What we talk about when we talk about conservatives

Never mind all the guff about Ronald Reagan. Reagan was an amiable-seeming father figure who did what his wife and her astrologer and Exxon told him to do. He regularly fell asleep in Cabinet meetings and by the end of his term didn't know where he was half the time.
Richard Nixon, Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich pretty much invented the modern conservative movement by harnessing the power of Barry Goldwater's Birchers and bigots, funded by corporations eager to buy the kind of legislation (or lack of it) that would allow them free rein to empty America's pockets without having to give any of  it back.
You can learn all about this from just about any mainstream political history text, but I would recommend Rick Perlstein's Nixonland to anyone who really wants to learn how American politics got to be the witchbag of corruption, sleaze and demagoguery it is these days.
Also, the film Boogieman, which chronicles Lee Atwater's work appealing to Southern racists to make the GOP the party of the Confederate States of America.


And if this had been written about anyone else, it would leave welts on their back, but it will simply roll off of Newt's carapace while he tells his half-bright supporters about the big bad liberal New York Times and how they are out to stop him from saving America.


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Midweek reading

Just a couple of things for your midweek read that I happened across:

• If Rob Ford's opponents on council were "two steps to the left of Joseph Stalin" as he claims, they would long ago have had him icepicked to death in Mexico or sent to starve to death in Siberia.. At the very least, he would have been sent to a re-education camp by now.
• A Scary Thought: Do We Really Need "If You See Something, Say Something?" | The National Interest Blog

And speaking of reading:

#7 Requiem for an Assassin By Barry Eisler
Fast-paced fun with freelance assassin John Rain. For those not in the know, Barry Eisler is a former CIA agent turned  thriller writer, so his take on the espionage novel is a bit different. Great action scences, authentic spycraft, thought-provoking observations on how violence occurs and how the mind deals with it.

I read and reviewed this when it first came out, back when I used to get paid to read and review books ( I reviewed an earlier Eisler book in the John Rain series "Hard Rain" but forgot to save an electronic copy for my own use, though the review is quoted at his site). I've also communicated with Barry a few times via email and bulletin boards and only narrowly missed having a drink with him in Tokyo one time.
He also wrote the introduction for the only English language book of which I can claim partial authorship. He blogs a bit and sometimes writes for Huffpo and Firedoglake. For an former spook with a fixation on knives and martial arts, he's strikes me as a pretty nice guy. His books, however - and I mean this in the nicest way -  are like potato chips: it's difficult to stop at just one.

#8 Fault Line by Barry Eisler
A non-John Rain thriller that leans heavily on the liberal elite vs conservative warhawk cultural divide in American culture. Definitely worth reading and like Eisler's other work, a thinking man's thriller with plenty of emphasis on tradecraft and the technical side of espionage.

Music worth paying for!

From Tbogg we learn that Bob Dylan has donated the royalties/waived the rights to a whole bunch of his songs for a fundraising album of Dylan covers for Amnesty International.

Some samples:








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War criminal feels the wrath of American military justice!

That will teach him a lesson! And let the dire fate of  marine Staff Sgt. Frank G. Wuterich be an example to every other soldier on the battlefield that the rules of war and human decency must be obeyed.
Well, mostly.
Unless you get angry because one of your fellow soldiers is killed, then ordering your men to shoot the nearest women and children is kinda like a bunch of unpaid parking tickets or getting caught shoplifting. Assuming of course the women and children are brown not-Americans foolish enough to have been born in a country to which the United States takes a dislike.
Three whole months in the stockade and forfeiture of two thirds of his pay for those three months. Assuming the USMC commandant doesn't step in and reduce the penalty.
And certainly the United States military doesn't want such a wanton law breaker and killer within its ranks, well not as a Staff Sgt. anyways, so he's been busted down to Private for now.
Imagine for a moment that an Iraqi soldier was responsible for killing 24 Americans - say U.S. security contractors or soldier, not women and children - what do you think the consequences would be? Can you conceive of any possible scenario in which that man would not be killed? Either through legal means with a quick show trial and a hanging or by presidential order and special forces hit team?
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Smug, okay maybe a little, but I think it's justified

with a tip of the beaver hat to the esteemed Mr. Otter, who reads & comments but does not blog
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Trash talking us into war

I think most reasonable people, at least in hindsight, would agree that one of the things the Liberals' got right under Chretien and Martin was keeping Canada out of the gigantic deadly goat rodeo known as the Iraq War.
Remember how in the months that lead up to the invasion we were told again and again that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, that there was no question he was working on 'nookyalur' weapons, that Saddam Hussein was seen french kissing Osama Bin Laden under the bleachers during the homecoming game. This was all given as gospel truth by the White House, Pentagon, CIA and about 90% of the Western Media.
And yet, hundreds of billions of dollars and a million or so deaths later, we know it was all bullshit. They were wrong or lying or both.
Iraq was about as close to having nukes or a means to deliver them as say, Guatemala is and was about as much a military threat to its neighbours at that point as Belgium is to France, Germany and Britain.
Outside of a very few conservative true believers and George W. Bush's inner circle, no one, least of all the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, think the invasion of Iraq worked out well.
Remember too, that Stephen Harper very much wanted Canada to take part in the Iraq War.
Now that Harper has his majority, he cannot and will not be denied his opportunity to show the world that Canada is a major player on the world stage just as capable of killing lots of non-Western Nogoodniks and Nogoodnik women and terrorist children as any other NATO member and not just some namby-pambly peacekeeper. Truly, lives could be saved if someone would just give the man a ruler, tell him the centimetres are really inches and send him off to measure his little Cheney.
Even though the current U.S. president is likely to be reelected without having start a war with Iran, Harper, ever hopeful of a victory for his Republican fellow travellers, is already laying the groundwork to take Canada into the next war of choice.

  “I’ve raised the alarm as much as I can, but obviously I don’t advocate particular actions publicly. I work with our allies to see if we get consensus on actions,” he said.
Mr. Harper said he has no doubt that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. “There is absolutely no doubt they are lying,” Mr. Harper said, referring to statements by Iran that the nuclear program is for peaceful uses.
“The evidence is just growing overwhelming. This is not, as was the case of Iraq, merely the opinion of allies,” he said.
The development of nuclear weapons as one of the purposes of Iran’s nuclear program “is just beyond dispute at this point,” he said. “The only dispute is how far advanced it is and how far off it will be until they actually develop those weapons and develop the capability of delivering the weapons.” 

Given that Israeli and U.S. conservative hawks have been warnings Iran is just x-number of years/months/weeks/days/hours away from "getting the bomb" roughly every two weeks since the Shah was chased out of Tehran, I tend to take such certainty with a bushel or two of salt.
Given the number of sabres being rattled at it, Iran would be wise to follow North Korea's example and actually get hold of some nukes. Saddam Hussein didn't and look what happened to him.
Mind you, it isn't just that Harper want to get his war on for its own sake, he also thinks he sees a way to turn a dollar or three for his oil-patch pals:

Also during the interview, Mr. Harper linked the debate over the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas with concern over Iran’s threat to blockade the main shipping route for oil in the Middle East. “It’s pretty obvious what the right decision is … not just from an economic and environmental standpoint, but from an energy security standpoint,” Mr. Harper said. “When you look at the Iranians threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz, I think that just illustrates how critical it is that supply for the United States be North American,” Mr. Harper said.

The winning quote from the interview though, by far was this bit of classic right wing projection. The same comment could have come from any leader in the Middle East, Asia, Eastern Europe, South America or Africa in discussing the United States and conservative Canada.

“In my judgment, these are people who have a particular, you know, fanatically religious worldview, and their statements imply to me no hesitation of using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes,” 

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It isn't your imagination, they really are talking to themselves

The SUN-TV news network was never intended to cover the news, it was intended to make the news. Some might even say make up the news, but what I mean is that the gang of clown-shoed commentators put together by right-wing Quebecor chieftain Pierre Karl Peladeau and former PMO flack Kory Teneycke are paid to act out and grab headlines, not to report the news.
Nobody watches SUN-TV outside of a few elderly shut-ins, the staff at QMI newspapers who are a captive audience, Blogging Tories and professional media watchers. 

Bill Brioux, a freelance TV writer for CP, owner of TVFeedsMyFamily.com and a former Sun Media TV columnist, has access to BBM numbers. He says the audiences for Sun News Network are indeed minuscule.

“Very few Canadians watch Sun News Network. A look at the BBM Canada overnight, estimated ratings for a typical mid-week night, Wed. Dec. 28, showed that their highest rated show was The Source with Ezra Levant at 10 p.m. with 38,000 viewers across Canada. ByLine with Brian Lilley at 9 pulled 35,000. Only 5,000 and 6,000 of those viewers were between 25 and 54, across Canada. There are more people, on any given night, in a mall in Toronto,” says Brioux.

So who does watch Sun News Network? “The vast majority of the few viewers SNN does get are way over 50, outside the demo advertisers want. So SNN draws enough on a nightly basis to fill a senior’s mall,” says Brioux.

He went on to say that after the top two shows, Sun News Network gets even fewer viewers. “Beyond Lilley and Levant’s shows—the two highest rated SNN offerings by far—everything else stiffs,” says Brioux. “Charles Adler has bombed from the beginning, drawing 8,000 at 8 p.m. and 2,000 at 11 p.m. on the 28th—and zero in the 25–54 demographic both hours, across Canada.”

As for David Akin’s Daily Brief, Brioux says 6,000 viewers tuned in over the supper hour. But the late-night slot tanked. “Daily Brief at midnight got zip and zip—so few viewers, BBM Canada could not measure them. The same night, CBC News Network peaked at 198,000/60,000 viewers.”

The idea behind the "news" network is to make a lot of noise through calculated and contrived outrageousness and get the other media in the country to pay attention. This results in the media that most people do watch and read - the CBC, CTV, Global TV, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Province et al - reporting "both sides of the story" and thus giving the radical right wing side of an issue equal balance with the truth, thus advancing the radical conservative neofascist agenda.
Every time Ezra Levant prances around in a fright wig or tells a foreign executive to go fuck his mother for opposing the destruction of the environment, every time some ignorant spokesbimbo insults a guest and spouts nonsense, every time Michael Coren tells the audience that real Canadians hate brown people and non-Christians --it makes the news, the blogs (including this one) go nuts and people talk about it.
With very few exceptions - and they should be ashamed of themselves - the people on SUN TV don't care about the news or journalism or truth - that isn't the business they are in. They will say or do anything to get covered by other media. They have to, because no one is watching them.
Essentially, SUN TV is engaged in cultural trolling and the way you get rid of trolls is to quit feeding them. So I call on other bloggers, other journalists, the real news media in Canada to stop giving these trolls the oxygen of public attention.
As long as the CRTC refuses to force cable companies to make them a standard station and force subscribers to give them money, SUN-TV will not turn a profit. Eventually PKP will get sick of shovelling money down a hole and Levant, Adler, Coren, Erickson and the rest will all be forced to go out and try to get real jobs.
And being a professional clown only looks good on a resume if you are applying for a job at Ringling Brothers or a rodeo.


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Street curling

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Oh the weather outside is frightful...

and I don't have a goddamn fireplace  to curl up in front of with a  good book while it drizzles outside (Rain? in January? in Canada? Are you shitting me? There ought to be a foot-and-a-half of snow outside by now at least, not this filthy mud.)

So I decided I needed a little Florida on Monday and reread this old favourite while waiting in the car for Mrs. Paperboy to go through a two hour job interview for a job for which she is massively overqualified.

#6 The Deep Blue Goodbye by John D. MacDonald
The first in MacDonald's series of books starring Travis McGee "non-conformist, boat bum, knight in slightly tarnished armour" is, like most of MacDonald's stuff, a 'page-turner' (a cliched term I loathe, but in this case accurate without the negative connotation of something only sold in train stations and airports).
McGee's Florida is a dark and sunny place, full of bikini babes and human sharks. This first one in the long running series, most instalments of which I read before I finished high school, is a bit long on the philosophizing and has a relatively simple plot compared to later works. Some of MacDonald's riffing on sociology and psychology is a bit dated, but like Fleming's James Bond, the strength of the characters, especially the hero, carries the story along very nicely.
MacDonald was already a well established writer, having published dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories in the 50's. He had publishers begging him to write a series featuring the same character for several years before he sat down and wrote not just this first book, but six more besides between 1962 and 1964 featuring "Dallas McGee"  - the first book being written three time before he was satisfied with it. The Deep Blue Goodbye sat in the publishers' office while he wrote the rest - just to make sure he could write a series. Of the first seven books written, two were never submitted for publication as MacDonald considered them failures. (Have a look here for a more comprehensive account of the creation of the series). He wrote over a million words before allowing the publishers to go ahead and bring the first book to market. The first three were published in rapid succession with the fourth and fifth close behind. MacDonald kept writing them until his death in 1986 and they continued to top the bestsellers charts.
I don't think they rise quite as high as Chandler's best, but they certainly follow the trail he blazed and the quality of writing is pretty high for the genre, the plots and characters ring true and the philosophical insights are...uh...insightful.
If you've never read any of the 21 (or is it 22?) books featuring Travis McGee, this one is a good place to start.
I've been to the library this week and just had returned to me three big boxes of books I left behind with a friend when I took off for Japan 15 years ago, so there is plenty of grist for the mill.  Time to start turning some more pages.

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readin' readin' readin'

#5 The Sister Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
Not many reviewers can resist comparing The Sister Brothers to the Cohen Brothers' version of True Grit and not without reason. The dialogue has the same declamatory feel and both works have their own odd sense of humour. It didn't win the Governor General's award for nothing. A fine, seemingly simple style (which is always the hardest stuff to write) and a few truly memorable scenes and images.
And if the Coen Brothers don't do the film version, there is no justice in this world.
As usual, leave suggestions in the comments.

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Another day, another trial balloon

Fresh from launching a trial balloon on reopening the abortion debate that he swears he has no interest in reopening (mainly because it is too handy a chunk of raw meat to dangle in front of the base at fundraising time) Steven Harper sends his legal beagles forth to reopen the debate over same sex marriage that he swears he has no interest in reopening. Amid the screeching, outrage in response to their clumsy er, backdoor effort to test the waters the Justice Minister is backpeddling at light speed.
The whole foray was ill advised to start with and as transparent a bit of wind testing as has ever been seen.
The lawyers for the feds, who would not be responding to this case in the way they did without checking with the boss first, argued neither woman was legally able to marry a person of the same sex under the laws of Florida or the United Kingdom, where they reside. "As a result, their marriage is not legally valid under Canadian law."
The whole thing could have and should have been avoided by citing the fact that Ontario divorce law has a residency requirement. That makes some sense, since if you don't live here, things like orders to divide property or share custody become much more difficult for Canadian courts to enforce.But no, Harper decided this would be a good time to mess around and provoke a freakout, thus giving him a chance to a) burnish his "see, I'm not really a bigot" credentials by tut-tutting about this "misunderstanding" b) blame the Liberals for not creating perfect legislation (that his party opposed) and c)reopen the legislation to 'fix' it.
These trial balloons, along with the earlier push to villify the CBC, are great tools for Harper because they allow him to rile up the base and squeeze them for cash to fight "those lousy socialists and liberals who are obstructing the grand conservative agenda to remake Canada" and lay the groundwork for changing things without having to do any actual remaking until he's damn good and ready to do it.
Well played, you baby-noshing, dead-eyed low-rent Machiavelli


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Beatles Reunion!

And a bunch of other stuff I found

• Now that Stephen Colbert is sort of running for the Republican nomination and outpolling Jon Huntsman in South Carolina, does that mean he will be included in the Republican leadership debates? (Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease)
• Another reason where I live is cooler than where you live. And that's not counting the new outdoor rink at city hall.
• It is Friday, so naturally you are listening to Driftglass and Blue Gal on the Professional Left podcast. Any other activity would be a less-productive use of your time and theirs
• No one can possibly be surprised by this, though the fact that the person who got rich giving so many Americans diabetes will now get richer by promoting diabetes medication is really an "only in America" moment.
• Predictable despicable douchebag, as predicted, behaves in a predictably despicable douchy way
• Meanwhile, in the Excited States the militarization of your local police force continues. 
• Copy editor humour  
• That whirring sound you hear is Comrade Che spinning in his grave. If we could hook a generator up to him, he could light up South America all over again.
• From our Very Short Answers to Stupid Questions dept. Yes. Supporting evidence here (It's nice when the fish swim into the barrel and hand you a grenade like that)

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Headlines we wish we could use

The United States Marine Corps -  America's No. 1 fighting force

(sorry, I couldn't help it)
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The joy of books

A little something in honour of my 50 book project.



(for Dan and Tammy)

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Whatcha reading?

As mentioned previously, I've embarked on a little project this year to read 50 books. Partly because I found I had started to cut down on my off-line reading late last year and partly just for the hell of it. As with hard-boiled eggs, I figured 50 was a good round number for books. Nothing too arduous, just plug along at a book a week, right? Should work fine as long I don't decide to read anything more ambitious than your average airport news-stand pot-boiler, right? We will see how the system works when I tackle some meatier stuff later in the year. But for this week, a pair of quick engaging reads that the ripped through in not time.

#3 The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler
Noir before there was Noir. Chandler is one of those writers of genre fiction who is so good that he rises above simple genre writing and moves on the plane of "Literature." Of course it helps that he practically invented the hard-boiled detective genre.
This is one of his later, less-known novels, and one I've had sitting on the self for a couple of years where I've saving it like a vintage wine. They aren't making any more 1990 Chateau Latour Paulliac and Chandler isn't writing any more novels, so to get to read one for the first time is always a treat.

#4 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
I read this year's  big contribution to Geek Lit in a single afternoon with only a short break to fetch the daughter from school and to cook my ought-to-be-world-famous eggplant parmesan (baked, not fried, so as not to be too greasy). Great read for any and all geeks, nerds, gamers, or anyone who grew up in the 80s  or  watches Big Bang Theory and says "Pfft, those aren't real nerds,  I'll show you real nerds - come and meet my friends from the games club." The first novel from the screenwriter of the movie Fanboys. If you liked the movie or have ever spent time in Second Life or a comic store or been to an SF convention or John Hughes movie marathon, you'll like this book.
Apparently, I am not the only one to read and enjoy this recently.

Currently in the on-deck circle: more Chandler, The Sister Brothers and some early Vonnegut and some Gabriel Garcia Marquez, if I can find my copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. Please, if you have suggestions, leave them in the comments.

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Canada's little ray of SUNshine

Canada's ethical snake-oil salesman and Glenn Beck wannabe Ezra Levant continues to keep it classy.  As far as I can tell, Ezra's objection isn't that Chiquita Banana keep paying right-wing death squads to murder labour activists in South America, but that they are denying that they are boycotting tarsand products as a PR dodge. How dare they obey free market principles, eh Ezra? I don't know how the mother of the Chiquita Banana exec feels about you suggesting her son should have carnal knowledge of her, but your mother must be so very proud of you.

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a project

My plan for this year is to read at least 50 books - just about one a week, which for me shouldn't really be a stretch provided I don't get too bogged down on something long and challenging - so naturally I hope to read lots of challenging material this year without too much rereading of stuff with which I"m already familiar. I'll try to post at least once a week telling you what I'm reading and what I thought of it. I welcome your suggestions in comments.
Admittedly, the first two books of the year are not exactly "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu" but  I'm sure they won't be the trashiest thing I read this year.

#1 - The Life of Python
By George Perry
Written just after the release of  "The Meaning of Life" as a biography of the Monty Python gang, it does offer some insight into the way they worked, but is dry as the sahara. Go watch them in action instead of reading this now largely irrelevant career chronology.

#2 -  Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra
By  Richard L. Boyer
Part of a 1970's Holmes revival, recently reprinted. Reasonably workman-like prose, a few plot holes, but mostly a solid genre read. Apparently,  rewrites of this particular title, mentioned in one of the original Conan Doyle stories, has been essayed at least three times by three different authors.

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Making people stupider

(JimDandy Goodness, with his sponsored argument between atheists and agnostics, and annoyance at dimwits who discount meteorology because it isn't 100% accurate 100% of the time got me thinking about this, so blame him.)

Not to kick off the new year by sounding like the opening of a Seinfeld  episode, but what is the deal with horoscopes?
Does anyone with an IQ above room temperature really put any stock in these things any more? Seriously, does anyone you know that you would trust with anything more dangerous than a crayon or a soft plastic spork consider the phrase "what's your sign?" anything other than a cheap pickup line or punchline? (the answer depends on who's asking the question: Stop, Yield, Do Not Enter and You Must Be This Tall to Ride being among the best answers) 
I ask, because amid all the arguments I see everyday in the newspaper about how we must be steely-eyed realists and put our faith in neither in socialist dreamers with their notions of the universal goodness of man nor in laissez-faire ideologues and their invisible hand of the marketplace, I notice that virtually every newspaper I see still devotes a quarter page a day to "What the Stars Reveal."
Truly, this is the oldest con-game in the history of mankind, even older than monotheism or patriotism.The numb-brained belief that the position of the stars and planets determine the content of your personality and the events that occur in your day-to-day life has been with humankind since we started looking up. It was the quest for more accurate star-charts for our soothsayers that drove us to develop astronomy in the first place.
As a newspaper copy editor, I have to read and edit this crap almost every day and have done so at several papers over the years and for the life of me I cannot ever recall seeing even one entry on a single day that wasn't so vague as to be totally meaningless.
Today's example for those whose birthday is Jan. 1: "This year waves of surprises keep hitting, forcing you to at least think. What you have taken for granted will be up for questioning. Curb becoming controlling when faced with instability."
Wow, pretty darned insightful, eh?
I'm pretty sure most of the drivel printed in the horoscope columns these days is either written by a not-very-sophisticated computer program, or somebody who has been drunk off their ass and recycling the same column since 1974. Either way, someone is making a living off of this shit and that money and effort would be better spent on almost anything else, even Ezra Levant's column. (though the intellectual rigor is of about the same level, Levant's columns are occasionally funny, at least accidently.)
I know this is shooting fish in a barrel and about as worthwhile as bitching about the weather, but really, shouldn't the news media be trying to encourage a little more intellectual rigor?
I appeal to my fellow working editors Could we not make better use of the shrinking amount of space in all of our publications to run more news about something that really matters - like whether Brittany Spears can make a comeback or the Royal Wedding or whether Rick Santorum can get elected president?

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RIP and en garde

Swordmaster Bob Anderson has laid down his blade at last. 

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More stories from the War on Christmas

 (graphic and entire concept shamelessly stolen from the brilliant Driftglass post that inspired this whole thing)


Close up: Willard, a mall security guard sips from a large hip flask, the camera pulls back to reveal he is sitting in Santa's chair at the Santa's village display in the mall. It is dark and the mall is closed. The guard is drunk. In the background we hear Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas."
Willard stands slowly and starts to waltz. He trips over a wrapped gift and springs into a martial arts stance. He spin-kicks the head off of an animatronic elf and then karate chops a huge wooden candy cane in half.
In a montage of quick cuts set to the music, Willard runs amok smashing presents, pulling down decorations, humping a statue of Rudolph, finally swinging a Christmas tree like a baseball bat to destroy the whole display as the music swells.
Finally as Bing Crosby sings "and may all your Christmases be white" we see Willard collapse and try to snort the artificial snow off of the damaged side of one of the Santa's Village huts. His nose starts to bleed and he begins to sob.

Voice over by Willard: "Santa's village. Shit. I'm still in Santa's Village.
Every time, I think I'm gonna wake up back in the snow. When I was home after the first shift, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing, just a lingering taste of candycane and a hint of pine scent in the air. I hardly said a word to my wife until I said yes to her office Christmas party. When I was here, I wanted to be back in the tree lot. When I was in the tree lot, all I could think about was getting back in here where it was warm.
I've been here a week now, getting softer. Every minute I stay in this mall, flirting with the girls in the elf suits, swilling eggnog, I get weaker. And every minute the elves tinker in Nick's workshop, St. Nick gets stronger.
Everybody always gets what they want for Christmas. I wanted a mission, and because I was on the nice list, they gave me one. Left it under the tree wrapped up in shiny paper with a big red bow"



Go and read the hilarious denoument at Driftglass

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