Garbage Strike Predictions: The Update

Well, it looks as if predictions 1-3 are pretty much correct, while 4 and 5 are not. 60% accuracy, not that great. I forgot to take the Windsor strike into account originally, hence the underestimation of the time.

I have to say, it's disheartening (though no longer surprising) to see the venom continually aimed at the very idea of unions whenever there's a strike of any kind. We saw it with the TTC strike, the York strike, and now the city workers' strike. In every case, people speak of it as the end of the world, the worst possible betrayal, pure evil, the decline of civilization. It never is any of those things, but every time it happens, that's how it's depicted. And, inevitably, people haul out the tired old "hostage situation" hyperbole -- as if anything we're experiencing right now is equivalent to being locked in a room with an armed nutcase. Let's get a grip and retire that metaphor.

Before anyone objects, yes, of course, I get that strikes are unpleasant and inconvenient; I live in Toronto too and I'm not thrilled about the way the city looks or smells right now. And, for the record, I don't like the idea of the 15-minute delays at dump sites; that seems to me to target the wrong people, and I wish that CUPE would change that tactic. But, it takes two sides to make a strike happen, and the other side of this has been let off far too easily. City management has had plenty of opportunities, for months now, to get the bargaining right, and they've completely blown it. Yet, they are not getting nearly the abuse that the workers are, not even when garbage is piling up in parks and near people's homes because of decisions that city management has made (Note, I'm not saying that city management should get abuse, certainly not personal abuse -- only that the expressions of general outrage have been lopsided).

The one exception to this is the abuse heaped upon David Miller, and as mayor he surely bears a lot of the blame -- but you'd think that he ran the city all by himself. City council seems to be getting off almost scot-free in public opinion, and the rest of the city's managerial structure is not even part of the general discussion. Furthermore, the remark that keeps getting brought up with Miller is his left-of-centre political alignment, as if that changed the fact that he's on the other side of the table from the union. It's weird: because people are angry with the head manager, they speak of him as if he were actually labour -- even though he's at loggerheads with, you know, the actual labourers in the present dispute. Somehow, when this sort of thing happens, nobody ever questions whether we need management in its present form, but lots of people are positive we don't need labour in its current form. This position is almost always reflexive and unexplained, and is capable of wild recategorizations of reality -- which suggests how deeply propagandistic its origins are.

As a side note, something that I find interesting in all of this -- because I still don't really understand it -- is the common (though not universal) line of thinking which goes, "Well, I don't get benefits that good in my non-unionized private sector job, so why should those people get them?" You'd think that this would be evidence that a non-unionized private sector job can be, let's say, rather less fantastic than commonly advertised. Yet the assumption underlying this line of thinking seems to be that no, the private sector just is the greatest thing of all, and unions are just bad in general, and everyone knows that, and if there is evidence to the contrary, why, someone must be gaming the system somehow. I suppose it may be as simple as misery loving company: if person A has a rotten time at work it can be galling to see person B demanding better and possibly getting it. It can be even more galling when demanding better is something that person A cannot do and dares not try. But I suspect it's really the result of more propaganda.

Toronto City Officials Decide to Cancel Canada Day Celebrations

And, of course, people choose to blame a bunch of garbage collectors who didn't make that decision. It really is absurd.

Quote of the Day

Or possibly of the year:

Extramarital affairs, gambling, alcohol abuse, prostitution and sexual pursuit of minors have taken a toll on the GOP.

I really can't add anything to that.

The Score So Far

I think I can confidently say that my garbage strike predictions 1 and 3 are coming along nicely, and number 2 is looking pretty strong too. Stay tuned for the rest.

Good Idea/Bad Idea

It's time for another Good Idea/Bad Idea.

Good Idea:

A new incarnation of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" could be coming to the big screen.

Bad Idea:

"Buffy" creator Joss Whedon isn't involved [...] no connection to the TV series, nor would it use popular supporting characters like Angel, Willow, Xander or Spike.

The End.

Garbage Strike Predictions

1. Everybody will blame the union.

2. The primary media response will be shocked outrage that some workers somewhere have a fairly decent contract.

3. Nobody will blame the city. Blaming David Miller will be the exception to this.

4. The strike will last about as long as the last one (2 weeks) before back-to-work legislation comes in.

5. The phrase "essential service" will come up repeatedly; nothing will result.

Yeah, I'm Fine

Just in response to a few questions: yeah, I'm fine, nothing bad has happened to me. I'm just finding that I don't have a lot to say in this format these days.

Quote of the Day

Roy Edroso, summing up the mustard thing:

This is a great example of what makes these guys fascinating. They're so humor-averse that when someone mocks them, they never, ever think about joking back -- they either sputter in outrage or launch windy explanations of why it is in fact you who are ridiculous, and then retuck their shirts. It's like they all grew up thinking Frank Burns was the hero of "M*A*S*H."

Update:



Image by Righteous Bubba.

Mustard

Really, the only thing this latest silliness suggests is that Hannity et al. haven't been to a burger joint in years. Spicy mustard is about as exotic as mayonnaise. These days, making jokes about the effeteness of dijon mustard is like trying to sound cool by quoting MC Hammer. People will giggle, sure, but it'll be you they're laughing at for being such a silly old fart.

Ah well. It keeps them out of trouble.

...Also, what dday said.

Ow

I wouldn't count them out just yet, but still.  Ow.

As the [Republican] party has shrunk to its base, it has catered even more to its base's biases, insisting that the New Deal made the Depression worse, carbon emissions are fine for the environment and tax cuts actually boost revenues — even though the vast majority of historians, scientists and economists disagree. The RNC is about to vote on a kindergartenish resolution to change the name of its opponent to the Democrat Socialist Party. This plays well with hard-core culture warriors and tea-party activists convinced that a dictator-President is plotting to seize their guns, choose their doctors and put ACORN in charge of the Census, but it ultimately produces even more shrinkage, which gives the base even more influence — and the death spiral continues.

60

Oh my:

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning.

Specter's decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next senator from Minnesota.

Which he will be.

Zombie Lies Never Die

As everyone knows by now, Janet Napolitano was unaware that none of the 9/11 hijackers came through Canada. Then, John McCain repeated the same mistake, putting him in the same club of misinformation as Hillary Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and Conrad Burns.

At this point, I fear that this particular myth is going to be with us forever. It's been depressing but not ultimately surprising to watch some American progressives speciously excusing Napolitano's mistake, for all the reasons Rex Murphy mentions here. And it's just been funny to see some American conservatives suddenly defending Soviet Canuckistan. Tribal politics trump facts; it's just human nature. Few who have commented on this south of the border seem to care about the issue itself; there, this has just been one more minor incident in the continuing crack-up of their culture and polity.

Oh, and by the way:

According to figures confirmed for the Toronto Star by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, travellers arriving from Canada registered 500 "hits" on the government's integrated terror watch list for the year ending last October. That compares to 150 hits on the U.S.-Mexico border for the same period.

In other words, the flow of people from Canada is more than three times more suspicious than that from Mexico, according to the classified data the U.S. security agencies use to measure the risk of terror.

All of which drives Canadian officials bananas.

"When the U.S. provides raw numbers like this, with no context whatsoever, it does a lot of damage," one Canadian security source told the Star. "Suddenly, you think, `Whoa -– 500 friends of Osama bin Laden marching to the border with Canadian passports.'"

But the breakdown of those "500 hits," Canadian sources say, shows the vast majority of the individuals in question are either U.S. citizens or U.S. landed immigrants.

Only a small minority of the 500 are Canadian passport holders. And though these specific numbers were cited during a recent congressional hearing to support the June 1 launch of strict new rules on the land borders linking Canada and the U.S., the overwhelming majority of the "hits" were air travellers, according to Canadian sources.

"We're talking people, in quite a lot of the cases, whose journey began overseas. They typically would board a connecting flight in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver – and when they trigger a hit on the U.S. watch list suddenly it seems like they are `Canadian' because they spent two or three hours in an airport," one Canadian official said.

Got that? An American citizen who has caught a connecting flight back from overseas, and spends three hours in a secure area in a Canadian airport, suddenly becomes a Canadian by virtue of being tagged on a terrorist list.

These are the elements of a full and comprehensive Blame Canada narrative, and one that I'm guessing will last for the forseeable future no matter who's in charge. It serves to justify American self-image. It blames others for America's own problems. It's a great way to pretend that citizenship rights don't exist in US terrorism cases. It's handy in several ways. For that reason, I suspect it will be with us for a long time.

Pregnant Women Getting Fired in Ontario

Oh, nice:

"We actually have an email from one employer saying, `Sorry, but with your little bundle, I don't think we'll be able to (re)hire you. We want a permanent solution,'" says Consuelo Rubio, manager of client services for Ontario's Human Rights Legal Support Centre, an independent agency funded by the province to provide free legal services to people experiencing discrimination.

The firings are in all sectors: "It's happening to women in senior positions and women in minimum-wage jobs," says Katherine Laird, executive director of the centre, who says she hasn't seen this level of discrimination through two previous recessions and 30 years in the human rights field.

"It's outrageous and illegal," Laird says.

The spike in calls from pregnant women who are frightened for their jobs, can't nail down return-to-work dates or have been told there will be no job waiting for them at the end of their maternity leave, started last fall. But they hit "nightmare" levels in January, says Rubio, and are now averaging 10 to 15 calls a week – accounting for about 10 per cent of all calls from workers inquiring about their rights.

In Which I Weigh in with a Reasonable Compromise

A bunch of conservatives at the RNC have put forward the following:

RESOLVED, that we the members of the Republican National Committee call on the Democratic Party to be truthful and honest with the American people by acknowledging that they have evolved from a party of tax and spend to a party of tax and nationalize and, therefore, should agree to rename themselves the Democrat Socialist Party.

To which I say, all right, but only on the following condition:

RESOLVED, that we the members of the Republican National Committee should be truthful and honest with the American people by acknowledging that we have evolved from a party of responsible grownups to a party of vacuous, fatuous whiners and, therefore, should agree to rename ourselves the No-Policy Pity Party.

I don't see what possible objection there could be.

All of Them

What John Cole said:

[F]or most of us, we don’t care if the person has a ( R ) or (D) behind their name when they were instituting a policy of torture. That is what is so depressing (to me, at least) about the Ari Fleischer’s and the Thiessen’s of the world. They honestly seem to think this is nothing more than a partisan witch-hunt, the same old Washington gotcha poltics. It isn’t. When you torture people, you have crossed a really clear line. Innocent people are dead. Lives have been ruined. Our international reputation has been destroyed. Yes, the Bush administration will get most of the blame, but that is because they were in charge and they did this, not because of what party they happen to belong to. If Jane Harman and Nancy Pelosi knew about this and ok’d it, they are just as culpable.

This is why, frankly, I have little respect for Janis Karpinski, who is speaking now about the torture program she ran at Abu Ghraib and the way in which the commands came from above her:

Karpinski: This is one of the most shameful aspects of these memos and the knowledge that people at the highest levels of our government had about these memos, actually sat together and wrote them and rewrote them and crafted them to meet the requirements of these techniques they wanted to use.

They were well aware, these people, Rumsfeld, Sanchez, all of them and were well aware of these policies and these memorandums while these soldiers were being accused....five years ago. And if it was okay Mr. Former Vice President, if you're saying that this was necessary today and that it produced good intelligence..where were you five years ago stepping up to the plate and saying hold on, we can't discuss this because this is classified information, but these soldiers did not design these techniques? Where were all of those heros then to step up to the plate and defend these soldiers and to defend me? These were soldiers that were serving in a combat zone that were good Americans and remain good Americans and that were so unfairly blamed. Five years this month to get these memos released, declassified and released and people still trying to say that what happened at Abu Ghraib was different than what these memorandums were directing. No! It is not!

I'm sorry, but anyone who was complicit in torture is not "a good American." Anyone who carried it out and was blamed for doing so is fairly, not unfairly, blamed. Yes, by all means blame the architects of the policy more, but if you did their dirty work you're also to blame. No excuses.

Why They Tortured

As several people have pointed out, we were the ticking time bomb that the Bush White House feared. Having realized that there really was no evidence of a Saddam/Al Qaeda connection (and later that there were no WMD in Iraq) they had to come up with some false information that they could spin. The best way to come up with false information ... is to torture it out of people.

[Post slightly updated for clarity.]

Texas Lawmaker Makes Fool of Self, Doesn't Realize It

So one Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) has the following exchange with Energy Secretary (and Nobel laureate for physics) Steven Chu:

Barton: You’re our scientist. I have one simple question for you in the last six seconds. How did all the oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic Ocean?

Chu: (laughs) This is a complicated story, but oil and gas is the result of hundreds of millions of years of geology, and in that time also the plates have moved around, and so, um, it’s the combination of where the sources of the oil and gas are–

Barton: But, but wouldn’t it obvious that at one time it was a lot warmer in Alaska and on the North Pole? It wasn’t a big pipeline that we created in Texas and shipped it up there and then put it under ground so that we can now pump it out and ship it back.

Chu: No. There are -– there’s continental plates that have been drifting around throughout the geological ages.

Barton: So it just drifted up there?

Chu: That’s certainly what happened. And so it’s a result of things like that.

Barton then posts a video of this to YouTube, entitled, "Energy Secretary Stumped by Simple Question." His staff then starts deleting all the comments of those who are pointing out the two simple facts that Chu was right and Barton's question was idiotic. Insofar as Chu was baffled, it was obviously at the inanity of the question and the questioner (professors of physics are not used to being around stupid people).

It's sad and embarrassing, really. Here's a guy who actually mistakes his ignorance for insight. And he's in government.

When Crime Is Policy

Via Steve M., I see that various types are beginning to complain about the still-open possibility of prosecutions over the torture policy:

Many liberals don't just want to defeat conservatives at the polls, they want to send them to jail. Toward that end, they have sometimes tried to criminalize what are essentially policy differences.

[...]

What they've essentially said is if we have policy disagreements with our predecessors... what we're gonna do is prosecute systematically the previous administration, or threaten prosecutions against the previous administration, based on policy differences.

Let's be clear about something. There are always policy differences between administrations. The Obama administration differs from the Bush administration on taxes, on stem-cell research, on all sorts of stuff. None of those are open to prosecution, and nobody is demanding that they be. The "policy difference" that many of us want prosecuted is very specific: the Bush administration's policy of, apparently, violating the criminal law by condoning and conducting torture.

See, a crime is a crime whether or not you call it policy. Suppose an administration came in to power and decided that it was going to embezzle millions of dollars because it believed that its employees should be better paid. That would be a crime, and you would not be able to defend yourself against a subsequent administration's prosecution by calling it a "policy difference."

So, spare me the whinging about criminalizing policy. The real issue is that the previous administration seems to have had crime for a policy. That needs to be prosecuted, period.

When Ignorance Rules the World

Oh, dear God:

According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.

Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. Nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading C.I.A. officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, or that the Justice Department lawyer most responsible for declaring the methods legal had idiosyncratic ideas that even the Bush Justice Department would later renounce.

The process was “a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm,” a former C.I.A. official said.

How, how, how do people this ignorant and uncurious get to have so much power? What the hell is wrong with us?

Update: I can't help but think that this sort of thing is related in some fashion:

“My thought process,” Justice Souter said, “is I would rather have the kid embarrassed by a strip search, if we can’t find anything short of that, than to have some other kids dead because the stuff is distributed at lunchtime and things go awry.”

The case at issue involved a thirteen-year-old girl with no history of misbehavior strip-searched by school officials on suspicion of having Advil. There is a segment of America that is just in love with the authoritarian state.

Compare and Contrast

Iran's theocratic government, about two years ago, pretending that a female British sailor was not really a sailor, but perhaps the ship's doxy or something:

"We said that the grounds were ready for the release of a woman among the British sailors, but if we are faced with a fuss and wrong behaviour then this will be suspended and it will not take place," he said.

Michael Coren today, pretending that a female Canadian soldier was not really a soldier, but was perhaps a deluded princess playing dress-up:

Last week a young girl dressed up as a soldier died in the increasingly futile and pointless war in Afghanistan. She was 21 years old, had been in the country for two weeks on her first tour of duty and probably weighed a little over 100 pounds.

I'm just sayin'.

***

Oh, and Michael? This part here just makes it worse:

Please know that I mean no disrespect to Karine Blais or to her family and I grieve for her and them. But what on earth was she doing in such a place and in such a job?

Look at the photograph of this beautiful girl. Look at the innocence, the gentleness, the grace. All of them precious aspects to the human character. So when I say that she was "dressed up as a soldier" I mean it as a compliment.

If you have to clarify that you mean no disrespect, it's because you're perfectly aware that you're being disrespectful. Adding hypocrisy to sexism does not actually improve your position.

What Dave Said

With knobs on.