Rev Blair

Way to shift those goal posts! You accuse me of being partisan and just hating Bush, and when I give other examples you go after me for not giving the examples YOU want me to. You guys are kind of funny. Nice strawman. I've never claimed any of of that. The US, by its powerful position, does bear more responsibility than other nations though. You don't get to demand that others follow your laws while breaking those same laws yourself. If you rape a prostitute, you're still a rapist. Hussein was contained. He was not attacking any of his neighbours. His nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs had been at a standstill for over a decade. He had no viable WMD and no way of producing any. Things weren't good in Iraq, but food and medical aid was getting in...and before you go off on a rant about Oil for Food, I suggest you learn the facts about that. Withdrawing from the UN would achieve what, exactly? It certainly wouldn't change the fact that the US is signatory to various international treaties...including the Geneva Conventions...and helped to write much the international law it now thinks it can break with impunity. Apparently your bias has over-ridden your ability to see what's going on around you. Or you've bought into the Limbaugh/O'Reilly spin. Either way, you're wrong. Right wing celebrities are every bit as bad as left wing celebrities when it comes to political issues. Those commentators deliver the Republican message. They lay the base for the subtext of the speeches the politicians make. Trying to separate the two amounts to pedantry. They've been shown the correct answers time and again. Social programs are both more effective and less expensive than prisons. Educated people earn more money than uneducated people. Treatment and harm reduction programs reduce drug crime more than the war on drugs. Backing petty dictators for short term interests bites you in the ass a decade or so later. Science works. Taking things by force...whether it's bananas or oil...has consequences. Conventional armies do not do well against insurgencies. Abstinence is not sex education. Racism leads to social problems. Mixing religion and politics ultimately leads to fewer religious freedoms. "Jaw jaw is better than war war," as Churchill said. We learned most of these things over a century ago.

Okay, you want to talk about Bill Clinton in Bosnia? How about his failure to act, which ultimately blocked the UN from doing anything, in Rwanda? How 'bout Bush Sr. invading Panama and locking up Manny Noriega to keep him from talking about what he knew about cocaine and guns? Why do you suppose Guatemalans were dancing in the streets the day Reagan croaked? How come nobody ever shut down the School of the Americas? Who taught Chilean torturers to put live rats in women's vaginas, then sew them shut? Or should we not talk about the first 9-11? What was the deal with the Gulf of Tonkin? Where did the phrase "Banana Republic" come from? There's a pattern here, it isn't just Bush. He's been the worst, likely because of incompetence, but he certainly isn't alone. Saddam was cooperating with UN weapons inspectors, and those inspectors said that there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. The only justification for the invasion, under international law, is a clear and present danger. That danger did not exist. Neither Saddam's violations nor the weakness of the UN (much of which was caused by being under constant attack from the US) do not change the matter of the US violating international law. You either respect the rule of law, or you don't. If you don't, pointing at somebody else and saying, "They did it too," does not make your actions legal. Ever watch a Ted Nugent interview? How 'bout that Chuck Heston? Brookes and Dunn. A whole whack of actors. Even Britney got in on the pro-Bush banter...and not just because she forgot her panties. Wanna pass the entire shaker of salt over? It's been part of the Republican message since Reagan began his run for president. It's the message of every right-leaning commentator you have, with the possible exception of Pat Buchanan. Which is a part of the same message. It's ignorance parading as populism. It's not restricted to your country. At another site, a in thread about how global warming is affecting Canada's north, the patter of a southern Albertan catskinner of questionable mental health was given the same or more weight than peer-reviewed science. It does have a greater hold in your country though. Up here the Conservatives...neo-conservatives really...can't get above 40% in the polls despite facing the weakest opposition in living memory. Down there, they've been running things for the last eight years.

I think you are moving into a different era of politics, Sisyphus. I think the highly partisan, win at all costs game that started with Reagan (actually Nixon, but he got caught) is over. I don't think that will lead to a reduction in actual partisanship, though. Your system is based on partisanship causing a debate and that debate convincing people one way or the other. Every working democracy I can think of is based on that same principle. What we are likely to see in the US is a little more thoughtfulness and more attention to the actual issues. Obama brings some of that, but so does McCain...these are guys who are confident enough in their policies to actually talk about them.

The Drive by Truckers. I can feel my neck getting redder with each track.

You deal with that through trade deals though. Obama has already taken the position that trade should be tied to the environment, workers' rights, and overall human rights. That's something that progressives everywhere, not just the US, have been pushing for a long time. So you cap your emissions, then deal with "dirty" products being shipped in through tarriffs. Your closer trading partners (Canada and Mexico) will follow suit fairly quickly. Then others will jump on the wagon. You are the biggest market in the world, if you want China to clean up its act, that's the way to do it.

Your government doesn't exist in a vacuum though. Did you sign the UN Convention on Torture? Yes? Have you been renditioning people, including Maher Arar, to torture? Yes. Are you in contravention of international law by doing so? Yes. You may also be in contravention of your domestic laws...and you can argue that all you want...but you are definitely in contravention of international laws. That's just one example...there are many others. It's also not just my opinion, the laws are pretty clear. I think it comes from taking the office too seriously. The denizens of that office ignore laws on a fairly regular basis and get away with that abuse of power because because people are afraid of the office. Start perp-walking them out of the Oval Office and into a waiting police cruiser, and the abuses will slow. Make them subject to trial at Hague, and your country will regain its position as a beacon of democracy and the rule of law. What I'm advocating is not gutter-level disrespect, but a healthy questioning of authority. If the rules don't apply to your president, then they don't apply to me either, after all. Funny, because a couple of months ago I was asked to say grace...a very political attempt to embarrass me by an alleged Christian...and responded with, "Jesus Christ, please help me to deal with people dim enough to believe in you." I wasn't gone after for insulting Christians, or the gaggle of god freaks I was forced to dine with, but for making a political statement. Getting Haggee to say the prayer at a race, given his views, his connection to the Republicans, and recent controversies, was very much a political statement. You skipped my point about country music too. If the Dixie Chicks were being political, they were nothing compared to the smarmy jingoism that regularly spews from Nashvile (started out as a typo, but I decided I'd leave it). We are taught that though. It is the message of the Republicans in your country and the Conservatives in mine. In is the message of right-wing commentators who try to hide behind populism.

It is not, as you try to characterize it, just decisions I don't like. It is things that are, at best, of questionable legality. Torture, wire taps, illegal renditions, Guantanamo Bay, an illegal war...that kind of thing. You ignored the rule of law while your leaders broke the law. Their aspirations were set high though. It's far from a perfect document...the Second Amendment alone demonstrates that by neither meaning what it says or saying what it means. The idea that African Americans aren't fully human was just as deplorable then as it is now. The separation of church and state was never defined as clearly as should have been. When was the last time the people of the US chose wisely? Kennedy? Lincoln? Sure they do. Consider talk radio or turn a country station on. NASCAR had Hagee doing the prayer at...I think it was Daytona...this year. It's my view of North American democracy in general. Of course people believe they know better than the experts and, whether in politics or home renovations, that can be a very dangerous thing. It works just fine when the public is educated and engaged, but that education isn't happening and the engagement is dependent on eight second sound bites, not deep analysis. I'm not really talking about realistic political partisanship though...that's built into every democracy on the planet and is based on policy. I'm talking about the almost complete lack of real political discourse. Consider the discussion about Obama's running mate...almost nobody is talking about skills or complimentary experiences and policies, instead they are talking about who can bring which seats, appeal to which demographics and special interests, and so on.

Okay, without changing the subject, I just wanted to say that Obama should pick Steve Earle for his running mate. That way, even when they screw up I can listen to it really loud. Now back to the various significances of the various pickles: No. Bush is a lot of things, but he's not a natural leader...he's no Bill "The Spaceman" Lee, for instance. If it wasn't for the undue respect that Americans have for the office of president, people would have crucified him for disappearing and running like a scared little girl of 9-11. When he did that, and I criticized him for it, the Americans I converse with were quite indignant that I would attack their president for being a coward. The Republicans had a problem with me criticizing Bush, of course, but the non-Republicans were pissed off about me daring to go after the president. Ah, but I don't hold the document in esteem. I don't hold its framers in esteem either. It might because I'm a writer, or it might just be because I've met too many allegedly intelligent people who don't understand influence and soft power, but your constitution wouldn't have happened without your founding fathers. You can try to separate the two, but there was a standard set and expectations built up, and the framers had to live up to them. I don't think you and I disagree on this point, I think we disagree on the effect of this point. I don't think that criticizing the office-holder is the same as criticizing the office. I do think that many people refrain from criticizing the office-holder, or water down their criticism, because they are afraid it may have a negative connotation for the office. I also think we need to criticize offices though...not the people in them, but what is done with them. Your insistence on protecting the office amounts to nothing more than a larger scale partisanship. For example, and to take it away from your feelings about your country, a generation ago Pierre Trudeau worked very hard to centralize power in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and to take away power from what were known as the mandarins. The mandarins were career civil servants who had so seniority that they couldn't be fired. They would stand up to politicians and tell them they couldn't do things. Today, the reality is that our PMO has way too much power and we really need the mandarins back. The Prime Minister who undermined their power and our present PM would have hated each other...in fact they both mentioned that they hated each other...yet they both had/have too much power because of the power of their office. I would suggest that the same thing happened in the US around the time of Lincoln. Your President has too much power, even if it isn't official. Perhaps you need to delve more deeply into the democratic tenet of the the need to protect against the tyranny of the majority. It's one of the reasons, a major one, why all those checks and balances were put into place in the first place. It's generally presented as a way to protect minorities from persecution, which it does and which is important, but protection from the tyranny of the majority also protects democracy against the bad decisions that the mob makes in general. I'm not missing anything. I am seeing a failure in your your political system. Ah yes, the "Attack Hollywood" defense. You seem to forget the other side of that coin...NASCAR racing, the absolute embarrassment of what comes out of Nashville under the guise of music, Chuck Heston and his gaggle of gun freaks. You want to see laughable ignorance, look at the pop culture of the right. Not at all. The arguable majority of Americans don't understand domestic or international law. They have been taught that experts are pointy-headed academics who live in ivory towers and don't understand real life. If you celebrate ignorance, teach people that it's cool to be stupid, unthinking, and reactionary...that there's dignity in purposeful ignorance...then use that purposeful ignorance as proof that ignorance is good, you will end up losing your democracy. I'll wait and see if your country is really finding itself. I honestly have little sense of that. I see the same old partisan fight. On the bright side, at least you are arguing about something...up here we're fighting about who will be better at sucking up to whoever you elect next. If it wasn't for beer, I might lose my sense of humour about Canadian politics. It isn't always a pointless political ploy. They went after Clinton for getting a blow job, but they went after Nixon for substantive reasons. Clinton getting it on with a staffer is not a constitutional crisis, Bush trashing your constitutional rights and breaking international law is a constitutional crisis. Our government up here has been playing similar games. Everything is secret until somebody files an access of information request. Recently, Harper got rid of the registry that made it possible to find out what Access of Information requests had been filed. To my mind, the biggest threat to our freedom is not terrorists, but governments that try to keep us in the dark about what they are up to.

I have to kind of disagree with that. The Jews I know...mostly secular, many agnostic or atheist...celebrate a lot of Jewish culture outside of religion. I think they (the people I know) are kind of a hybrid between nationality and religion. I'm not sure whether that's a fact in the larger Jewish community, or a local thing, but I tend to think it's pretty widespread. Most of them (again, Jews I know personally) disagree rather harshly with the government of Israel re: Palestine as well, for what that's worth. In a lot of ways they remind me of the Ukrainian community here...very difficult to separate culture from religion, but as the religion filters out over generations, the culture remains.

Right now I'm listening to Elliot Brood play some serious death banjo. I'm never going to get this article written....

I think iNow has it about right. We rot and the circle continues, or we get cremated and it continues a little faster, or we give our bodies up for research and students make jokes about our corpses. At least I hope they do...I'd hate to be dissected by somebody who was all serious.

Well, the New York Times actually issued and apology for not doing their job in the run-up to Iraq. The reasons they gave included their own reaction to 9/11, but the subtext of that is that, because it was felt the country should unite against a common enemy they united under the leadership of a bad president. They didn't question him because of the office he held. No, I mean the offices, not the physical buildings. There have been dozens and dozens of failed democracies and dictatorships that created those same offices. Such failures happen more often with the republican model than the parliamentary model. The truth is that the republican model doesn't work very well in most circumstances. That yours survived its early years is a testament to your founding fathers, not the offices they created. None of that disregards the importance of law, in fact, it reduces the opportunity to evade the law because there is no worry about being seen to insult the office instead of the office holder. The present holder of the highest office in the US has flaunted both domestic and international law, yet nothing has been done about it. At least part of that is due to people being afraid to besmirch the office. Meanwhile the office, not to mention your international reputation, suffers.

Careful with that...Talbot turned out to be a bit of a whiner as time went on. I moved on to digital several years ago, but even then the variety of silver-based films, especially black and white, was becoming quite limited compared to what it had been. Same with papers. There used to be an abundance of choices in an abundance of retailers. Much of that has gone away. I miss darkroom work sometimes too. It used to be that I could disappear into the darkroom with some beer and cigarettes, and be left alone. Now I use a computer for a darkroom and people seem to think it's some kind of spectator sport.

That depends how you define "viable", Phi. Talk to ten different people, you'll get twelve different opinions.

Actually, I've already made a lot of the lifestyle changes. I work out of my house, my trucks are left-overs from another era that I owe nothing on, and Mrs. Rev works close to here...close enough to bicycle. Some of my writing is technical/carpentry stuff though, so I need materials to build the projects as I write about them, and, because I live in an old house, there are always repairs, upgrades, and maintenance to do. Then there's the landscaping...it's hard to carry a yard of 3/4 down lime in a smart car. I worry more about people I know in small towns and on farms. They have little choice but to commute to larger centres for work, and they have to buy fuel for their farm equipment. Many of them are farmers who work off the farm to make ends meet, so moving isn't an option for them. Others moved to small towns because housing prices are low in small towns and they could afford to live there. I'm not talking about people who wanted a monster house on a five acre lot here, or people who over-extended themselves because they wanted all the toys, I'm talking about people who were struggling before and are being hit hard by gas prices now. Finally, there's another reality that nobody talks about much, likely because it's considered rude. Some of us don't fit into the urban lifestyle very well. You can't just dump us into the middle of a city without making the neighbours uncomfortable.

It's not just the size of the cars, it's the entire design of North American society. We live a long way from where we work and, in a lot of cases spouses work in different areas from each other. We have a lot of lifestyle choices that require owning a truck or SUV...everything from gardening to "camping" to not looking after our roads properly. I can't imagine trying to live where I do without a truck. I haul stuff most weekends in the summer. I've never bought into the bit about using a truck as my main method of transport, but if I had bought something new (as all the advertising tells us we should) and was making payments on it, I couldn't afford a fuel efficient car as well.

That "fair shot" business assumes a blank slate though. Politicians do not reach high office without garnering a record that can be used as a likely predictor of their performance. I don't just mean a record of voting and previously held offices, but a record of statements, proposed policies, and interactions with others. To most foreign observers, it was fairly obvious that George Bush was going to be a bad president, for instance. Those predictions were based on his past performance and the performance of those around him. Similarly, it's pretty obvious to non-neo-conservative observers that Stephen Harper is a bad Prime Minister for Canada...which is likely why he keeps stumbling in the polls despite facing the weakest Liberal Party in Canada's history. Yet the esteem the office is held in is at least partially responsible for your press not doing their job in the run-up to war in Iraq and your Congress' continued failure to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney. They say that impeachment would cause a constitutional crisis when, in fact, impeachment would address an existing constitutional crisis. That's why it's there. I have a great deal of respect for your founding fathers, especially Jefferson, but because of what they achieved, not because of the offices they held. Those offices could have as easily been created by a gaggle of despots working a scam...which kind of brings us back to Bush and company. It's necessary to keep in mind that you aren't the only one in awe of the office, and others react differently in that awe. It's not healthy and eats away at the democracy the office is supposed to represent.

It doesn't really matter...our money is pretty much at par now, which has cut into my income because I get paid in US funds a lot.

I dunno...he seems a little more honest than most of them, and more willing to deal with things head on. Look at his speech on race, or his analysis of some voters becoming disenfranchised and bitter. When I looked at his policies and his record, I found that he had some real depth and understanding there, too. His views on the economy, trade and the environment...and you really have to look at them together...make more sense than those of Clinton. He is the presidential contender who can say he was right about Iraq. None of that answers my question about why Canadians like him though. In fact his policies on trade would very likely be bad for Canada. A friend of mine said that it might be because he reminds Canadians of Tommy Douglas. I don't know if that's true or not...there is a certain similarity to their speeches and their views, but not their solutions or policies. For those of you who don't know, Tommy Douglas is basically the guy who brought social programs to Canada, although he did it without ever holding power federally. Douglas was also Keifer Sutherland's grandfather.

Quite often, actually. The thing is that those who have those traits either remain on the back benches, or water down their capacities in order to become more electable. That's part of the tyranny of democracy, unfortunately. As for holding offices in awe...that seems to be more an American thing. I don't care how smart a president is, or how powerful the office makes him. In the end he's just another guy in an upper management position. The office doesn't make people better, and it holds no magical powers. Nah, my analysis is as honest as anyone's...perhaps more so because I have no inhibition when it comes to speaking truth to power. The problem with holding an office or a policy-maker in high esteem is that at some point you lump their bad policies in with their good ones, or let the policies you don't agree with slide because of the ones you do agree with. My grandmother gave me some advice about the NDP once, a party she supported from its inception and I still support today. "You have to watch these bastards," she said, "Or they start talking like Liberals and voting like Conservatives." I think that goes across the political spectrum...we have to speak out in whatever forum is available to us in order to keep the politicians honest.

Ah, there's the rub. Should I put as much effort into this as I put into my paid writing? I'm not sure what you do for a living, Pangloss, but I am pretty sure that you don't do it for free in your spare time as well. You might talk about it with others, you might share some of your knowledge, but I doubt you actually sit down and do the work. That brings us back to the reality of politics though. There are no hard facts. Sorry, but supplying links doesn't change that. What we do know is that Bush's policies have failed in the past, and his policy towards Iran is based on the same kind of thinking that caused those other policies to fail. We also know that Iran has reacted badly to foreign intervention and imperialism in the past. It is the one thing that brings disparate groups of Iranians together. If you doubt that, look into the cooperation between Khomeini and the democratic movement in ousting the Shah. The record speaks for itself though. If Bush was right part of the time and his dissenters part of the time, you'd have a point. The reality is that the dissenters have been right every time though, and Bush has been wrong. More than that, Bush has gone against the advice of the international community as well. There are a lot of very intelligent people who specialize in these things, and the majority of them predicted what would happen if Bush carried out his policies. Have I called anyone but George Bush an idiot? As for global warming, there is a huge body of scientific evidence supporting it, and little or no valid evidence showing the theory to be incorrect. The anti-AGW crowd is dominated by political and financial motivations. There are a few scientists, but most of them aren't publishing peer-reviewed papers on the subject. There has been more than a little dishonesty from the anti-AGW crowd as well...check out the reality of the Oregon Petition or pretty much anything Inhofe has said on the subject. Anyway, I have to go see a man about a horse...literally...so I'll pick this up later.

I do speak out against Bush's lack of intellect in a disparaging manner. So do a lot of other people, not all of them highly partisan. The thing is that I can't think of a single policy of his that worked as advertised, never mind whether I agreed with the advertising or not. Eight years of failed policies does not point to an intelligent policy maker. Also, I'm pretty used to playing pretty hard at politics, and insulting politicians is part of that game. I don't hold them or their offices in awe, in fact I agree with Mencken's maxim that down is the only way a journalist can look at a politician. Anyway, I take all of your points to heart, with special mention to Saryctos.

I think you might be onto something there, John. Our current crop of Canadian politicians are about as inspiring as sawdust. Our Prime Minster and the leader of the official opposition are both policy wonks who are afraid to talk about their policies lest they cease to be all things to all people. The two smaller parties (the NDP and the Bloc) keep their leaders on a short leash for much the same reason. It's kind of like watching a porn movie with all the dirty parts edited out. Then Obama shows up on our TV sets and we see how politicians could be. That's against a background of a current US president who is incredibly unpopular here, and the Clinton's who were well-liked enough here, but not very exciting either way.