A lot of LIberals are speaking out against Bob Rae's apparent move to secure the permanent leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. Of course, it goes without saying that a lot of Liberals are very stupid, which is why they're Liberals in the first place.
Those people are also the reason that the LPC is on its deathbed today. Unlike most political observers, I'm willing to state the obvious and say that it's incredibly unlikely that the Grits will ever hold government again. I think it far more likely that
they'll be swallowed whole by the New Democratic Party in five years. And I believe it likely that the Liberals will destroy that party as well.
This is because Liberals love nothing more than going to war with one another. At this point, they love it more than winning elections. The party has been fighting their retarded leadership wars since 1975 and is divided into two factions: the Trudeau-Chretien-Rae wing and the Turner-Martin-Ignatieff wing. And each faction has acted as suicide bombers against the other for almost the entire time.
Granted, this didn't stop them from running the country. But that's only because conservatives were such an unmitigated goddamned mess most of the time. And when even a semi-competent Conservative leader appeared, the Liberals lost to him every time. They were beaten by three very different Conservatives; Joe Clark, Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper. The numbers show that it was only a divided conservative movement that allowed Jean Chretien to become prime minister at all. When the movement unified under Harper, the Grits were first reduced to a minority, removed from power altogether, and finally robbed even of their Official Opposition status.
The LPC is the most overrated political force anywhere in my lifetime. For at least forty years, they've only won when their opponents are so disorganized and dumb that they can't be trusted to run a profitable rub and tug, let alone a major industrial nation. And even under ideal circumstances, their own infighting does them in, as we've seen over the last decade.
Here's the thing. If I was a Conservative Party supporter (which I'm not. I last voted for the federal Progressive Conservatives in 2000, after voting Reform in '93 and '97), I'd be afraid of facing Bob Rae in a federal election.
Rae is easily the smartest and most experienced viable candidate in the party today. In a party of lifetime politicos, academics and bureaucrats, Rae is also the only person in the LPC who has ever run anything before.
Which brings us to Rae's time as Ontario's NDP premier, which the anti-Rae forces feel is disqualifying. That's a record that can and should be examined, if only because times have changed so much that it might actually work in Rae's favour during a campaign.
(For the record, I voted against Rae twice in Ontario, casting ballots for Progressive Conservative Mike Harris in 1990 and '95. After the 1999 campaign, I've voted exclusively for minor parties and independents provincially.)
Rae, as even he will tell you, was an accidental premier. He was elected because David Peterson's almost awesome arrogance - fighting no fewer than three elections in a single five-year mandate - finally blew him up, and the fact that Mike Harris had been leader for less than a year and no one knew who he was.
He was a socialist who was elected at the beginning of a worldwide recession, so he governed predictably, trying to spend his way out bad economic times. In the process, he created what was then record deficits.
But then Rae did something very unpredictable. He attacked those deficits and in the process destroyed his own political base. Instead of passing massive tax increases, which you would expect from an NDP government, he instituted austerity on the heavily unionized provincial civil service. That, you might have noticed, is conservative orthodoxy today. Indeed, the widely-hated Rae Days remain well to the right of what Republican governors like Scott Walker and John Kasich have attempting in the United States over the last two years. Walker and Kasich, like Paul Ryan in Washington, are trying things that won't produce savings for a minimum of fifteen years. Rae Days inflicted immediate pain on the bureaucracy and went a fair way in reducing the deficit.
I've spent that last five years trying to figure out exactly how the Harper Conservatives (or Harper's probable successor, Jason Kenney) runs against Rae. And I've got to tell you, I'm fucking stumped.
Bob Rae isn't a political novice, like Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff were. Indeed, he's been running bigger campaigns for longer than anyone currently in the Conservative Party. He also survived the Liberal Armageddon of last May, which few other national party figures managed to. That alone makes makes Rae a formidable opponent in ways that no other Liberal is. He understands what it is to run a major campaign, having done so four times in Canada's largest province.
Then there's his Ontario record, which is heavily mitigated by the way politics has changed over the seventeen years since Rae was ejected from Queen's Park. The Harris-Eves Conservatives left office with a fairly large deficit, and the current Liberal premier, Dalton McGuinty, has racked up deficits that dwarf Rae's. And the Harper Conservatives have pissed away money at a rate that would impress even Pierre Trudeau.
Yes, the Tories will almost certainly dive-bomb Rae with millions of dollars of negative advertising demagouging his record at Quuen's Park, which a broke and demoralized Liberal Party will be unable to counter. It worked maginificently against Dion and Ignatieff, so there's no reason that they won't go to that well again.
But at some point, the Tories are going to have to debate him on national television. And that's dangerous for them. Rae is smarter, a more experienced politician and a better speaker than Harper is. And if Harper leaves office before 2015 (which I think is a distinct possibility), Rae will almost certainly face Jason Kenney, who is a ward-heeling retard that only got where he is today by stealing the disgusting concept of identity politics from the fucking Liberals.
One can reasonably expect Harper or Kenney to start a debate by immediately attacking Rae's by then twenty year old deficits. If I was Bob Rae, my first answer would be "Yes, I was socialist who governed during a deep recession in the early 1990s, so I did what socialists are expected to do. Sir, what is your excuse for spending a $13 billion surplus on nothing and creating deficits that made mine look frugal by comparison?" That alone will be devastating because there is no plausible answer to it.
Then one can expect the attack on Rae Days. That's problematic in so far as if the Tories are even halfway serious about their deficit reduction plan - which they say will not include a tax increase - they'll have to do something that looks a lot like Rae Days, if not actually be more draconian. Remember, Harper pledged to reduce spending only down to 2009 levels, when the country was already in deficit and spending was at a high. If the Conservatives bar themselves from raising revenue and continue to use the tax code to buy themselves votes, the civil service is the only place left to save money. As a very smart guy, I expect that Bob will rattle off the facts and figures and look very credible doing it.
Also, by 2015 the Tories will have been in office for nine years, the standard exhaustion point for a government. Both Mulroney and Chretien were done at that point, and Trudeau was doing everything he could to postpone the election that would ultimately lead to his defeat. I think that Stephen Harper knows the history well enough to get the fuck out of Dodge and make some money before the next election, leaving a half-wit like Kenney as a sacrificial lamb that serves only to burnish his his own legacy, much like Mulroney did with Kim Campbell.
If the Liberals could mange to stop being Liberals for three whole years, I think that Bob Rae has an even chance of beating Harper, and could almost sexually humiliate Jason Kenney, even with a bankrupt and demoralized party. If Thomas Muclair wins the NDP leadership and takes Quebec off of the table for the Grits and Tories, I think that Rae could form at least a minority government. If the NDP falls apart, and Rae manages to keep Denis Coderre in line, the Grits could possibly win as many as forty Quebec seats and govern with a majority.
But the Liberals can't stop being Liberals for three whole minutes, let alone three whole years. As you're already seeing, there are factions of anti-Rae chuckleheaded strategists, bloggers and media types that are determined to pound the final nail in the Liberal Party's coffin if they can't have the Liberal Party all to themselves.
They don't care that Bob Rae is probably the only candidate that can work with the party machinery that the Libeals actually have, as opposed to what they wish they had. Instead of showing the kind of political discipline the Conservatives have always had in getting behind their leader, the Grits are flirting with an idiotic American-style primary system that will make getting behind the leader almost impossible, given that party's history.
Bob Rae has the best chance of any Liberal of beating a unified Conservative Party since Trudeau. But he can't do that if he has to spend his time as Opposition leader and a federal election candidate watching his own back.
Rae is alone as a Liberal who can beat the Tories, but the Liberal Party is incapable of unity, which is why the 2015 election will almost certainly be their last. If they give the leadership to another amatuer that loses even more seats in the interest of keeping Rae's critics happy, they won't survive it.
It never ceases to amaze me that people say, do or support catastrophically dumb things and expect them to end up being anything less than catastrophic. My mayor, Rob Ford, is an object lesson in how this works.
If you've read this space for any length of time, you know that I've hated Ford for years. During last year's campaign, I argued that he was singularly unqualified to run this city and that he would be an unmitigated disaster for conservatism, if only because he isn't especially conservative. He's more of a self-aggrandizing blowhard and a drunken idiot than anything else.
During his decade on City Council, Rob didn't do much of anything other than vote no a lot and make a Coors Lite-fuelled spectacle of himself regularly, which is something that I can do. Being something of an elitist, I always endeavour to vote for people that are smarter than I am, which is significantly harder than you would think it is. The mayor has never built or done anything in his life. His money, his business and his original political base were all inheritances from his Daddy. The guy was environmentally conditioned to be a monumental shithead.
More importantly, his entire election platform was built on a shockingly transparent set of lies. He vowed to withdraw from a fully-funded public transit plan called Transit City, but would expand subway infrastructure using only magic. Actually, that's not entirely true. Ford thought that the deficit-laden federal and provincial governments would give him metric shit-tons of money by virtue of the fact that Ford is a confrontational prick and a borderline retard. And private business would finance the rest, despite the fact that the very same notion proved to be a spectacular failure on the original Sheppard subway line, a decade ago.
Rob further promised to do away with all manner of revenue to the city without cutting services. As a matter of fact, he specifically said that he would expand services where needed. This would be accomplished by cutting things like gardening at Nathan Phillips Square and the hallucination that career politicians would vote themselves into oblivion by reducing the size of Council by 50%.
I spent the better part of a year pointing out that Hizzoner's policy positions were silly and that his math didn't work. Moreover, his plan was based on such a fantastical notion of how politics works that even toddlers shook their heads at it once it was explained to them. Among other things, I said that supporting Ford was an act of willful ignorance, and perhaps evidence of a particularly worrisome extra chromosome. But it sure as fuck wasn't an expression of actual conservatism.
Most of my commenters during the campaign were either as cosmically ignorant of the laws of both both politics and mathematics as Ford himself is, or they acknowledged that he was lying, but it ultimately wouldn't matter. The voters were of a similar mind, and Boy Rob won with a margin that seemed to surprise even him.
Being the fan of reality that I am, I decided to sit back and watch the debacle unfold. I may have placed too much faith in the chronically self-interested and genetically defective electorate of this city, but I do understand how politics and, more importantly, math works.
The brothers Ford thought that they could score some easy points a couple of months ago by engaging liberal has-beens like Margaret Attwood over irrelevant issues like library funding. But times have changed and the math hasn't. So now we're looking at pretty dramatic cuts to things like cops, firefighters and the public transit that Ford promised to expand. And the same silly fuckers that supported Ford and putting on their outrage helmets.
One of the biggest polls ever conducted in Toronto shows residents from every corner of the city are overwhelmingly against Mayor Rob Ford’s cuts.
From Doug Ford’s ward in Etobicoke to budget chief Mike Del Grande’s in Scarborough, the results will serve as a sobering warning to councillors within the Ford voting bloc.
A Forum Research telephone survey of nearly 13,000 people reveals that more than three-quarters of Torontonians want their local councillor to protect services rather than comply with the mayor’s wishes. And only 27 per cent of residents say they would vote for Rob Ford if an election was held tomorrow.
More significantly, because of the poll’s size, Forum was able to provide the first authoritative assessment of support on a ward-by-ward level.
Forum’s poll, which was paid for by CUPE Local 79, one of two major unions at city hall, questioned 12,848 Toronto residents on Tuesday using a random dial, push-button response, phoning system. The margin of error is plus or minus 0.9 per cent, 19 out 20 times.
Say what you will about the poll being paid for by opportunistic communist hacks, but the sample size is stellar and you almost never see a margin of error less than a third of what you usually see. I don't see a professional polling firm putting itself out of business just for a quick paycheck from some Gambino Family-connected librarians. These are serious numbers that should be taken awfully fucking seriously.
Most importantly, the revolt is coming from the parts of the city that were the more vehement for Ford just 11 months ago. The numbers from wards like mine, which went heavily for Ford, are staggering and impossible to ignore. Once Hizzoner loses suburban councillors, he's done..
That fat asshole's political base has dropped out from under him. Right-leaning councillors now have the choice of either tying themselves to the fucking Titanic, or representing the wishes of their own constituents. If I know anything at all about politics, we're about to see the mayor reduced to irrelevancy by his own allies. The much-ballyhooed "gravy train" is getting ready to run right over that stupid motherfucker.
Here's the thing. I don't care all that much about service cuts. But the fact remains that Rob Ford went out of his way to specifically promise that they wouldn't occur. More importantly, his entire campaign was predicated on just how bad the municipal budget imbalance was, so he can't realistically hide behind the notion that the numbers were a surprise to him.
The fact is that he was lying, and most semi-reasonable and literate people should have known that. If this were a truly just and equitable world, the wards that supported Ford the hardest - like mine - would feel the goddamned axe most viciously. But I think that isn't going to happen, don't we? The coloureds along the Finch West and Eglinton West corridors are going to get hammerfucked directly into hell, while folks like me are going to get by. They already wait 9 hours for a packed and smelly cattle-car of a bus that seems more like it's going to Auschwitz than Yonge Street, so what difference is an extra twenty minutes going to make?
And no sane person thinks that Ford is going to annihilate the downtown wards that opposed him the strongest are going to get hurt, either. Shit, the Ford boys want to give those Marxist dickheads more fucking condominiums and lakeshore shopping malls that no one wants to pay for.
This isn't a local phenomenon, either. Ontario has a provincial election next month, and Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak, who had a double-digit lead just six weeks ago, is poised to have his ass handed to him by Liberal Dalton McGuinty, who has only ever been popular with shitheels and pederasts. And even shitheels and pederasts don't like McGuinty that much. They just like him a lot more than they do Hudak.
Let's look south of the border for a minute if you're not convinced. Take a look at the Tea Party candidates that actually got elected to positions of adult responsibility, as opposed to the MILF brigade of Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin. As I write this, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, John Kasich of Ohio, and Rick Scott in Florida are all polling behind church burnings. Sure, you could argue that they're only polling slightly behind church burnings, but you you can't ignore the fact that the numbers are upside-down in a big, bad way.
Even weapons-grade morons like Rick Perry aren't immune. Perry took steps to inoculate young girls from an entirely preventable cancer and large segments of the modern right are painting him as a straight Michael Jackson, whimsically dispensing "fuck drugs" to pubescent girls, presumably because he enjoys kidfucking. And that's when they're not running against other applied sciences, like evolution. It's also important to remember that this is the same Rick Perry that was actually applauded when he said that he "didn't lose sleep" over the possibility of executing an innocent person, mostly because he already has.
And they're not wrong in doing so. If I had their economic policies, I'd want to distract everyone from them by running against Darwin and for cervical cancer as much as I possibly could. The only halfway coherent plan out there is Paul Ryan's, which immediately increases the deficits that Republicans are running against in a big, bad way, and might balance the budget in thirty years, which just happens to be about twenty-five years too late.
The only thing that has allowed these people to get as far as they have is the fact that liberals are liberals. As such, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. If they were even halfway smart, they'd do what Bill Clinton did, which was steal issues from the right and address them in a way that's acceptable to the general electorate. At that point, it's pretty easy to paint your enemies as extremist assholes.
But even that's beyond the ability of most of the left. Dalton McGuinty is the exception in that he's blessed with ineffective and retarded enemies, much like Stephen Harper.
The Passing of Greatness: Notes on the Death of George Carlin
I find that as I get older, things suck more. Music sucks, novels suck, politics sucks, and few things suck as much as comedy. I'm a crotchety old man and I'm not even 40 years old yet. But the fact is that none of those things are as good as they were just a twenty years ago.
The only thing worse than watching everything suck more and more is watching the masters of those forms grow old and die. We're in an age where we're not just seeing artists go, we're seeing entire art forms go with them.
Will there ever again be an album as great as Exile on Main Street or Highway 61 Revisited? How about a novel like Lolita? Does anyone seriously think that there'll be another president who achieves as much as Harry Truman or even Richard Nixon?
Does anyone think there will ever be another comedian like George Carlin?
Anyone who studies comedy - which really isn't something to studied - will tell you that there's a holy trinity of the form. It consisted of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and Carlin. Anyone who followed them modelled themselves on at least one. As brilliant as he was for about three years, Dave Chappelle was essentially covering the same ground as Pryor thirty years ago. The same is true of Lewis Black and Carlin.
What's different is that they don't have the same insight or humanity. When you watch Chappelle or Black, you'll laugh your ass off, but you don't feel like you would after 90 minutes of Bruce, Pryor or Carlin. You'll laugh a whole lot, but you won't really learn anything. Watching the first group, you walked away thinking "I never really thought of that that way before." And that just doesn't happen these days.
Unlike today's comedians, Bruce, Pryor and Carlin all structured their comedy like music. If you listen to it without paying particular attention to what they're saying, you start to notice little rhythms and counter-rhythms developing. It beautifully built to a point as opposed to race to a punchline, which is what you see all too often now.
Of the three, Carlin was the only one not to destroy himself. In so doing, we got to see that you can take that form of comedy and have it mature with you. Unlike George Carlin's predecessors from the fifties and early sixties, he wasn't doing the same act into retirement that he started out with.
If anything, Carlin's humor got much darker as he got older. Routines like Football and Baseball and A Place for my Stuff were gradually replaced with far more existential riffs that were far more entertaining, at least to me. As much as I appreciated The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television, I fell in love with the more apocalyptic aspects of his last twenty years.
When I was a little kid, my parents were massively pissed that my older cousin introduced me to George Carlin. They were even more pissed that I loved his work so much. By the time I was twelve, I could recite several of his albums by heart - not just the material, but all of the breaks and inflections in it, too. That made them truly nuts.
But the more he listened, the more my father, at least, understood that Carlin was much more than just a guy who said the word "fuck" a lot. Nothing that he did was done for the sole purpose of shocking an audience. When he did it, which was often, there was always a larger point to be made. There was a universe of difference between George Carlin and an idiot like Andrew Dice Clay.
Having a point in recent years has been the death of otherwise great comedians. If you look at Bill Maher and Dennis Miller, as just two examples, you see how true that is. Both have suffered from the syndrome that killed Lenny Bruce's humor; they wanted to be right more than they wanted to be funny. But Bruce had been persecuted to the point that he earned that right. Maher and Miller just want to please their respective political comrades. Consequently, Miller has had a string of failed shows and Maher isn't far behind.
Perhaps the greatest tribute to George Carlin was on Monday's Larry King Live. Someof the biggest names in comedy were on the show, and only one of them, Lewis Black, has been remotely funny over the last decade. Carlin was on stage three times as long as Jerry Seinfeld, but he always stayed hungry and wanted to always be better at his craft, while Seinfeld was happy driving his Porsches and making bee cartoons.
Carlin worked for fifty years. He recorded 23 albums and made 14 HBO specials. He was one of the truly great ones and he will be missed
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: A Legend in My Time By: Johnny Cash From: American V: A Hundred Highways
I don't have aby first hand experience, but I'm pretty sure that being accused of rape would suck. That would be doubly true if you're actually not guilty.
Getting over a rape accusation would be pretty tough, assuming that you're even exonerated in the first place. This isn't a popular thing to say, but just the charge of a sexual assault makes a fair trial very difficult. The charge itself stirs up so many emotions that it can cloud the judgement of otherwise rational people. And no one wants to believe that a woman would make up such a thing.
Indeed, even if you're one of the few who manages to get acquitted, you still find yourself (pardon the pun) screwed. People will automatically assume that you must have done something to find yourself in a position where you're accused of that. People will always look at you just a little bit differently when they learn of your past brush with the law. It can ruin your life, both professionally and personally.
But women sometimes do fabricate a rape charge. In that, it isn't all it different than any other crime. Because even real victims frequently wait before reporting an assault, there is often no medical evidence to disprove the charge. In both the courts of law and public opinion, it is a matter of "he said, she said," and most people are naturally inclined to believe the woman.
In fact, it's probably more common when a celebrity is involved. Some accusers are little more than extortionists, who file a criminal complaint as a way to tee up a lawsuit which will inevitably be settled. And some accusers are just batsht fucking crazy. The fact that there are almost never any consequences for making a false rape accusation only encourages both the extortionists and the insane.
However, not only was Rockett not guilty, he wasn't even in Mississippi during the month in question. His exoneration wasn't as heavily covered. It was announced a month ago and I didn't hear about it until this morning at The Superficial. If you have as much time on your hands as I do, google "Rikki Rockett rape case" and you'll find his being cleared .... as the ninth entry. Seven of the first eight highlight his arrest.
Of course, I'd like to congratulate both Mr. Rockett and everyone in Poison, but that's hardly my point in writing this.
I always thought that if you were going to accuse a celebrity of doing something horrific that it would be helpful if you could find someone who is still actually famous. Seriously, Rikki Fucking Rockett? Is it still 1987 and no one told me?
If you're going to lie about a rape, why not make it interesting? Say that you were gang-banged by Rudy Sarzo, Alec John Such and the guy from Cinderella! Why not go nuts and further state that the whole thing was videotaped by Jeff Pilson?
False rape accusations hurt everyone. The more often they occur, the less likely it is that real victims will be discouraged from reporting real assaults by practioners of hair metal. The saddest part of the Rikki Rockett rape saga is that it makes it almost impossible for anyone to believe my story about being fingered by Lita Ford.
I'm not saying that it was an assault or even unwanted. In fact, it was rather enjoyable and something that I'd very much like to repeat. I just wish that I could tell the story and not have people roll their eyes at me. Because the part about being held down by Vixen is really sexy.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Talk Dirty to MeBy: Poison From: Look What the Cat Dragged In
"DESTROY ANOTHER FETUS NOW, WE DON'T LIKE CHILDREN ANYHOW"
I'd like to describe myself as "pro-choice when it comes to abortion, but I'm not a coward. I'm not afraid to say what I'm for, and that happens to be abortion.
No one would describe themselves as being "pro-choice" on, say, civil rights. When was the last time you heard someone say "You know, it would be really nice if black people could vote without being lynched. Y'know, unless white people don't want that?"
No one is "pro-choice" on guns. You either have that right or you don't. Period. The same is true of abortion. If you believe in it, you're not "pro-choice," you're pro-abortion. And if liberals weren't such snivelling little assholes, they'd be proud to say so. When it comes to the rights of the people, there really is no "choice" involved. You either have a right, or you don't.
It might not seem like it, but I actually do respect "pro-life" voices. The problem is that most of them are the same kind of cowards that the "pro-choice" idiots are. If you believe that abortion is the murder of another human being, you do not make exceptions for "rape, murder or the life of the mother." If you believe that there are certain classes of expendable human life, then you're no better than a fucking Nazi.
Abortion is not a morally incrementalist argument. It's either murder or it isn't. A fetus is either human life, or it isn't. The only truly immoral voices in the debate are those of the vast middle, the "choice" believers on the left and the "exceptionalists" on the right. What they seek to do is, pardon the pun, split the baby.
I disagree with pro-life absolutists with every fibre of my being, but I can at least respect them for being honest. I can't say that for everyone else who isn't me. If you argue that "rape, incest and the life of the mother" are incremental steps in banning abortion outright, you might be the most immoral people of all. You are, by your own definition, willing to sacrifice innocent life for decades until you achieve some far away goal. Those terrorist assholes who bomb abortion clinics are more morally honest than you are, and you should be ashamed of yourselves for even suggesting that in public.
I happen to believe that if you can't prove that a fetus is human life beyond any legally definable doubt, then you should cede the choice of what to do with that mass of cells that will someday drop out of college to the person carrying them in their bloated bellies. That's just how I roll.
I have a very difficult time reconciling the belief that "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects ... shall not be violated, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation" has any exceptions. If anything, the freedom of a woman's uterus from government interference is much more important than, say, your collection of sawed-off shotguns and Internet porn. My position on abortion rests on the foundation of security of the person, particularly the one that everyone can actually agree is a person. Without the security of the person, all other rights are essentially meaningless.
If I have a problem with Roe v. Wade, it is that Justice Blackmun's reasoning is almost incomprehensible. If I were to write that decision, it would be all of two sentences long. It would read "The Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Amendments to the Constitution, taken as a whole, clearly establish a right to personal privacy. Fucking deal with it."
Even as strident a pro-life voice as Justice Antonin Scalia has said that there is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits abortion. Whenever I see a doubt as to what the Constitution says, I feel compelled to side with the individual over the state, which the Ninth Amendment does, too.
Instead, Blackmun wrote an incredibly muddled opinion that has only served to make the United States the political laughingstock of the world. Even the people of a backward country like Ireland, that bans abortion totally, laugh their asses off watching American politicians obsess over an issue than effects a grand total of one (depending on your definition of "life") person.
Widely ignored is the fact that Roe was the least important of two abortion decisions from the 1973 term. The real ground breaker was Doe v. Bolton.Even if Roe was overturned, it wouldn't affect Doe, which established access to abortion.
After Morgentaler, there was almost no constitutional foundation upon which to write a new, restrictive law. Also, the politics were horrible. Just mentioning abortion in the context of an election campaign is a good way for a political party to get dead fast.
It should be noted that unlike the United States, all criminal law is by definition, the jurisdiction of the federal government under the Criminal Code of Canada. One of the most important parts of Morgentaler v. Her Majesty, the Queen was the finding the provinces cannot pass abortion laws on their own.
Amazingly, Canada has been an abortion law-free kingdom of tranquility and happiness ever since.
Of course, that doesn't stop the jackals in the goddamn liberal media from polling us on abortion.
The poll by Angus-Reid - a firm that I have found to be traditionally unreliable - finds that 91% of Canadian support abortion rights to one degree or another. That isn't hugely surprising. What does shock me is what happens to the numbers when you add public funding to the equation.
When it comes to funding abortions, though, there is not the same level of support.
The same poll found 44% of respondents thought the public purse should only pay for abortions that were medical emergencies.
Four percent think the health-care system should never fund abortions. Egan said the numbers surprised her, but that they may not truly reflect people's thoughts on the issue.
She said many younger women, low-income women and women from rural areas could not afford abortions if they had to pay for them themselves, and so if the public system didn't pay for their procedures, it would amount to discrimination.
Firstly, the Canada Heath Act (socialized medicine to my American readers) doesn't, despite the best efforts of a bunch of liberal cocksuckers, doesn't deny treatment for maladies incurred by bad behaviour. Those leftist assholes would love to deny me coverage for my eventual cancer and heart disease because I love smoking more than anything in the world.
Furthermore, the taxes I pay on my cigarettes are, according to my government, supporting the fucking system in the first place. As I remember it, that's the justification for tobacco taxes in the first place. Should I demand that those taxes only pay the costs of smoking-related illness? How would all of Canada's remaining stupid motherfuckers react to that?
And what about all of those fatasses out there. McDonald's kills almost as many people as Imperial Tobacco does! Why are those sloppy, sweaty fuckers getting off so easily?
What said leftist assholes overlook is that most health maladies are the result of bad behaviour. When I first had this argument with a professor in college, I used the example of HIV/AIDS, perhaps the most preventable disease in North America after 1984. That didn't go over very well because liberals don't want to say that anything bad that happens to homosexuals might be a result of behaviour.
Making moral distinctions regarding care under a universal health care system would indeed be discriminatory. If you won't pay for a woman's abortion, why should I pay for her retard kid? Abortion is a one time payment of about three hundred bucks. Retards cost a fortune over their lifetime in health care benefits. That's to say nothing about the cost of their education. Them floppy-headed fuckers are expensive, and as a fiscal conservative, I object to footing the bill when an alternative exists.
Like it or not, Canadians have decided that health care is a right. Through our courts, we have also decided that abortion is a right. Furthermore, anything that involves sticking things into a woman's uterus that isn't me is by definition a health-related matter.
If nothing else, abortion and emphysema are at least fun-related conditions. Someone had a good time getting that way. But the 50% of you assholes who are body-surfing your way to Type 2 diabetes on a wave of fucking cheeseburgers and pancakes stuffed with chocolate and peanut butter are the last people who should bitch about funding abortions with your precious health care dollars.
Yet you fat, moralistic motherfuckers are going to be the first ones in my wallet when you have your fucking feet cut off, aren't you?
Let me get this straight, my tax dollars are only supposed to encourage certain kinds of behaviour and not others? Encouraging a girl to be a filthy little whore who needs it bareback is wrong because it costs a few hundred bucks, but holding a parade for you assholes who eat an entire pig for dessert because the fucking cow wasn't filling enough is right because you have a glandular problem is compassionate?
If that's true, fuck you and fuck Canada. I hope the goddamn terrorists win. At least they'll be more honest than you are.
Everybody in this fucking country is an asshole but me.
Thank you for your attention.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day:The FutureBy: Leonard Cohen From:The Future
In 1995 the British journalist and historian Gitta Sereny published the biography Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, which examined the disconnect between his exculpatory statements during and after his war crimes trial at Nuremberg and the historical record. Sereny, although personally fond of the Third Reich's Minister of Armaments, found that he was nowhere near as innocent as he claimed to be during the last thirty-six years of his life.
Barack Obama is waging his very own battle with truth, and he's doing it within the context of a presidential campaign. Just this week, he has renounced not one, but two major pledges that he made during the primaries, the most recent of which was made just three months ago. It would be a stunning thing to see from an average politician. It is all the more so coming from an almost deified "change agent" espousing a fuzzy and vague brand of "hope."
During the Ohio primary, Hillary Clinton created a great stink regarding NAFTA and her intention to "renegotiate" it to protect American jobs. This was interesting, in so far as most of the lost jobs are more of a consequence of the rise of India and China and the self-defeating stupidity of the American labor and business communities. NAFTA became a catch-all for all the bad American economic choices of the last forty years.
No one was particularly surprised that Hillary would do this. The Clintons have a richly deserved reputation for doing and saying anything to win, regardless of how asinine those assertions are to anyone with a modicum of education. To almost everyone's surprise, Obama decided to compete with the Clintons on who could be tougher on trade, saying that he would use the "hammer" of withdrawing from the treaty to strengthen America's advantage. Not surprisingly, the Clintons won, crushing Obama in the Ohio primary.
Just on NAFTA alone, I was glad to see it and almost wished that one of them was telling the truth and won the presidency on the strength of such a platform.
The Clinton and Bush administrations have made it clear to both Canada and Mexico that the word of an American president is not to be trusted. Of NAFTAs three partners, the United States has been in violation of the treaty most frequently and most unrepentantly. And when that has been the finding of the NAFTA arbitration panel and the WTO, the Clinton and Bush administrations have ignored their rulings.
I've written about how Canada was essentially raped in the softwood lumber dispute before. Worse is the treatment that Mexico has received. 15 years after NAFTA specifically called for the access of Mexican trucks to American roads, the US Congress and Bush administration continues to stall on it, going so far as attempting to pass a law prohibiting it. No reasonable person can be expected to long deal with a partner who only adheres to the parts of a deal that benefit them and lie about or ignore the provisions that don't.
I was great supporter of both the US - Canada Free Trade agreement and NAFTA, so much so that I voted exclusively on those issues in the federal elections of 1988 and '93. To this day I don't regret that support. What I regret is the way that the United States government has conducted itself for the last sixteen years. I voted to partner with the United States of 1941-92, an internationalist nation that stuck it's word and honored its obligations. That country has effectively ceased to exist regarding trade issues.
In his memoir, My Years as Prime Minister, Jean Chretien explains the pressures an American president faces in trade disputes from individual senators when trade becomes an issue. A senator can - and often does - exert pressure on other parts of a president's agenda to force violations of treaties to get their way. And that's what created the softwood lumber dispute. Senators from the American northwest didn't like actual competition and forced the Clinton and Bush administrations to implement protectionist and illegal measures.
Especially priceless was President Bush's reaction when the WTO ruled against the United States. He said that he "would welcome" further negotiations on the matter with Canada. You know, I'm pretty sure that Charles Manson would have "welcomed further negotiations" with the Los Angeles District Attorney's office after he was convicted on 9 counts of first degree murder, but life doesn't work that way. Furthermore, the American government had no problem banning Canadian beef over Mad Cow concerns, but cried to the fucking heavens with other countries banned US beef for the same reason.
I would love like nothing else for an American president to come to Ottawa and demand a "renegotiation" of NAFTA to protect the environment and labor standards. I'd tell him or her to repeal Taft-Hartley and adopt Canada's. I'd also have a few things that I'd like to renegotiate myself. These would include the provisions that demand that Canada supply the United States with energy and fresh water at the previous year's levels, even if Canadians face a domestic shortage. Just to be a prick, I'd demand that the Americans allow Mexican trucking on their roads as NAFTA clearly calls for.
If that president refused, I'd use the "hammer" of opting out. I don't give a shit what pressures a president faces from his Senate or domestic opinion. If the United States can't be relied upon to keep its word, no one should give a fucking inch in dealing with them. No treaty at all is better than a selectively honored one.
Why would anyone renegotiate something that one party isn't complying with in the first place? Wasn't that the justification for invading Iraq?
The fact is that when Prime Minister Mulroney negotiated free trade with President Reagan in the eighties, Canada was being strangled by an out of control deficit and smothered in debt. We negotiated from a position of weakness. That's no longer true. Canada is now the only G8 country operating with a budget surplus and is rapidly paying down its debt. Oh, and we have all the oil now.
It is now believed that there might be more oil in western Canada than in the Arabian peninsula. If you believe President Bush's assertion that "America is addicted to oil" and know how the phenomenon of addiction works, you know that a junkie doesn't dictate the terms of a drug buy to his or her pusher. Can you think of another reason why Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers and the source of the overwhelming majority of terrorist money for decades, isn't a target on the War on Terror?
I'm still a free-trader. I'm just not sure that we can trade freely with the United States when it is incapable of trading honestly or fairly. As Senator John McCain pointed out yesterday in Ottawa, Canada is the single largest export destination for 36 of the 50 United States. That will almost certainly continue to be the case whether that trade is free or not. But while, say, Michigan cannot negotiate a free trade deal with China, India or the European Union, Canada can.
I'm sick to fucking death of being targeted by assholes like George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton because they want to please their domestic idiots. If you want to "negotiate," then let's do it. If you want to threaten to opt out of NAFTA, I'm at the point where I'm willing to do it first. Yes, I'll lose jobs in the process, but you'll lose ten times as many. And you'll lose your guaranteed access to oil and water in the process. Anyone who has read me for any length of time knows that I'm a great proponent of the American doctrine of mutually assured destruction.
Barack Obama, who once vowed to use the "hammer'' of opting out of NAFTA to force the renegotiation of the trade pact, now says he will seek change through dialogue if he is elected U.S. president.
The presumptive Democratic nominee says in the upcoming edition of Fortune magazine that campaign rhetoric can sometimes get "overheated and amplified," and he denies he would move to unilaterally reopen the trilateral trade deal.
(...)
"I'm not a big believer in doing things unilaterally," Obama said in the Fortune interview. "I'm a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make this work for all people.''
Hmmm, turns out that the famous Canadian embassy memo wasn't as false as Obama spun it to be, was it?
At a debate in Cleveland in the final days of the Ohio primary campaign in March, Obama agreed with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton when she said the six-month opt-out clause should be invoked on NAFTA to force changes.
"I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labour and environmental standards that are enforced," he said.
But every time Obama alters his statements on NAFTA, he lends credence to a Feb. 8 memo describing a meeting between his economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, and George Rioux, Ottawa's consul-general in Chicago.
The Canadian memo, which was leaked to The Associated Press, said Goolsbee told Rioux that Obama's campaign remarks about NAFTA should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy.
American assholes decrying Canadian interference in the US primary process caused an unimaginable amount of shit in Canadian politics. The "Obama memo" led to an investigation of the Prime Minister's Office and, indirectly, the resignation of the chief of staff. And now we learn that the memo was largely correct.
What said assholes need to learn is that if American candidates are going to use foreign nations to their political benefit, those nations reserve the right to respond. And we'll do so in your precious fucking primary system if it becomes necessary. If Stephen Harper's staff was behind the leak of the Obama memo - which it almost certainly was - my respect for them just went up about fifteen notches.
After 15 years of being fucked over by the Clinton and Bush administrations, we should cut any other candidate who tries it off at the knees whenever possible. Whoever actually leaked that memo to CTV and the AP should be awarded the Order of Canada and a loving, sloppy blowjob from our super-hot Governor General.
American politicians have shown absolutely no reluctance in using every weapon in their arsenals for decades now. I see no reason why foreign governments shouldn't involve themselves in the electoral process if they continue to be used as a tool for American liars and scumbags getting elected. Besides, it isn't like the United States is entirely innocent in inserting itself in the democratic political process of sovereign nations.
If an American candidate says one thing to a foreign government and another thing to the American people, that foreign government has an obligation to its own people to point that out. So long as American politicians are going to present themselves as the model of openness and democracy, they shouldn't be allowed to hide behind diplomatic niceties as they screw their neighbours. I only hope the Mexicans start doing the same thing.
To use Obama's own pilfered phrase from The Untouchables, Canada brought a gun to his NAFTA knife fight. And you know what? We kicked his fucking ass. We know a little bit about "the Chicago way" our own selves.
Senator Barack Obama announced Thursday that he would not participate in the public financing system for presidential campaigns. He argued that the system had collapsed, and would put him at a disadvantage running against Senator John McCain, his likely Republican opponent.
(...)
“The public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system,” Mr. Obama said. "John McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. And we’ve already seen that he's not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations."
Mr. Obama had pledged to meet with Mr. McCain following the primaries to attempt to work out an agreement on financing the campaigns. That meeting never took place, aides to Mr. Obama said, because a meeting between lawyers for the two sides was not fruitful. "It became clear to me that there wasn't any basis for future discussion," said Robert Bauer, the general counsel for Mr. Obama’s campaign.
Let there be no doubt at all, Obama is completely full of shit. His lies in justifying his decision are nothing short of mind-blowing.
John McCain has a long-standing histoy of wanting to restrain 527s. The problem is that the law won't let him. He actually did speak out against the evil and wrong Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, but since he wasn't on the ballot, the law didn't apply to him. A 527 is a tax-exempt organization and is therefore precluded from having any communication or coordination with a campaign. That's a matter of federal law.
If McCain were to even attempt to honor Obama's conditions, he'd be committing a felony and Obama knows that. You'll also note that Obama hasn't called on Democratic 527s like MoveOn.org or America Coming Together to hold their fire. Obama doesn't also point out that 15 of the 20 largest 527s in the 2004 cycle were alligned with Democrats
That goes double for Obama's assertion about McCain controlling the RNC. Under current law, the nominee is prohibited from coordinating with the national committee. That was just one of the campaign finance laws that President Clinton broke during the '96 campaign that led to McCain-Feingold in the first place.
If it were up to me, McCain-Feingold would have been avoided because the national parties and presidential candidates wouldn't get public money at all. Obama's right, but for all of the wrong reasons. And he's going to get away with it because so-called conservatives are so fucking dumb.
As much as conservatives like to bitch about campaign finance regulations, they never stopped taking public money to finance their campaigns, did they? Public financing is nothing more than welfare for rich white guys who want to rule the world. But as conservatives never fail to remind other welfare recipients, that money comes with strings attatched. Since recipients of the former AFDC program surrendered their Fourth Amendment rights, why in the fuck shouldn't the DNC and RNC surrender their First Amendment rights?
"Good government" shitheads love to say that campaign finance legislation is necessary to prevent things like bribery. What they overlook is that bribery is already a crime. As a matter of fact, it is already written into the Constitution as an impeachable offense. If conservatives were people to be taken halfway seriously, they would renounce "preventative" law enforcement measures across the board as opposed to the ones that just effect them at the ballot box.
If Republicans weren't completely full of shit, they wouldn't protest campaign finance laws as they accept public money. Wasn't "making government live by the same laws the people do" a part of the goddamned Contract With America?
If anything, Obama is taking the more conservative position on campaign finance. It would be better if he pledged to return his matching money from the primaries, though.
That doesn't mean that he isn't a duplicitious motherfucker, because he is. So far as I know, he has supported every reform law since Watergate but now refuses to abide by them. Obama is taking a prticularly rich "destroying the village to save it" position on public financing. It didn't work in Vietnam and it won't work in general elections. And thank Christ for that. I hope that all campaign finance laws are destroyed as a result.
If Obama believes that the system is "broken," he would do something other than abandon it to fix it, although that's pretty much the position the government has taken on New Orleans. The fact remains that Obama wants to save the city by watching it sink.
But Obama couldn't have picked two better issues to lie about. Every sensible adult thought he was lying about NAFTA and no one gives a shit about campaign finance, given what hypocrites Republicans have been about the system.
This guy's a pro, make no mistake about that. The only question is how stupid his adherents in the "new politics" movement are going to feel once they finally realize that Barack Obama was never one of them after all.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: LiesBy: The Rolling Stones From:Some Girls
DIAMONDS ARE A GIRL'S BEST FRIEND, STEPHANE DION TAXES CARBON
I've been studying politics like the sexless geek that I am for well over twenty years now. And if I've learned anything, it is that if you're a candidate whose leadership ability has been questioned for 18 solid months, you should come out of nowhere and announce that you're going to tax one of the very building blocks of life. That almost always works.
But be sure that you don't say anything specific about your new tax on all things animal, vegetable and mineral other than you'll implement it. Much better that your opposition can define you for months on end when you could be defining yourself. Better still if the only person willing to support you in public is Jason Cherniak.
That's all you really need to know about politics and, fortunately, that's all Stephane Dion knows. He's performing about as well as you would expect a guy who became leader of the Liberal Party of Canada by accident would. Since his ascension he has resisted repeated opportunities to bring down a government he himself has said is destroying Canada and waited for the perfect issue on which to campaign. And it turns out to be one that he explicitly rejected during the leadership campaign.
New taxes, as you might imagine, are not usually something that politicians promise during a campaign. They tend to be something that are lied about, usually prefacing the term with the word "no." This is either the craziest fucking thing that I've ever heard or Dion has learned a magical new secret about how the electorate thinks.
The plan started leaking on Wednesday and Dion is set to outline it in public today. To be fair, Dion's policy is actually being touted as a "tax shift." This will involve taxes being levied on carbon-based pollutants while income taxes are reduced. In theory, this makes the plan "revenue neutral," something that Canadians are supposed to cherish.
The problem is that taxes are never revenue neutral. It just doesn't happen that way. One can suppose that would be double true when the tax supposedly has a moral purpose such as saving the universe. Politicians are impatient and the public is stupid, so if the tax is implemented and Saskatchewan doesn't become Eden in the first six months, you can rest assured that the tax will become increasingly aggressive.
Furthermore, Canada is such a small country and our percentage of the world's carbon emissions is so insignificant that all 33 million of us could live the life of the Amish and it would do virtually nothing to stop global warming. Even the Bush administration, which created an energy task force comprised entirely of oil executives, is doing better at meeting Kyoto targets (which they didn't even ratify) than is Canada.
Then there's the issue of climate. You might not know this, but Canada gets awfully cold in the winter. And the winter lasts well into July. Home heating oil and natural gas are primary targets of the tax "shift." Not everyone makes enough to pay federal income taxes, but everyone does share the biological imperative to avoid freezing to death. Not only does the carbon shift expand the tax base, it does so in the most regressive way imaginable.
Yes, the Dion plan does call for credits for lower income Canadians, but those can be fleeting. Back in the 90s, when the Liberals learned that running an economy through massive deficits and carrying horrific debt loads, subsidies and tax credits are usually the first thing to go. Under Chretien even health care transfers to the provinces took a significant hit. If the economy goes into recession, which is happening even as we speak, the government is not going to start throwing money around.
Then there is the inflationary effect of the tax shift. Did you know that a chicken, for example, doesn't walk onto your plate and commit suicide? There are several, carbon intensive steps, involved in getting it there. Each one of those steps is about to become markedly more expensive if the Liberals get their way, and those costs will be passed on to you, the consumer.
Anyone who doesn't know what inflation in a recession looks like should study the 1970s. Not only does it cause extreme economic pain, wipe out your savings, and cost you your job, it makes you dress funny. Implementing this tax at the best of times would be inflationary in the extreme, doing it during a recession will be economic suicide. Furthermore, the costs of restructuring the entire tax code to accommodate Dion's pledge might be enough to put the government back into deficit.
Then there's the matter of doing this when gas prices are so high. As much as Americans like to bitch about that, they're paying the lowest price to the gallon of any country outside of OPEC. While US prices are averaging about four dollars a gallon, Canadians are paying over five.
While Liberal spinsters like Mr. Cherniak are saying that gasoline will be exempt, the leaks of the plan don't say that at all. What it calls for is "moratorium on new federal taxes on aviation and diesel fuel for the first year." The problem is that gasoline prices are dictated by the price of oil, from which both aviation, diesel and gasoline all come. I'm not at all sure that you can raise the price of some and not others.
This of course, calls into question the purpose of government. If you're of liberal leanings, this is the ideal tax for you. Not only will you still have your income taxes, theGSTand provincial sales taxes, you'll get the Liberals behaviour modification tax as well. You'll be ever so happy if you believe in the power of the government to make life better.
I don't happen share that belief in government. I'm of the mind that the federal government should be limited to paving roads and killing foreigners, two things that it isn't particularly good at. Most Canadians are shocked when the government can shovel snow in less than a week, but now we're expected to believe that it can actually save the world?
Then there's the electoral politics of this, and I've never seen anything handled so disastrously. Dion started musing about carbon taxes months ago but refused to give ant details. This has allowed the Conservatives to define the plan for him and not in the ways that he'd prefer. And most Liberals are just dishonest, not stupid. They have been the government for most of the last century and are the most successful political party in the history of western democracy. They understand how elections work and they understand that no one is going to vote for a giant new tax, shifted or otherwise. This has understandably caused all manner of discontent within the Liberal caucus.
This is not a revenue neutral tax in the way that literate adults understand the term. Not only is it extraordinarily inflationary, it moves Canada away from the principle of progressive taxation and toward a system that rewards or punishes behaviour. The problem is that the poorer you are the fewer options you have regarding your behaviour. Worse still, if you subsidize the bad behaviour of poorer Canadians, you defeat the stated purpose of the plan.
Even if this plan were the greatest thing ever, it is almost impossible to properly explain the context of a thirty second commercial or a ninety second debate answer. And unfortunately for Stephane Dion, those are the only things that voters pay attention to. All Stephen Harper is going to need to say is "Yes, climate change is important, but so is the cost of feeding your family. If you think that you aren't paying enough, I encourage you to vote for my opponent. However, if you think that you're paying too much, you should trust the Conservative Party to manage our fuel crisis and stop inflation before it starts."
And then Stephane Dion will be destroyed.
I don't know what it is about Dion, but he seems determined to make every day Christmas for Stephen Harper.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Fall on MeBy: R.E.M From:Life's Rich Pageant
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration by James Risen Finished, Thursday 19 January 2006
A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks by Andy Gill and Kevin Odegard Finished, 23 January 2006
Grits: An Intimate Portrait of the Liberal Party By Christina McCall-Newman Finished, 17 March 2006
Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architechts of American Power by David Rothkopf Finished, 6 April 2006
Strategery: How George W. Bush is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats and Confounding the Mainstream Media By Bill Sammon Finished, May 10, 2006
George Wallace: American Populist By Stephan Lesher Finished, June 15, 2006
Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi - U.S Connection By Gerald Posner Finished, June 20, 2006
Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan By Robert D. Kaplan Finished, June 27, 2006
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus By Rick Perlstien Finished, July 4, 2006
Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson And His Times 1961-1973 By Robert Dallek Finished, August 10, 2006
Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential By James Moore and Wayne Slater Finished, October 7, 2006
The Fall Of Baghdad By Jon Lee Anderson Finished, October 31, 2006
The Way It Works: Inside Ottawa By Eddie Goldenberg Finished, November 12, 2006
Child Of God By Cormac McCarthy Finished, November 18, 2006
Right Side Up: The Fall Of Paul Martin And The Rise Of Stephen Harper's New Conservatism By Paul Wells Finished, December 8, 2006
The Private Life Of Chairman Mao By Dr. Li Zhisui, Translation By Tai Hung Chao Finished, December 14, 2006
Exile On Main Street: A Season In Hell With The Rolling Stones By: Robert Greenfeild Finished, February 21, 2007
"Work Hard, Study ... And Keep Out Of Politics!" Adventures And Lessons From An Unexpected Public Life By: James A. Baker, III with Steve Fiffer Finished, March 7, 2007
Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story Of The Struggle For Control Of The United States Supreme Court By Jan Crawford Greenburg Finished, March 14, 2007
Imperial Life In The Emerald City: Life Inside Iraq's Green Zone By: Rajiv Chandransekaran Finished March 18, 2007
Memories Of My Melancholy Whores By: Gabriel Garcia Marquez Finished, March 21, 2007
Guests Of The Ayatollah: The First Battle In America's War With Militant Islam By: Mark Bowden Finished, April 4, 2007
Screwjack By: Hunter S. Thompson Finished, April 19, 2007
State Of Denial: Bush At War, Part III By: Bob Woodward Finished, April 22, 2007
31 Days: Gerald Ford, The Nixon Pardon, And A Government In Crisis By: Barry Werth Finished, May 6, 2007
At The Center Of The Storm: My Years At The CIA By: George Tenent with Bill Harlow Finished, May 28, 2007
No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner By: Robert Shrum Finished: July 1, 2007
Chief of Staff: Lyndon Johnson and His Presidency By: W. Marvin Watson with Sherwin Markmarn Finished: July 12, 2007
Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power By: Robert Dalleck Finished: July 17, 2007
1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft & Debs - The Election That Changed The Country By: James Chace Finished: August 5, 2007
Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey By: Linda Greenhouse Finished: August 20, 2007
President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination By: Richard Reeves Finished: September 20, 2007
Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush By: Robert Draper Finished: October 1, 2007
Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power By: Tom Flanagan Finished: October 9, 2007
Full Circle: Death and Resurrection in Canadian Conservative Politics By: Bob Plamondon Finished: October 17, 2007
My Years As Prime Minister By: Jean Chretien Finished: October 23, 2007
The Thumpin': How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution By: Naftali Bendavid Finished: October 25, 2007
Not A Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency By: Richard A. Posner Finished, October 29, 2007
Slash By: Slash and Anthony Bozza Finished: November 1, 2007
The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star By: Nikki Sixx and Ian Gittin Finished: November 2, 2007
Clapton: The Autobiography By: Eric Clapton Finished: November 5, 2007
Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet By: James Mann Finished: November 13, 2007
Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the American Political Conventions of 1968 By: Norman Mailer Finished: November 15, 2007
Memoirs: 1939-1993 By: Brian Mulroney Finished: December 3,2007
Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperalism By: P.J O'Rourke Finished: December 4, 2007
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 By: Lawrence Wright Finished: December 11, 2007
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 By: Ron Suskind Finished: December 19, 2007
Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President By: Stephen F. Hayes Finished: December 25, 2007
When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House By: Patricia O'Toole Finished: January 1, 2008
America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918 By: Richard Brookhiser Finished:January 7, 2008
The Road By: Cormac McCarthy Finished: January 9, 2008
The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews By: James Reston, Jr. Finished" January 11, 2008
Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford By: Thomas M. DeFrank Finished: January 15, 2008
The Bush Tragedy By: Jacob Weisberg Finished: January 18, 2008
When All You Have Is Hope By: Frank O'Dea with John Lawrence Reynolds Finished: January 21, 2008
Confessions of a Political Hitman: My Secret Life of Scandal, Corruption, Hypocrisy and Dirty Tricks That Decide Who Gets Elected (and Who Doesn't) By: Stephen Marks Finished: February 8, 2008
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court By: Jeffery Toobin Finished, February 18, 2008
The Architect: Karl Rove and the Dream of Absolute Power By: James Moore and Wayne Slater Finished, February 21, 2008
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln By: Doris Kerns Goodwin Finished, February 26, 2008
Post Office By: Charles Bukowski Finished: March 6, 2008
Factotum By: Charles Bukowski Finished: March 7, 2008
Women By: Charles Bukowski Finished: March 10, 2008
Queer By: William S. Burroughs Finished: March 12, 2008
To Live's To Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zant By: John Kruth Finished: March 17, 2008
Twenty Thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music By: David N. Meyer Finished: March 24, 2008
W.A.R: The Unauthorized Biography of William Axl Rose By: Mick Wall Finished: April 4, 2008
Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons By: Adrian Levy & Catherine Scott-Clark Finished: April 21, 2008
The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq By: George Packer Finished: May 5, 2008
Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush By: John W. Dean Finished: May 7, 2008
Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House By: Carol Felenthal Finished: May 12, 2008
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America By: Rick Perlstein Finished: June 2, 2008
Infidel By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Finished: June 11, 2008
The People's Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy By: Joe Mathews Finished: June 20, 2008
The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate By: James Rosen Finished: June 30, 2008
American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate & Beyond By: E. Howard Hunt w/ Greg Aunuapu Finished: July 4, 2008
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA By: Tim Weiner Finished: July 16, 2008
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder By: Vincent Bugliosi Finished: July 21, 2008
War by Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror By: John Yoo Finished: July 25, 2008
Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters By: Richard A. Clarke Finished: July 31, 2008
The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America By: Kenneth M. Pollack Finished: August 13, 2008
The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture By: Ishmael Jones Finished: August 19, 2008
Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba ... And Then Lost It to the Revolution By: T.J Enjlish Finished: August 25, 2008
Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia By: Ahmed Rashid Finished: Sepember 9, 2008
The Case Against the General: Manuel Noriega and the Politics of American Justice By: Steve Albert Finished: September 25, 2008
Condolezza Rice: An American Life By: Elisabeth Bumiller Finished: October 10, 2008
Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989 Michael Beschloss Finished: October 13, 2008
What People Are Saying About skippy
"hands down, Canada's most underrated blog" Damian Penny, The Undisputed Dean of Canadian Political Bloggers. Posted at Daimnation , Saturday October 21, 2006
"You can count on “Skippy” to make you think in different ways about familiar issues. You can also depend on him to be rude, offensive, and outrageous – if you're offended by completely uninhibited sexual imagery (and imagination!), don't read Skippy – but your prudery will keep you from an often interesting perspective." Posted On: Jamulblog, July 12, 2007
"Your Maximum Leader is beginning to think that the less he posts, the better Skippy’s political posts are. Indeed, your Maximum Leader even thought (just a few short moments ago) that if your Maximum Leader just stopped blogging all together would Skippy just keep on writing enough good material for two blogs? (Admittedly one of those blogs would be an X-rated social commentary/diary site and the second a remarkably well-informed and insightful political commentary site…)" Posted On: Naked Villainy, September 18, 2007
"I love your writing. few could pull off sarcastic humor and self-loathing like you do. You've turned self-disgust
into an art form." Posted By:Ophelia July 19, 2003
"hahaha um, not funny" Posted By: Ophelia July 17, 2003
"This is not fucking funny." Posted By: Bee August 21, 2003
"I join Bee in saying that this isn''t funny AT ALL. jesus christ, Skippy." Posted By: Ophelia August 23,
2003
"You are obiviously being kept down by the Mud People." Posted By: DrReverend August 21, 2003
"I''ll give you $50.00 if you kill yourself." Posted By: DrReverend August 19, 2003
"Last time I read this blog." Posted By: Dave, October 24, 2003
"I think you should stop talking about killing yourself and ACTUALLY kill yourself. For fuck's sake, everybody is
tired of hearing about how you might, just do it or face the fact that you are too pathetic to even kill yourself."
Posted By: A Caring Guy, October 25, 2003
"If Joey Ramone were alive today he'd probably shit in your mouth." Posted By: DrReverend November 11,
"When you're good, you're good. When you're bad, you're even better. See you in hell." Posted By: Anna
November 11, 2003
"Skippy, if you can prove to me that giving head and swallowing will without a doubt keep lung cancer and heart
disease at bay, you've earned yourself a BJ." Posted By: Mary Magdalicious, December 5, 2003
"Wow...you know nothing about politics." Posted Dr. Reverend, December 26, 2003
"You are a dick and should think seriously about killing your stupid blog - go get a job, you big fag"Posted
By: Princess Paragonian, December 29, 2003
"You have a, how shall i say.... appealing 'tough', yet gently gay look." (Univited PM) Posted
by:Jus20012002, January 2, 2004 .
"I hope jesus doesn't kick you in the nuts."Posted By: Mary Magdalicious February 2, 2004
"Stumbled on to your blog by accident and i must say alot of the stuff had me in stitches. Love it" Posted
By:Jeremy February 4, 2004
" .....sick."Posted By: Bee February 7, 2004
"Hey Skippy, you ever consider running for public office in the states? I know some people in the West Virginia state
government and our Senator can't live forever.Hell, even Strom, Thomas-Jefferson-Fan, Thurmond died
eventually.Posted By: Ford W. Mavrick, February 9, 2004
Wow, for someone who is so opinionated, you really don't know shit about American or Canadian culture. You appear to
know even less about history." Posted By: Dr. Reverend February 13, 2004
"Your blog's the best I have come across in a long time. I may not agree with all you say but the verve with which
you say it and the humour and irreverance is terrific. These days when the media just reproduces the handout from central
control, blogs like yours do a great deal to form informed opinion in a democratic society. Thanks. Keep it up."
Posted By:Anandan February 13, 2004
"SKIPPY pities ME? Where's my noose?" Posted By: Kilgore Trout March 22, 2004
"Jesus Skippy. Now Allah is going to kick you in the nuts" Posted By: Mary Magdalicious March 22, 2004
"I could make one that says "Skippy has a small penis" although his cock is superb. Posted By: Bestest Pussy March 23,2004
"Cunt sucking is for bitches.You're considered one of the girls because you dress like one. Posted By: Dr. Reverend March 24, 2004
"John Malkovich is one sexy bastard. I have such a thing for him. And I never realized til now, Skippy, how much you resemble John Malkovich...this, by default, makes you also one sexy bastard. See how that works?" Posted By: Zombie March, 26, 2004
"Too bad you live up north. It could have been beautiful.
Ever since I started coming here and saw your pic I wondered why you weren't getting more action. You are not a bad looking guy at all.
Maybe the girls are just...well, that's enough kindness for one day." Posted By: Serenity March 26, 2004
"Hell, if they make gay marriage legal, I'll marry you..." Posted By: Outpatient March 26, 2004
"You look creepier than the REM faggot. But he looks much more like a homersexual." Posted By: Dr. Reverend March 27, 2004
"Skippy, your hits will go up again if you post pictures of your man nipples. Lots of man nips." Posted By: Mary Magdalicious April 15, 2004
"What the fuck? You turning faggot? Posted By: Dr. Reverend April 16, 2004
"Sometimes it gets to be just a little too much. Sharing, that is." Posted By: Bee May 23, 2004
"I'll give you $5.00 if you make the fucking font you use on your blog bigger.
I'll give you $50.00 if you stop fucking writing about American politics.
I'll give you $500.00 if you fucking kill youself." Posted By: Dr. Reverend May 26, 2004
"Of course women like jerks.
Why the fuck do you think they like me?
I guess you've learned nothing from me over all these years." Posted By: Dr. Reverend May 29, 2004
"Sometimes a bitch just has to die." Posted By: Ford W. Maverick May 29, 2004
"It looks like we have more in common than the swastikas carved in our foreheads."Posted By: Dr. Reverend May 29, 2004
"This might be a shallow and 'Waiting-for-Godot-like' comment but...you seem to have not only brains but also beauty." Posted By: Nietzscheswife June 7, 2004
"Skippy, you are such a twisted bastard. Seriously. Why haven't we had sex yet?"Posted By: 0phelia June 25, 2004
"Just found your site. I find some of the things you say quite disgusting. And really quite enjoyable,so keep up the good work."Posted By: Big Al June 28, 2004
"I've read most of your blog. I'd say that so far it's the best I've come across, and believe me, I've seen a few. It's funny, well written (except for the spelling...) and interesting. There will always be those few idiots who just don't get it. It's useless to get worked up about it." Posted By: Johnny June 30, 2004
"Skippy... Go for the facial tattoo. I dig em', and fuck what those other bitches think. You can always bite their tits off if they back talk you." Posted By: Mary Magdalicious July 1, 2004
"Go fuck yourself up your butt." Posted By: Reek Stankleberry July 6, 2004
"Well if ass-fucking won't keep Satan away, I just don't know what will." Posted By: Dr. Reverend July 7, 2004
"dude, you're killing me. keep it up." Posted By: Son of Nixon July 22, 2004
"Are you always either naked or in a suit?" Posted By: Rehella July 22, 2004
"That person should speak for himself or herself. 'Cause you really are that much of a cunt, skippy." Posted By: Kilgore Trout August 4, 2004
"I've read you for a long time but have never commented before. That isn't a slight to your great writing ability, it's mainly because I don't want to be seen here!" Posted By: Paul August 4, 2004
" Dead on. Bulls-eye. I take back what I said about you being a cunt. For now." Posted By: Kilgore Trout August 4, 2004
"Know what, Skippy? You're alright." Posted By: Anna August 18, 2004
"Excellent work. Damn you for being so dead on." Posted By: The Maximum Leader August 24, 2004
"Skippy, fuck the puppy idea. Try getting a monkey that smokes. That will get you laid." Posted By: Mary Magdalicious August 27, 2004
"As to the beard - I like the clean shaven better - and what's wrong with a bald head? Bald heads are hot on some guys - unfortunately most can't pull it off * sigh * You look like you can pull it off though and that's a good thing - not a bad.
BTW, love your blog. I saw it in my referrers and thought it was just a random hit. Then I started reading and found you to be hilarious - it was only after about 10 posts that I noticed you linked me. I was more than flattered - linked by someone I was about to link anyway - awesome. Thanks" Posted By: Kinky August 27, 2004
"Fuckin' Goy bastard." Posted By: Dr Reverend December 19,2004
"Who does a guy have to sleep with to get one of his Skippy quotes pasted to the sidebar?
Great googly-moogly." Posted By: Smallholder December 20, 2004
"Are you a child molester or what's the story?" Posted By: Fukinator, December 28, 2004
"Sick dude." Posted By: DCayer December 29, 2004
"You officially suck." Posted By: Sorry, January 22, 2005
"I heart you, Skippy" Posted By: Karinsky, January 25, 2005
"As I've stated before, you were quite skilled in bed and I had no need to fake any of my multiple orgasms." Posted By: 0phelia, June 30, 2005
"I love Skippy. I swear I do. The only blogger more twisted than me." Posted on: Velociworld, July 26, 2005
" You are so fucking ignorant about America. And while the American people ARE stupid, so are you." Posted By: Bill Lassiter, August 2, 2005
"How can you not love a man who hates himself so viciously?" Posted on: It's All About De , August 31, 2005
"If I wasn't positive that all Canadian men had tiny penises, I'd be all over that Skippy." Posted On: It's All About De
"I've seen pictures of you and I'd say you're fuckable." Posted By: Joan, September 29, 2005
" I love your posts on Canadian politics even more than I love your posts on porn.
And I love your porn posts.
Why the hell do you waste all this talent on the internet? Write a book or something, goddammit! Posted By: Cliff S., November 17, 2005
"Let it never be said that underneath your self-cavilling, bitter (yet strangely egomaniacal) surface that you never take the time to give the people what they want. Even if it's just one people. Gawd bless you, Skippy! Posted By: Locke, November 18, 2005
"Wow! I don't know that I've ever been flattered and yet somewhat revolted at the same time... It's an interesting sensation." Posted By: Dewey in Toronto, December 1, 2005
"Very often, debating you is like playing whack a mole: You pop up some premised assertion moles, I pull out my mallet and start whacking, then you pop up more premised assertion moles - which are mostly or completely unrelated to the original moles I was whacking at. Your stock of moles seemingly stretches into infinity. And yet, an endless supply of moles does not equate to cogent argument.
Very often, debating you is like speaking to a salesman who will not answer a particular direct question, and instead flies off on the flight of rhetorical splendor known as "baffling them with bullshit." I'm impressed with your rhetorical skills, and your IQ, and your accumulation of knowledge. I'm impressed that I'm the American citizen, yet you might have a more thorough knowledge of the American Constitution than I. And yet, these impressive things are not substitutes for cogent argument."Posted By; gcotharn, December 21, 2005
"Besides, you seem to think you're the least respectable person I know. While you're often right, you're wrong on that count. Careful, I might out YOU as a nice guy. Or something." Posted By: Dewey In Toronto, December 27, 2005
"I've been to Toronto. The most dangerous thing I saw there was an 11 foot tall red head with shaved balls."Posted By: Judy, December 31, 2005
"There was this "Caught on Tape!" video I watched back in my highschool days where one of the scenes shows two people starting to cross the railroad tracks. One looks up at the last minute and sees the train, the other does not. In the commercial, it cuts away just before the train does its thing, but the video...
Your blog is like a twisted version of the video. We know the train is going liquify you in shocking gory fashion, but that's why we keep coming back. It's so much more fun that we both know the train is coming and you still gleefully walk into its path...and we love you all the more for it." Posted By:Locke, January 13, 2006
"Fuck. I'm hooked." Posted By: DeAnna, January 14, 2006
"Your Maximum Leader has found Skippy's commentary more insightful and interesting than anyone elses. So now he supposes that Skippy will go back to writing about porn and strippers he meets in the subway." Posted By: The Maximum Leader on Naked Villainy January 24, 2006
"Slightly crazed is fine, but with the beard you look like a total nutjob. If you ever hope to get laid again, for fuck's sake, Skippy, NEVER, EVER grow a saddam beard. You're welcome."Posted By: The Lady O, 28 January, 2006
"Maybe we should get married. My readers could support us by purchasing my worn panties and you could be the panty pimp." Posted By; Joan 28 January 2006
" I know it must be hard for you...being objectified by women all the time. But come on, how can they really help themselves? Have you seen yourself lately? Your pheramones preceed you into a room (as does your crotch). Don't blame it all on them...you did choose to leave your house. :D" Posted By: Joan, 3 February, 2006
"Skippy, you sarcastic twerp." Posted By: Arwen, 8 February 2006
"Just so you know.. if I had to choose between Moussaoui or Skippy.. You'd win. Even if I know what an asshole you are. Posted By; Judy, 13 February 2006
"I'd be willing to sign a legal document stating that is IS ok, in fact, to masturbate whilst thinking of me." Posted By: DeAnna (Who seems unaware of my reputation as an outlaw) February 24, 2006
"Feel free to masturbate while thinking of me...actually, do you need some of my panties to help you with that?" Posted By: Joan, February 24, 2006
"I blame myself for this. I have been too lenient with you. Your Godless behaviour must come to an end. You will receive a severe beating this weekend and I am contemplating removing your testicles." Posted By: Dr. Reverend, February 24, 2006
"Just remember skippy, the US never threw a fit when you smuggled your own personal WMD over the border twice a year. After all, it wasn't like you were hiding in your pants or anything.
All's fair in love and war, so to speak." Posted By: Judy, April 4, 2006
"Wow...nothing hotter than a man willing to issue fatwas for pussy." Posted By: Joan, April 16, 2006
"You sir, are a brilliant writer." Posted By: Judy, May 4, 2006
"I think I'm falling in love." Posted By: DeAnna, May 11, 2006
"THIS IS THE MOST DIABOLICAL FALSITY YOU HAVE EVER ENGAGED IN!!!!
I was intending to kick you in the face upon our next meeting, but now it's obvious that I must douse your scrotum in kerosene and set your testicles aflame. Alas, it is the only way you will learn." Posted By: Dr. Reverend, May 12, 2006
"And i would like to commend you on some excellent blogging. This particular story would normally warrant a few cryptically humorous lines and a link. To an ordinary blogger. But you managed to wring an essay of New Yorker-esque proportions out of it. That takes talent. Your beautiful young friend is right. I see big things for you in the future." Posted By: Annika, June 4, 2006
" I like a man who will unabashedly tell someone his penis size because hes unashamed. Thats hot.
*raises hand* I'll take that 6.5, thank ya" Posted By: Kinky, June 6, 2006
"Elvis, like skippy, is the very definition of rock and roll. Posted By: Rube, June 10, 2006
" I'm beginning to think you're the only good man left in the world, skippy. WTF?" Posted By: By: DeAnns, June 11, 2006
"Just so everyone knows.
Skippy does indeed, taste like bacon.
And, any guy who doesn't know cum tastes good to real women, is clueless." Posted By: Judy, July 2, 2006
"There was a British columnist whose work was described as 'a suicide note in weekly installments.'
This blog is sort of like that." Posted By: Gadfly, July 6, 2006
"Jeez, Skippy. Sometimes I really hate coming here." Posted By: Cynlee, July 18, 2006
"Someone needs to throttle you with a riding crop...truly!" Posted By: Joan, July 18, 2006
"Holy mother of god. I just had an orgasm. It's official: I'm devoting the rest of my life to you, skippy." Posted By: DeAnna, July 19, 2006
"Skippy, sometimes I'm not quite sure of your sanity, but you are without a doubt the baddest morning news reading, quiz show hosting, talent introducing PIMP in the motherfuckin' blogosphere." Posted By: Shank, July 19, 2006
