Obama's Bipartisanship

Missed by the American media pundits on the cable political talk shows was that Obama's bipartisanship has nothing to do with charming Republicans but about meeting with Conservative PM Stephen Harper.

"If Canadians were no fans of Mr. Bush, their conservative leader, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, found in him a kindred philosophical spirit . . . "

In personal terms, there should be excellent chemistry between these two guys. In generational terms, they belong to the same baby-boomer cohort. Harper was born in 1959, Obama in 1961. They both come from modest backgrounds, where their mothers were the most important influence in their lives. They both saw themselves as agents of change, both made audacious reaches for power at a young age, and both have grasped the brass ring.

Never mind that Obama is a liberal Democrat and Harper is a right-of-centre Conservative. Both have taken parties of chronic losers and made them winners. That's the starting point between them. And in any event, the left in the U.S. can be to the right of centre in Canada. Obama wants to double U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan, while Harper has promised to pull Canada out of the country by 2011. Obama would never support legislation or constitutional amendment to legalize same-sex marriage in the U.S., while Harper called a free vote on it in Canada, and dropped his opposition when a parliamentary resolution backed the courts.

After all as I pointed out here on several occasions Obama is a classic liberal, that is a 'progressive' conservative. While Harper too is a classic liberal, though more influenced by American Republican interpretations of libertarianism equating it with Ayn Randism. Underneath their discourse was the common view that it was time to fortify the gates of fortress North America, which includes Mexico, over issues of common security, shared climate change policy and mutual stimulus packages.

Despite big differences in philosophy and style, Obama and Harper presented a common front on issues as varied as the war in Afghanistan, reversing the recession and pushing back the hot-button issue of trade protectionism.

Together, they announced a "clean energy dialogue" aimed at finding technological answers to the twin environmental dilemmas of Alberta oil sands and American coal.

For left wing Americans and Canadians who think Obama is left wing, their enthusiasm for Obama is simply their misunderstanding of his realpolitik, as Thomas Walkom notes.
His vision is that of Lincoln Republicanism, especially the radical Republicans who have nothing in common with the right wing evangelicals who took over the current party under Reagan, nor anything in common with the isolationists of the Republican Party of the FDR era.
In that he and Harper share a common understanding of the classical liberal politics of self improvement through self reliance and self responsibility, progress through merit, not class or status. These are the masonic values of the enlightments further espoused by the utilitarian philosophers.
Yes the visit to Canada was truly an expression of Obama's successful bi-partisan politics, the politics of radical republicanism.


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Blackwater On YouTube

I look forward to seeing this on Youtube.

Iraqi investigators have a videotape that shows Blackwater USA guards opened fire against civilians without provocation in an incident last week in which 11 people died, a senior Iraqi official said Saturday. He said the case had been referred to the Iraqi judiciary.

While the U.S. government might want to look at Blackwater instead of Iran for weapons smuggling into Iraq. Oh yes and ask them about the tons of missing weapons that they were supposed to be guarding.

Feds probe whether Blackwater smuggled weapons into Iraq: Federal prosecutors are investigating whether employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA illegally smuggled weapons into Iraq that may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, officials said Friday.

File this under oops we spoke to soon.

Iraq says won't move to expel Blackwater: "If we drive out or expel this company immediately there will be a security vacuum that will demand pulling some troops that work in the field so that we can protect these institutes," spokesman Tahseen al-Sheikhly, speaking through an interpreter, told a news conference.

SEE:

Sounds Familiar

Moral Turpitude Is Spelled Blackwater



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The Cost of War

That's Trillions of dollars.


U.S. NATIONAL
DEBT
CLOCK

The Outstanding Public Debt as of 14 Aug 2007 at 09:16:31 AM GMT is:

The estimated population of the United States is 302,702,356

so each citizen's share of this debt is
$29,645.27.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of

$1.47 billion per day since September 29, 2006!

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U.S. Supplies Iraqi Insurgents With Weapons

As I reported here in March; Look In Your Own Backyard

We now have a count of the weapons lost by the U.S. to insurgent forces in Iraq, far more than could ever be supplied by Iran, or Syria, or Saudi Arabia, or all of them combined.

190,000 US weapons feared missing in Iraq

But it gets better, now the Iraqi puppet regime in Baghdad is buying weapons from the Mafia!

US loss of control over the flood of weapons into Iraq was highlighted again yesterday when it emerged that Italian anti-Mafia investigators had uncovered an alleged shipment of 105,000 rifles of which the American high command was unaware.

But they are just following in their masters footsteps.

It was classic bureaucratic bungling, the Government Accountability Office concluded last month in a report criticizing the Pentagon's failure to keep proper records and track weapons flows. But there may have been another factor -- the government's dangerous and bumbling use of bad guys.

Consider the case of one particular bad guy, Viktor Bout -- a stout, canny Russian air transporter who also happens to be the world's most notorious arms dealer.

Perhaps Joseph Heller's Catch 22 should be mandatory reading for Congress and the Pentagon.

Colonel Cargill was a forceful, ruddy man. Before the war, he had been an alert, hard-hitting, aggressive marketing executive. He was a very bad marketing executive. Colonel Cargill was so bad a marketing executive that his services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. Throughout the civilized world, from Battery Park to Fulton Street, he was known as a dependable man for a fast tax write-off. His prices were high, for failure often did not come easily. He had to start at the top and work himself down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning. A person misplaced, disorganized, miscalculated, overlooked everything and opened every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made, the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps, Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

Since this kind of screw up is an American Military tradition. Just business as usual.

I explained about the 17- and 18-year-old medics in Vietnam carrying M&Ms to give to soldiers too severely wounded even for morphine, whispering that the candies were for the pain while they waited for the choppers.

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Ron Paul

Even the Democratic Candidates for President have not been this radical when it comes to the war in Iraq. Ron Paul is the self styled 'Libertarian' candidate in the Republican Primaries. He is not as libertarian when it comes to other issues like abortion, gay rights, or immigration.

Of course he has as much chance as the Democratic libertarian Dennis Kucinich does.

This is from the last Republican candidates debate.

Ron Paul

Voted against use of military force in Iraq. Supports withdrawing troops from Iraq, but opposed war spending bill which included a plan to withdraw most U.S. troops by March 2008. Calls for repealing authority given to the president in 2002 Iraq war authorization vote. Opposed Bush plan to increase the number of American troops in Iraq. Says military victory in Iraq is "unattainable."

You’d abolish the Department of Homeland Security in the middle of a war?

Ron Paul: We were already spending billions of dollars on homeland security prior to 9/11 and it didn’t prevent the attacks; inefficiency was the problem. Adding another huge, expensive, inefficient level of bureaucracy makes things worse.

You’re the only one on this stage who opposes the war. Are you out of step with your party, and why are you seeking its nomination?

Ron Paul: The Republican Party has lost its way. The conservative wing was always anti-interventionist: Taft was against NATO; Bush ran on a promise of a humble foreign policy, anti-nation-building, anti-global-policing; Republicans were elected to end the Korean and Vietnam wars; it’s the Constitutional position; the founders’ advice was to pursue friendship with other nations but avoid entangling alliances. We should negotiate, talk, trade with other countries; we lost 60,000 soldiers in Vietnam and lost the war, and now we invest there. We shouldn’t go to war so carelessly.

Follow-up: Is noninterventionism still a viable position after 9/11?

Ron Paul: 9/11 was a response to our previous interventions. We’d been bombing Iraq for a decade; we’re now building 14 permanent bases there and an embassy bigger than the Vatican. If China were doing this in the Gulf of Mexico we’d be upset.

Follow-up: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attacks?

Ron Paul: I suggest we believe their reasons are what they say they are; also bin Laden says he’s delighted our soldiers are over there where they can be targeted more easily.

Giuliani intervenes: As NYC mayor during 9/11, I’ve never before heard such a shocking claim that we invited 9/11 and I ask Ron Paul to withdraw it or clarify whether he believes it.

Ron Paul: I believe the CIA is correct when it warns us about blowback. We overthrew the Iranian government in 1953 and their taking the hostages was the reaction. This dynamic persists and we ignore it at our risk. They’re not attacking us because we’re rich and free, they’re attacking us because we’re over there.

(Later on Tancredo also attacked Paul, saying that regardless of what our foreign policy was or whether Israel existed, the terrorists would still attack us because they view it as a religious imperative. Paul did not have a chance to respond.)

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Strange Bedfellows

The politics of universal health care makes for strange bedfellows in the U.S.

Wal-Mart, Unions Unite on Health Care

This united front of business and labour are calling for universal health care. But it is not Canadian style single payer universal medicare.

Joining Wal-Mart Stores Inc. CEO Lee Scott and Service Employees International Union leader Andrew Stern at a Washington press conference were top executives from Intel Corp., AT&T Inc. and Kelly Services Inc., a temporary staffing agency.

The partnership of business and union leaders laid out four main goals, including universal health-care coverage for all Americans and boosting the value of every U.S. dollar spent on health care. The business and union leaders' coalition, dubbed "Better Health Care Together," pledged to convene a national summit by the end of May to recruit others from the private sector, labor, government and non-profits.

If the environment is Canada's top election issue, Health care is going to be the issue in the next U.S. Presidential election.

But will any of the candidates endorse a single payer system like we have in Canada?


Wal-Mart, Union Leaders Collaborate on Health Care- PBS




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Poll Predicts War On Iran

It's a good thing that the Bush White House doesn't develop its policies and strategies based on polling. American Majority Predicts War with Iran


See

Iran


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