Politics and Press

Living in Lies: America Goes to the Polls

Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred.
—— Vaclav Havel

The late Vaclav Havel promoted the concept of “living in truth” as a revolutionary strategy for overcoming the authoritarian crimes committed on the Czech people by the Soviet regime. A frequently jailed dissident, Havel led the Czechoslovak people through their Velvet Revolution, became the president of Czechoslovakia, and watched sadly as the country’s Czech and Slovak populations went through their Velvet Divorce. Havel then re-emerged as the President of the Czech Republic and started the process of re-invigorating the country’s political and economic cultures. Throughout his life his commitment to truth remained paramount and constant, both in his literature and his politics. Small of stature, he was a giant among the world’s leaders.

And that brings us to those of our home grown political practitioners who are convinced that truth is at best a relative term and at worst an inconvenience. We are stuck – and I do mean stuck – with a group of Republican challengers for the presidency whose commitment to truth is about as strong as Newt Gingrich’s commitment to his first two wives.

The likely Republican challenger to President Obama, Mitt Romney, flits from one stance to another while manufacturing Obama quotes that were never actually said. People expressed shock when Newt Gingrich said on national TV that Romney is a liar, but their shock was only that he said it, not that the description was untrue. Our candidates are expected to lie and we accept it as part of the game. But the result of our willingness to play along with that game is that we end up electing people we cannot trust and then wondering later what went wrong.

The Czech Republic is a country of approximately 10 million people and it produced the leadership of Vaclav Havel; our country of 300 million produces the Lilliputian likes of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Donald Trump and Rick Santorum. Go Figure.

The CFL at 99 and counting, what Canadian football could teach the Yanks

So the big game is over, the Grey Cup has been  presented in its ninety-ninth year to aVancouver team that lost its first five games and won nine of its next ten, including today’s down to the wire victory at home against Winnipeg.  56, ooo people sold out its new half billion dollar upgraded stadium, to watch he best young quarterback in football (think Doug Flutie, Warren Moon, Joe Theisman if you want to recall the kind of players who preceded Travis Lulay in the CFL) lead the Lions to a deserved narrow victory .  It’s true that for Canadian sports fans this can’t replace the loss by the Canucks in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup championship  to Boston, but virtually the whole country watched it and it was a reminder, if one was needed, of how much more exciting  Canadian 3-down  football games are compared to US 4-down ones.  With  4 minutes to go and the team with the ball leading by a touchdown in the US, the game is basically considered over as you can run out the clock with a steady diet of four-yard runs.  Paint dries faster.

In Canada that game is just beginning at that point.  Winnipeg scored two touchdown in the last three minutes to come within 8 points of Vancouver and were driving again as the game ended.  Even more exciting was the Canadian university championship game played two days before the pro championship in the same stadium, during which the favoured rouge et or of Laval came back from 23-0 half-time deficit to pull ahead of McMaster by one point with  a couple of minutes to go only to see themselves go ahead by a single, get tied by a rouge and apparently lose by one point when McMaster missed a field goal with  no time left, but any ball that is kicked into or out of the end zone without it being returned or kicked back out results in  one  point in Canada, enough  to win the game in this case.  But the ball didn’t go over the end zone line as a Laval player caught it before it passed the  line and made it back out to the one–yard line after faking a drop kick as a return.  Eventually the winner was decided by an overtime that   had everyone standing and defies explanation.  These are rugby rules, and the NFL should send someone up to see how they add excitement in places where the NF L offers nothing but  dead air – fair catches, no reward for kicking balls into or out of the end zone, no possibility of returning kicks with kicks, ridiculous ways ways of breaking ties, etc.

The Media’s Election Narrative

There is one year to go before the 2012 presidential election and the American press continues to focus on the political process over the substance of issues. Early on the press determined that while Mitt Romney held a slight – and decidedly soft – lead in most national polls, a changing series of candidates must be anointed by the press to the role of “anyone but Romney” challenger for the Republican nomination. This has happened with little or no substantive exploration of issues, but has maintained a horserace kind of press coverage..

Initially former Governor Tim Pawlenty was promoted by much of the press for his “seriousness” which the voters then determined was a kind of insipid, tediousness. The press then jumped to Michelle Bachmann who presented a feminine face backed by a religious nuttiness that always seems to show up in Republican primary races in Iowa. She tanked early after voters began to actually listen to the strange things coming out of her mouth.

The press then decided that Governor Rick Perry was the one to take on Flipper Romney, not out of any particular policy differences but rather because he was from Texas, had a lot of campaign funds and talked a big – or at least loud – game. Perry lasted about two weeks as he fumbled in debates for words that might be translated into actual thoughts. The press then ignited his downfall because of a slip in a debate when he lost track of his thoughts – some would argue, not all that unusual an occurrence. Then the press moved to pizza company CEO Herman Cain as a new frontrunner with the innovative campaign strategy of joking about how little he knows about the world while defending himself against numerous (5 and counting) accusations of sexual harassment.

Now the press has identified Newt Gingrich as the next likely antidote to Romney. This, some months after the press dumped him as a tired old hack who couldn’t manage his campaign staff or his wife’s Tiffany account. Meanwhile Ron Paul maintains credible numbers, has an identifiable set of policies and is mostly ignored by the press. Jon Huntsman makes the most sense – especially on foreign affairs – and is mostly ignored by the press as irrelevant. Romney continues to waffle his way toward some weird kind of consistency – that is, the consistency of having no apparent core beliefs that he would not jettison for a few more votes, and the search for an alternative continues, but not based on any particular policy issues.

We have another year of this and perhaps as the process moves along the press will begin to focus on actual issues but for now, the focus remains on the way the game is played rather than on the probable consequences of candidates’ actual policy differences.

Iceland, Greece, Whatever

The economic crisis send out its ripples, knocks down its first dominoes, and the rich fat cats who thought they were too far away to be threatened, are starting to raise their heads and start smelling something rotten heading their way. First it was Iceland, now it’s Greece, and soon it may be bigger fish in much bigger lakes like Italy and Spain. The problem is always the same: whole countries live beyond their means, run up big debts on credit and fall apart when the sleazy chaps who convinced them to take out cheap loans, ask for a payback.   Iceland lived in a fantasy world of fake wealth in this bizarre ritual and the streets of Reykjavik rumbled with the weight of oversized  cars bought on non-existent money. The average Reykjavik household had 3 cars, and more than 20,000 cars were imported in the year before the banking system collapsed in 3 days only 4 years ago. This year 2,000 cars are coming in. But Icelanders have learned to live with catastrophes: hunger winters, volcanic eruptions, whatever. When asked how he was doing in the midst of the debacle, my brother Doug’s Icelandic pal had a quick reply: “Don’t worry about us, we know how to fish and raise potatoes”. And lo and behold it is the Icelandic fishery that has actually prospered in terrible economic times, as the fishing fleet never stopped going out into dangerous waters, still under Icelandic control after the cod war of the 1970s after the fleet turned away invading British warships, and provided a solid economic base for an economic recovery, even for the gamblers who had  lost in the economic games of the mid-2000s.

Now it is Greece’s turn to pay the price of spending too liberally on the basis of phoney money. Just as in Iceland (and in all the countries that will be hit next) it is the fat cats who will be able to find an escape hatch and the poor suckers who have tried to make an honest hard-earned wage who will find that their savings have disappeared along with their jobs. Like Iceland Greece has tremendous resources in its saplendid setting and matchless history. Come on guys, get it together, start planting those potatoes or whatever grows best, send out the fleet, and get those workers who are ready to roll up their sleeves back on the job.

The Wild Ones make a comeback

In a period of seemingly unending bad news about the state of the environment, it is time for some surprisingly upbeat developments: Some of the big guys in the animal kingdom are coming back to areas they had abandoned under constant human pressure scores of years ago, in some cases even centuries ago. It is true that almost all these cases are happening in the still somewhat wide-open spaces of northern North America and Euroasia, but still they are happening and there is quite suddenly some startling evidence that the often apparently hopeless attempt by some humans to undo the damage done by most humans is actually having some success. It seems that protected national parks actually work as something other than a tourist goal.

In southern British Columbia grizzly bears are definitely extending their range southward and even westward as the first sightings in a century of the giant carnivores within an hour of Vancouver lead to predictions that within twenty years a grizzly will be standing on the ski slopes of Vancouver looking at his encaged brethren at the top of Grouse Mountain. Four young male grizzlys are now being tracked on the west coast of Vancouver Island where the languages of the natives have no word for them, as there is no record of them having been there before. It can only be assumed they have made the almost unimaginable swim from the mainland by moving from island to island and are now considering whether they want to stay in a new land where they would be king of the wilderness. If the resident black bears run into them, they may regret getting to know this branch of th e family.

They would almost certainly also be meeting an ever-expanding cougar population, once seen only rarely and at a distance – my brother Doug claims to have almost hit one on the road to Zeballos – and now making thei presence felt in many places where they may be less than welcome. This summer a cougar jumped out of the bush and on to a little kid at popular Kennedy Lake in Pacific Rim National Park, only to be driven away by an irate mother. Cougars have also now been positively identified as roaming the woods of Quebec and will surely soon be back in th he Adirondacks.  Wolf packs are spreading rapidly eastwards in Germany where they have been absent for a century.   Tigers have been brought back from the brink of extinction in southeastern Russia through a decision in Moscow that a great country like Russia deserves a great wild animal.  China may be thinking that one over at the moment, since they wiped out all their own tigers, but still get the occasional wanderer from north of the Amur River. In 2009 in British Columbia federal officials estimated that the salmon returning to the greatest free-flowinng salmon river on earth, the Fraser, which reaches the sea in Vancouver, would be reduced to a rump 1 million fish and might well be considered on the way to extinction.  And then 30 million showed up from nowhere, the highest number in a century, and all bets of extinction were off. So take heart, you may yet run into a grizzly or a pack of wolves on your afternoon constitutional and never be the same again.

In Praise of rugby

There is a world championship going on in New Zealand that can recall the golden days of sport when amateurs could play against professionals in team sports and have a chance, when small countries could field teams that could beat meganapoleanic big sports factory countries and where the best national teams in the world would nonetheless end up vying for a cup that promises honour more than money as a reward.

And look at the favourites: New Zealand, the all Blacks who seem likely to win it all at home; Australia, their bitter rivals who lost bitterly to Ireland in the first round games; South Africa, the Springbocks, who could be the All Blacks spoilers but were lucky to beat Wales; England, and France, which had its hands full for most of the match against mainly amateur Canada, also Wales, punching above its weight, Argentina, the Latino outsider, and any one of three small Polynesian islands, where very big men push and push and push. Russia and the US are also there, and try just as hard or harder to hold on to their middle-of-the-pack role than do the professional sports teams running for the cash. As is the case with the world’s second most popular sport, cricket, following soccer, it is mostly a Commonwealth gathering but profits greatly from the fact that it isn’t only that, as is the cricket world championships, but also a gathering of very tough guys, playing a very hard game without protection and doing it mainly for the glory. You won’t be seeing these lads at the Olympics.

Partisanship in America: A Commitment to National Failure?

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
–Leonard Cohen

Having (barely) survived the nonsense of the Republican-generated debt ceiling fiasco we are now looking at two new opportunities for partisanship to screw the majority of Americans: the deficit reduction Congressional Committee and the attempt to produce more jobs in America. And right out of the chute we are seeing the lines drawn and the vapid sarcasm of the likes of Eric Cantor leading us again toward the edge of the cliff.

None of this should surprise anyone. From day one President Obama faced a lunatic fringe questioning his birthplace, his religion, comparing him to Hitler etc. This fringe was aided and abetted by so-called national political leaders in the Republican party while so-called “moderate” Republicans like Senators Scott Brown, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snow forced a reduction in the stimulus bill and refused to consider a single payer health care approach. Obama and the Democratic Senate rolled over and accepted tepid progress when radical approaches were needed.

But that was then and now is even worse as the Republicans begin their final assault on the Obama presidency regardless of its effect on the country they say they serve. We are in a leaderless world with Europe breaking down over its inability to manage the Euro zone and the US looking for rational policy development from people who are unable to agree on the simplest things, never mind the tough ones. This is looking like a very painful yearlong run for the presidency with an increasingly likely chance that the people who ruined the economy in the first place and then refused to help fix it will get the reins once again.

For a discussion of President Obama’s job plan by Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman in today’s NY Times, click here.

Upset in British Journalism Twit of the Year Race

In a race completely dominated for almost its entire length by Rupert Murdoch’s journalism cohort, a sudden tremendous sprint by an unexpected rival led to the most exciting finish in the traditional British twit of the year race since John Cleese edged out Michael Palin with a crazy walk stumble over the finish line to take the legendary 1977 championship. As the Murdoch crew staggered along virtually unchallenged for 364 of the 365 days of the marathon challenge, a stunning spurt by the cleverly disguised Economist crew resulted in an unprecedented  upset as the economists surged in front of the twisting and turning creatures wearing the Murdoch colours, just before the finish line .
And what an impeccable strategy the splendid British scribes employed, using their highly dubious annual ranking of the livability of cities to demonstrate the thorough research behind their performance during the year. Vancouver, rated number one for many years in a row, was deemed too have lost .07 points because of an accident on the Malahat Highway that closed the thoroughfare down for a day, thus displaying the formerly most livable city’s inability to deal with modern traffic problems, and pushing Melbourne and Vienna in front of it on the livability front. The researchers of the economist thus tumbled first over the finish  line in the 2011 twit of the year race when it was pointed out that the Malahat Highway is on Vancouver Island, not in Vancouver city, and is 4 hours away from Vancouver, including a 2-hour ferry ride. Similar logic would have led to the conclusion that a traffic jam in Budapest brought down the livability of poor Vienna. Man on the street interviews by Vancouver Sun reporters quickly found that 77.7 per cent of Vancouver residents had never been on that highway and 55.5 per cent had never heard of it. Leading the pack over the finish line, Economist editor of current affairs and such things claimed that the mistake of confusing Vancouver Island with Vancouver, not unheard of in bewildered tourists, had not been the cause of the magazine’s bizarre conclusion, but rather that it was meant to be a subtle reference to the need for better highways in Vancouver. The Murdoch crew breathed a loud sigh of relief as their bitter rival stole a win from the jaws of defeat in the annual Monty Python look-alike derby as well.

Grand Old Party, R.I.P.

Mark Hatfield died last week. He served six terms in the U.S. Senate as a Republican from Oregon and added considerable class, intelligence and courage to that semi-August group. Mac Mathias, former Republican Senator from Maryland died early last year and left a similar legacy. Both were committed to developing policies for the good of the country regardless of narrow party ideologies.

Today we have Mitch McConnell as (Republican) minority leader in the Senate and John Boehner as Republican Speaker of the House, committed to destroy the presidency of a Democrat president regardless of the damage to the country. It is no longer amazing – it is the common thread that connects the likes of John Birch to the Tea Party zealots to the religious zealots like Rick Perry and the Ayn Rand kooks like Senator Paul and his son, Congressman Paul.

It should not be necessary to review the craziness of last week’s rush to the edge of disaster when the Tea Party loonies emasculated Boehner and put America in a position of just another banana republic. That they are blaming it on the black president no surprise; that it will work is perhaps not so obvious. But it is absolutely clear that we have a relatively small group of dangerous, fundamentalist clowns forcing gutless politicians to damage their country rather than govern responsibly.

The American press has been complicit in this disaster by providing coverage of a small group of rabid political fundamentalists without calling them out for their foolishness and their lack of understanding of even the basics of the economic and governmental challenges facing the country. It is apparent that the issue for them is to destroy a presidency and if the country goes down with him so be it.

So we search in vain for the Mark Hatfileds and Mac Mathiases in the Republican Party. The only serious candidate for their legacy remains Richard Lugar who will face a primary challenge from the Tea party. Mere pretenders to their legacy are the likes of Senators Snow and Collins of Maine, Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Leslie of Graham of South Carolina. Each of them has taken stands based on the rigid demands of their base, either out of political cowardice or an inability to comprehend the reality of the country’s needs. Their attempts at moderation have left the country with an inadequate stimulus plan, an inadequate tax revenue stream, and an economy foundering on a level of debt made worse by their actions.

The Republican Party has become a party of ideological fanaticism that if left unfettered could lead America into the abyss that their Christian fundamentalist supporters seek: a kind of Rapture unlike anything described in any bible.
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The Financial Crisis for Dummies

Okay, here is the scoop. Please pick it up and move on to serious matters, like how to end the wars that are obviously part of the financial crisis. The European Union, founded on the idea of a common border and common currency, is falling apart. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark, as it has reinstated border controls on both its German and Swedish borders. Though nowhere near as draconic as the heavily-armed US outposts along the Canadian frontier, where all those dangerous outlaws are trying to press south, they nevertheless irritate their neighbours mightily. Hungary currently contributes the presiding president to the EU council and also unnerves its fellow members by acting contrary to EU rules on the question of ethnic minorities. Greece is living so far beyond its means that Sugar Daddy Germany has made clear it has run out of patience with request for further bank transfers. Ditto Portugal and Ireland, and more menacingly Spain and Italy. Who’s next? Well, even France has noticed that its bellicose response to poor Libya’s problems is costing way more money than it thought it would (which war doesn’t?) while gaining it no new friends on its former colonial continent since military success is not on the horizon while civilian deaths mount. The UK staggers along with a new scandal (welcome aboard Rupert) each week. Can you name the Prime Minister? There are some economic successes that should be mentioned: Germany, cruising along because of the quality of its expensive products and its unwillingness to get into wars, Switzerland, cruising along because of it secret bank system, Poland, the country that has gained the most from EU membership, and, amazingly, Estonia, which has the best financial report of them all.
And then there is the United States, the most powerful one of them all still – pace China – whose elected representatives seem incapable of dealing with elementary money matters such as overwhelming debt, war expenses and looming bankruptcy. The last will presumably not be allowed to happen, but I’m afraid the analysis of that possibility goes beyond the scope of the title of this rare foray of my brother Doug into higher economics.