Work in Progress

Spanking Boston: A lovely way to kick off a new century

From TSN.ca:

MONTREAL -- On the night the Montreal Canadiens turned 100, they played like the great teams of old.

Mike Cammalleri made like Rocket Richard with three goals and Carey Price like Georges Vezina with a 37-save effort as the Canadiens celebrated their 100th anniversary with a 5-1 victory over the Boston Bruins on Friday night.

"We all played inspired hockey," said Price. "There were a lot of faces here I grew up watching.

"We really wanted to win this one. We were pumped up watching the guys out there and chatting with vets who won championships. We wanted to win for them as well. We're all pretty proud to be Canadiens tonight."

The Canadiens, founded eight years before the NHL was formed on Dec. 4, 1909, marked the occasion with a nostalgic 75-minute pre-game ceremony in which the jerseys of 1940s greats Elmer Lach and Butch Bouchard were retired.

Then they went out and skated like their record 24 Stanley Cup teams from the past, with opportunistic goals, tight defence when it was needed and superb goaltending.

The performance had the sell-out crowd of 21,273 -- already on a high from a ceremony packed with stars of the past -- in a roar for most of the night.

"Hopefully it had an inspiring effect," added Cammalleri, whose team was coming off two consecutive weak efforts including a 6-2 loss in Buffalo on Thursday night. "We played two games we weren't happy with and I'd hope we would have played like that anyway, but for sure, it hit an emotional chord."

Cammalleri's three goals came in a four-goal second period, while Glen Metropolit and Jaroslav Spacek also scored for Montreal (13-14-2), which ended a four-game winless run in a game witnessed by dozens of former greats, including Hall of Famers like Jean Beliveau, Guy Lafleur, Patrick Roy & Gordie Howe.

Vladimir Sobotka scored for the Bruins (14-9-5), who looked to have no legs after waiting out the ceremony. They ended a seven-game string without a loss in regulation time. And goaltender Tim Thomas was pulled after allowing five goals on 23 shots in two periods in favour of Tuukka Rask.

Thomas refused to blame the ceremonies.

"I don't think that was it -- I don't know what happened," he said. "From top to bottom, that was one of our worst efforts of the year."

The Canadiens were jubilant in their dressing room, where Hollywood actor Viggo Mortensen, who introduced Lafleur during the ceremonies, shook hands with players from his favourite club.

"It was awesome," said Mortensen. "I'm sure Cammalleri will never forget tonight."

He got that right.

"This was amazing for anyone who is a fan of sports," Cammalleri said. "I can't express what it means, it's such a special thing."

For the first time in nine games, the Canadiens came out of the first period with a lead as Spacek got the only goal on a blast from the point just as a power play ended at 8:30.

On a night of many standing ovations, the Canadiens got another as they killed a two-man Boston advantage for a full two minutes early in the second frame. Only half a minute after returning to full strength, Tomas Plekanec shot wide on a breakaway but Cammalleri followed in to score at 8:10.

Matt Hunwick slid the puck to his goaltender, but Thomas let it slip out in front for Cammalleri to pounce on and score for a 3-0 lead.

Metropolit was at the side of the net to tip in a diagonal pass from Gill at 16:07 and Cammalleri one-timed a pass from Scott Gomez past Thomas for his 15th of the season at 17:29.

The Bell Centre was littered with caps for the hat-trick, as well as one Bruins sweater thrown in by a spectator, while Cammalleri wore an ear-to-ear smile.

"I'll never forget that noise," he said. "What else can you say but wow."

Sobotka tipped a point shot by Matt Hunwick past Price 4:45 into the third period.

Montreal winger Sergei Kostitsyn left the game in the second period with a knee injury, but said later he felt OK and did not expect to miss any games. Coach Jacques Martin said more would be known on the injury when Kostitsyn is examined on Saturday.

Among the pre-recorded scoreboard tributes to the Canadiens shown throughout the game were messages from Alex Ovechkin, Martin Brodeur, Vladislav Tretiak, Don Cherry (who was booed), as well as Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The Canadiens rarely play at home on Friday nights, but their all-time record in those games is 10-0-4.

Notes: Georges Laraque returned after serving a five-game suspension for a nasty trip on Detroit's Niklas Kronwall and Gill was back after 14 games off with a foot injury. That bumped rookies Tom Pyatt and Ryan White from the Montreal lineup. . . With seven defencemen dressed, Mike Keane took a game off from the AHL Manitoba Moose to attend the ceremonies. "This only happens once in 100 years, I'm not going to miss it," he said. . . When Bouchard's No. 3 was retired before the game, defenceman Ryan O'Byrne and skated on left wing on the fourth line. . . Former Montreal captain changed to No. 20.

Happy Days, if your name is not Che or Vladimir or Mike or Erin (Updated)

Canada's economy is delivering some good news just in time for the holidays.

From the Globe & Mail:

Canada's private sector began hiring again in November, helping to create a stunning 79,000 jobs.

The unemployment rate dipped to 8.5 per cent from 8.6 per cent as both full-time and part-time jobs rose and the number of self-employed Canadians declined, Statistics Canada said Friday.

The bulk of the new jobs came in the services sector, where employment is now back at levels not seen since October, 2008, when the labour market peaked just as the crisis was escalating in the wake of the mid-September collapse of Lehman Brothers. In the goods producing sector, employment is still down sharply from a year ago.

With the gains in November, employment in Canada is still down 1.9 per cent, or 321,000, from that peak last year. Still, it is the first real sign of a change in the private sector, where few jobs had been created until last month. Economists caution, however, that monthly numbers are volatile.

Read the rest here.

And for the few, if any, non-Marxist-Leninist anarchist pinkos who read the blog, more glad tidings on the improving economic environment, from the country's banking sector:

Again, from the Globe & Mail:

Royal Bank of Canada (RY-T57.48-0.40-0.69%) , the country's biggest bank, topped analyst expectations on Friday with fourth-quarter earnings of $1.24-billion, up 10 per cent from a year ago.

It follows in the footsteps of Bank of Montreal (BMO-T54.18-0.56-1.02%) , Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CM-T70.001.522.22%) and Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD-T66.08-1.71-2.52%) , each of which brought in higher profits than analysts expected they would as the country emerges from recession.

RBC earned $717-million in the quarter, which ended Oct. 31, from its bread-and-butter Canadian consumer and business lending business. That showing was up 6 per cent from a year ago, despite higher provisions for troubled loans. Chief executive officer Gordon Nixon said the division's strong performance was muted by the low interest rate environment and because banks' funding costs are still higher than they were prior to the financial crisis.

RBC's international banking division, which includes its U.S. banking operations, posted a loss of $125-million, smaller than its year-ago loss of $206-million. The red ink in the most recent quarter stems from higher provisions for bad loans and the weak economic environment, as well as a charge related to the restructuring of Caribbean mutual funds, the bank said.

“We are working hard to address the challenges in our U.S. banking operations by improving our operating model and building efficiencies to ensure that we are well positioned when the environment improves,” Mr. Nixon said.

Capital markets or investment banking earned $561-million, down $23-million from a year ago. That division's results were boosted a year ago by RBC's decision to release $542-million it had set aside to deal with a class action suit related to Enron (the bank released that money because it felt the chances of having to pay a large settlement had declined). The Houston judge presiding over that suit dismissed RBC from the allegations this week.

The capital markets group benefited from strong trading results and equity origination in the latest quarter, but that was partly offset by higher total employee bonuses and higher provisions for troubled loans.

The bank's Tier 1 capital ratio, the key measure of its financial cushion, stands at a whopping 13 per cent, the highest of the banks that have reported thus far and nearly double the minimum level of 7 per cent that regulators require. Mr. Nixon said that provides the bank with a competitive advantage and flexibility. “We have tremendous opportunities to invest in our existing businesses and toward other opportunities consistent with our strategy,” he said.

Now, with the Canadian economy on the mend, if the government could turn its attention to bailing out our crumbling religious institutions, we could finally put this ugly period behind us.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, signs of improvement for our Americans cousins, from Marketwatch.com:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. labor market improved markedly in November, with the unemployment rate falling back to 10% and job losses shrinking to the lowest level in nearly two years, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Nonfarm payrolls dropped by a seasonally adjusted 11,000 in November, the fewest jobs lost since December 2007. Payroll losses in September and October were revised lower by a total of 159,000.

The report was much better than expected by economists surveyed by MarketWatch, who were looking for 100,000 fewer jobs and a steady 10.2% unemployment rate. See the Economic Calendar.

The news provided a big lift to U.S. stock futures and sent the dollar rallying against major counterparts. See currencies.

Details of the report were largely favorable. Hours worked rose, temporary-help employment increased, and a larger percentage of industries were hiring. However, the number of people unemployed for longer than six months rose to 5.9 million, accounting for a record 38.3% of the jobless.

Service-producing industries added 58,000 jobs, the second straight increase. Goods-producing industries cut 69,000 jobs, the fewest in 18 months, according to a survey of hundreds of thousand of business establishments.

A separate survey of households showed employment rose by a seasonally adjusted 227,000 in November and unemployment fell by 325,000 to 15.4 million. About 100,000 people dropped out of the workforce. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell by two-tenths from a 26-year high of 10.2% in October to 10% in November.

Forever & Ever, Amen

Go Habs.

Ricky Gervais could teach our friend Mike a thing or two

This is a couple of years old already but I hadn't seen until just now. Seems like a pretty good idea, what with carbon footprints and all that. I'm just sayin'.

Thomas Friedman on Obama's Aghanistan

From his NY TImes column:

Let me start with the bottom line and then tell you how I got there: I can’t agree with President Obama’s decision to escalate in Afghanistan. I’d prefer a minimalist approach, working with tribal leaders the way we did to overthrow the Taliban regime in the first place. Given our need for nation-building at home right now, I am ready to live with a little less security and a little-less-perfect Afghanistan.

I recognize that there are legitimate arguments on the other side. At a lunch on Tuesday for opinion writers, the president lucidly argued that opting for a surge now to help Afghans rebuild their army and state into something decent — to win the allegiance of the Afghan people — offered the only hope of creating an “inflection point,” a game changer, to bring long-term stability to that region. May it be so. What makes me wary about this plan is how many moving parts there are — Afghans, Pakistanis and NATO allies all have to behave forever differently for this to work.

But here is the broader context in which I assess all this: My own foreign policy thinking since 9/11 has been based on four pillars:

1. The Warren Buffett principle: Everything I’ve ever gotten in life is largely due to the fact that I was born in this country, America, at this time with these opportunities for its citizens. It is the primary obligation of our generation to turn over a similar America to our kids.

2. Many big bad things happen in the world without America, but not a lot of big good things. If we become weak and enfeebled by economic decline and debt, as we slowly are, America may not be able to play its historic stabilizing role in the world. If you didn’t like a world of too-strong-America, you will really not like a world of too-weak-America — where China, Russia and Iran set more of the rules.

3. The context within which people live their lives shapes everything — from their political outlook to their religious one. The reason there are so many frustrated and angry people in the Arab-Muslim world, lashing out first at their own governments and secondarily at us — and volunteering for “martyrdom” — is because of the context within which they live their lives. That was best summarized by the U.N.’s Arab Human Development reports as a context dominated by three deficits: a deficit of freedom, a deficit of education and a deficit of women’s empowerment. The reason India, with the world’s second-largest population of Muslims, has a thriving Muslim minority (albeit with grievances but with no prisoners in Guantánamo Bay) is because of the context of pluralism and democracy it has built at home.

4. One of the main reasons the Arab-Muslim world has been so resistant to internally driven political reform is because vast oil reserves allow its regimes to become permanently ensconced in power, by just capturing the oil tap, and then using the money to fund vast security and intelligence networks that quash any popular movement. Look at Iran.

Hence, post-9/11 I advocated that our politicians find sufficient courage to hike gasoline taxes and seriously commit ourselves to developing alternatives to oil. Economists agree that this would ultimately bring down the global price, and slowly deprive these regimes of the sole funding source that allows them to maintain their authoritarian societies. People do not change when we tell them they should; they change when their context tells them they must.

To me, the most important reason for the Iraq war was never W.M.D. It was to see if we could partner with Iraqis to help them build something that does not exist in the modern Arab world: a state, a context, where the constituent communities — Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — write their own social contract for how to live together without an iron fist from above. Iraq has proved staggeringly expensive and hugely painful. The mistakes we made should humble anyone about nation-building in Afghanistan. It does me.

Still, the Iraq war may give birth to something important — if Iraqis can find that self-sustaining formula to live together. Alas, that is still in doubt. If they can, the model would have a huge impact on the Arab world. Baghdad is a great Arab capital. If Iraqis fail, it’s religious strife, economic decline and authoritarianism as far as the eye can see — the witch’s brew that spawns terrorists.

Iraq was about “the war on terrorism.” The Afghanistan invasion, for me, was about the “war on terrorists.” To me, it was about getting bin Laden and depriving Al Qaeda of a sanctuary — period. I never thought we could make Afghanistan into Norway — and even if we did, it would not resonate beyond its borders the way Iraq might.

To now make Afghanistan part of the “war on terrorism” — i.e., another nation-building project — is not crazy. It is just too expensive, when balanced against our needs for nation-building in America, so that we will have the strength to play our broader global role. Hence, my desire to keep our presence in Afghanistan limited. That is what I believe. That is why I believe it.

I've said it before, I wish Friedman had a role in running something. He's too smart to be wasted as a commentator.

it's over, Mr. President

President Obama inherited such a mess in Afghanistan (ironically, considering American involvement in Iraq was the issue for most of the previous 5 years) that I'm not sure anything he can do will salvage the situation, the previous Administration's incompetence being as complete as it was.

That said, there's nothing more to be done in Afghanistan and we are fighting a futile battle against an enemy that is deeply ingrained in the society. 

David Brooks looks at the some of the options facing the President in his NY Times column today:

In late 2006, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. James F. Amos released a brilliant book with a thrilling title. It was called the “Army/Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24.” In its quiet way, this book helped overturn conventional wisdom on modern warfare and gave leaders a new way to see the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It’s a mistake to think you can succeed in conflicts like these by defeating the enemy in battle, the manual said. Instead, these wars are better seen as political arguments for the loyalty of the population. Get villagers to work with you by offering them security. Provide services by building courts and schools and police. Over the long term, transfer authority to legitimate local governments.

This approach, called COIN, has reshaped military thinking, starting with the junior officers who developed it and then spreading simultaneously up and down the chain of command.

When President Obama conducted his first Afghanistan strategic review last winter, he too gravitated toward the COIN mentality, appointing Gen. Stanley McChrystal, one of the chief architects of COIN, to run the war effort there.

This fall, General McChrystal came back with his own report, and made two key recommendations. First, the U.S. should deliver a sharp blow, to regain the initiative and reverse the Taliban’s momentum. Second, he wrote, “Success demands a comprehensive counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign.”

But over the past few months, senior members of the Obama administration have lost some of their enthusiasm for COIN. It may be a good approach in the abstract, they say, but there are problems with applying it in this particular context.

First, they say, COIN is phenomenally expensive. It consists of doing a lot of things at once — from increasing troop levels to nation-building — and doing them over a long period of time. America no longer has that kind of money, and Americans won’t accept a new 10-year commitment having already been there for eight.

Second, it may be possible to clear and hold territory, but it is looking less likely that we will be able to transfer it to any legitimate Afghan authority. The Karzai government is like an organized crime ring. The governing talent is thin. Plans to build a 400,000-man Afghan security force are unrealistic.

Third, they continue, the population in Afghanistan is too dispersed for COIN to work properly. There would be a few bubbles of security, where allied troops are massed, but then vast sanctuaries for the insurgents.

Fourth, COIN is too Afghan-centric and not enough Pakistan-centric. The real threats to U.S. interests are along the Afghan-Pakistani border or involve the destabilization of the Pakistani government. The COIN approach does little to directly address that.

The administration seems to have spent the past few months trying to pare back the COIN strategy and adjust it to real world constraints. As it has done so, there has been less talk in the informed policy community about paving the way for a new, transformed Afghanistan. There has been more talk of finding cheap ways to arrange the current pieces of Afghanistan into a contraption that will stay together and allow us to go home.

What’s emerging appears to be something less than a comprehensive COIN strategy but more than a mere counter-terrorism strategy — shooting at terrorists with drones. It is a hybrid approach, and as we watch the president’s speech Tuesday night, we’ll all get to judge whether he has cut and pasted the different options into a coherent whole. It’s not the troop levels that matter. What matters is how this war will be fought.

Some very smart people say that the administration’s direction is already fatally flawed. There is no such thing as effective COIN-lite, they argue. All the pieces of a comprehensive strategy have to be done patiently and together because success depends on the way they magnify one another.

These experts may be right. But none of us get to have our first choice on this matter. President Obama faces such a devilishly complex set of constraints that the policy he announces will be partially unsatisfying to every American and to every member of his administration. The fights inside have been so brutal that there have been accusations that the Defense and State Departments have withheld documents from the president to bias his thinking.

Nonetheless, my impression, pre-speech, is that Obama has negotiated these constraints in a serious manner, and improved some of his options — for example, by accelerating troop deployments. He has not been enthusiastic about expanding the U.S. role in Afghanistan, but he has not evaded his responsibility as commander in chief, and he’s taking brave political risks.

It may not be the complete COIN strategy, which offers the best chance of success. But it may be the best strategy under the circumstances.

Let's face it, Americans don't want to spend the next 10 years investing further lives & treasure in this country if it means supporting crooks like Hamid Karzai. Canadians answered America's call when our friend was attacked but our country is leaving 2011, regardless of what happens between now and then, having done what we could.

Rebuilding that society should have started months after 9/11, not after 8 years of bungled war but America did not have the right person in place, one who had the capacity to understand the issues and so, here we are: facing an emboldened Taliban after 8 years of futility. After ousting the Taliban, an army of people like this would have created the circumstances for transformation of Afghanistan and done so at a fraction of the cost of the military missions.

Time to bring the boys (and girls) back home.

let us pray

It's a burden, I know, but knowing doesn't make coping any easier. Faith, once hard-wired into the DNA, is very hard to shake. I'm sitting here, in an empty house, with the family on their way to a Gingerbread house party up north. After some sombre second thought, it was decided by all that my not attending this thing was probably wise. This is because, you see, over the past few days my mood has been steadily darkening and this morning, we (hope we) hit bottom.

What can I say? You sandwich two Leaf road wins around consecutive Habs losses and you are going to get a very unhappy camper, scowling at the end of the table. In particular, a loss that resulted from a lead being lost in final eleven seconds? Ooh. Not good. 

So here I sit. Alone.

Add to that, some growing pains of how to use the new Mac plus some nonsense in Dubai that really seemed to piss off financial markets in the latter half of last week and all in all, it's been a tough time.

That said, I was still prepared to venture to Gingerbread land until I saw it. Plain as day, the headline on the Toronto Star story: Surging Leafs Winning Ways. Now, come on. What's a guy supposed to do with that? Surging? Surging?!

GMAFB. 

That was it. The mood, the Mac, the Gingerbread thing, all headed out the window.

Anyway, off I head to Montreal tomorrow for a couple of meetings and then on Tuesday, my good friend Mike will join me and I will baptize indoctrinate introduce him to the religion that is Le Club de Hockey Canadien. I have done this instilling work with pagans before, to great success. I know the drill. You find the weakness and then, very subtly, exploit the living shit out of it. 

Raising kids here, the very belly of the Beast, made for treacherous times so the work began in utero. The boy was easy: Cokes and arcades. Give him a handful of quarters and a tall cup of the Real Thing and he'd goose-step all the way to Berlin. 

The girl? More of a challenge. She needs to feel a special connection with something to really make it part of her. The Habs took care of that. Carey Price had his first shutout at her first game so when, on the way home, the radio announcer made a point of saying "if you were at the game tonight, you'll always be able to say you were there the night Carey Price got his first shutout", the eyes widened, she looked at me and I knew she was hooked.

Mike obviously presents more of a challenge in that he is virtually a fully-formed adult. One who has not been subjected to KGB-style brainwashing techniques from before birth to see a Habs' game in Montreal before.

Considering we are working in a very tight window of time, I am not sure how this will play out. On the one hand, dude is clearly very susceptible to tall tales and will believe anything. On the other hand, he's no dummy and will probably be well on his guard for subliminal tactics so the whole thing may just be out of my hands. I will just have to sit back and watch the team, still missing over 45% of its roster, take to the ice against the so-called surging Leafs. (GMAFB)

So I leave this one in the hands of Fate: Thy will be done, boys, Thy will be done.

Go Habs. 

ooh, DeMint-y fresh...

It appears the great state of South Carolina, the only one that still proudly flies the flag of the Confederacy at its capitol, is having a bit of an internal battle over the direction of its conservative politics. Seems the Republican forces in South Carolina can't choose between a solidly conservative but pragmatic approach of senior Senator Lindsay Graham and the no-compromise, leave-no-building-standing attitude embodied by its junior senator, Jim DeMint.

From the NY Times:

CHARLESTON, S.C. — When Senator Lindsey Graham joined forces last month with Senator John Kerry on a compromise to the climate change legislation known as cap and trade, it was the last straw for the Charleston County Republican Party. The county party, which has traditionally been considered moderate, voted by a wide margin to censure Mr. Graham in harsh terms. Their grievance list was long: it cited the senator for calling opponents of immigration law change “bigots,” holding the Republican Party “hostage” by participating in bipartisan maneuvers, voting for the Wall Street bailout and tarnishing the ideals of freedom. It even criticized Mr. Graham, a Republican and the state’s senior senator, as having “stated on many occasions that his primary concern is to ‘be relevant.’ ” The party had no such criticism for the other senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint. In fact, Mr. DeMint, a Republican in his first term, is the leader of a movement to pull the party in the opposite direction from Mr. Graham’s conciliatory approach. The political action committee he founded, called the Senate Conservatives Fund, backs only candidates who are rock-solid conservatives, and adherents to his views have led the efforts to censure Mr. Graham. The two senators say they are friends whose differences are exaggerated by the news media, and Mr. DeMint has not personally criticized Mr. Graham or called for his censure. But their contrasting strategies have brought home to South Carolina the struggle over the future of the Republican Party and have put them on opposite sides of important Senate primaries in states like Florida, where Mr. DeMint supports a vocal conservative, Marco Rubio, and Mr. Graham supports Gov. Charlie Crist. In California, Mr. DeMint supports Chuck DeVore, in defiance of the national party leadership and Mr. Graham, who said he would campaign for Carly Fiorina. Here in South Carolina, Mr. Graham’s vote to confirm Justice Sonia Sotomayor to theSupreme Court, among other positions, has cost him the support of many conservatives, as have his comments that voters want politicians to reach across the aisle and that Republicans need to do a better job of attracting younger voters and minorities. After the Charleston party vote, Mr. Graham narrowly averted censure in neighboring Berkeley County by promising to meet with party leaders. In the north part of the state, the York County Republican Party stopped short of a censure but made its displeasure with Mr. Graham known by approving a resolution strenuously opposing cap and trade. “I believe in the Constitution 100 percent — Mr. Graham does not,” Terry Hutchinson, an auto mechanic in Rock Hill, said before attending the York County meeting. “He voted for Sotomayor, that’s the first thing. She is a liberal, she is a racist, and you support her? Wrong, absolutely wrong.” The voting records of Mr. Graham and Mr. DeMint are actually not that far apart — according to the American Conservative Union, which gives Mr. Graham a lifetime rating of 90 out of 100, he voted with Mr. DeMint on bellwether issues 80 percent of the time in 2008. Mr. DeMint is the only senator the group designates as a “Defender of Liberty,” its highest accolade. Instead, the two men diverge on their vision of the party’s future. Mr. DeMint, who declined an interview for this article after several requests, has said he would prefer having fewer, but ideologically pure, Republicans in the Senate rather than more Republicans who were ideologically suspect. Mr. Graham takes the more pragmatic view, countering in an interview that neither he nor Mr. DeMint would be electable in states like Maine or California, but that a single centrist Republican senator from a moderate state could give the party enough votes to blockPresident Obama’s major initiatives. “If we had one more vote, one more Republican, this health care debate would be over,” Mr. Graham said. Mr. DeMint, a favorite of the tea party movement, a diffuse grass-roots group that taps into antigovernment sentiments, attracted widespread attention when he referred to health care legislation as Mr. Obama’s Waterloo, while Mr. Graham was one of 12 senators to join a yet-unsuccessful effort at a bipartisan health care compromise. Mr. Graham has a history of bucking partisan expectations. As a House member, he signed on to Senator John McCain’s presidential bid, giving Mr. McCain a lift in the South Carolina Republican primary in 2000 when many in the party and the state supportedGeorge W. Bush. In 2005, he was a member of the bipartisan “Gang of 14,” which preserved the minority party’s right to block presidential appointments by filibuster but also cleared the way for the confirmation of several conservative judges. Political analysts in the state say it is difficult to tell how much the anger of the right will hurt Mr. Graham, who does not face re-election until 2014.

Read the rest here.

Imagine Senator Graham openly wishing to remain relevant?!

Not so, Mr. DeMint. Jim, who puts the ha in whack-job, is my third-favourite Republican at the moment and I applaud his decision to remain true to his principles and ride that train straight to irrelevancy. 

Let's face it, thoughtful pragmatism like the variety practiced by Graham will only result in the GOP remaining mainstream and, as we all know, that can only be bad for America and for the world. Thankfully, the words thoughtful and Republican go together about as well as playoffs & Redskins.

Dubai-ai-ai

From the Globe & Mail:

Dubai's debt crisis rattled world financial markets Friday, raising concerns that some banks could further tighten lending and hamper the global economic recovery.

The possible spillover effects from Dubai fed fears that international banks could suffer big losses if the debt-laden emirate is forced to default. That sent stock and commodity markets tumbling in New York, London and Asia as investors flocked to the U.S. dollar as a safe haven.

But earlier concerns that the crisis might trigger another major financial meltdown seemed to ease Friday after some analysts played down the risks for U.S. banks. U.S. stocks rebounded from their earlier lows as investors grew confident that the damage might be contained.

“I don't think the collateral damage is going to be that great,” said Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at Raymond James. “People will dig into this over the weekend, but I think balance sheets have healed enough to withstand a shock like this.”

Still, the unfolding crisis in Dubai pointed to the vulnerability of the global economy despite recent signs of recovery.

A year after the global slump derailed Dubai's explosive growth, the city-state's main investment arm, Dubai World, revealed this week it was asking for at least a six-month delay on paying back its $60-billion debt. Major credit agencies responded by slashing debt ratings on Dubai's state companies, saying they might consider the plan a default.

In recent years, Dubai has expanded with ambitious, eye-catching projects like the Gulf's palm-shaped islands and the world's tallest skyscraper in hopes of becoming a tourist friendly and cosmopolitan Middle Eastern metropolis. In the process, however, the state-backed networks nicknamed Dubai Inc. have racked up $80 billion in red ink, and the emirate may now need another bailout from its oil-rich neighbour Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

Following a rout in Europe, Asia's stock markets tumbled Friday, while the dollar hit a fresh 14-year low against the yen as investors piled into currencies perceived as safer. Crude oil at one point fell more than 6 per cent.

With Dubai World hard pressed to pay its bills, banks could take the biggest hit, analysts said.

Read the rest here.

Investors had better be prepared for this type of out of left-field crises going forward. The financial emergency hasn't ended, merely evolved into a new stage. Caveat emptor.

Maybe McLuhan was right

Have you ever heard of Rosa Parks?

Many of you probably have; Time magazine called her one of the most important people of the 20th Century.

How about Claudette Colvin?

I would very few among you have, I certainly hadn't.

On that supercharged day in 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala., she rode her way into history books, credited with helping to ignite the civil rights movement.

But there was another woman, named Claudette Colvin, who refused to be treated like a substandard citizen on one of those Montgomery buses — and she did it nine months before Mrs. Parks. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his political debut fighting her arrest. Moreover, she was the star witness in the legal case that eventually forced bus desegregation.

Yet instead of being celebrated, Ms. Colvin has lived unheralded in the Bronx for decades, initially cast off by black leaders who feared she was not the right face for their battle, according to a new book that has plucked her from obscurity.

Last week Phillip Hoose won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice,” published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The honor sent the little-selling title shooting up 500 spots on Amazon.com’s sales list and immediately thrust Ms. Colvin, 70, back into the cultural conversation.

“Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn’t the case at all,” Ms. Colvin said in an animated interview at a diner near her apartment in the Parkchester section of the Bronx. “Maybe by telling my story — something I was afraid to do for a long time — kids will have a better understanding about what the civil rights movement was about.”

Ms. Colvin made her stand on March 2, 1955, and Mrs. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same year. Somehow, as Mrs. Parks became one of Time Magazine’s 100 most important people of the 20th century, and streets and schools were named after her, Ms. Colvin managed to let go of any bitterness. After Ms. Colvin was arrested, Mrs. Parks, a seasoned N.A.A.C.P. official, sometimes let her spend the night at her apartment. Ms. Colvin remembers her as a reserved but kindly woman who fixed her snacks of peanut butter on Ritz crackers.

“My mother told me to be quiet about what I did,” Ms. Colvin recalled. “She told me: ‘Let Rosa be the one. White people aren’t going to bother Rosa — her skin is lighter than yours and they like her.’ ”

Ms. Colvin said she came to terms with her “raw feelings” a long time ago. “I know in my heart that she was the right person,” she said of Mrs. Parks.

Unlike Mrs. Parks, whose protest was carefully planned, Ms. Colvin was just a 15-year-old who couldn’t stomach the Jim Crow segregation laws one second longer.

Ms. Colvin was riding the bus home from school when the driver demanded that she give up her seat for a middle-age white woman, even though three other seats in the row were empty, one beside Ms. Colvin and two across the aisle.

“If she sat down in the same row as me, it meant I was as good as her,” Ms. Colvin said.

Two police officers, one of them kicking her, dragged her backward off the bus and handcuffed her, according to the book. On the way to the police station, they took turns trying to guess her bra size.

At the time, the arrest was big news. Black leaders, among them Dr. King, jumped at the opportunity to use her case to fight segregation laws in court. “Negro Girl Found Guilty of Segregation Violation” was the headline in The Alabama Journal. The article said that Ms. Colvin, “a bespectacled, studious looking high school student,” accepted the ruling “with the same cool aloofness she had maintained” during the hearing.

As chronicled by Mr. Hoose, more than 100 letters of support arrived for Ms. Colvin — sent in care of Mrs. Rosa Parks, secretary of the Montgomery branch of the N.A.A.C.P.

But Ms. Colvin was ultimately passed over.

“They worried they couldn’t win with her,” Mr. Hoose said in an interview from his home in Portland, Me. “Words like ‘mouthy,’ ‘emotional’ and ‘feisty’ were used to describe her.”

Mrs. Parks, on the other hand, was considered “stolid, calm, unflappable,” he said. The final straw: Ms. Colvin became pregnant by a married man.

A second Montgomery teenager, Mary Louise Smith, was also arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat — after Ms. Colvin’s arrest but before Ms. Parks’s — and she was also deemed an unsuitable symbol for the movement partly because of rumors that her father had an alcohol problem.

Although Ms. Colvin quickly left Montgomery, she returned during the peak of the bus boycott that Mrs. Parks had subsequently sparked, and testified in federal court in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that effectively ended bus segregation.

“It’s an important reminder that crucial change is often ignited by very plain, unremarkable people who then disappear,” said David J. Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Dr. King.

Even Mrs. Parks was forgotten for the better part of 20 years, only re-emerging as a world-famous figure in the early 1970s after magazine articles and attention in several children’s books.

Ms. Colvin, who relies on a cane to steady herself, retired in 2004 after 35 years as a nurse’s aide at a Manhattan nursing home. She contributed to her own obscurity: after settling in New York, she never talked about how her arrest helped prompt the famous bus boycott.

“She continued to heed her mother’s advice, and worried that drawing attention to herself would result in the loss of her job. “I wasn’t going to take that chance,” she said.

Read the rest here.

One is among the most important people of the century, the other a tiny footnote. Incredible.