M. CHRETIEN'S INTERESTING RELATIONSHIP WITH THE TRUTH
Canada's 20th prime minister, the Right Honourable Jean Chretien, P.C, M.P has an interesting relationship with the truth. It isn't that he's lying so much as his lifelong psychosis compels him to believe things that are demonstrably not so.
Chretien's recent memoir, Paul Martin is a Cunt My Years as Prime Minister is chock full of examples of this. As just one example, he blames the Mulroney government for a debt and deficit that actually exploded under Pierre Trudeau's government of which he was minister of finance for a time. When Mulroney first took office, Chretien said of his government, "We left the cupboard bare."
There are so many instances of half-truths and omissions in his ghost written tome that one can only assume that he's either extremely forgetful, batshit fucking crazy, or chronically dishonest. And one of the topics that M. Chretien is evasive about is the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In My Years as Prime Minister, Chretien is very careful about attributing motives for the invasion to President Bush and his misadministration, although he does say that he was dubious about the American's WMD case. Now that he's doing publicity for the book, he's not so shy.
Jean Chretien believes the United States invaded Iraq for oil.
The former prime minister told the popular Radio-Canada television show Tout le monde en parle why he thinks U.S. President George W. Bush declared war on the Middle Eastern country in 2003.
"There are some people who suspect it was oil, for the control of oil. . . ,'' Chretien said in French during the interview, which aired Sunday evening.
The show's host, Guy A. Lepage, then told Chretien he thinks everyone believes the invasion was for oil.
"Well, me too,'' Chretien said.
There's been one question that I've been asking my countrymen for years now. That is "What did Chretien actually do in office?" Some will say that he ended Canada's deficit spending and left us giant surpluses. However, that would have been impossible without Brian Mulroney's Free Trade Agreement and the Goods and Services Tax, two things that the Liberal Party of Canada specifically campaigned against in the 1993 general election.
The second answer? "He kept us out of Iraq."
This is fascinating when you look at it in the context of what he said at the time an in My Years as prime Minister. Back then (and his memoirs were only released last month) he was emphatic that Canada would participate - although the U.S only ever wanted Canada's diplomatic support - in the war if were authorized by the U.N Security Council.
That raises a really interesting question. Does Jean Chretien believe that it's okay for third countries to invade someone and steal their resources for no reason if the Security Council says it is? If he does, that says a lot about Canada's morality in foreign policy under Chretien. Otherwise, he lied to the country in the lead up to the war and continued to do so until this past weekend.
His answer then gets even more convoluted.
"Saddam (Hussein) was a very bad dictator, but he was not a religious dictator,'' he said Sunday.
"He fought against religious leaders in Iran, and that was an excuse (for the Americans) to go to Iraq. It doesn't make sense.''
I'm not sure exactly what Saddam's religious proclivities have to do with anything here. Is he saying that Canada would have joined the invasion if Saddam only went to mosque more? By the way, Saddam didn't just invade theocratic Iran, he also attacked secular Kuwait 1990 and his military was poised to strike Saudi Arabia.
Amazingly, the United Nations did authorize the use of force to reverse Iraq's 1990 aggression. Equally amazing, Chretien voted against Canada's participation in same in the Commons as the leader of the Official Opposition. He said that Canadian forces should go to the Persian Gulf, but leave if anything untoward - such as a war - happened while we were there.
He was against a war that the UN authorized to reverse unprovoked aggression, but he would have been for a war of conquest with no other point than to pilfer another nation's natural resources if the UN said it was okay.
I've spent twenty years trying to figure out the logic of Jean Chretien. Like figuring out the thought process of, say, the Manson Family, that might be impossible, but too fun to stop trying. I hope other journalists press Chretien on this because I just know that he'll respond by breaking out his collection of shiny golf balls again. He tends to do that when faced with tough questions.
To the eternal discredit of the Canadian people, it works.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Cracked Actor By: David Bowie From: Aladdin Sane
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the Republicans can't win the presidency next year, regardless of who they nominate.
Holding the White House for a third term is so difficult that, even under ideal circumstances, it has only happened three times in the last century (1920-32, 1932-52 and 1980-92.) As you might imagine, this season is hardly ideal for the GOP.
George W. Bush has devoted his entire presidency to turning everything Republicanism once stood for on its head. To re-read his campaign speeches and debate statements from 2000 is to not know whether to laugh, cry or punch somebody in the face. Remember how candidate Bush promised fiscal discipline and a "humble" foreign policy? Apparently, neither does he.
Combined with a fantastically bloated and corrupt congressional caucus, Bush and his party have governed like New Deal Democrats on a drinking binge. Actually, that might be an unfair comparison as there was actually a point to the New Deal. The only motive behind the GOP's racking up 9 trillion dollars in debt is to spread their filthy lucre to as many of their constituents as possible in the hopes of winning re-election by increasingly large margins.
Karl Rove has spent the last decade babbling about a "permanent Republican majority." In retrospect, it couldn't be clearer that the he decided early on that the only way that this majority could be acheived is by not being Republicans in any ideological way.
When in opposition, the GOP almost defeated Clinton's crime bill because he proposed spending a few bucks on dumb shit like midnight basketball. Almost immediately after taking power, they were proposing $400 billion farm bills, $750 billion prescription drug benefits and a trillion dollar Social Security reform package that would have immediately made the federal government the single largest player in the stock market.
In short, not only are they whores, they're particularly pricey ones.
No matter who they nominate, the Republicans are almost certain to lose if for no other reason than any potential message they have inspires little but laughter.
In 2000, Bush didn't run against Gore as much as he ran against Bill Clinton's penis. That's what his pledge to "restore honor and dignity to the Oval Office" was shorthand for. In so far as it won in a time of peace and prosperity, which usually favors the incumbent party, it was an effective tactic. I don't think that Bush could have won any other way. He won the presidency the same way his predecessor got his carnal gratification, by using Monica Lewinsky.
Times have changed a great deal in the last eight years. Peace is something that Americans will one day have to explain to their grandchildren the way our grandparents told us about life before television. And with the U.S dollar losing nearly half its value in five years and the housing market in danger of imminent collapse, prosperity isn't exactly a winning issue for Republicans these days. The War on Terror, such an effective issue in 2002 and 2004, will effectively be neutralized by Iraq.
Any hope that a Republican nominee has of some close to winning is running against Bush, effectively creating a third-party candidacy using Republican money and machinery. But no one seriously expects this president to take attacks on his "legacy" lying down, and attacking the Congress only guarantees a larger Democratic majority in each house. And as it is, the Democrats are going to be at or over 60 seats in the Senate by this time next year.
The only Republican who even has a hope of pulling it off is McCain, who consistently voted against Bush's insane spending, but he's so tied to Iraq that I'm not sure how effective it would be.
So let's stop pretending that the GOP has anything even close to a 50% chance of winning next year. If things were going well, history indicates that it would be an uphill battle. If Richard Nixon couldn't succeed Eisenhower, there's virtually no way that any of the Republican candidates can succeed Bush.
And please don't count on Team Jesus to pull the party's nuts out of the fire. Mark Foley made sure that religious conservatives stayed home last year, and Larry Craig, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani and going to keep them there next year. If I'm skeptical about the honesty of anyone who has a "revelation" about something as fundamental as abortion in their fifties, I'm guessing the God Squad is, too. Anyone who changes that many positions on that many issues that late in life is either lying, stupid, or hasn't been paying attention. Remember, I've never said that evangelicals are stupid, just that they believe silly things.
Furthermore, the Religious Right has been powerfully fucked over on their priorities for thirty years now. Have you noticed fewer abortions taking place over that period? And while the proportion of homosexuals in the general population has more or less remained static, their numbers have exploded in the Republican congressional caucus. Sometimes a wide stance is more than just a wide stance.
How loyal would you be to a group that hasn't given you anything they promised over that long a period?
I'm not all that surprised that former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey has essentially come out and said that there's no stopping Hillary Clinton from winning next year. Armey is, well, a dick. He lives to be a contrarian asshole whose favorite past-time in Congress was pissing everybody off. And he has a lot of free time these days.
Almost in spite of myself, I like Armey. We share similiar interests, like a burning hatred for Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush and Tom DeLay. Also, his remarks about Barney Frank are pretty fucking funny, if exceptionally dickish. Dick Armey doesn't give a shit what you think about him because he was never overly fond of you in the first place. I find that refreshing in politics.
Anyhow, Armey wrote this essay, which is supposed to be about Hillary's inevitability, is really just an exercise in ripping his party a new asshole.
No doubt, Hillary Clinton has the Democrat primary all wrapped up. A couple of one-term senators are simply no match for the political machine she and her husband have built. I won’t go so far as to say that it’s not possible for a Republican to defeat her in the general election. But as things stand today, the GOP has a very real set of problems that are larger than any of the party’s candidates.
First and foremost, the Republican brand as effective stewards of the taxpayer dollar is in tatters, and the shredding doesn’t look to stop any time soon. Just last week, 138 House Republicans joined the Democrats in voting to override the president’s veto of a wasteful and pork-ridden Water Resources bill. That vote was a shameful display of personal politics over the national interest, and it contains the seeds of destruction of whatever conservative principles remain in the Republican party.
The callow accommodation to big-spending Democrats in Congress is one of the ways the Republican party will return itself to the days of serving as a compliant, permanent minority. Happy for table scraps, elected Republicans will simply abandon the ideas of their party in order to “get along”.
No wonder Americans prefer Democrats on the economy, taxes, and spending issues, according to recent polling data. When the choice is between Democrats, and the Democrat-lite ideas the GOP has become so comfortable offering, the Democrats will win every time.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Okay, I probably could have but I'm very lazy.
The next time somebody tries to tell you what a braintrust President Bush is, just ask them why he thought being the spiritual heir to Lyndon Johnson was such a good idea forty years after Democrats recognized that it wasn't. It's such a good question that I still can't figure out an answer that isn't batshit fucking crazy or makes me hate voters any less than I already do, and I've spent three years thinking about it.
Mr. Armey appears to be a little more optimistic about Republican fortunes than I am. He thinks that Hillary will win one term as president and two if she's lucky. I, on the other hand, think the GOP is fucked for the long haul. I don't think that you'll see Republican political dominence like you did between 1994 and 2006 (and make no mistake, on a policy level, Bill Clinton after 1994 was three times the Republican president George W. Bush is) again in my lifetime.
It took the Republican Party twenty years to even seriously think about electing a pesident after Herbert Hoover, and Bush is at least as bad as Hoover was. Actually, I think people have been unfair to Hoover. The Great Depression was an unprecedented event in history and no one else was able to deal with it effectively either.
But this president and his party have spent the better part of a decade trying to replicate Jimmy Carter's economy and creating a foreign policy that only a dyed-in-the-fucking-wool anarchist can admire. Bush no sooner learned how to spell the word veto and his congressional cronies joined the Democrats in overriding one on an insanely oligarchial water bill. By the way, the last time a veto was overridden was in 1986 when sanctioning South Africa's apartheid government was at issue.
Under George Bush and his Congress, everything Republicans ever believed was shunned. So how are the current candidates responding to this? Well, two of the leading candidates - on issue after fucking issue - are saying "Yeah, well that's what I believed last week. Let's pretend that never happened, okay? 9/11 changed everything. Even Social Security and abortion."
Not only are those fuckheads going to lose, they deserve to.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Little Bit of Whore By: Johnny Thunders From: Jet Boy: The Anthology
CANADA: WHERE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT .... UNTIL YOU DON'T
Canadians are an odd people for four reasons.
First, we're all lumberjacks. That's not entirely true. Some of the fucking thrill-seekers in Quebec trade in beaver pelts but the rest of us try not to talk about Quebec too much.
Second, each and every one of us has had out genitals genetically enhanced to previously unknown levels of fabulousness. Foreigners are known to have explosive and potentially harmful orgasms whenever they so much as see one of us naked. Frankly, I'm shocked that we're still allowed to leave the country.
Any questions regarding the above should be referred to Pamela Anderson and Peter North.
Third, the Jews don't control Hollywood, Canadians do. Rather, we did until Jim Carrey's career went south, but we still have Mike Myers and the Chinese chick on Grey's Anatomy, and Eugene Levy has been in every movie released in the last fifteen years, so I guess we still call the shots.
Fourth, the justices of our Supreme Court dress like Santa Claus and deliver particuarly weird rulings from time to time. This comes from the old English tradition of looking like a douchebag when trying to be taken seriously.
Okay, the last part was only half true. The Supreme Court of Canada delivers particularly weird rulings all the time. It's actually gotten to the point where the townsfolk are shocked when a ruling comes down that seems to follow a discernable pattern of logic.
There are a couple of reasons for this. You see, the prime minister of Canada has almost Caligula-like powers of appointment. There is no confirmation process whatsoever. Executive appointments are not subject to either review of any kind by Parliament. I'm convinced by any doubt that the only reason that crazy bastard, Jean Chretien, didn't name a horse to the Senate or Supreme Court is that its been done. To be sure, Chretien is a psychopath, but he's a psychopath with an exacting demand for originality in his weirdness.
That said, no one has any idea at all what a potiential justice's legal theories are before they take their seats on the court.
Canada also has what can only be described as a useless and odious constitution. If you actually sit down and read the Charter of Rights and Freedoms - which no rational adult should ever do sober - it looks fairly standard upon first glance. However, closer inspection reveals that it has two built in "self-desctruct" mechanisms.
The first is Section 1, which reads "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
That is to say that your right to, say, free speech can be limited by either an act of Parliament or a court ruling. All they need do is deem such a limit to be "reasonable" and "demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." There is no compulsion to actually explain how such a limitation is reasonable, or how any restriction of personal freedom can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. I'm given to believe that restricting freedom has a tendency of making a society less free, rather than more. On the other hand, I'm a really bad Canadian.
Should the courts or the legislature fail to find a way to exercise even that overly broad section to fuck with you, Parliament or any provincial legislature can invoke Section 33 - the dreaded Notwithstanding Clause - to over-rule any court ruling. Your right to free speech or to free of unreasonable search and seizure can be suspended at any time, for any reason, anywhere in Canada.
Pretty sweet, huh?
Canadian jurisprudence also has no use for absolutes in protecting the rights of the people. We do have an exclusionary rule, but there is no Canadian equivilent of Mapp v. Ohio, which would dictate that any illegally produced evidence be excluded from a criminal trial. Such evidence may be excluded, but that is within the sole discretion of the trial court. Furthermore, such a ruling almost never constitutes reversible error at the appelate level.
The government of Canada and the judiciary can pretty much do whatever it wants and the people have no recourse. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is really little more than the USA PATRIOT Act writ large and dressed up in the garb of an instrument of democratic governance. According to my Supreme Court, the only inalienable right I have is to marry a homosexual. And that would be funny, if there wasn't a very real possibility that I may be forced to resort to that pretty soon. I'm awfully lonely.
And this week, the Supreme Court of Canada demonstrated yet again how seriously it takes the fundamental rights of criminal suspects and, by extension, all Canadians.
I trust that everyone has seen those cops and robbers shows on television that are ever so popular. You know how on Law & Order when the cops are interrogating a skell and said skell insists on not saying shit until his shyster comes a-callin' and everybody stops talking? That's called invoking your right to remain silent. It is seen as being a pretty important thing in the criminal justice system pretty much everywhere that pretends to respect the rights of the individual.
In the United States, it is called the Mirandarule and pretty much everyone who isn't Rudy Giuilani agrees that its a neat legal protection. And that's only because Rudy has a rather "elastic" view of what the Bill of Rights provides for.
The right to silence in Canada is not an absolute rule that requires police to stop interrogating people who have no wish to speak with investigators, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.
In a 5-4 decision yesterday, the court refused to treat the right to silence, as guaranteed by Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in the same manner as the "Miranda" rule so deeply ingrained in the United States, where police must cease questioning anyone who asserts a desire to say nothing.
"What the common law recognizes is the individual's right to remain silent," said Justice Louise Charron, who wrote the majority decision. "This does not mean, however, that a person has the right not to be spoken to by state authorities."
Essentially, getting arrested is now a lot like a child's relationship with his or her parents. Mom and Dad will keep pestering and nagging about why the cat's head is in the fishbowl, and the kid plugs his fingers in his ears and sings "I can't hear you" over and over again.
Eventually, the kid's ears and throat start to hurt, so he explains to mom and dad that his imaginary friend decapitated Garfield. Amazingly, it's almost never the imaginary friend who goes to bed without dinner.
The case at issue, Regina v. Singh is particularly enlightening in respect to what the cops are now allowed to do.
The court was sharply divided over an appeal by Jagrup Singh, who asserted his wish to remain silent no fewer than 18 times while under interrogation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 2002 in connection with a shooting that killed an innocent bystander at a bar in Surrey, B.C.
His questioner, Cpl. David Attew, admitted his objective was to get a confession "no matter what."
Singh eventually admitted being in the bar and identified himself in a photograph, incriminating revelations in a case where no forensic evidence linked him to the crime. He was convicted of murder in 2003.
Singh argued his statements were obtained in violation of his right to silence under Section 7 of the Charter and asked the court to adopt a rule that would require police, unless they have a signed waiver, to refrain from questioning any person who invokes that right.
You read right, Singh invoked his right to remain silent no fewer than 18 times. That's pretty impressive. Indeed, it's a number that approaches how many times I say "Wanna fuck?" over the course of a day whenever I find myself in a relationship with a woman who happens to live in the same time zone as I do. Said woman usually invokes her right to remain silent, too, although she also frequently invokes her right to call me a "brain-damaged, oversexed, mongloid monster." Then she invokes her right to tell me that her pussy hurts. When I point out that her ass looks okay, she invokes her right to throw me out of her apartment.
In their majority opinion, the Court used the most ridiculous stretch of constitutional logic I've ever heard to tell Mr. Singh to go fuck himself.
But imposing such a rigid requirement would ignore the state's important interest in solving crime and goes well beyond provisions in the Charter and common law that protect a person's freedom to choose whether to speak with police, Charron said. "One can readily appreciate that the police could hardly investigate crime without putting questions to persons from whom it is thought that useful information can be obtained," she wrote on behalf of Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Justices Michel Bastarache, Marie Deschamps and Marshall Rothstein.
Your right to remain silent is now officially subservient to the right of the police to not have to work very hard. Your rights are now only as effective as your ability to be as much of a prick as the cops are. And it is important to remember that cops work in shifts and you don't. You can be held in an interrogation room for days.
There is no time in a person's life when his or her rights are more important than when that person is in the custody of the state. And those rights are now lawfully less important than the right of Corporal Attew to be home before dinner gets cold. That doesn't seem right to me, but I don't know all of the facts. Mrs. Attew might be a real cunt when poor Dave comes home late for his eats.
What is especially shocking is something that was pointed out in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Morris Fish.
What's "particularly disturbing," said Fish, is that Attew "subtly but unmistakably" urged Singh to forsake his lawyer's advice.
So not only is your right to remain silent gone, so is your right to to retain and instruct counsel (Section 10.b of the Charter) and the right not to be compelled to be a witness in proceedings against yourself in respect of the offence (Section 11.c)
What I find most troubling is the Court's endorsement of Corporal Attew's wanting to get a confession "no matter what." Would "no matter what" include slapping Mr. Singh around if he didn't talk? How about pulling out his fingernails? Sure, Singh has the right "not to be subjected to any cruel and unusual treatment" (Section 12,) but he also used to have the right to remain silent and retain and instruct counsel.
You might be able to make a case for the "reasonableness" of continued questioning after the right to remain silent has been invoked if Jagrup Singh had, say, planted a bomb that was about to go off. And you could only make that case with any measure of self-respect if you were Jack fucking Bauer. Few of us have days as bad as he does.
But that didn't happen in this case. Singh shot somebody in a bar. Unfortunate for the victim, but a pretty commonplace occurence, all told. And for that, the RCMP decided that the Charter and decades of common law could be ignored. Remember, Attew had no idea that this case would end up in front of the Supremes and how they would rule if it did. Can you imagine what the fucking Mounties are doing in kidnapping or terrorism cases, or when they figure that no one's paying attention? Christ, I'm amazed that those assholes don't get their man more often.
Look, I don't believe that cops, Crown attorneys or judges are necessarily bad people - although they frequently are. I believe that they're just like anyone else, interested in making their day go by as quickly and easily as possible, and are willing to cut a few corners to do that. You do it and I know that I sure as shit do.
But the difference between us and law enforcement and the judicial process couldn't be more profound. When they cut corners, they undermine the freedom of the people and the fundamental building blocks of a democratic society. Do it often enough, and you create a police state, albeit an exceptionally polite one. Canada is very rapidly becoming what we so often proclaim overselves better than. A few more rulings like this one and the only significant difference between us and a country like Myanmar will be that we have a much more adorable way of pronouncing the word "about." And our fantastic genitals. One should never forget those.
This country's priorities couldn't be more retarded. Say what you will about Ronald Allen Smith, but I'm pretty sure that his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights were respected in 1982 and that he received a fair trial. For all I care, Smith can be cut to pieces and fed to ferrets before he actually expires.
I trust the state of Montana enough to believe that his conviction and execution are righteous and pure. I don't trust my own government to same degree and can't therefore support the death penalty here, although I'd love to. Canadians are willing to sacrifice process at home as they whine about punishment abroad. This country's priorities are fucked.
But I'm one of those "glass half full" guys. As such, I'm pleased that the justices no longer wear those stupid goddamned wigs. They're demeaning. And if you're going to undermine the rule of law and everything democracy is supposed to stand for, it's important that you don't look silly doing so.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Breaking the Law (Live) By: Judas Priest From: Metalogy
And before you ask, yes, I do feel as gay as you do watching those Judas Priest outfits prance about, but what can I do? It's a pretty fucking cool song.
skippy ROCKS THE CASBAH, SHOUTS AT THE DEVIL, BARKS AT THE MOON, IS ON THE HIGHWAY TO HELL, IS ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY, CAME IN THROUGH THE BATHROOM WINDOW, AIN'T TALKIN' 'BOUT LOVE, IS IRON MAN, JUST LIKE A WOMAN, WALKS THIS WAY, BRINGS THE NOISE, IS BREATHLESS, HARD TO HANDLE, WANTS TO BE YOUR TEDDY BEAR, TANGLED UP IN BLUE, STILL HASN'T FOUND WHAT HE'S LOOKING FOR, IS THE WALRUS, WATCHING THE DETECTIVES, SHOUTS IT OUT LOUD, DON'T WANNA BE YOUR MONKEY WRENCH, WAITING FOR HIS MAN, FIGHTS FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PAAAARRRRRTTTY AND IS A LOSER BABY, SO WHY DON'T YOU KILL HIM?
So I've been feeling pretty down on myself lately, which I actually should be because my life fucking sucks. It seems to me that being down on yourself because your life fucking sucks is an appropriate response to circumstances, but most of the people I know seem to think differently.
Actually, that's horseshit. The only person I've talked to outside of work in weeks has been De. By e-mail. Because I'm such a smooth, suave and all-around seductive motherfucker.
So I did what anybody in my emotional state would do, I murdered thirty-seven prostitutes and scattered their bones on my pig farm took Rolling Stone's Almost-Impossible Rock & Roll Quiz.
And you know what? I kicked ass! Of 55 questions, I got 45 right. Apparently, this qualifies me as an "expert." Rolling Stone.com has certified that I indeed "know my Bowie from Bannarama!" And there were a couple of questions I didn't even bother guessing the answers to. Seriously, I'm not going to lower myself to thinking about the nautical conditions in the worst song on the Beach Boys otherwise brilliant Pet Songs. I try to pretend that I have some dignity left.
This should mean that I am entitled to take your women and do things to them that they will giggle and blush about when forced to testify about them in divorce court or a child-custody hearing.
But I have a sneaking suspicion that it only means that I'll never have sex again.
You know, I'm told that there was a time when you felt better after having done well on a test than before you took it. If any of my readers out there have children and tell them that knowing lots of worthless shit is somehow worthwhile, I'd like to hit you in the face with a shovel.
I am a rock geek. Please kill me.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Loser By: Beck From: Mellow Gold
This video really has nothing to do with anything other than my love of Norah Jones. If you want an idea of what my ideal woman's face looks like, that's as close as you're going to get. Better still, she has the single most gorgeous voice in the fucking business today.
Now you get to hear her sing the best song the great Gram Parsons ever wrote.
If you don't love this, you're wrong in ways that no god will ever forgive. You might as well be a fucking satanist or Mitt Romney supporter, or something, because no one else will love you.
WHEN CONSERVATISM IS AS PURE AS THE DRIVEN SNOW, IT'S ABOUT AS USEFUL
One of the things in life and politics that makes me batshit fucking crazy is demands of ideological purity. This is doubly true when the side making said demands happens to be winning. For some people, winning just isn't enough if it isn't matched with purity.
In most political movies, you often have a candidate or a fictional chief executive who utters the famous phrase "I'd rather be right than be president." That was first uttered by Henry Clay, who despite running five times, never got to be president. As a matter fact, no one who says that - and is actually dumb enough to believe it - gets to be president.
The ideologically pure hold the perfect as the enemy of the good, and they don't get either. Instead, the get the opposition, who disagrees with them 100% of the time, as opposed to a natural ally who might actually agree with 70% of the goals of the pure.
In short, the ideologically pure are all too often stupid.
Gerry Nicholls is a Senior Fellow with something called the Democracy Institute and, friends, he is a blazing fucking idiot.
You see, for nearly fifteen years, conservatives were singularly incapable of getting elected to anything at the federal level in Canada. The Progressive Conservative Party that had 166 seats in the spring of 1993 was reduced to a mere two later that fall. The party had split three ways, with the Reform Party taking over the western vote and the Bloc Quebecois assumed the PCs place in Quebec. For the first time in Canadian history, an avowed separtist party became the official Opposition and the Liberals under Jean Chretien racked up three consecutive majority governments.
Reform and their successor party, the Canadian Alliance, believed that they were ascendent and the government-in-waiting, but they proved themselves singularly incapable of winning anything east of the Manitoba border. Many were beginning to believe that conservatism has breathed its last in Canada.
Through fortitous circumstances, brilliant strategy and incredible patience, the Progressive Conservatives under Peter MacKay and Canadian Alliance of Stephen Harper merged in early 2004. By February of 2006, the new Conservative Party was the government of Canada.
No reasonable person had any right to expect that the Liberal hegemony of the federal government could be ended so abruptly, but it was, in no small part due to the hard work of Stephen Harper and his adviser, Tom Flanagan.
Flanagan recently documented his work behind the scenes of the two leadership and two federal election campaigns that Harper has contested in the last five years in his new book, Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power.For anyone with an interest in the Canadian conservative movement, I can't recommend Flanagan's book and Full Circle: Death and Resurrection in Canadian Conservative Politics by Bob Plamondon enough. Both both are very instructive for those who are interested in how Canada got where it currently is.
One of the central themes in Flanagan's book is that the wild-eyed populist and religiously based conservatism of the Reform and Alliance movements were wholly unacceptable to Ontario, and this made those parties unable to ever form a national government. When the Alliance mereged with the Progressive Conservative Party, it is worth noting that they adopted the PC constitution almost word for word. Also untouched were the Tories positions on most social issues.
This allowed the CPC to almost win in 2004 and to assume power in 2006. And that never could have happened had Harper not moderated his party's positions on social and fiscal issues, Both Flanagan and Plamondon are in agreement on that.
Which brings us to Gerry Nicholls. As it happens, winning isn't nearly as important to Mr. Nicholls as is winning the right way. Recently, Nicholls debated Flanagan and his part of the debate was transcribed and printed as an editorial in Tuesday's National Post.
Here’s a question no one can answer: Is the Conservative Party of Canada heading in the right direction?
No one can answer it, because it’s a trick question.
The fact is we don’t really have a conservative party in this country. Of course, we have a party which calls itself “Conservative.” But it doesn’t actually believe in conservatism.
Rather, it believes in a new philosophy or ideology, which former Conservative Party campaign manager Tom Flanagan outlines in his recent book, Harper’s Team. This new ideology is seemingly based on four points: Winability, Incrementalism, Moderation and Persistence. I prefer to summarize it by the acronym W.I.M.P.
W.I.M.P! Isn't that cute?
As it happens, Gerry Nicholls really doesn't like being in government all that much. By reading his arguments, it becomes clear that he much preferred it when his party was pure, if marginalized by the Canadian electorate.
Well they actually don’t believe in anything. They don’t believe in conservative principles or values or ideals. And they certainly don’t believe in any kind of conservative vision for Canada. WIMP Conservatives, in fact, regard ideals and principles as nothing but obstacles to winning elections. And that’s all that really matters to them - winning elections. If they have to act like Liberals or Greens or New Democrats to win elections, well that’s what they will do.
Anyone who believes that the Conservatives are governing as the Liberals, New Democrats or Greens are is, simply put, a fucking idiot. The Liberals, NDP and Greens would certainly disagree with this assertion.
Nicholls then goes on to display an almost blinding ignorance of conservative political history.
One can only imagine what would have happened had Flanagan advised Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher or Mike Harris.
He likely would have advised Reagan to drop his “scary” conservative ideas and to act more like Jimmy Carter. He likely would have recommended Harris change “The Common Sense Revolution” to something a little less radical sounding, something like “The Common Sense Incrementalism.” And no doubt he would have suggested to Thatcher that since Britain was a left-wing country, she should scrap her conservative agenda and give the people what they want: socialism.
And in fact, many people did urge Thatcher to compromise her principles. Back in 1980, in her first year in power, two million Britons were unemployed, a recession gripped the country and her free-market economic policies did not seem to be working. Consequently, she was under tremendous pressure from the public, from the media and even from within her own caucus to do a U-turn.
It never ceases to amaze me how some people manage to live through a political movement and not remember anything that actually occured during it.
Let's start with Margaret Thatcher. While Thatcher did reduce Britian's almost comic top tax rate of 97%, she didn't preside over any fundamental restructuring of English society. The National Health Service didn't vanish under Thatcher. In fact, it grew. The United Kingdom wasn't less socialist after Thatcher than it was before her, just more efficient, if only slightly.
One should also remember that Thatcher's reign was deposed by her own parliamentary caucus during the first Gulf War because she was seen as being too conservative and therefore a threat to Conservative prospects for a fourth majority mandate. She was replaced by the less doctrinaire John Major and that fourth mandate was won in 1993.
Ronald Reagan is another case that baffles me. Yes, Reagan signed the largest tax cut in American history up until that time in 1981. What people don't remember is that taxes were actually higher when he left office than they were when he entered it. The '81 tax cuts were superceded by new taxes and user fees that were implimented throughout his second term. No one actually realized this because the Reagan Administration was very careful not to refer to them as tax increases. Instead they were called "revenue enhancements."
Nor did Reagan leave office very popular with people like Nicholls in the area of foreign policy. During Reagan's last year, there were any number of conservative editorials that decried his "appeasement" of the Soviet Union in signing the 1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Indeed, President Reagan's partnership with Mikhail Gorbachev was seen as a betrayal of principle on a grand scale. It was only after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union that Reagan's image was rehabilitated with conservatives.
But Thatcher was no WIMP.
In a famous speech, she answered her critics defiantly, declaring: “The Lady’s not for turning.” And she didn’t turn. She stuck by her principles and, by doing so, enjoyed political success. Just as Reagan and Harris also stuck to their principles and enjoyed success.
That's another misreading of history. Thatcher and Reagan "turned" on any number of issues that infuriated conservatives. As to their "political success," does anyone think they were ever in any danger of losing power to Neil Kinnock or Walter Mondale? Reagan would never have been elected if Jimmy Carter wasn't the incumbent and Mike Harris wouldn't have won if Bob Rae didn't destroy his own political base. That Gerry Nicholls doesn't like those facts doesn't make them any less true.
Mike Harris is another story altogther. Like Thatcher and Reagan, Harris didn't fundamentally alter the structure of the Ontario government, it just seemed like it because his style was so confrontational. In fact, Harris didn't eliminate any social services, he merely downloaded them - and their costs - to the municipal level. The Common Sense Revolution worked pretty much the same way Bill Clinton's welfare reform program did.
People like Mr. Nicholls keep up the mistaken impression that conservatives are elected in the strength of their agenda, and they almost never are. All of his heroes were elected based entirely on the failures of their predecessors. The exception was Reagan, whose personal charm was instrumental in his election.
Furthermore, all three engaged in massive deficit spending, which used to be anathema to conservative theology, but ceased to be by the time they left office.
In that, if anyone betrayed the conservative doctrine of fiscal discipline, it was people like Ronald Reagan and Mike Harris.
What a sorry contrast to what is happening to the Conservative Party of Canada.Unlike Thatcher, Prime Minister Stephen Harper did turn. He turned his back on his own values. And he turned his back on the Canadian conservative movement.
Rather than making government smaller, Harper is making government bigger; rather than cutting spending, he increased spending; rather than getting government out of people’s lives, he has bashed banks for ATM fees, banned incandescent light bulbs and dictated to Canadians how much money they can contribute to political parties.
Rather than treating all citizens equally, he has blatantly pandered to Quebec nationalists. The Flanagans of the world will argue the Prime Minister was forced to do all these things because, after all, he has only a minority government. But that doesn’t explain why Harper refuses to even talk like a conservative.
Actually, yes it does.
Both Preston Manning and, particularly Stockwell Day both talked "like a conservative." And they were both discredited in the eyes of the Canadian people for doing so. For fifteen years, the Liberals were able to beat Reform, the Alliance and the Conservatives using the rhetoric of their "hidden agenda" and scaring the shit out of voters with it. Worse, Manning and Day did absolutely nothing to dissuade anyone from that perception.
Harper's finally managed to break free of the effectivness of the "hidden agenda" attacks. Without it, there is very little that Liberals have that can derail the Conservatives from winning a majority government. But Nicholls seems to want a hidden agenda. More precisely, he wants Harper to embrace programs and an ideology that Canadian voters have rejected no fewer than four times in thirteen years.
For him, no loaf is better than half of one, which Ronald Reagan certainly never believed. For Gerry Nicholls, a Liberal government is preferable to a Harper government that could never win re-election, let alone a governing majority.
Principles are a wonderful thing, but they happen to be utterly worthless without the power to enact them. People like Nicholls have never understood that and they likely never will. Mr. Nicholls would "rather be right than be president" and it doesn't seem likely that he'll ever be either.
In an age where the Liberal Party is running away as fast as they can from Stephane Dion, Gerry Nicholls might be the only friend he has left. Romantisizing the past at the expense of the future is not only dumb political strategy, it's childish behaviour in someome who prefers to think of himself as an adult.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Same Old Song and Dance By: Aerosmith From: Get Your Wings
THE BUSH DOCTRINE IN THEORY & PRACTICE: KURDISTAN EDITION
We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. -President George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress, 20 September 2001
In the lead-up to his invasion of Iraq, President Bush opined forcefully and frequently that the United States was justified in toppling the government of Saddam Hussein because it was a state sponsor of terrorism and posed a direct threat to the America and its allies.
The Turkish parliament yesterday voted to allow military strikes against Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq, despite stiff U.S. opposition and appeals from Baghdad for time to purge the rebels.
A government motion seeking a one-year authorization for one or more incursions into Iraq was approved with the support of 507 lawmakers in the 550-seat house, with 19 voting against. The motion leaves it up to the government to determine the timing and scope of the operation and the number of troops to be sent.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stressed that parliamentary approval would not mean immediate military action, signalling room for diplomacy.
Baghdad and Washington scrambled to dissuade Ankara from following through on military action.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he was determined to act against the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, which attacks Turkey from its bases in northern Iraq.
The PKK has waged a bloody campaign for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey since 1984. The conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives.
Any fair-minded observer has to agree that, under this president's own doctrine of international relations, Turkey has a much stronger case for attacking Iraq than did the U.S in 2002-03.
In 2002, Washington argued that Iraq harbored terrorists and may have allowed the establishment of al-Qaeda training camps on its territory. That those camps were in the autonomous Kurdish zone and protected by U.N resolutions and American air power was wisely left unsaid.
Since the end of the first Gulf War nearly 17 years ago, the Kurdistan Worker's Party (or PKK) has escalated its terror attacks against Turkey and not infrequently engaged the militaries of both Turkey and Iran. Turkey responded with a low-level attempts at the ethnic cleansing of its southeastern frontier, which only served to invite more terorrism from the PKK.
Between the American wars in Iraq, the PKK fought rival factions in the autonomous zone. However, since the overthrow of Saddam, neither the Kurdish regional government, the Iraqi government in Baghdad, or the United States military - which has been charged with unrooting terror wherever it is found - has done much of anything about the PKK. To Turkish ears, the president's declaration that "you are either with us, or you are with the terorists" must ring hollow indeed.
Turkey has been a close American ally since the the end of the First World War and, as a member of NATO and under the Truman Doctrine, it enjoys an American security guarantee. There are currently 160,000 U.S forces in Iraq and the United States has done nothing to stop terror attacks against an ally by a group that the U.S itself has designated as a terrorist organization from a country it occupies. Indeed, Washington holds Iraqi Kurdistan up as an example for the rest of the region.
It then stands to reason that Ankara has every right to ask the United States with whom it stands, Turkey or the terrorists.
Of course, the fledgling government of Nouri al-Maliki would very much like to avoid a second foreign invasion of his country in less than five years and has pledged to Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan that such an exercise will be unnecessary.
Maliki told Erdogan on the telephone that Baghdad "is absolutely determined to end the activities and the presence" of the PKK in Iraq, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported, quoting unnamed sources.
He asked for "a new opportunity" to resolve the issue through diplomatic means and proposed talks.
Erdogan welcomed the proposal but warned that Ankara cannot tolerate any "further waste of time."
I think after 23 years, Turkey has been more than patient.
The obvious question is with what army will al-Maliki "end the activities and presence" of the PKK? The army under his control has yet to prove itself equal to the task of quelling the insurgency that has engulfed the territory under his direct command, and Maliki has little, if any, influence in Kurdistan. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find anything as trivial as an Iraqi flag north of Kirkuk.
The United States currently has no forces at all in the north and even if it did, lacks the will or domestic political support to take on the PKK and face the possibility of a third major insurgency against its forces.
Therefore, there are few options other than Turkish unilateral action. Ironically, the White House is strssing diplomacy.
In Washington, President George W. Bush said the U.S. was "making it very clear to Turkey that we don't think it is in their interests" to send troops into Iraq. But Washington has lost leverage with Ankara because of a pending Congressional vote on a resolution branding the 1915-17 Ottoman massacres of Armenians as genocide.
Turkey strongly rejects the "genocide" tag and has threatened unspecified reprisals against its NATO ally.
For George W. Bush to call for patience and diplomacy is certainly one of the more interesting phenomenons in recent history. That he decides what is and is not in the interest of other countries certainly is not. He is, when all is said and done, the decider.
Bush's evaluation of Turkish interests is certainly fascinating. Saddam Hussein presented no direct threat to the American homeland, all fantasies about "mushroom clouds in American cities" aside, and the terrorism he sponsored targeted few, if any, American citizens or interests. But terrorism was one of the two stated justifications for the March 19, 2003 invasion.
Yet "democratic" Iraq is currently providing both safe harbor and a base of operations to the PKK, which has attacked Turkish terroritory, interests and nationals repeatedly for years. Those were precisely the reasons the United States was justified in taking down the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It is important to remember that Turkey is not acting pre-emptively to some distant (and laughable) threat. It has been and continues to be attacked by a group that even the United States has declared a terrorist organization. And the Bush Administration is trying to slam the brakes down on that.
That begs an important question; "What is the War on Terror really about if not terror and going to war against it?" The United States was never attacked by Iraq, not even by proxy. One attack against the American homeland was launched from Afghanistan. Yet, this administration levelled two (albeit highly unpleasant) governments and engaged in a doomed exercise in nation building that it mocked just seven years ago.
Turkey, on the other hand, is in its third decade of attacks on its terrority by a group that everyone recognizes as terrorist. The Iranians know that the PKK is a terrorist group. But Turkey is supposed to wait around around for the United States and its puppet regime in Baghdad to do .... nothing. George W. Bush and Nouri al-Maliki have spent more time fighting Carl Levin than they have the Kurdistan Workers Party.
When one country invades another, it faces the risk of a native insurgency. That's the nature of war. The Turks have invaded no one. No, they find themselves invaded by a Kurdish foreign insurgency that believes it has found protection in the rhetoric of Washington. And for all intents and purposes, the PKK does have President Bush's protection.
It couldn't be more obvious that this president believes that his country alone has the right to respond to a threat - real and perceived - however and whenever it sees fit, yet reserves the right to restain other nations with clear and justified national security interests at stake. It is equally obvious that he is about learn a powerful lesson; that the world doesn't work that way.
Five years ago, President Bush was rather more liberal in using words like "terrorist" and "genocide" than he is today. He's now learning that those words have real long-term, and probably permanent, implications on America's relationship with Turkey.
The Kurds are the world's largest ethnic group without a nation of their own. Consisting of approximately 55 million souls, they are nearly twice the population of Canada. They have been oppressed, betrayed and slaughtered by every country in the region. Their tragic history, however, does not give them licence to engage in terrorism.
Ankara has the same right to self-defence that Washington does and they have a far more compelling case for conducting military operations in Iraq now than did the United States four and a half years ago. In fact, since America assumed responsibility fot Iraqi security by virtue of its occupation and disbanding of the Iraqi military, the Bush Administration has a special duty to prevent precisely what is happening now. It is now clear that it has been derilect in that duty.
That leaves it with nothing but bad options, and those options are getting worse by the day.
Mr. President, are you with the Turks or are you with the terrorists?
Editor's Note: I wrote this post in longhand at work yesterday. Of course, most of the arguments were also used in a far more humorous way by the Daily Show last night. I just can't win, can I?
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Welcome To The Terrordome By: Public Enemy From: Fear of a Black Planet
I supported the war in Iraq that removed Saddam Hussein from power. My reasons for doing so were completely different from those who waged that war and most of its other supporters.
I thought that the WMD argument that the Bush administration presented as a justification was nonsense, and I said so at the time. Using common sense, I assumed that there would only be a first use or transfer to terrorists of WMD by Iraq if the Ba'ath regime were mortally threatened. After all, one doesn't usually engage in an act of suicide unless one is already facing certain death.
Nor was I particularly persuaded by the atrocities that Saddam had committed - and continued to commit - against his own people. If one were to trouble themselves with listing the countries and regimes on earth by their brutality against their citizenry, Iraq would have a very difficult time breaking into the top five.
Domestic barbarism is not now a driving force behind American foreign policy and it never was. Germany's actions toward the Jews began long before the United States entered World War II and President Roosevelt never spoke publicly about them once it had. The United States did not intervene to stop the genocide in Rwanda and, unlike former President Clinton, I don't think it should have.
I supported the war for the simple reason that Saddam Hussein could not be trusted to keep the regional peace. He launched two unprovoked invasions of his neighbours; Iran in 1979, and Kuwait in 1990. Iraq was contained, for a time, by the United Nations Security Council, but the sanctions that were in place were easily evaded by Iraq and the support for them in the U.N was rapidly eroding.
If the sanctions fell apart, history indicates that Iraq would have gone on an arms-buying binge and attacked another of its neighbours sooner or later. As in 1991, that would have required American intervention. If the question was taking down the regime when it was weak, or waiting until it was strong, I preferred the former.
I also knew what the likely consequences would be in the summer of 2002. I was aware of the possibilty that the country could disintegrate into sectarian violence that could potentially envelop the region.
However, I thought that the Bush national security apparatus was experienced and wise enough to see these things as well, and would strive to prevent those outcomes as much as was possible. It is important to remember that while President Bush was a novice Texas governor, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condolezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz had well over a century of foreign policy experience between them.
I supported them to conduct an operation that I wouldn't have trusted with, say, the Clinton administration. Needless to say, I was wrong.
The Bush administration relied more on idealism than on wisdom. There was almost no forward planning and the inserted force was woefully inadequate. The invasion was designed almost solely to prove or disprove a light force projection theory of Rumsfeld's.
The Coalition Provisional Authority was staffed by hacks and political contributors to the president's first election campign and the Republican National Committee. So ideological were they that Iraqis were given a flat tax before it could guarantee electricity or reliable water service. The decisions to disband the military and de-Ba'athify the civil service took a relatively small insurgency and made it massive, threatening and unstoppable.
Not only should President Bush's Iraq adventure be compared to Vietnam, it should be unfavorably compared. Vietnam was escalated in secret after President Johnson knew that the cause was lost. President Bush refused to escalate when it could have actually accomplished something in mid-2003 and has the temerity to question the sense of anyone who opposes his current, all-too-late escalation.
I believe all of the above to be grounds for impeachment. If federal judges who were confirmed by the Senate can be removed from office for drunkeness and insanity, a president can so be convicted for misdministration of office. If any of you operated your cars the way this president has conducted foreign policy, you would be convicted of criminal negligence and/or vehicular homicide.
The way that George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld invaded Iraq created a civil war. If American forces are withdrawn any time in the next five years, they could possibly create a holocaust. If that isn't an impeachable offense, I'm not sure what actually is.
In any event, for the United States to leave the Iraqis to persue a genocide they made possible would constitue a crime against humanity. All pretending to the contrary aside, the United States is the government of Iraq and will be for some time.
Christopher Hitchens supported the war for purely moral reasons. He was of a mind that Saddam was an evil fellow and long-overdue for removal. While not a wholehearted Bushie, Hitchens stayed on the Iraq bandwagon far longer than did most sensible people.
I disagree with Mr. Hitchens in some areas and agree with him heartily in others. However, he is a truly brilliant writer and rarely diappoints, regardless of your perspective. His articles and, in particular, his interviews, never fail to entertain and educate. As much as there can be a Mencken for our time now that Hunter Thompson is gone, Christopher Hitchens is it.
Unlike most bloggers, Hitchens has a much higher platform and a far greater voice. That voice has consequences that I'm sure that he never imagined.
In the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair, Mr. Hitchens comes face to face with that responsibilty. He learned that his writings directly influenced 23 year old Mark Jennings Daily, born on the Fourth of July, to enlist to fight in Iraq, where Lieutenant Daily was killed by an IED in Mosul on January 15, 2007.
I can't imagine what it would be like for something I've written to have such enormous human consequences, and I don't think Mr. Hitchens ever did either.
Hitchens did something that must have been agonizing for him, he contacted Lieutenant Daily's family, and participated in the interment of their son / brother / husband's ashes. In his account of the aftermath of Mark's death, we learn something far more important than the truism that the boys and girls who wear the uniform are heroes, more often than not, their families are, too. The soldiers are gone, but we should always keep in mind the families of the fallen.
I'm not going to blockquote the Hitchen's article at length, because you should read it for yourselves. But there is one part of it that the casual reader of my stupid blod should see. That's from the last letter Lieutenant Daily sent to his wife, Snejana.
One thing I have learned about myself since I've been out here is that everything I professed to you about what I want for the world and what I am willing to do to achieve it was true. …
My desire to "save the world" is really just an extension of trying to make a world fit for you.
Can you imagine the depth of the love behind that sentiment? Think of what Lieutenant Daily could have achieved as a husband, as a father and a teacher.
That's what we lost this past January.
I hope that everyone who visits this stupid blog, clicks through and reads Christopher Hitchens' article. Better yet, I hope they buy the magazine itself.
And regardless of your feelings about the war, keep the memories of the fallen and your prayers for their families in your hearts.
It has been said that when you can't tell if a political operative is lying, stupid, crazy or all three, that's when you know that's he's good at his job. Okay, it turns out that I'm the only person who has ever said that, but I'm usually right about such things and I expect the lemmings in the Washington press corp to hijack that wisdom just as they do everything else I say.
That rule applies to virtually every political operative and campaign consultant you could name over the last thirty years. After all, if one has a whorehouse to run, one doesn't send a recruiting team to a convent.
There are however, exceptions that prove the rule and Karl Christian Rove is one of them. His boyish innocence is such that you would be shocked to hear that he doesn't place his teeth under his pillow, expecting a quarter and leave milk and cookies unattended by the tree on the evening of December 24th.
Karl is all about truth, justice and the American way. Not for him the leaking of a CIA agent's name for political purposes or implying that a respected judge is a pedophile. Not our Karl! He is to fair play and good government what Sonny was to Cher - a relic of a more innocent time before her face was botoxed into paralysis and her ass scarred with gaudy tattoos.
On Friday August 31st - just as the door was hitting his ass on his way out - Mr. Rove left a parting love letter to his boss, the 43rd President of the United States on the webpage of the National Review.
Like myself and other great romantics, Karl addresses his hossanahs for Bush to history. You have no idea how far a public declaration that _ _ _ _ _ is the greatest president and / or fuck in American history can get you. If I have to tell you this, it'll likely do you no good and you'll go nowhere in love or politics. Having said that, I'm intimately familiar with both and have gone nowhere in either.
But this isn't about me, this is the ballad of Karl and George.
The Washington Post scorned President Truman as a "spoilsman" who "underestimated the people’s intelligence." New York Times columnist James Reston wrote off President Eisenhower as "a tired man in a period of turbulence." At the end of President Reagan's second term, the New York Times dismissed him as "simplistic" and a "lazy and inattentive man."
These harsh judgments, made in the moment, have not weathered well over time. Fortunately, while contemporary observers have a habit of getting presidents wrong, history tends to be more accurate.
I would suggest that contemporary observers aren't always wrong. The same journalists who disparaged Truman, Eisenhower and Reagan also described President Carter as a "moralistic prick and an inconsequential president were it not for his diasterous impact on everything he touched that wasn't the White House tennis court schedule." The press also described Presidents Johnson and Nixon as "broken" and "disgraced" respectively. The contemporary judgement of Herbert Hoover seems to have stood the test of time as well.
The assessment of the media on presidential records seems to be about 50/50.
So how might history view the 43rd president? I can hardly be considered an objective observer, but in this highly polarized period, who is?
Here's a little secret my non-political readers might want to know: every time there's an upcoming vacancy at 1600 Pennsylvania Blvd, it's a political season and politics clouds judgement. I know that everyone likes to try to remember the end of President Clinton's term as a period of sweetness and light, but it wasn't.
Folks, every political period is "highly polarized." Being for or against giving a specific person the power to declare war on countries populated by brown people and illegally intercept the communications of the citizenry tends to polarize folks in ways that few other things that aren't TRL can.
However, I believe history will provide a more clear-eyed verdict on this president’s leadership than the anger of current critics would suggest.
President Bush will be viewed as a far-sighted leader who confronted the key test of the 21st century.
Oooohhhhhhhhhh, this should be good!
He will be judged as a man of moral clarity who put America on wartime footing in the dangerous struggle against radical Islamic terrorism.
Actually, no he didn't. Since Mr. Rove is pointing to history for justification, so will I. And historically, a "wartime footing" usually means something. Among the things it includes is shared sacrifice. The Global War on Terror is almost singular in American wars that doesn't involve things like conscription and massive government interference in the domestic economy to divert needed resources to said war.
President Bush took what he himself described in the 2000 campaign as an "unprepared and unequipped" military and sent them far away for an indeterminate period of time. As for everyone else, they were urged to show their support by shopping and enjoying the pork that he and Congress were sending their way. If you can rationalize a way that Bloomingdales is a front on the War on terror, you're smarter than I am.
Following the horrors of 9/11, this president changed American foreign policy by declaring terror sponsors responsible for the deeds of those they shelter, train, and fund. America, he said, will not wait until dangers fully materialize with attacks on our homeland before confronting those threats
Actually, that sounded really good on September 20, 2001, but it isn't really true. The terrorists that attacked America on 9/11 were indoctrinated in Pakistani madrassas that were funded by Saudi royal money. The Taliban government that sheltered al-Qaeda was a wholly owned subsidiary of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence Agency.
Hezbollah, the strongest terror group of the greatest global reach - demonstrating the capability of attacking Israeli interests in South America - was left untouched.
Which country was faced with the largest ground invasion since Vietnam? Iraq, which funded very little foreign terror and none at all against the United States.
The president gave the nation new tools to defeat terrorism abroad and protect our citizens at home with the Patriot Act, foreign surveillance that works in the wireless age, a transformed intelligence community, and the Department of Homeland Security.
And in giving the nation those "tools", President Bush made war on the Constitution he had sworn to uphold and protect.
The USA PATRIOT Act and the administration's casual intrepretation of FISA have rendered the Fourth Amendment ironic at best and places the Second, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments in real jeopardy because of those and the War on Terror generally.
And this president saw the wisdom of removing terrorism’s cause by advocating the spread of democracy, especially in the Muslim world, where authoritarianism and repression have provided a potent growth medium for despair and anger aimed at the West. He recognized that democracy there makes us safer here.
If you are interested in knowing what the single most dangerous assertion of the Bush Doctrine has been, it is that democracy will stop Middle Eastern terrorism.
Despite having been begged by everyone in the region to avoid them, the Bush administration demanded free and fair elections in the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon. Hamas gained power in one and Hezbollah the balance of power in the other. Feel better? Would you like to try Egypt or Saudi Arabia next? Who wants to see who would win an Egyptian election, the Muslim Brotherhood or Egyptian Islamic Jihad?
Because the authoritarian regimes in the Middle East have outlawed democratic opposition, the only organized opposition happens to be that outside the law. American-style elections have been attempted in three Arab countries, the PA, Lebanon and Iraq. Poltical chaos has overwhelmed one and actual terrorists have prevailed in the other two, leading to a massive Israeli incursion into one.
Can anyone explain to me how giving political legitmacy to terrorists makes America safer? Let me restate something that's obvious but very important: in his obsession to prove that Middle Eastern democracy will neutralize terrorism, a terrorist group has become the government of the Palestinian Authority.
President Bush will be seen as a compassionate leader who used America’s power for good.
While the world dithered, America confronted HIV/AIDS in Africa with the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has supported treatment for more than 1.1 million people worldwide, over one million of them in Africa. While most of the globe ignored Sudan and Darfur or refused to act, this president labeled the violence there genocide — and pressed world leaders to take action.
A wide range of human-rights issues — from the repression in North Korea, Myanmar, and elsewhere to religious freedom to trafficking in persons — are kept on the international agenda in good part because of this president’s demands for action.
Recognition of a problem is an important first step, but it's only a first step. Action is required to rectify a problem. Other than HIV / AIDS funding, which the Bush administration has taken an admirable lead on, the United States has done nothing but point out the obvious.
A pitiful African Union force is in Darfur, accomplishing precisely nothing. North Korea entered the Twenty-First century as the most repressive regime on Earth. Now it's the world's newest member of the nuclear club. Not only are the world's cruellest regimes are still in power, they are more secure than they were seven years ago because of the preoccupation of this administration on other things. It seems as though Mr. Rove wants a cookie for recognizing that the house is burning down and he wants to eat it before getting a hose.
And President Bush met challenges with new institutions and methods. For example, the Proliferation Security Initiative confronts the transfer of dangerous material and information. And he has reformed America’s foreign aid to focus on results, accountability, transparency, and anti-corruption and pro-democracy requirements.
Accomplishing what exactly? Does the world seem safer, freer or more secure than it did on January 20, 2001?
President Bush promotes economic growth and understands free markets provide the best path to a more hopeful tomorrow.
Really? Since when?
The president inherited an economy entering recession. It was further weakened by terrorist attacks, corporate scandals, natural disasters, and out-of-control spending with discretionary domestic spending increasing 16 percent in the last fiscal year of his predecessor. President Bush took decisive action, cutting taxes and ratcheting down this spending. The results? The net creation of 8.3 million new jobs since August 2003; higher after-tax income and greater incentives for firms to invest and expand; three years where America’s economic growth led the rest of the G7 economies; and a budget on path to surplus by 2012 — despite the increased spending invested in securing America’s safety by standing up the new Department of Homeland Security and fighting the Global War on Terror. In the four years since taxes were last cut in 2003, the U.S. economy has grown 13 percent in real dollars. The additional growth is larger than the entire size of the Canadian economy.
That might be the single most ridiculous paragraph in the history of the English speaking peoples. What isn't blatantly false is deliberately misleading.
Yes, discretionary spending went up 16% in Clinton's last budget. But Clinton didn't impliment a $700 billion dollar prescription drug benefit or pass massive, pork-riddled highway and farm support bills. I'm reasonably certain that if President Clinton were signing war funding supplemental bills, he wouldn't have allowed a putz like Ted Stevens to include giant bridges to nowhere in them.
Clinton increased discretionary spending by 16%. Bush has increased it by nearly 40%. Worse, the way programs like the prescription drug benefit are structered, they are new entitlement programs and not discretionary spending.
While the American economy has been expanding, so has its debt. The current American debt - as opposed to the deficit - currently stands at $9 trillion dollars, a good deal of which is held by hostile foreign powers like the People's Republic of China. This administration has cut taxes while increasing domestic social spending and fighting two foreign wars and in an economy dominated by rapidly rising energy costs. As long as the United States can continue to sevice that debt, the economy will continue to grow. But once it can't, the entire house of cards collapses and the U.S becomes a heavily armed bananna republic. The American dollar has already lost a fifth of its value against the Canadian dollar in the last five years.
Furthermore, budget surpluses are meaningless in the face of such monsterous debt. A future surplus may instill a false sense of consumer confidence, but that will just increase demands for further defense or discretionary social spending.
This president also understands our standard of living depends on selling to the globe. The 14 nations with which we have implemented free agreements represent 7.5 percent of the world’s GDP, but 43 percent of our exports. The growing number of free-trade agreements concluded and signed under this president helps explain why American exports have risen 27 percent between 2004 and 2006, creating jobs and prosperity here at home.
That would be wonderful if the United States ever begins honoring the letter and spirit of the trade agreements it signs. Under this president it hasn't, and there's no indication that it will anytime soon. The U.S has violated both NAFTA and the WTO in its dispute with Canada over softwood lumber tariffs and is in violation of the WTO in banning online gambling, which could lead to a trade war with the European Union and Australia.
History will see President Bush as a reformer who focused on modernizing important institutions.
He is concerned with fundamental change that will - among other goals - strengthen the ways our children are educated and health care is provided.In education, “No Child Left Behind” introduced accountability into our public-education system by ensuring every child’s progress is measured.
Parents now know whether or not their child is learning - in their own schools, and compared to other schools. This new focus on results helped lead to more improvement in reading scores in five years than in the previous 28 combined. This reform shows that measuring leads to results.
The Texas version of No Child Left Behind was exposed as a massive fraud mere months after Governor Bush became president. Because of the funding formulas, grades are cooked and school violence goes unreported. Students are taught little but how to pass a standardized test but teachers and school administrators have learned to become very effective liars.
NCLB's primary sponsor in Congress, Senator Ted Kennedy, is enraged because the act has never been fully funded and he has accused the president of a personal betrayal because of this for years. Just a decade ago, conservatives saw the abolition of the Department of Education as a top priority. President Bush has more than doubled its budget. Karl Rove and George Bush are seemingly the only people who are proud of No Child Left Behind. Everyone else - students, parents, teachers, administrators, the states and both liberals and conservatives - actively loathe it.
Medicare was modernized with a prescription-drug benefit, now used by 39 million seniors. Giving seniors the drugs they need helped them avoid expensive operations and long hospital stays. The result is better health care for seniors at a lower cost to them and at a lower cost than expected to taxpayers.
Saying that a program that has no exceeded costing projections by nearly 300% is being delivered "at a lower cost than expected to taxpayers" is an exercise in mathematics expected from the antangonists in an Orwell novel. And the projected cost of three-quarters of a trillion dollars only covers the first decade of the program, when only a minority of the baby boomers have retired and qualify for the program.
As it currently stands, the prescription drug benefit costs more than any one of Lyndon Johnson's entire federal budgets. And those budgets included dozens of Great Society programs and the Vietnam war.
The president approached other tasks — such as legal reform, higher-education assistance, transportation, and conservation and forest policy — with the same reformist spirit. And he did so on issues which are controversial within his own party, such as comprehensive immigration reform, which he has championed since he first started running for governor of Texas in 1993.
None of which passed and immigration served only to divide the GOP going into an their first election as a minority party in over a decade and alienated Hispanics, who were the Republicans greatest demographic for growth. Good work!
He will be seen as an innovative conservative thinker with a positive, optimistic agenda for action.
I will say this about President Bush, the establishment of massive, expensive government beauracracies is nothing if not "innovative conservative thinking." If it weren't so innovative, people like me might describe it as New Deal liberalism on steroids.
For example, his proposals to reform health care are drawn from his understanding of the values of competition and markets. A standard tax deduction for health care — similar to the deduction homeowners get for mortgage interest — would level the playing field between those who get their health insurance from employers and those who pay for it out of their own pockets and expand the number of families with coverage.
People should be able to save tax-free for out-of-pocket health costs. The Health Savings Accounts the president signed into law are the first step toward this. HSAs will help move health care toward a consumer-driven model and away from a single-payer system. More than 4.5 million American families are benefiting from HSAs today.
What Rove isn't telling you is that tax cuts or deductions are government spending by other means. For all of the conservatives who fear state subsidized medicine, you're already there. It's the first step toward a single-payer system. The only problem is that liberals are too stupid to recognize it for what it is and just shut up and wait for "conservatives" to acomplish their dream for them. For the time being, it's a comfortable federal subsidy for the insurance companies.
The president has a similar focus on bold changes when it comes to opportunity and poverty. He emphasizes policies, such as welfare reform, that promote ownership and encourage personal responsibility rather than dependence on government.
For those of you who didn't know, the welfare reform of 1996 (formally known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act) removed as many as 16 million single mothers from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, but there was nothing in the bill that allowed the government to monitor what happened to them. Essentially what Clinton and the Republican Congress did was create a labor subsidy for minimum wage employers like Tyson Foods, Wal-Mart and McDonalds.
Since the famous "welfare queens" of yesteryear haven't been a political issue in over a decade, one can reasonably assume that Bush would like to ressurect them to bolster the case for further unwise tax cuts. And I somehow doubt that he will do so as a Republican outreach program for welfare queens.
His faith - and community-based initiative is encouraging social entrepreneurship to confront poverty and suffering. Billions of federal dollars can now be accessed by such groups eager to serve a neighbor in need. Already, 34 Democrat and Republican governors and more than 100 mayors of all stripes have created faith- and community-based offices to build on the federal initiative.
The faith based initiatives are the single most interesting programs Bush has launched, if for no other reason than they are the ones that raise unanswerable constitutional issues.
Since allowing an orginization that recieves federal or state money to prostelitize would violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment, they restrict the free speech rights of those groups under same. As much as I intellectually like the idea of private charities administering federal poverty programs, I can't see how one side or both doesn't eventually succeed in having the initiatives found unconstitutional by the courts.
In these and other areas, history will see President Bush drove policy in new directions, based on conservative principles.
This should be good. I have yet to see a conservative principle that George W. Bush hasn't declared war on.
He will be recognized as a strong advocate of traditional values.
Other than hating homosexuals and the Fourth Amendment, I fail to see how.
He advanced a culture of life where every child is protected and welcomed.
By whom are these children welcomed, state orphanages or the prison system? Even with Roe v. Wade as established law, the supply of unwanted children has exceeded the demand of adoptive parents. And when a prosperous white family like John McCain's adopts a "black" baby, they find themselves politically assaulted by people like Karl Rove for their trouble.
He supported traditional marriage when it came under attack from the courts. He sought to strengthen families and encourage personal responsibility. And he understood the necessity of appointing judges who know the proper and limited role of courts and will provide impartial justice and faithful application of the Constitution.
Presumably Evangelical conservatives believe that marriage promotes monogamy. In opposing gay marriage, President Bush seems to seek a Constitutional amendment recognizing and promoting homosexual promiscuity. I would implore every opponent of same sex marriage to ask themselves who is a better proponent of the stable family, Melissa Ethridge or Larry Craig.
And anyone who looks at the conservative argument about "activist judges" without giggling has earned either my undying respect or contempt. I haven't yet decided which.
What people like Rove want is conservative activists on the bench. They seek to limit the soveriengty of the states to pass laws regarding things like medical marijuanna and abortion. In 200 years, the Congress never passed anything regarding abortion that didn't involve federal funding. Conservatives have repeatedly declared that abortion should be left to the states, yet they applauded Gonzales v. Carhart, a recent Supreme Court decision upholding a congressional ban on partial birth abortions.
Make no mistake, Karl Rove and George Bush want a Warren Court, but they want one that thinks like they do. They hate fedralism every bit as much as liberals do, they just happen to be more adept liars about it.
President Bush had the political courage to confront the biggest economic challenge America faces.
The looming fiscal crises in Medicare and Social Security will result in either the impoverishment of the American people through higher taxes and lower growth or through the inability of government to deliver on its promises.
This president has worked to restrain the spending growth of entitlements, and to modernize Social Security and Medicare by injecting market forces and competition into their operation. He proposed Social Security reform that would solve the system’s long-term financial shortfall while giving younger workers the choice to put some of their own money into conservative stock-market investments.
He has made it impossible for future presidents and future Congresses to ignore this challenge. The president’s proposal will be the starting point for reform when it happens. When it does, Americans will be grateful President Bush made entitlement reform an issue and will be aware that valuable time was lost because of the obstructionism of his critics.
Actually, President Bush added three-quarters of a trillion dollars to the Medicare entitlement and his proposal to modernize Social Security would have cost, by his own admission, another trillion dollars over a decade.
The prospect of added trillions of dollars of debt to programs already threatened with bankruptcy, particularly when the United States is at war in two seperate theatres, makes ignoring the problem not only easy, but fiscally prudent.
Furthermore, Rove simplifies what the proposal was beyond any recognition of what it would actually do. For a good long time, one of he most "conservative stock-market investments" was a company called Enron. That is until Enron was discovered to have been run by criminals. That being the case, the government decided that it would only allow Social Security investments in "preferred portfolios." Not only would that lead to government control of private investments, it would allow for a special class of companies to be traded on a public exchange. To my mind, that defeats the purpose of market competition itself.
The outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan will color how history views the president.
History’s concern is with final outcomes, not the missteps or advances of the moment. History will render a favorable verdict if the outcome in the Middle East is similar to what America saw after World War II.
America’s persistence in Europe and Asia after that war helped Germany and Japan become democracies and allies in the struggle against Communism. If something similar happens in Iraq and Afghanistan, it will change the region and the world. For the first time, millions of citizens across the Middle East will see a working model of freedom in their region — and it will give them hope for a better future for their children by making America safer for them.
The analogies between Germany and Japan to Afghanistan and Iraq are perhaps the most misleading and dangerous policy smokescreens in American history.
Countries do not just naturally succumb to foreign ideologies like democracy. They naturally resist these things, particularly when they are imposed by occupying powers. Democracy succeeded in Japan in Germany for one simple reason: everyone who could oppose democracy in either country was dead.
World War II visited horrible slaughter onto both nations. An entire generation of healthy young men had been dispatched to the great beyond and Germany and Japan, both with devasted civic infrastructures and facing the immediate danger of mass starvation, were in no position to resist. There was also the very real possibilty of Soviet domination that created a further incentive to cooperate with the Western powers.
Further, Germany and Japan did not have a national experience of occupation and occupation of occupation and aggression by colonial powers prior to 1945. Iraq and Afghanistan have little else but a historical familiarity with gunboat diplomacy. And they have an energized population of fighting aged men to resist it.
The most troubling word in Rove's love-letter is "if." In fact, the entire foreign policy of this president has been predicated on an unknowable "if." Not "how," not "when," but "if." President Bush has gambled the future of one of the world's most dangerous regions on "if" and little else. As someone who supported both wars, I can honestly say that President Bush has conducted both in the most irresponsible way imaginable. He has created the single greatest fiasco in the history of American foreign policy.
And in the most cynical political manovuer in my lifetime, Messers Rove and Bush are now attempting to frame their self-made fiasco through the lens of a previous American disaster.
If the outcome there is like what happened in Vietnam after America abandoned our allies and the region descended into chaos, violence, and danger, history’s judgment will be harsh. History will see President Bush as right, and the opponents of his policy as mistaken - as George McGovern was in his time.
The United States became involved in Vietnam after the French withdrawl out of fear of what became known as the "domino theory." That theory was premised on the idea that if South Vietnam fell to the north, Soviet and Chinese influence would spread through Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia and the Phillipines.
What this president's policies has created is a self-fufilling domino theory. In toppling Saddam's government in Iraq and disbanding the military and police, the United States left the country with no central system of civic authority other than the occupying force itself. The underlying ethnic tensions in country have made it impossible to create a functioning democratic society.
When that society inevitably implodes, it will almost certainly draw Iran, Syria and Turkey into the conflict. If and when the jihadis take power in any of Iraq's regions, one can safely assume that they will use it as a base to undermine the moderate Saudi, Jordanian and Egyptian regimes. How long does anything think that Israel will tolerate being surrounded by extremist, fundamentalist regimes?
Afghanistan is no better. Because the he Unted States and NATO relied so heavily on corrupt, regional warlords to pacify the country outside of Kabul, the heroin trade has flourished far beyond what it was under the Taliban. This is where the War on Drugs intersects with the War on Terror. If NATO hits the heroin trade - currently responsible for 93% of the world's supply of the drug - it destroys the chances of democracy because the warlords will then support the Taliban, just as many of them did before 9/11. And the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces are using precisely the same tactics that drove the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan in 1989.
A NATO defeat in Afghanistan could, in theory, involve Pakistan, Iran, Russia and the increasingly dangerous former Soviet Central Asian Republics in a race for influence in the region. It is likely that Indian, Pakistani, Russian and Chinese intelligence could begin a new Great Game in Afghanistan as it descends into chaos.
That domino theory is much more plausible than the one in Southeast Asia 40 years ago, and one that originates completely in the person of the 43rd President of the United States.
The contemporaries of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Reagan were wrong about their tenures. I also believe that they were also wrong about Johnson, Nixon and the first Bush as no one has really measured their failures against their very real accomplishments.
The current President Bush has none of those accomplishments and has failed in ways that no president since Harding thought was even possible.
When Karl Rove first started going to work for George Bush in 1993, Bush forced him to give up the consulting business that made him rich. For fourteen years, George W. Bush has been Karl Rove's only client. Their fates are bound together forever, so it is in Rove's interest that history treat them well.
Unfortunately, the legacy of Karl Rove and George Bush involves most of the rest of the world, so it is in everyone's interest that they not be allowed to write the first draft of that history.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Nothing From Nothing By: Billy Preston From: The Ultimate Collection
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
