Harper's Bad Week

   
Unbelievably, Mike Duffy is a hero.  Two days ago, he looked like the archetypical insider crook.  Today he is the only known case of someone publicly defying Stephen Harper and living to tell the tail.  That's bad for business.  Queue the counter-attack.  Not that anything besides monumentally stupid incompetence by the PMO could have restored Duffy's reputation to the point where a counter-attack is necessary or viable.

The worst possible outcome of this scandal is that it could get attached to the Prime Minister personally.  His party is known for enthusiastic betrayal when the leader shows some blood.  Like The Man Who Would Be King.  And the suspension might have passed last week, but its gone now.  Total defeat for the PMO and tar all over the PM.

The most fascinating thing is that the only story having a ring of truth is Duffy's. That he's a self-serving crook makes his story even more credible.  He knows what he's talking about.  It looks like the $90,000 was a straightforward bribe, the Prime Minister knew about it, and probably approved it.  And who created this Duffy monster?  Stephen Harper, in one of his more transparently cynical moves as PM.  His cunning, paranoia and vindictiveness have finally come back to stab him deeper than any enemy could have.

Yap

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain

There is no distinctly American criminal class, except Congress.
Mark Twain

NSA Scandal: The Bolivian Plane Incident

Welcome to Vienna Mr. President!

Photo: Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters

The shenanigans surrounding the blocking and subsequent search of Bolivian President Evo Morales' plane last week will probably never be publicly explained.  That is the way of these things.  Fear not, I have an expansive conspiracy theory that reveals everything.  Like most good conspiracy theories, this one hasn't a shred of proof.  100% unadulterated speculation. 

For those not following the story breathlessly, here is a write up from The Guardian.  The brief version is that Morales was flying home to Bolivia after meetings in Moscow.  France, Italy, Spain and Portugal denied passage to the plane which ended up in Vienna.  There it was searched by the Austrians to determine if Edward Snowden was on board.  He was not.  These airspace closures were, as has been admitted, requested by the Americans who were apparently convinced Snowden was on the plane.  Just about everyone in South America is up in arms over the incident. The European governments in question are running for cover.  So what happened?

Here is my guess.  The Americans got information that Snowden was on the plane, and they panicked.  Remember that they are still extremely freaked out over Snowden's ongoing leaks.  They don't simply want to get him for what he has done, but for what he might do yet.  So they asked these five European governments to act (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Austria). But Snowden wasn't on the plane.  And all five governments, plus the Americans, are now humiliated. 

Why were the Americans so certain he was on the plane?  The information must have come, one way or another, from Moscow.  American agents could not have seen Snowden get on the plane.  He is at a different airport, and was nowhere near the Bolivian plane.  So the information must have come from from sources in Moscow, or from an intercept.  So that brings us to the crux of the conspiracy theory.  I think the Russians deliberately gave the information to the Americans as a nice "Fuck You", anticipating the panic and embarrassment that would ensue.  Further, to get the Americans to bite on the bait, it must have come from a source the Americans believed in.  Like an intercept.  An intercept like the ones Snowden is in trouble for revealing.  Wouldn't it be delightful if the Russians communicated the false story among themselves through a channel they knew the Americans were listening to?  One that the Americans thought the Russians did not know was compromised?  

If they did pass false information, the payoff was immense.  The incident might be forgotten soon among the general public and media, but institutions have a longer memory.  Trust has been broken.  Politicians are embarrassed.  Careers could be derailed.  And Snowden is still in Moscow.  So it was all for nothing.  Somehow I think the next urgent request from Washington will get a frosty reception in Europe.  Whether they are behind this or not, the Russians must be delighted. 

Yap

“Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value.”
National Research Council president John MacDougall
This is apparently the Canadian Government's new position on publicly funded scientific research. Galileo and Einstein?  Pasteur?  Darwin?  No work of any value there. 

NSA Scandal, The Other Shoe

As the NSA details continue to leak, I'm looking for one in particular.  In most Western countries, the intelligence services are forbidden from spying on their own citizens.  I'm guessing, and its only a guess, that one of the many functions such services carry out is to spy on each other's citizens and exchange the information, thus avoiding the prohibition on domestic spying.  Again this is only speculation, but it would explain some of the bizarre behavior around Edward Snowden.  European governments are condemning US spying on the one hand, but embarrassingly intervened with the Bolivian President's flight home on the other.  Spain, Portugal and France covered themselves in shame over this incident.  If they are so pissed off about US spying, why would they risk serious international embarrassment over this flight?  Because there is a lot more to this story than we know now. Being seen as American lapdogs is a very poor political position, especially in France.  Possibly the incident was a result of American diplomatic pressure, but I doubt it.  Something more fundamental is going on.  Given the leaks of the last month, I think that something will come out.

The Defense of Marrage Act

    Bill Clinton signs the Defense of Marrage Act into law, September 21, 1996.

The Defense of Marriage Act, just overturned by the US Supreme Court, was as cynical and opportunistic a political ploy as I've ever seen.  That opportunism was exemplified by Bill Clinton, who signed the Act into law in order to clear the playing field for the 1996 election and yesterday cheered its reversal.

The only thing the Act was intended to defend was the Republican Congressional majority.  By creating a controversy, the Republicans hoped to stimulate turnout among their base.  That it fostered discrimination and persecution was irrelevant.

Everyone at the time thought it would be swiftly overturned by the courts, because it was so obviously discriminatory.   Due to the Bush Presidency, that didn't happen. Had it been overturned early, there would have been few political implications.  However, things have changed.  As a result, the overtuning of the Act will lead to full recognition of same-sex marraiage at the Federal level.  In a sense, the opportunistic effort to win the 1996 elections has led to de-facto approval of Gay marriage by the US Government.  And Bill Clinton comes out a winner. 

Yap

I loved when Bush came out and said, "We are losing the war against drugs." You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it. 
Bill Hicks

Fredricksburg

    The view south from Fredricksburg, in the spring of 1864.

On December 13, 1862, a bitterly cold day,  about 40,000 Union soldiers marched down the road on the right and tried to take the ridge in the background.  There were 3,000 Confederates behind a stone wall along a road running right across the center of the image.  And another 3,000 with artillery on top of the hill.  They held off the Union all day.  The two white houses in the center left are on this side of the road.  So is the white building in the dead center distance.  Wave after wave of Union Infantry formed up beyond the stream on the left and tried to cross the open ground towards the road.  None made it.  Later in the afternoon, they tried it against the hill on the right of the road.  No luck there either.  It became a disaster that still haunts the US Army.

And who was responsible?  My favourite idiot, General Ambrose E. Burnside.  Recently promoted to commander of the Army of the Potomac, the general spent the day on the other side of the Rappahannock, having not actually laid eyes on the field itself.  All afternoon he sent more and then bigger units to accomplish the impossible. The ridge could not be taken, and the Confederates knew it.  His generals pleaded with him to stop, but he insisted.  Things finally ground to a halt when darkness came.   This was his trademark, focusing on one small tactical objective to the exclusion of everything else, like winning the battle.  He used idiotic piecemeal tactics to boot, resulting in terrible casualties.  Exactly the same mistake he made at Sharpsburg three months earlier.  Except then he wasn't in charge of the whole army.  Burnside may not have been the worst general of all time, but he was in there pitching.

That evening, when the scale of the disaster became apparent, Burnside tried to blame those same generals that had pleaded with him a few hours earlier.  Lincoln wasn't buying it and fired him shortly afterwards. Unfortunately, that was not the end of his military career.  It took another year and a half before Lincoln finally got rid of him.  Burnside went on to become a successful politician, serving a term in the Senate.

Update Dec 21:
Thinking about it some more, what Burnside did at Sharpsburg, Fredricksburg and the Crater was to focus not on some random tactical objective, but on the one tactical objective he couldn't solve.  Then he threw everything he had at that objective.  And still didn't solve it.   At Sharpsburg it was the bridge.  At Fredricksburg the stone wall, and at the Crater, the crater.

The other thing worth mentioning is that this is photograph is almost unique.  There are few other contemporary photographs that show the key part of a battlefield.  In this case, it shows about 20% of the entire field, but this is where all the action was. 

Here is another view from across the Rappahannock, behind and to the left of the camera position in the photo above.

In this photo, you can see the stone wall.  It runs along the base of the hill on the right hand side, and can be clearly seen as a light line through the center and left at the base of the hill.

Many thanks to Blogger John Hennessy.  His site is what excellent amateur history looks like. 

Meme Watch

Toronto's Great Year

    1947 Leafs with the Cup

Oh what a year for Toronto!  The Argonauts win the 100th Grey Cup at home.  Rob Ford is kicked out of office for extreme stupidity.  And the Leafs haven't lost a game this season. 

Romney Spins His Wheels

     AP Photo | M. SPENCER GREEN

Poor Mitt. Nobody understands him.  He's had 2 weeks to get some traction after the convention and hasn't gone anywhere.  He is running out of time.  He needs to advance his agenda, jobs and the economy.  He has not kept his focus on that agenda.  Rather, he's gotten pulled into a foriegn policy debate.  He hasn't a clue about foriegn policy, so why is he wasting his time talking about it? Now things may go bad for Obama over the Mid-East protests, but Mitt has already blown his chance to capitalize.

Romney expected this election to be a referendum on Obama's handling of the economy. The conventional wisdom 2 months ago was that Obama couldn't run on his iffy record.  That Romney wouldn't need to get into policy specifics.  Well all that changed with the Democratic Convention.  Because Romney hasn't explained his policies, Bill Clinton did it for him.  Clinton also demolished, in detail, Romney's entire platform.  And Obama came out with a ringing defense of his record.  So.  Time for plan B.  But Romney doesn't seem to have a plan B. And he doesn't seem to have any compelling policies he's willing to talk about.

The momentum is with Obama now.  Mitt's next big chance to change that is the debates.  But the debates put him in a difficult place.  He has to attack and land telling blows on Obama.  Obama just has to act Presidential and get a few jabs in.  Rope-a-dope.  At lest George Forman had a killer punch. And the debates don't start for 3 weeks.  What will Romney do between now and then?  Figure out a plan B I guess.  Good luck Mitt!

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Note: in an earlier article, I said Mitt would need to pull off a difficult double pivot at his convention.  But he didn't pivot at all.  I assumed that was a tactical decision, but I'm now wondering if a pivot was beyond his ability in the 1st place.

Oopsie

The Food Network's dessert tip of the day:

No, I have no idea if its real.  It only has to be plausible to be funny.

Fox News