A message from Stephen Harper's biggest fan

While it is hard to believe something this long could be written in crayon, it is even harder to believe that brain-dead, half-assed, prarie National Review wannabe paragon of conservative intellectual thought - the Western Standard -- would publish this magnum dopus by Adam Yoshida (seen at the left, just one step away from becoming one of these guys) in the midst of an election in which they want to make their guy look less scary to centerist voters.

"Do too much, rather than too little. Don’t shift these things around. Burn them down and salt the Earth. A future Liberal government won’t have the guts, the time, the wherewithal, or the money to recreate them all at once. Sell the land and the buildings. Shred the records. Disperse the staff. It’s easier to destroy than it is to create. A Tory government on a rampage could destroy in a couple of months what it took four decades to create – and what it would take another forty to recreate."

Reassuring isn't it? He burbles on about the need to triple the size of the Canadian Forces, get rid of the CBC, build a couple of aircraft carriers and crank up the Canadian military-industrial complex (no really, he calls it that)

PSA does a proper eviceration. One might think that this would be the craziest thing Adam has ever written and it just somehow slipped through the editing process at the Western Standard. Sadly, no.

Tonight, on a very special episode of ...

Well, you can leave your sitcom name suggestions in the comments (The Frostbacks? Flyboy and Sureshot? The Pitbull and the POW?) but this latest rumour is proof that the GOP brain trust is being run by people who have watched way too much television --and I don't mean 60 Minutes and Nova.

In an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one — the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancé before the November 4 election.

Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

It worked on Rhoda, it worked a couple of times on Friends, it worked on Cheers, it worked on Coronation Street, on the Office, on Beverly Hill 90120 ---almost every television series that lasted more than a single season has a wedding episode. Whenever TV writers are running out of ideas, need a big season-closing climax or just need to get their audience back you can bet that somebody is going to be getting hitched and wacky hijinks will ensue.

And if the wedding plan doesn't work out, maybe McCain can offer Ted McGinley a cabinet post or go waterskiing or take the whole family to Hawaii or London or adopt an adorable orphan-- I know, why not a speech where McCain and Palin sing a duet of "Summer Loving" from Grease!

spot the difference

You know this isn't the real Sarah Palin because Tina Fey is too coherent.

Plus ca change etc etc

At least I can still count on Japanese politics to be predictable.

For I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep

But then, I'm not John McCain, who less than 12 hours before the first presidential debate, a event he committed to weeks ago, can't decide whether to show up or keep obstructing the business of congress in trying to put a $700 billion band-aid on Wall Street's sucking chest wound. How very Mavricky of him to start breaking campaign promises before he even gets elected. What a lovely "screw you" to voters.  I guess the woods in Washington are lovelier, darker, and deeper than we realize. My guess is that he will either cave in and show up or six months from now we will learn he hasd a "medical crisis" that prevented him from attending or even sending Caribou Barbie to stand in for him.

It is what it is, and what it is, is unqualified

I know, I know, I said we should stop talking about her, but the more I see of her, the more I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I'm delighted that the Republicans have picked such an obviously, comically unqualified candidate to shore up the glaring gaps in McCain's areas of expertise. On the other hand, I'm horrified that there is any chance at all that this woman could get anywhere near the Oval office.

Caribou Barbie, Sarah America, Bible Spice -- call her what you want, but by any name. Sarah Palin should not be allowed to work in the White House, not even as a tour guide.

The title of this post, at least the first part of it, is one of my father's favorite little verbal tics of late. I was warned that he has taken to watching FOX news -- this is a guy who has always been a centerist politically, more or less, but like many of us seems to have gotten more conservative as he's gotten older. He was Trudeau fan, but I suspect he voted for both Harris and Harper. We are both political junkies, but tend to treat it more as a spectator sport than something we would want to actually get our hands dirty with as candidates--It isn't that we don't care who wins, we do, its just that I suspect we'd both rather be handicappers or bookies than racehorses. I don't really want to drag him into this, but the fact that he didn't express outright support for either candidate had me wondering. He made some predictions, but he never really said which side he hoped would win and since he's the closest thing to a conservative I'm on face-to-face speaking terms with these days, I was curious to see his reactions to the presidential race. 

Both the Democratic and Republican conventions were on while I was back in Canada. We watched Obama's speech together and he said he thought Obama would win, but that as usual his speech was short on specifics. I couldn't watch the Republican convention with him, mostly because I couldn't suppress my gag reflex long enough or keep from making snide comments whenever Mitt Romney  or Rudy 9u11ani said something stupid, (ie: every time they opened their mouths). 

"You have to listen to both sides" he'd keep telling me as he flipped from CNN to FOX and I started to sneer at Bill Kristol. Hey, I'm a journalist, I know all about listening to both sides, but if I'm doing a story on the Holocaust and one side is concentration camp survivors, soldiers who liberated camps and every serious historian on the planet and the other side is David Irving and a couple of knuckledraggers from the American Nazi Party, it isn't a "he said/she said/who knows what the truth is" kind of a situation and I can tell one side to shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of my office with a clean conscience. Eventually, I went and watched in another room.

When it came to Sarah Palin, I was suspicious from day one. I looked around for bio info on the internet when McCain first announced he had picked a running mate, realized she had zero policy  experience, was a fundamentalist Christian, was a family values conservative, anti-choice, pro-war, pro-drilling here, there and everywhere, had ties to corrupt bum Sen. Ted Stevens and pretty much wrote her off as a losing prospect. I knew she'd never get the disappointed Hillary voters. When it came out that her teenage daughter was knocked up, I admit I cackled with schadenfreude, wondering how the hell McCain's people missed it and how they would try to spin it. I watched her speech and figured "okay, she can tell a really old joke and make mean misinformed cracks about he opponent. The republican base is gonna love her, but that's it. No problem."

But then the press loved her. And my dad seemed to think she was okay -- he seemed to like the pit bull gag--god knows he sat next to enough hockey moms during my and my brother's minor hockey days. He seemed to think she was as qualified as anyone for the job. "It is what it is" he said. This worried me. My dad is a pretty smart guy and he wasn't dismissing this travesty. Could the American people fall for this bullshit? God knows, they've fallen for some stupid shit before, but would they buy into the neocon Cinderella narrative about her being a tough and sassy hockey mom who could hunt moose in the morning and run the state in the afternoon? I hoped not, but they bought the absurd idea that John Kerry was a coward whose war record was a lie and George W. Bush was a fighter pilot/war leader, so anything was possible.

Then some cracks started showing. The GOP machine was keeping her away from the press and unfriendly crowds. Then they let her be interviewed.

"In what respect Charlie?"

"I'll try to find some and I'll bring'em to ya"

Watch CBS Videos Online

These all reminded me of something. 

The best description comes from the comments at Balloon Juice:

"I'm still in shock over how terrible the Palin/Couric interview was. "Train wreck" is being charitable -- it was more like a train derailing on a bridge, tumbling a thousand feet into a canyon and landing on a pile of old dynamite and gas drums. And then a jumbo jet crashed into the flaming wreckage. Followed by an earthquake that caused the whole mess to slide off a cliff into the sea, where the few miraculous survivors were eaten by sharks."

In a way, I'm not worried anymore.

Sorry Dad, but this is a case where one side is grounded in reality and the other is not even sure where reality is anymore--in fact, I don't think they could find reality at this point with both hands and a search party if it was safety-pinned through both ass cheeks. Seriously, if you want to be vice president and you can't even manage to bullshit your way through an interview Katie Freaking Couric, how does she think she's going to do if she has to sit down across the table from Vladimir Putin or even Joe Biden?

 I don't think anyone could watch these and get the idea that this person is well suited to be Vice President. I don't think most people watching these clips would even think she should be running the least populous, most remote state in the USA. I don't think anyone but a dyed-in-the-wool, born-again, Republican partisan would think she was even qualified to be the mayor of a town of 5,000.  Frankly I'm amazed Wallisa doesn't have a monorail, but maybe that's more of a Shelbyville idea. 

She can't seem to form and express a coherent opinion or even put together a full sentence. 

That McCain picked her should disqualify him from ever holding public office again. This choice is not a demonstration of poor judgement, its is evidence that he has lost his freakin' mind.

A pause for the GOP cause?

As we've been reminded again and again and again, John McCain is genuine hero POW who was tortured and stuff after he was shot down during a bombing mission to burn women, children and villages in North Vietnam from several thousand feet in the air. Apparently this brave air warrior is askeered of debating Barack Obama and is calling for a time out in the presidential campaign to "put country first" once again and deal with the financial crisis as only he can.

It's interesting that McCain came up with this brainstorm only a day after his poll numbers took a serious hit. It's also interesting to note that he hasn't voted in the Senate in five months and has missed more votes this term than any other member except Tim Johnson, who had major brain surgery. Also interesting is the fact that two days ago, McCain hadn't even read the three page bailout proposal he now feels that only he can push through Congress and save us all from the mess he and his helped make. Especially interesting since he told us only the other day that the "fundementals of the economy were strong" and has previously admitted he doesn't understand economics.

George W. Bush managed to debate John Kerry twice while he president of a country that was at war and McCain thinks he is indispensible in getting this no-strings-attached, no-oversight $700 billion handout through congress? Or is he just chicken? This is all about keeping himself and Caribou Barbie out of the debates.

Thankfully it doesn't look like the Obama campaign and the media are going to play along with his attempt to get himself some political breathing room and put the brakes on the Democrats momentum with this cheap stunt.

No more Mr. Nice Guy

Remind me again why Ken Dryden is not at least leader of the opposition, if not Prime Minister?

Then there’s the blue vest, the “Mr. Nice Guy” ads. Ad firms are paid millions to tell the story their client wants told. It’s much easier for them when it’s a new “product” or a new “person” launch. When the information they provide is the only information - when the public knows nothing else. The problem for Mr. Harper is that the public does know something else. They’ve been watching him for 2 ½ years and Stephen Harper, they know, may be lots of things, but he’s not a “nice guy.”

He’s not. Nice guys don’t cut literacy programs. Nice guys don’t cut funding to women’s groups, aboriginal groups, health and childcare and poverty and disability groups. Toying with them month after month, teasing them with silence and desperate hope. If, they say to themselves, if I don’t say anything, if I just go quiet, maybe I might get something. Please. Then crumbs, or nothing.

Nice guys don’t decide there’s only one voice in this country that matters. Not these voices of our communities. Not those of his own Cabinet or Caucus. Not voices in the arts who get their programs cut because they say things that might make us squirm. Not any voice competent and professional who disagrees - Linda Keen, Adrian Measner, Jean-Guy Fleury - who then feel the pulverizing weight of a Government machine come down on them just so they know: you don’t mess with “the vest”.

Arts groups, literacy and poverty and childcare groups - it’s the same story. Nice guys don’t make the weak weaker and the vulnerable more vulnerable.
Nice guys don’t act like there are Canadians and not-quite Canadians. Those who fit Mr. Harper’s understanding of how life is supposed to be lived, and those, Canadians too - single mothers, addicts, gays and lesbians - who don’t.

And nice guys don’t take someone else’s person, as he did Monsieur Dion, they don’t take their personality, their character, their life, what they’ve worked hard to build, what is decent and substantial and good. What they’ve earned. They don’t take that, twist it, stretch it, caricature and distort it. They don’t buy air time
and in front of millions of people, assassinate it. And pretend, ahh, that’s just politics.
Oh, and the puffin and the poop - oops, sorry. Didn’t mean it. Just like I don’t mean all the other just-as-new ads on the Conservatives’ website, that reach tens of thousands just like the Mr. Nice Guy ads on TV, that are just as abusive as the others in the pre-Mr. Nice Guy time.

If it quacks like a duck, put a blue vest on it, it’s still a duck.

Dryden goes on to say a bunch of other good things - mostly pointing out the small, petty nature of the Harper campaign and the need to address larger issues and provide a vision of a Canada that is greater than the sums of its parts, the notion that the election should be about more than the ability of the Conservatives to buy taxpayers off with their own money.

Seriously, remind me why the Liberals picked Dion and not Dryden, because I'd really like to know. I think Dryden would have mopped the floor with Harper by now. I wish I could vote for him. Say what you want about the track record of his party over the last ten years, Dryden's vision of A Big Canada is the closest to mine that has been enunciated by any politician since Trudeau.

Stop them, stop them NOW!


Dear fellow Canucks,
I know there is a distracting spectacle south of the border what with the minority elitist who was raised by a single mother on foodstamps running against the son-and-grandson-of-admirals, 11-house owning everyman for leader of the pack and all, and that whole global financial meltdown thing happenning, but we have an election going on too. I read the polls every day and I have to ask-- what the hell is wrong with you people?

Watching things in the Excited States over the last eight years, we've all seen what happens when you put a bunch of proudly ignorant neoconservative dingbats in charge for an extended period. Given Stephen Harper's propensity to crib from the Republican playbook, do you really think its a good idea to give him a majority? Really?

Aside from the apology for the Residential School tragedy, name one thing he's done right in the last two years, name one promise he's kept -- no, really, I'll wait, you go ahead and google around and tell me all about his successes with the nuclear safety watchdog, with the Arar affair, with ongoing, neverending war in Afghanistan, his environmental record --- and let's not forget about his insatiable hunger for the flesh of innocent children. The more you look, the more reasons you'll find to dump this chump.

The most recent scandal over bad meat has Tory fingerprints all over it, but the media seems more concerned about a few tasteless jokes by the minister in charge rather than his removal of inspectors from meat plants.

Recently he's been beating the usual conservative drum about "getting tough on crime" by sending 14-year-olds to prison for life, except in Quebec. I've addressed this kind of brainless pandering before. It's all part of the usual conservative obsession with talking tough and striking macho poses. A key element of right-wing politics is the notion of a "strong" leader who will "act decisively." Yes, well, we can see how that has worked out in the past for Germany, Italy and Spain and how it is working out now for the United States. Strength and resolution are all well and good, but if you make stupid, wrongheaded or just plain evil decisions and then stick to them in the face of all evidence, that doesn't make you a maverick or strong leader, it puts you somewhere on the spectrum between stubborn fool and diabolical meglomaniac.

I know Stephen Dion is not Pierre Trudeau and Jack Layton is no Tommy Douglas, but for the love of Lester Pearson, Maurice Richard and Laura Secord -- would you all just pick one of the two and stop Dead-Eyes from getting re-elected by dividing and conquering yet again?

I...uh...wow

This is why he is The General and we are mere footsoldiers.

Dazed and Confused '08

First we had Sarah Palin's deer-in-the-headlights response to Charlie Gibson's questions about the Bush Doctrine, now we get Grandpa Simpson John McCain's befuddlement over Spain, though to be fair, it may be that McCain's memory is longer than most of us thought. The interesting thing is that his staff are more willing to cause a diplomatic incident and alienate a NATO ally than admit their candidate might have had a "senior moment" or just plain didn't listen to the question. They could have come up with all kinds of excuses that would have played to base -- anything from "He couldn't understand the crazy foreign reporter's crazy foreign accent" to "Who care about Spain? they aren't even as important France and everyone knows the French are a bunch of cheese-eating surrender-monkeys beloved by the Democrats! John Kerry lived in France!" -- but no, they've decide that won't do. There can be no excuses for John McCain's straight talk on Spain -- they are a potential enemy!

From the link:

Randy Scheunemann, McCain's chief foreign policy adviser, writes in an e-mail to me that McCain knew precisely what the questioner meant, and that, indeed, "Senator McCain refused to commit to a White House meeting with President Zapatero in this interview."

But in April, McCain strongly hinted that he'd let bygones be bygones and expected
to invite Zapatero to the White House.

Why, I asked by way of follow up, did McCain seem to change his mind?

Here's what Scheunemann e-mailed back:

"In this week's interview, Senator McCain did not rule in or rule out a White House meeting with President Zapatero, a NATO ally. If elected, he will meet with a wide range of allies in a wide variety of venues but is not going to spell out scheduling and
meeting location specifics in advance. He also is not going to make reckless promises to meet America's adversaries. "

Things I never thought I'd say
1. I won't be voting in this election. Not because I'm following the old adages "No matter who you vote for, the government still gets in" or "don't vote, it just encourages them," but because I can't. As an expatriate Canuck, you are allowed to vote in federal elections in your previous home riding or in the riding where your "permanent address" is located, but only for the first five years you live overseas. I've lived in Japan for 11 years now, so I'm no longer eligible to vote in Canadian elections. Sometimes it sucks to be me.

2. I love Joe Biden. I know, I know, I'm shocked too. He voted for the Iraq war and the horrible bankruptcy bill and I always thought he was way too centerist and about as exciting as cold oatmeal, but check out the speech he gave this week.

"...a culture in Washington where the very few wealthy and powerful have a
seat at the table and everybody else is on the menu."

3. Can we stop talking about Sarah Palin? Yes, she is the greatest thing to happen to political comedy since Vice President J. Danforth Qualye. Yes, she is a total nightmare, completely unqualified to hold high office, a hypocrite and quite probably crazy (the feral glint in those unblinking eyes is just plain scary, it's like she's going to start speaking in tongues any second or try to bite you or something) but the more abuse we heap on Caribou Barbie, the more it energizes the Republican base of ignorant dumbasses who think "If'n yer so smart, howcum you ain't rich?" is deep philosophy to get out of their double-wide and vote to protect one of their own from us fancy-pants, liberal, book-reading elites.

Life imitates art

If only...

Sometimes I miss my old job

At least the raises were regular and no one really cared what you did in class.

higher, stronger, faster, prettier?

Synchro swimming, figure skating, artistic gymnatics --- While I would never deny that they require superb physical conditioning, incredible skill and stamina, anything that requires costumes, music and clown makeup is not a sport. If it was a sport, this two minutes of comic perfection would not be nearly as funny.

If Pakistan can do it...
As recently as two years ago, Pervez Musharraf was the absolute ruler of Pakistan, well except for those pesky tribal areas on the Afghan border that are ruled by who ever has the most guns in the neighborhood at the time, and the intelligence service that either runs or is run by the Taliban. After staging a military coup, Musharraf ruled Pakistan for seven years without any serious opposition outside the various militant groups who opposed his cooperation with the United States, which backed him no matter how many judges he sacked or mosques he blew up. He was a dictator and bastard, but he was their bastard.

Within the last 18 months Pakistan has seen the return of not one, but two exiled opposition leaders, the assasination of the leading opposition candidate and a general election. Musharraf was forced to step down as head of the army. Following an opposition victory at the polls, Musharraf was given an ultimatium this week - quit or face impeachment - and suddenly Pakistan is a democracy once again.

If Pakistan can get rid of a corrupt, human-rights abusing, illegitimate undemocratic leader whose national security apparatus answers to no one, why can't the United States?

Another good reason to love living in Japan

Now imagine the same thing in real life, with one important wardrobe change....

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese police have arrested a 20-year-old man who attacked and robbed two people after they stared at his Winnie-the-Pooh costume, officials said on Tuesday.
Masayuki Ishikawa was hanging out on a Tokyo street corner after midnight last month while wearing the cuddly costume, accompanied by two friends dressed as a mouse and a panther, when he took offence at being stared at, police said.
"It's uncommon to see people dressed up like this, so the victims were watching them. Then the perpetrator came up and said 'What are you staring at?'" a police spokesman said.
Ishikawa and his friends beat up the two victims and stole $160 from them, the spokesman said, adding the group had apparently donned the unusual garb because they had run out of clean clothes.

Where else could this possibly happen? (Okay maybe Orlando or Anaheim, but this had no connection to Disney) I can just picture the guy in the Winnie-the-Pooh suit going all Travis Bickle. Imagine the humiliation in going to the police station to report that you just had you ass kicked and wallet taken by this guy:

(actual police sketch of the assailant)

Thinking with the wrong head

First of all, I'm pissed at John Edwards for staying the race when he knew this was out there and could detonate at any moment. He was my first choice among the Democrats (not that I get a choice, not being one of teh chosen people and all) so finding out that if he had won the primaries the world would be looking at four years of John McCain, just because he couldn't keep it in his pants really rankles.

I agree it shouldn't matter to the rest of the world what anyone does with their naughty bits-- consenting adults and all that--but anyone running for public office in the Excited States knows damn well that what should matter has nothing to do with what will matter. It not as if sexual impropriety hasn't become a political issue before.

Second, yes Elizabeth Edwards is a smart, classy woman - but she still let her husband run for office knowing this scandal was out there waiting to erupt. That is poor judgement IMHO, but not so poor that I wouldn't like to see her take her husband's old Senate seat.

Third, this is getting very little press outside the U.S., because the rest of the world realizes that it DOESN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE TO ANYTHING. Edwards is not the nominee, he is not going to be on the ticket, he holds no office and has no role in the Obama campaign. Trying to paint this as bad for Obama is like trying to Rush Limbagh's oxycontin addiction as bad for McCain. They're on the same side, but that's about it. So let's just leave these private citizens alone to deal with their private lives at this point, OK?

From a purely tactical point of view, with any luck the whole kerfuffle will draw attention to McCain's previous infidelities. Because if John Edward's affair disqualifies him from the presidency, so should McCain's past behavior.

Basically, I agree with what Chet says over at the Vanity Press and he puts it better than I will, so go read his posting.

My world no longer makes sense

Please understand that among the two-legged lifeforms that populate the Earth, there are few I loathe more than Paris Hilton. She is a cringe-inducing, spoiled, dim-witted, wealthy skank who is famous for being a vapid, skanky, shallow, spoiled, materialistic media-whore. And she's a total skank. And dumb as a Prada bag of Louis Vuitton platinum, diamond-crusted hammers. And not especially good looking, even her porn isn't hot. And in addition to giving me hives, her television show epitomizes Everything That is Wrong with the Western World. And did I mention she's a total skank?

Well, that was what I used to think. Then John McCain used her in an campaign ad to try to hint that Obama was a lightweight - and I suppose he wanted us to think Obama was as dumb and skanky as Paris Hilton, or at least as big a media whore or something. Naturally Obama supporters either sputtered and fumed about how unfair the comparision was or laughed at the idea that this was the best the Republicans could do. The Skank Princess' mommy came out of the Hilton palace to say that she didn't think it was very nice of McCain to compare her darling daughter to that no-talent skanky nutbar Brittany Spears and I figured that was that, on to the next round of brainless negative campaign ads as the McCain campaign continues to clutch at straws.

But then I saw something that shattered all my preconceptions.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Now, I doubt she had a hand in writing the script for this. For all I know she didn't even pick out the shoes she's wearing and I still think Paris is a skank, but I'm not so sure about the dumber than a designer bag of overpriced hammers part anymore. This is actually pretty clever.

What next? Will they let someone on American Idol that isn't a douchebag sing a song that doesn't suck? Will Jerry Bruckheimer start producing a film version "The Cherry Orchard"? Will Stephen Dion kick the living crap out of Jason Kenny and Stephen Harper in the lobby of the House of Commons? Will the temperature dip below 30 degrees in Tokyo this month? I'm so confused.......