Sometimes it seems that nothing interesting ever happens up here on the Canadian political landscape.  Our American cousins have wide stance senators in airport washrooms and congressmen having tickle fights with interns and of course a president that liked to pontificate on the taste of a good cigar.  But we need to stop being such self-deprecating little whiners and appreciate the weirdos and perverts on this side of the border.

Conservatives are often the culprits in both countries though not exclusively as the reference to Clinton shows.  It is not really that the Liberals are all that chaste.  But Conservatives are always lecturing us to be choirboys, seemingly forgetting that being a choirboy can be hazardous to your virginity.

Some of us are old enough to remember the Gerda Munsinger Affair that scandalized the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker.  Apparently Gerda had done the rounds of the Conservative party leadership including the minister of defence.  She was rumoured to have connections to the East German secret police.  The story was disseminated in the early 1960s, likely by the Kennedy administration who worked tirelessly to oust poor old Dief and install the more likable (at least to Kennedy) Lester Pearson.

More recently there was the scandal over Maxime Bernier leaving secret documents at his girlfriend’s home.  Pundits at the time wondered why he would risk his political career by dating a  woman with biker connections who had once worked as an exotic dancer.  Ah! our intrepid media, a brain trust if there ever was one.  I can give you two very large reasons up front it you would like.  If the reporters don’t realize why they should talk to their cameramen because they always seemed to place the reason front and center.

I always knew Betty Davis eyes were a popular look but Sarah Palin hair?

Now we have the dynamic duo of scandal, Rahim Jaffer and wife Helena Guergis.  Allegations have been brought to the prime minister’s attention of some shenanigans by Ms. Guergis and she was asked to resign from cabinet and was at the same time expelled from caucus.  Although no official word has surfaced as to what specifically she is supposed to have done rumours abound.  The only observation I will make is that having a minister resign is a common tactic to ease pressure and embarrassment for the government.  But also expelling the member from caucus in one fell swoop is not an every day occurrence.  Whatever this is Harper must think it makes him and his government, which is the same thing, look really, really bad.  I can hardly wait I am so excited with anticipation.

In the meantime, let’s have a look at her husband Rahim Jaffer a former Conservative MP from Alberta, land of cold hearts and toxic waste.  Apparently, Mr. Jaffer was internalizing some toxic waste of his own last September when he was pulled over by Ontario police.  He was speeding, drunk and cocaine was found in his car.  In a plea bargain the more serious impaired and drug possession charges were dropped and he pled guilty to the lesser charge of careless driving.  Wait for it.  That’s not the best part.

The reason for pleading Mr. Jaffer down was the Crown’s decision that conviction was unlikely.  Why you might ask?  Well the Ontario Keystone Cops refused to let the man see his own lawyer on request and made the poor man get naked.  That’s right, naked.   Now I know we hear constantly in the media that there is a shortage of cops out there and the workload is getting pretty heavy.  Dalton McGuinty says these little slip ups will happen from time to time.  But really now, give these poor guys some R and R and let them see their wives and girlfriends once in a while.  We can’t have police roaming the highways looking for some unsuspecting speeder to fulfill their fantasies.

Now I could be interpreting this wrong.  After all I am reading it in a CBC report where the wording could be read another way.  The actual quote is “… repeatedly denying Jaffer access to his own lawyers and a strip search after he was pulled over on a rural road …”.  So was Jaffer asking for a strip search.  Maybe he’s thought the silhouette of his body in the moonlight would bring a soft sigh and a warning rather than arrest.  Either way our police need to find better ways to relieve the tension.  Perhaps that could be a new use for those tasers they are so fond of.

Of course, even if the Crown had moved forward on the cocaine charges Jaffer could have used Richard Hatfield’s defence.  Hatfield, then Conservative premier of New Brunswick, was found at Fredericton airport with a bag of marijuana in his luggage.  He denied it belonged to him and had the police dust the bag for prints.  When his weren’t found charges did not proceed.

So thank you for being consistent, Conservative party.  Hypocrisy is what you are best at.  Good thing cause you aren’t good for anything else.  The Liberals may be slimy, power-hungry spawn of Satan who would pimp their mother for a vote, but at least they admit it.  The Conservative choir may sing like angels but up close there cassocks smell of booze and stale sex.

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To elect or not to elect, that is the question.  Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the inanity of the current parliament with its showmanship and buffoonery or to take arms against this sea of trouble and by a ballot end it.  Ah to vote, perchance to get more of the same.  Aye there’s the rub.  For what spectres of absurdity might come when we shuffle off this current catastrophe must give us pause and make us rather bear those nitwits we have than to fly to others we know not of.

Such is the dilemma of the Canadian people this fall.  Michael Ignatieff vows he will bring down the government at the first opportunity.  An easy vow to make knowing the NDP is in no shape for an election and would be inclined to support the Harper government rather than fly into debt they cannot pay.  Actually Layton and the NDP had been using the same strategy vowing never to support the Conservative government in the knowledge that the Liberals at that time feared an election.  And so the brinkmanship and the nonsense continue.  Caught in the middle of the sandbox, surrounded by surly children each wanting to be King for a day or however long a government lasts these day, is the Canadian people.  Mired in recession, casualty counts from an unpopular war rising and being shafted by the so called friend (U. S.) that dragged us into this mess, Canadians are in no mood for childish behaviour.

The sad thing is that minority governments can be the best government.  Forced as they are to compromise in order to govern, history has supplied us with numerous examples of successful minority governments.  Much of the social safety net we are so proud of today was the result of minority government as were our national anthem and our flag.  Minority government can also be full term government as in the Davis minority in Ontario during the early 1980s and the King federal government of the early 1920s.  Both of those lasted four years.

In this round of minorities the egos of the players get in the way.  Mr. Harper strikes at Mr. Ignatieff’s narcissism and lengthy sojourn to the land of the drive-thru gun shop.  Mr. Ignatieff parries and replies with a thrust at Mr. Harper’s dogmatism.  The King-makers are the 2 court jesters.  Painted harlequins they prance around the two main party leaders, now getting smacked aside, now being embraced and cajoled.  Their patrons laugh and sneer at them at caucus meetings and use them as they wish in the House of Commons.  They stand as the most fitting symbol of the current state of Canadian politics:  parliament would be funny if so many people weren’t getting hurt.

Arguing that we should avoid an election now because we would just get more of the same begs the question whether we should ever again bother with such an ineffective, expensive farce.  More of the same is what we will get for the foreseeable future.  Even if one of the head knobs were to form a majority government, nothing much would change except that the opposition parties would feel even more secure in mugging for the cameras, portraying themselves as the great champion of the Canadian people.  No my friends Canadian politics has changed.  We can hope that Harper’s Hamlet and Ignatieff’s Laertes politically die on each other’s swords but the hope is probably vain as who might follow may be no better.  No my friends we must come to the realization that the only lions left in Rome are in the arena.

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What do you do if you have a relative, a brother or a cousin, maybe an aunt, who is having difficulty holding on to reality.  This person sometimes appears rational and aware of their surroundings but in the next moment can fly off to a world of their own creation.  Delusional, sometimes they think everyone is out to get them and flail madly at all around them in a paranoid frenzy, hurting themselves and anyone unfortunate enough to be near them.  At other times they pout and moan because they can’t have their own way in a melancholic narcissism.  The phantoms tormenting them do as much or more damage to themselves as they do to others.  As the symptoms worsen the family is called together and tries to come up with a strategy to help the pathetic soul caught as it is in its own delirium, tortured by demons from the depths of its own psyche.

It is never an easy decision for the family.  Parents remember the promise at the birth of their beloved child.  The bright smile, the first tentative steps and missteps.  Why did this happen?  Where did they fail?  Perhaps they were too permissive and indulgent.  Perhaps if they had given their child more discipline he would be able to deal better now with his demons.  But as it is he is out of control and drastic measures are called for.  Institutionalization or at least constant tight supervision.  And only the family as a whole can accomplish this.  If we all don’t work together then the only other solution is to euthanize the suffering creature and even that will take the strongest of us together.  It is always sad but if you truly love someone then you must do what is best for them no matter how difficult or painful.

It is time now for the world community to sit down together and decide how best to deal with our paranoid schizophrenic little sibling, the United States.

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I love my wife for many reasons.  One of them is the way she can sometimes put everything into perspective in just a phrase or a sentence.  On the weekend we were discussing the latest Reverend Jeremiah Wright ‘controversy.’  In an interview he had use the word Jews in a derogatory way, saying that those Jews around Obama wouldn’t let him get near the president.  Of course this comes in the same week as the tragic shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington.  My wife looked at me and said, “If Lincoln had farted at Gettysburg that would have been what the media would focus on.”  And she is right. 

Responding to a question about his access to Obama and what he would advise him if they did speak, Wright inappropriately used the term Jews.  I am certain he was really referring to White House Chief of Staff Raum Emmanuel who as part of his job does control access to the president.  It was a poor choice of words, an ignorant remark, made in anger and frustration to lash out foolishly at someone standing between himself and a young man he had felt a kinship with, but it was not necessarily a sign of deep seated anti-semitism.  Bigotry against Jews is a plague upon our society that is so ingrained that often people don’t realize they are perpetuating it.  It is appropriate to point out that the Reverend Wright was wrong to use the word as a term of derision.  But it is not a story that warranted several days of media buzz.  I doubt it would have gotten as much attention as it did had it not been for the other, real story, that should have shocked America and made society examine its darker recesses.  The rest of Wright’s remark stressing that he believed Obama should hold to the principles that led him to seek public office and not compromise to the political hacks who care only about winning elections at any price, is a more important story than the ill thought remark.  Important not just in relation to Obama and whether or not he is really following his conscience, but for politics in general.  If everyone who sought public office followed Reverend Wright’s advice how much better the world would be.  Politicians acting on principle, doing what is right instead of acting on avarice and doing what is expedient.  That would be worthy of a round table discussion. 

Also note that no other evidence of active anti-semitism was reported against Wright.  No investigative team of crack journalists scoured the Reverend’s past to see if a charge of anti-semitism was warranted against him.  Rather the media was content to seductively lay out this one instance in virtually the same breath as the story of the Holocaust Museum shootings and let the audience draw the inference.  Having never made the accusation of anti-semitism directly they maintain a comfortable deniability.  Titillate the audience with innuendo but stop an inch short of defamation.  And people wonder why I would sooner believe a story in the National Enquirer than the National Post. 

I am sure, as my wife suggested, that had Lincoln farted during his famous speech on the battlefield at Gettysburg CNN would have been first out of the gate with the story.  Video footage of screwed up noses and quick glances amongst those directly behind Lincoln would have circulated on YouTube by now.  A panel of pundits would convene to ponder the political significance of the fart.  Was Lincoln wafting a message to the retreating Southern army?  Was the stench of this particular fart such as to raise concerns about the president’s health?  Should someone with a flatulence problem be trusted with the most powerful office of the state?  Oh yes I am sure Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper would devote an entire show each to this pressing news event.  And Rick Sanchez would be calling for a dictionary to look up the word flatulence.

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Nothing like a little town hall meeting to mark one hundred days in office.  A nice win one for the Gipper speech before a receptive audience to make everybody feel better in bad times.  Barack Obama is perhaps the best president since Ronald Reagan when it comes to being able to speak to the hearts of an audience.  And America needs it now.  Things are not good and everybody needs some reassurance that we can get through this crisis. 

Of course the problems of the American auto industry were front and center in his words today.  Bad decisions had led to the position we are in now and President Obama could not justify more bad decisions with taxpayer dollars.  He would demand of auto executives that they table workable plans for a sustainable recovery if they wished to dip into the pockets of ordinary American citizens.  He is absolutely correct.  Bad decisions did bring us to this point.  But much as I dislike corporate executives and believe me, they must shoulder a significant portion of the blame, they can’t be tagged for it all.  Those bad decisions were made in a social culture that demanded just the decisions that they made.  It is a social culture that still exists and was reinforced in the president’s speech. 

Obama spoke of a time when the American auto industry built the cars that people wanted but lost their market to foreign competitors due to poor corporate decisions.  There certainly was a period of complacency that resulted in poor quality design and manufacture processes.   The American auto industry was producing vehicles that were plagued by breakdowns and recalls.  They lost the trust of the North American consumer who sought out imports that sold themselves on quality and fuel efficiency.  The president is absolutely correct lazy and stupid are bad decisions.  But were they not still designing vehicles that people wanted?  The answer is yes they were.  A cursory look at Japanese automobiles (still the chief competitor) since they broke onto the North American market will show you that Detroit didn’t change, Tokyo did.  How do the 6 and 8 cylinder four door luxury sedans full of computerized crap that just means more to break down compare to the Toyota Corolla and Corona with their simple functional design and fuel efficiency.  Not too well.  It is not that GM, Ford and Chrysler were force feeding us larger vehicles, we demanded them.  Look at the highways today and you see them full of over-sized quasi-trucks.  Many of those with brand names like Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and Mitsubishi.  That is what the people want.  There lies the problem.  We cannot afford to give the

Photo by David Williams, Knoxville Tennesee. Retrieved from FUH2.com

people what they want.  Just like you shouldn’t let your kid go on that all sugar diet she wants, you can’t let the childish North American have his Hummer.  The Earth is mad as hell and is not going to take it anymore.  (I know that GM is currently in the process of dumping its Hummer line.  Actually it is hoping to sell off the brand.  Take my advice, sell the brand to an adult toy manufacturer and not to some idiot that will try to make another ugly-ass vehicle out of it causing carbon and visual pollution.)

But there is more.  I said that Obama was correct in saying that bad decisions led us to this point but more bad decisions are not going to bail us out.  Bailing out the current automobile industry is an error of Earth shattering proportions, pun intended.  Obama’s speech mentioned moving to fuel efficient, environmentally friendly, blah, blah, whatever cars.  Hybrids, green cars, bio-fuels are all pacifiers stuck into the mouths of whining little brats who can’t get it through their heads that the private automobile must go.  If the money used to bail out these dinosaurs of our adolescence was put toward creating a comprehensive public  transit system (which would be both faster and cheaper) and into technologies such as carbon recovery, passive housing, etc.  it would create more jobs, make the economy more sustainable and guarantee our children and their children a future. 

Oh but wait that would make sense.  Can’t do that then.  And we won’t.  We will poor good money into this bygone contraption and when the inevitable comes we can only hope their is enough money and time left to save the planet.  And hope is all we have given the short-sightedness we continually confront and the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, Eco-Catastrophe, breathing hard on our necks.  For now though we will all skip merrily over the cliff because no politician or community leader has the courage to just speak the truth.  But like the Earth I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore.  So to paraphrase Shakespeare I say ‘First let’s kill all the people who own Hummers and see where we get from there.’ 

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What is with the press over Obama picking basketball winners or whatever it is that he is picking?  I admit I don’t follow organized sports at the professional or college level.  Just no interest.  But apparently President Obama does and did a photo-op filling out something called the brackets.  Okay, I have no problem with that.  But now it is a national news story with legs because I have been hearing about it for at least a week now.  Many believe that there are more important things he could spend his time doing.  That’s true.  I imagine most of what the president of the United States does is more important than selecting his favourite sports teams.  But so what?  Really, get a life and grow up.  The whiners all sound like my students who believe I have nothing else to do all day than mark their papers or exams.  I have a life and obviously Barack Obama does too.  Bloggers are being blamed by the mainstream media for perpetuating this story but I am not sure that that is not just a convenient way of masking their own petty obsessions.  Let’s see if they mention that some of us believe Obama can have interests that don’t involve national crises. 

Would you want a president that spent every waking hour thinking only of your foreign wars, bank and industry bailouts and unemployment figures?  Would that make any of those things better?  And hey what about sleep?  Maybe the president should get hooked on bennies and stay awake 24/7 because after all the United States never sleeps.  The economy moves on, insurgents attack in the Gulf or Central Asia, somebody is working the final hours of their job or losing their home.  How dare he sleep!  We shouldn’t wake him up with that 3am. phone call.  What is the lout doing dozing off in the first place?  (Wonder if he got it yet and how he responded?  It did seem last fall that it was the most important issue of the campaign to those of us looking on.)  Or even worse he and Michelle would take the nation’s time to say howdy to each other horizontally if you know what I mean.  Image the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs calling at such a moment.  He hears a terse ‘WHAT?’from the president and asks for permission to launch the American nuclear deterrent and only hears a chorus of yes! Yes!! YEs!!! YES!!!! on the other end.  Guess we are all cooked. 

Sorry if I am beginning to get a little absurd here, but really!  Maybe the news media should ask itself if it doesn’t have more important things to cover than this nonsense.  But since they have run out of story ideas on Paris’s panties they have to have something so it’s Barack’s brackets.  CNN and the rest of them are what puts the laughter into professional journalism.  Not in the sense of covering the funny story which is good as we all need lighter moments in our lives, but in the sense of their childish obsession with the trivial and mundane.  To paraphrase Monty Python ‘I hope there is intelligent journalism somewhere in the universe because there is bugger all down here on earth.’

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With the first half of the $750B already dolled out to banks and financial institutions the results are less than promising.  First there was the frenzy to try to buy each other out.  Not more stable buying up unstable institutions, which might have made some sense in streamlining the industry and providing some stability, but the big boys trying to play a high stakes game of Monopoly with our money.  Now it seems that some individual institutions have given out more in year end and Christmas bonuses to executives than they received from the government.  I absolutely loved the rationalization given by the apologists for the banks.  It seems that these bonuses are necessary if they want to be able to keep the best people.  HELLO!  Aren’t these the same best people that got the industry into this mess in the first place?  Or was it that the best people were all on holiday for the last 20 years and the help somehow screwed the pooch without their guiding hands.  Maybe these people suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder, yeah, that’s it.  They are the best people when they are drinking champagne and celebrating their bonuses; as soon as they sit behind their desks the evil idiot inside them comes out. 

This is what happens when you hand out money with little or no oversight.  I have a major insight for all of you out there in cyberland.  Corporate executives and business people in general are just that people, with all the foibles that go along with that designation.  In fact in our system it is virtually impossible to rise to the upper executive  level and have any ethical fibre to your character.  If you aren’t prepared to pimp your mother for a nickel you will inevitably run into the glass toilet bowl on your descent into upper management.  So these guys are just being true to form.  They need those million dollar bonuses so they and their families can enjoy this festive season.  Oh and the bonuses are down from last year they assure us.  But I bet they are still more than those who are being laid off from manufacturing plants in all sectors, not just auto.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the envelopes in which the bonuses were delivered are worth more than some American and Canadian families have to spend this Christmas.  As a matter of fact I know they are because I know many people who have $0.00 to spend this Christmas.  But these are the entitled, the movers and shakers.  These people would be lost if they couldn’t pay people to do everything for them.

Hegel in the Phenomenology talks about the master-slave relationship.  The slave is independent while the master is dependent.  Without the slave the master is nothing and cannot survive.  First without a slave how could he be a master and secondly he relies on the slave for the means of subsistence.  The slave, however, not only provides from him/herself but also for the master.  The slave has no need of the master to survive.  The only thing the master gives to the slave is his/her slavery.  Once the slave realizes this, he/she is no longer a slave.  It is time for us to realize that we the slaves of this planet are the ones that sustain the self-appointed masters.  It is time for us to walk away and let these parasites die if they cannot adapt. 

Others are starting to do this already.  There is move afoot in South America to create an alternative to the World Bank which has enslaved developing countries for decades.  Several South American nations have paid off their debt to the World Bank by helping one another.  It is their intention to found a new Bank without the neo-colonial strings exerted by the World Bank.  Voting would be equal; one member, one vote unlike the weighted voting at the World Bank which gives control to the industrialized West.  Micro-banking is growing around the world and needs to be introduced here as well.  And it is us that needs to introduce these ideas, you and me.  Let’s just take what we provide to those who have been our masters and use it for the benefit of ourselves, the decent people in this society that actually create and sustain its wealth.

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Health Canada has just recalled a plush toy animal (I suppose political correctness prevents them from identifying it as a bear) that is dressed as a mountie.  The belt on the toy contains lead and the buttons could be swallowed and cause choking.  It is good that these problems were caught before any child was hurt. 

Now maybe I am warped, okay I am, but still there seems to be an irony here.  Here is probably the most recognizable symbol of Canada, the country known around the world for peacekeeping, human rights and all that other touchy feely stuff, and it is being made in China.  It was bad enough when Disney owned the copyright to mountie paraphenalia (actually I don’t know whether they still do or not).   But China internationally stands for everything Canada is supposed to be against.  At least with Disney there was only the problem of our country being mistaken for a cartoon.  Come to think of it we do kind of have a mickey mouse prime minister at the moment. 

China uses slave labour.  China violates the right of self determination for the Tibetan people (of course many English Canadians would gladly violate that same right for French Canada if they try to leave).  China practices religious intolerance.  China has some of the worst pollution in the world.  Now China has been trying to kill our children by putting plastic in milk and lead in plastic.  

Question:  Why are we still buying anything from China at all? 

Answer:  Greed, Capitalism and all those other related things that we really stand for.  We are told that if we engage China their human rights and environmental records will improve.  That is why we awarded them the 2008 Olympics.  Remember they promised that they would clean up their record by the time of the games.  Oh yeah they cleaned up all right.  They cleaned up the streets by arresting anyone who might criticize the government or challenge the veracity of their public statements.  They cleaned up by arresting foreign journalists who dared to photograph anything not pre-approved by the Beijing government.  Environmentally they ordered wealthy government apparatcheks to refrain from driving for a few weeks until the games were over. 

Message to Western governments:  Engagement doesn’t work!  The Chinese are laughing at you.

But I guess before we remove the speck from China’s eye, we should remove the beam from our own.  This year has seen a plethora of food contamination problems in Canada and when was the last time you felt really safe driving a North American car.  And when it comes to the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, what do you want to bet they bus the homeless and street people to Alberta.  Except for the prostitutes of course.  We wouldn’t want all those foreign dignitaries to have nothing to do at night.

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In what has to be the greatest breakthrough yet in human research, a study released a month or so ago revealed that people suffering from dementia were at greater risk of motor vehicle accidents.  I wonder how many millions of dollars and months or maybe even years were expended to uncover this burning mystery.  The study suggested doctors should advise patients with advanced dementia not to drive.  The same research group has moved on to study the driving ability of comatose patients.  I know that I for one will be eagerly awaiting their conclusions. 

Maybe somebody should do a study on ability of research academics to come up with one more reason to get some grant money.  This study has to go down as one of the all time greats, right besides the study that looked at the culture significance of pink flamingos.

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