Category Archives: Current Events

Quote of the Day: “Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom”

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrNl6-j9x5w

What we don’t get here and why

“In looking at two countries as closely related as Canada and the United States, no difference is unique or exclusive: we can point to nothing in Canada that does not have a counterpart, or many counterparts south of its border.  What is different is a matter of emphasis and of degree.” Frye in “Canadian Culture Today,” (CW 12, 510)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gives Canada props for preventing Fox-style “news” from developing here because we regulate the deliberate dissemination of lies.  He points out, however, that we must be particularly vigilant with Stephen Harper on the scene.

Money quote:

Canada’s Radio Act requires that “a licenser may not broadcast….any false or misleading news.” The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the U.S. airwaves. When Stephen Harper moved to abolish anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio. Harper’s proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right wing network, “Sun TV News” which Canadians call “Fox News North.”

Harper, often referred to as “George W. Bush’s Mini Me,” is known for having mounted a Bush like war on government scientists, data collectors, transparency, and enlightenment in general. He is a wizard of all the familiar tools of demagoguery; false patriotism, bigotry, fear, selfishness and belligerent religiosity.

Full story here.

Nagged

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFbPz6hMa1c

Here’s the real Stephen Harper addressing “real Canadians” on a completely phony issue

The Conservative attack ads are now non-stop, and it’s many weeks, maybe even months away from an election.  When they aren’t running attack ads, they’re running “government of Canada” ads, which means tens of millions of tax-payer dollars spent to spit-polish the Harper government at our expense. During peak viewing hours, every second commercial break has either one or the other of them in an unending manic-depressive cycle of reassurance and vituperation.

It may be that this strategy will ultimately backfire because the motives are so transparently cynical. You don’t have to be partisan to find it distasteful to be incessantly nagged, poked and tugged at, especially when your own money is paying for the trouble.

I’ve posted the video above before, but it’s worth watching again. No filters. No public relations. No image consultation. Just an undiluted expression of bigotry, fear and resentment. According to Stephen Harper, there are “real Canadians,” and then there’s everyone else — which, minus the minority who voted for him in the last election, is two thirds of the population.

Quotes of the Day: Sullivan and “Anonymous”

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Libertarian conservative columnist for the Sunday Times and The Atlantic, and one of the most-read political bloggers in the world, Andrew Sullivan today:

If your name is Koch, it’s pronounced cock. And if your name is Boehner, it’s pronounced boner. They can always change their names if they want. Until then … I’m calling it like it is.

Meanwhile, the online hacking collective, Anonymous, is targeting the Koch-sponsered Americans for Prosperity.  Their press release reads in part:

Koch Industries, and oligarchs like them, have most recently started to manipulate the political agenda in Wisconsin. Governor Walker’s union-busting budget plan contains a clause that went nearly un-noticed. This clause would allow the sale of publicly owned utility plants in Wisconsin to private parties (specifically, Koch Industries) at any price, no matter how low, without a public bidding process. The Koch’s have helped to fuel the unrest in Wisconsin and the drive behind the bill to eliminate the collective bargaining power of unions in a bid to gain a monopoly over the state’s power supplies.

The Koch brothers have made a science of fabricating ‘grassroots’ organizations and advertising campaigns to support them in an attempt to sway voters based on their falsehoods. Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth and Citizens United are just a few of these organizations. In a world where corporate money has become the lifeblood of political influence, the labor unions are one of the few ways citizens have to fight against corporate greed. Anonymous cannot ignore the plight of the citizen-workers of Wisconsin, or the opportunity to fight for the people in America’s broken political system. For these reasons, we feel that the Koch brothers threaten the United States democratic system and, by extension, all freedom-loving individuals everywhere. As such, we have no choice but to spread the word of the Koch brothers’ political manipulation, their single-minded intent and the insidious truth of their actions in Wisconsin, for all to witness.

Story here.

Frye on Democracy, Laissez-Faire and Oligarchy

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“Democracy should work as a force for the underprivileged.” Northrop Frye, interview in The Telegram, 25 March 1950

On a couple of occasions I’ve received comments about the political direction the blog takes on current events, typically in the form of “What does this have to do with Frye?” (I get the same thing when it comes to popular culture.) My response has been that Frye was always critically engaged with the world around him, most conspicuously during his decades-long stint at The Canadian Forum. His politics were unambiguously to the left (he was in fact a lifelong social democrat), and his observations on political matters are frank and detailed. Although some people might not like it, he lived long enough to make pungent remarks about two prominent North American conservatives of the 1980s: Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney. It’s not difficult to imagine what he might have said about George Bush and Stephen Harper.

I am comfortable, therefore, to post critiques of the political right in the liberal spirit Frye embodied, and I am always on the lookout for passages from the collected works consistent with the opinions expressed here. This is particularly true regarding the behavior of an increasingly aggressive economic elite that for the past thirty years has begrudged the poor the assistance they require while stripping the middle class of a fair share of the wealth they generate. In the 1940s, Frye readily characterized such trends as the emergence of a North American brand of fascism. There isn’t any good reason we should hesitate to do so now. It is a direct threat to democracy, which Frye seemed to think of as a secular form of salvation. It is also a nullification of the primary concerns he regarded as the full expression of both corporeal and spiritual life. If there’s any lingering doubt about this, below is another quote to add to the collection already compiled here over the last few months, this time from “Trends in Modern Culture.” As always, Frye sets the standard for feet-on-the-ground idealism: the recognition of and the working toward the better world we could create if only we had the courage to push this one aside.

As the conception of democracy has matured, it has separated itself from its vague background of Utopian optimism.  Many Americans still believe that laissez-faire is the economic aspect of democracy, but there is a growing realization that laissez-faire by itself does not lead to democracy, but to oligarchy, and thence to managerial dictatorship. Laissez-faire by itself is antidemocratic: all progress in the conditions of the working classes has been wrung from it in a kind of cold civil war. . . . (CW 11, 251)

Video of the Day: “The Koch brothers are out to bust unions”

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQuNrPg1paM&feature=player_embedded

Shepard Smith — apparently the only employee at Fox News who doesn’t follow Roger Ailes’s policy to lie — weighs in on the Wisconsin union busting effort and explains why it can be called that. Americans seem to have picked up on what’s really going on here: in a poll released yesterday, 61% said that they would oppose an effort in their state to deny unions collective bargaining rights. Decency trumps ideology. Maybe we can cautiously begin to expect more of that.

Canadian Conservatives: Whatever

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Conservative senator Doug Finley: charged with election law violation

Four Conservatives, including two senators, have been charged with breaking federal election law on campaign spending.  Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey dismissed the charges, saying, “This is an accounting issue.”

That seems to be a pattern of behavior for conservatives everywhere these days: the law is for other people, particularly when it comes to any form of electoral malfeasance intended to gain or hold on to power.  It’s just another accounting issue.

Story here.

Gov. Scott Walker Prank Tells Us Exactly What We Need to Know

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nweqmMnRi04

Scott Walker confiding in “David Koch.” (Part 2 of the conversation after the jump.  A full transcript of the conversation here.)

Koch: Bring a baseball bat. That’s what I’d do.

Walker: I have one in my office; you’d be happy with that. I have a slugger with my name on it.

Koch: Beautiful.

Walker: Union-bashing…

Koch: Beautiful.

You’ve probably heard that Wisconsin’s Tea Party governor Scott Walker got a prank call from a reporter at The Buffalo Beast (founded by Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi) in which he spoke with carefree frankness about his intention to break the public sector unions in the state. What’s crucial to the prank is the person Walker believed he was talking to: David Koch — the same David Koch to whom Walker seems eager to deliver untendered state contracts.

If you want to look into the representative faces of the corporate interests that have by this point more or less purchased the Republican party outright, look no further than the David and Charles Koch: they fund global warming denialism, they co-founded and fund the Tea Party, they threw millions of dollars at the Republicans during last year’s midterms and are looking to raise tens of millions more in 2012; now they intend to do a little union bustin’ in Wisconsin. These guys are not here to fool around. They’re working behind the scenes to distort public perceptions on some of the most important issues of the day and to gin up the political polarization that results. All of this effort is to advance an agenda whose only beneficiaries are themselves and the rarefied corporate cloud dwellers they associate with — as well as their bought-and-paid-for Republican flunkies in Congress.  So the first thing to do is to bring them out of the shadows to give them the exposure they shun.  That seems to be happening a little more every day.

Continue reading →

On Wisconsin

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAfsIW6RY8Q

This is nice little common sense video putting the Wisconsin budget “crisis” into perspective and explaining by the simplest possible means how little it would cost to “fix” it.

However, what it doesn’t mention is that the “crisis” has been deliberately engineered by the new Tea Party governor of the state as a pretext for union busting.  He inherited a budget surplus when he took office in January.  He’s now running a deficit.  The reason?  It rhymes with “wax butts for the witch.”

It never stops.

(h/t to Amanda Etches-Johnson for the video)

Video of the Day: The Beginning of the End?

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua_rSF1TQ6k

Chris Matthews and his panel have a hilarious good time reviewing the leaked manuscript of a memoir by former Palin aide Frank Bailey.  This may be enough to end the madness, at least as far as the mainstream media is concerned.  No more free rides for her.

Now if only we could revisit Bill O’Reilly’s multi-million dollar sexual harassment suit and Rush Limbaugh’s draft deferments for a sore bum, his illegal possession of Oxycontin, not to mention his illegal possession of Viagra during a visit to a sex-vacation haven.  Poobahs on the right are as answerable for their foibles, crimes and misdemeanours as everyone else.  They only think they aren’t.