taken a particular political stand on something.

But not Springsteen. Here is what he told the Globe's Robert Everett-Green about why he publicly opposed George Bush and why he went on to play for John Kerry last fall:

"When your elected officials are consciously lying to you, as I do believe happened, they're supposed to lose their jobs.........

........At the same time, they played on people's cultural fears very well, whether it was abortion, or evolution. You had people writing that the Bible would be outlawed if John Kerry won. You had Cheney saying that if the Democrats got in, there would probably be another terrorist attack. The pure audacity and shamelessness of it was sort of disgustingly admirable. What balls, you know? But the sad thing about it is that it's based on divisiveness, not on the idea of an inclusive country where people of a variety of philosophies and religious ideas make things work."

The thing about Springsteen is that he one of those troubadours who is capable of making his songs all things to all people. But unlike so many of that ilk, and Mr. Zimmerman comes to mind here, Springsteen is also someone who does seem to truly know, and see, America for what it really is.

Take this lyrical snippet for example.

"Show a little faith there's magic in the night.
You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright....... and that's alright, with me."

Now, the first time I heard that I really did conjure up a girl named Wendy. And the weird thing is that she was both real and imagined. She had come to my highschool from Edmonton with a Chevrolet that was definitely not her Dad's. I rode in that car once or twice and I would have done pretty much anything to ride in it again, back then and maybe even right now.

As for Bruce?

Well, who knew that the not-quite-but-almost beauty he wrote about so long ago, and who he still sings about today, would turn out to be his country.

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Apologies for stealing a little from Heather Mallick, sort of. I must confess that, while I rush out to the corner store every Saturday morning so that I can rip open the Globe to page F2, I rarely read her bit in the Style section. But this week, even there, she made my heart sigh.

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Staying The Course

WhatHeDidn'tFindInAfrica
BigPictureVille


Some folks on the left side of the bloggodome figure the time has come to hop off the Yellowcake Road before it gets to that hallowed gate named 'Plame'.

The argument for taking a hard right at the nearest exit goes something like this:

"It is ridiculous for progressives to be spending all this time and effort on an internal act of weaseldom involving the CIA while The Empire continues to get away with murder in Iraq and beyond."

Which is fine as far as it goes, but it misses the point.

Because I distinctly remember the moment in time when I read Joseph Wilson's original OpEd piece, out of the blue, that Sunday in July two years ago.

Even for someone like myself, someone who was extremely skeptical and who had done their best to pay attention, this thing from Wilson was like a thunderbolt to the forehead.

So, I put the (real)paper down on the couch, stood up, and said to my wife.

"If what this man has written is true, these people truly are engaged in a criminal war of naked aggression."

Which is why Plamegate and all that swirls around it must be dealt with to the fullest. Because it was hatched to discredit Mr. Wilson and his family and thus, by association, his OpEd piece without ever actually producing evidence to indicate that the OpEd was not truthful.

In other words, the work of the special prosecutor, Mr. Fitzgerald, and hopefully a newly unleashed American press, may be the last best chance for the United States to demonstrate that it is still a nation of laws, not men.

And very possibly, criminal men.

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Geneva And Me

HSTFriday
SeventhEditionVille

Believe it or not, former Nixon Pol and waygone rightsider Pat Buchanan was once on darned good terms with Hunter S. Thompson.

And here is the correspondence to prove it, written by Buchanan in response to an invitation from Thompson to write an article on the future of American Conservatism with impeachment looming in March of 1974:

Dear Hunter:

Sorry I haven't been able to get back to you sooner; but all leaves and furloughs have been canceled for the last sixty days, on orders of the General Staff. At the appropriate time, I may well deliver myself of the recommended 'hammerhead screed' but I must say I was dissillusioneedd to learn that Rolling Stone had excercised the bad judgement to thrwo away three good pages on Richard Goodwin.* As the Old Man said in the final days of that wonderful year, 1968, it is "getting down to the nut-cutting." Tellyour liberal friends we expect to be treated with all the deference and respect as outlined in the Geneva Conventions on the handling of prisoners of war.

Best,
Patrick J. Buchanan
Special Consultant to the President

Reprinted in: Fear and Loathing In America
The Gonzo Letters, Vol II, Simon & Schuster, 2000, pg 587.

Well, the more things change the more they don't stay the same.

Because 'Rethugs - The Next Generation' have pretty much gone out of their way to make sure that all deference, not to mention the Geneva Conventions, no longer exists.

And while Jann Wenner may be a Republican now, even he would never be so stupid as to throw these people a lifeline.

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*Goodwin was a great society, left-sided operative who worked for Kennedy and Johnson who participated in Thompson's maniacal high-profile effort to turn the Democratic Party onto Freak Power at a Wenner-financed conference in Elko Nevada in early 1974.

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Uncaging His Inner Cottinghammerer

TheLaughingMan
SomewhereNearTheParisChineseBorderVille

Our favorite speechwriter, Rob Cottingham, was the subject of a feature in yesterday's Vancouver Courier.

And hey, there's some good stuff in there.

Biq question now is.....will it help raise his Technorati ranking to get him into the same league as his partner Alex?

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Serving 'Em Up......

NotSoGiant98
DinoVille

.......Softballs That Is

Caught everybody's favorite time compression magician, Stockwell 'Don't Call Me Channing' Day, on Michael Smyth's radio show this evening.

In a wide-ranging, free ride of monumental proportions Mr. Day managed to move through his talking points with nary a hiccup, linking Paul Martin's heretofore well-hidden overt support for International Terrorism and the Low Age of Consent to the Destruction of Western Civilization As We Know It before finishing up with a blanket 'It's All Ujjal's Fault' denial of everything Grewal (could have sworn I heard the bright shiny sounds Reynolds Wrap ventriloquism on that last one, but couldn't be sure given the complete lack of follow-up from the host).

It's not that Smyth has lost all ability to snap off the high hard ones, it's just that it looks like he can only do it for about 12 minutes of each 120 minute show.

Case in point - Smyth did hold the Private Health Clinic guy's feet to the fire in the short, final segment that followed Mr. Day.

But what the heck. Given the short-attention span journalism that is all things Province I suppose it could be argued that 12 minutes a show is actually a huge, huge bonus.

Not to mention the fact that it is about 11' 30" more than you will get if you forget to lock onto Rafe tomorrow and instead waste your time listening to the Goodship Watercarrier in the morning.

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With Friends Like These....

NoDaVinci
OnNBCThursdaysGoneByVille

Given that COPE just can't quite patch things up, it looks like the big prize in Vancouver civic politics at the moment are a bunch of Friends, none of whom lives in an apartment on TV.

We're talking, of course, about the Friends of soon-to-be-former mayor Larry Campbell, a PR and fundraising juggernaut that may go for Lite man Jim Green which will go a long way in determining how viable Classic guy David Cadman's campaign will be.

All of which sets up the pins for a really big split on the left side of the ledger.

And then there's the right side, which also looks to be headed for a split between Sam Sullivan and Peter Ladner, two bigtime heavyweights - not.

And that 'not' is important these days because the time when the NPA, or more specifically their backroom boys, could pump a bunch of developer-assisted money and influence into a campaign and be assured of a win are long gone (thanks in large part to Mr Campbell and his predecessor Philip Owen).

So with all this splitting going on just who might successfully come up the middle?

Well, never count out former NPA councillor Jennifer Clarke, she of the infamous creme de la creme quote who was then creamed herself by big Larry last time out and who subsequently shamelessly peddled herself first as an apologist for UBC's transgressions as a newly minted developer and then as a short-lived pre-Carole T. saviour for Langara which will soon have the RAV line slicing through it, something Ms. Clarke didn't want to go through her own real neighborhood (ie. the Arbutus corridor - that part of town with all that creme).

But how's this for a centrist blast from the past that could still make a difference if somebody could convince her to throw her hat in the ring - Nancy Chiavario.

She too, like Clarke, is a former NPA councillor. But Chiavario also had a progressive side, swung both ways on council votes based on principle, and she actully worked for all parts of the city. And for that she too got creamed, not by the electorate, but instead by the backroom boys.

But they couldn't touch her now. Especially if she happened to have Friends with Vision on her side.

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Update Thursday am: When I originally posted this thing I was going with CanWest (not)Global's info saying that COPE had, indeed, patched things up; obviously this all changed radically late Wednesday night as reported by Sean Holman. Thus, the original obtuse trapezoidal lead was re-written to reflect this new development.

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Go Left Young Man

UniversalStudebakerBlues
CostCertaintyVille

Toyota is passing up all kinds of incentives to build a new plant in the States and is instead coming North to Canuckistan.

Now, the news peg wants you to believe that this is all about the high skill and literacy levels:

WOODSTOCK, Ont. (CP) - Ontario workers are well-trained.

That simple explanation was cited as a main reason why Toyota turned its back on hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies offered from several American states in favour of building a second Ontario plant.

Industry experts say Ontarians are easier and cheaper to train - helping make it more cost-efficient to train workers when the new Woodstock plant opens in 2008, 40 kilometres away from its skilled workforce in Cambridge.

But the kicker looks to be something else.

And it's called cost certainty.

As in health coverage, which as become one hella expensive upward death spiral for anyone using a workforce in the States that isn't willing to be treated like chattel.

"In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.

"Most people don't think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage," he said.

And it's not like folks running a good portion of the American government, at least those that actually care about what is happening to their country, don't want to rectify this because at least 18 States are seriously considering starting up Universal Healthcare programs of their own.

Now, if we could just convince all of those State legislators that it is also fun to take trips with Rosie O'Donnell, not to mention to 'Stay at the YMCA'.

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Original Link Source: Coreuleus at AllSpinZone.
Update: And those chattel chasers? Why they would be folks like this. Thanks to RJ Eskow at Skippy for the link.

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Double Trouble On The Yellowcake Road

AnimalHouseRedux
DeanWormerRisingVille

Hey Zeuss!

Do they really talk to each other like this?

"It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation ..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA."

So it was the man working the whirlitzer while hiding behind the curtain at the end of the Yellowcake Rd. after all......

And what should happen now?

Well, Digby makes a good case for stomping down, hard, on the throttle.

".......there is no reason that Rove should not be forced to resign over this. If it were any other White House we would naturally assume it would happen. But I think that for some reason everyone, wingnuts and moonbats alike are invested in the idea that Rove is omnipotent. He's not. He's a cheap thug. And while it may be true that if he is forced to resign he will still be able to advise the president, it's also true that the president would not have his single most necessary and loyal lieutenant by his side every day. Rove is the most malevolent force in the Republican party. He's building a criminal Republican machine --- that's his legacy. It's vitally important that we stop him if he can. Wringing our hands and saying nothing will ever happen because he's Superman is a self-fulfilling prophecy."

And when they release her, does this mean that the woman wearing the soon to be jewel encrusted big book contract-financed red slippers, Ms. Miller, should be put on, to quote John Vernon:

"Double-secret Probation?"

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Conversations With My Neighbo(u)rs

AcrossTheFence
AndTheGreenGrassGrewAllAroundVille

When I lived in the United States a colleague, a dastardly Frenchman, conducted an even more dastardly experiment.

Apalled by what he described as the 'American Newswell', a place where very little from the outside penetrated, especially for those that watched a lot of TV, the dastardly Frenchman flashed a picture of the recently deceased Francois Mitterand at everybody in our workplace and asked them to identify him.

The place where we worked was full of science geeks from all over the world. Only two of the 12 North Americans among us got it right. And neither was actually an American.

Now those ten Americans that got it wrong were hardly a representative sample. After all, we were all apprentices who had come to a hardcharging, bigtime lab where we worked 70 or 80 hours a week in an effort to make a name for ourselves so that we could all go home and get real jobs.

As a result, the great majority of us had little time or, truth be told, inclination for the real world or realpolitick.

Thus, by the same token I'm not sure how many of the young Europeans working in the lab would have been able to identify a picture of Gerald Ford.

But not all the Americans I got to know pretty well while living in the States were science geeks. Luckily, my wife worked with normal humans in a very different field so we got to meet lots of interesting folks. Additionally, we were living in Berkeley California where, if you were paying attention and if you were open minded, it was pretty easy to have fantastic, rabble-rousing conversations with anyone, anytime just about anywhere at all, including, say, the ballpark or the supermarket checkout line.

Unfortunately, in recent years I've noticed that I rarely have these kinds of conversations anymore when I venture south, which is still pretty often.

And this post from Shawn over at the very fine, and very American, Liquid Thoughts got me thinking about the whys and wherefores:

".....I was vacationing many clicks north in Canada’s Banff National Park. It’s a beautiful place, and I’d highly recommend taking a vacation there. My wife and I saw grizzlies, elk, foxes, mountain goats, and lots of people that really do say “eh?”—a lot.......

.....In my head, as we jawboned (nice word, eh?) over the campfire each night, I really became quite saddened by the talk. I’ve traveled the world a good bit, and I clearly remember the days when status as an American citizen drew smiles and excitement from foreign hosts. In the past, conversation involved upbeat inquiries about life in the USA. No longer. Today the American traveler can expect suspicion and not-really-joking humor from their hosts ….even in Canada. How do Republicans’ deal with this, I wondered? How do they explain away behavior they support, like torture, to a gape-mouthed, horrified citizen of another country?"

Now I can't disagree with Shawn about how I, as a Canuckistani, currently deal with Americans, Republican or not, whose Newswell-assisted view of the world keeps them from wondering if pre-emptive war, total information domination, state-sanctioned torture, liberation by economic shock therapy or the flattening of entire villages for no good reason at all might have a downside, either for them or the wider world.

But I have also noticed something else.

And that is that it is not just foreigners that have become suspicious and cynical to the point of hopelessness. Because for those Americans, like my good friends from Berkeley and beyond, that are able to stand a little bit apart and peek back inside it is becoming harder and harder for them to honestly and openly discuss the destruction of their country, its way of life, and it's previous exceptionalism with outsiders.

And that truly is sad.

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