Global Medical Relief Fund Drive Update

Hey, folks.

I just wanted to update you on what's happening with my pledge drive for the Global Medical Relief Fund that I started here on Monday morning.

When I announced this, my Google Ads kitty was just shy of 20 bucks, which had taken me over two weeks to build up since the ads first went up. You guys have doubled that in four days! You rawk!

If you keep it up at this rate, I should break $100 by about the second week of April. From what I understand, Google calculates what you make at the end of the month and cuts you cheque, that you get in the mail at the end of the next month. I originally said that I would give the first hundred to Global Medical Relief. But I didn't think that you guys would be as cool as you've turned out to be. Therefore, whatever that first cheque turns out to be will go to them.

But it occurred to me that none of you actually have a reason to trust me, do you? And that's important, if only because when I think that something is important enough to turn over some of your hard-earned money to, I need to earn some credibility. For that to happen, I need to prove that the cheque is going where I say it is.

So here's what I'm proposing. I'll let you all know when I get the cheque from Google Ads and let you know how much it's for. Within five days business days of that, we'll meet in a bar somewhere in Downtown Toronto, where you can watch me endorse the cheque and put it in the mail. If any of you knows a place that wouldn't mind hosting a get-together for charity and is willing to set it up, let me know and I'll announce it here.  And if you want to bring along a cheque or money order to be stuffed in the envelope with mine, you'll be extra welcome.

I want it to be an apolitical night, and one where personal differences can be put aside. Even if you think that I'm the worst human being alive - or if I think that you are - if you're willing to bring a cheque of your own to the Global Medical Relief Fund, I'll welcome you and shake your hand. All I ask is that everyone be civil to another for one night. And please don't use it as an occasion to serve subpoenas or libel notices on one another, or more importantly, me. Being an asshole not only will ruin the night, it'll kill the possibility that this little community can do something for their fellow man ever again, and I think that we can.

Now there's something that you need to know about me. I'm really uncomfortable meeting new people, especially new people who know about this dopey goddamned blog. I either feel that I have to live it down or live up to it. Every time I've been in a position to meet readers, I've dreaded it, even though it usually turns out to be a lot of fun. I'll detest every minute leading up to it, knowing that you'll all be there to watch me hate myself in public. And that's going to be a giant pain in the ass for me, something that even none of my girlfriends has ever understood.

Having said that, I feel strongly about this, and about maybe doing something like it for other charities in the future, so I'm willing to do it. So should you. At a minimum, all you have to do is click an ad, for God's sakes.

I need to point again that Global Medical Relief Fund is an American charity, even though it primarily serves non-American child victims of war or natural disasters. If you're not a U.S citizen, you probably cannot claim your donation on your taxes. I want to be really clear about that. If it makes you feel any better, I've never claimed a charitable donation on my taxes.

I'm not gonna lie to you. There are lots of reasons not to participate in this. You can't claim it on your taxes, and the best thing that happens is that you get stuck in a room with an anti-social asshole like me for a few hours. Oh, and you'll be buying my friggin' drinks, too. Remember, I don't have a pot to piss in and I certainly can't afford a night on the town. If I was even halfway smart, I'd keep the money for myself.

But you know what? This is important. I feel strongly about this. There's a woman in Staten Island who has devoted her life to rebuilding the faces and limbs of kids who haven't done anything to anyone. Please don't tell me that you can't at least click a goddamned ad to help them.

And there will be as many witnesses as care to be there to know that I'm not screwing you out of your ad-click. And I'd sooner lose one of my own limbs than meet a roomful of strangers. So please help Elissa Montanti. If you're not going to be in Toronto this spring, you can still donate here.

If other local bloggers want to co-sponsor and/or co-host this with me, I'd be more than happy to accept the help. And if a much bigger blogger wants to take it over, feel free. I would definately prefer that this wasn't about me.


Update: Wowee, we're up fifteen bucks in the last two hours. Not bad at all. you guys are impressing me!

Upperdate - Friday 1 April 2011, 1:28 pm: Shazam! You've managed to double the city since yesterday afternoon. We're now up to $84.38, which is pretty impressive, considering it's soley from clicking ads. At this rate, we'll probably break a hundred dollars over the weekend, depending on traffic. Some of you have also left comments saying that you've made donations on your own. Turns out that you're good peeps.

On "Debates"

So the latest kerfuffle in Canada's most pointedly unnecessary and useless of elections is over the debates. The leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth May, was told that she wouldn't be invited to participate. Meanwhile, both Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff are openly lying about wanting to have one of their own, excluding the NDP and Bloc Quebecois.

As for me, I'm left here wondering why anyone even gives a shit. Political debates aren't actually "debates," at least not as the term is commonly understood. An actual debate is where you build a case for or against something. Televised political debates (at least in North America) are nothing more than exercises of glorified used car salesmen treating us like even bigger idiots than we already are for 60 seconds at a time. I defy any of you to cite the last time that you learned anything at all from a televised campaign debate, let alone changed your mind about something substantive based on what you heard in one. Actually, can you quote anything that was said in the last nationally televised debate in your country? I can't, and I've wasted my entire life studying this nonsense.

Here's a great example of what I'm talking about. In October 2008, my American then-girlfriend and I were staying in a hotel in downtown Toronto. One night we watched Sarah Palin and Joe Biden try to out-stupid one another. The next night, we watched the Canadian federal leaders debate. The only substantive difference was that my guys did it in French, which impressed the girlfriend endlessly, but is sort of beside the point.

This is because they aren't actually debates. They're beauty contests with exceptionally ugly people as contestants. In that they are designed to solely reward anti-intellectual emotional appeals and ignore the very existence of reasoned argument, they're really no different than American Idol. Yes, I watch them, but only because I enjoy knowing the true extent to which the very idea of democracy is being fucked over by their inability to tell the truth, our inability to care, and the media's inability to even notice. Debates are a great way of learning that.

Modern debates date back to the 1960 U.S presidential election, when John F. Kennedy basically revealed everything that he learned in his classified CIA briefings and forced Richard Nixon to lie about it to protect national security. And 1960 was the high point of televised political debates.

A candidate doesn't even have to be smart to participate anymore. Shit, being half-retarded is actually considered a potential advantage. That began when Ronald Reagan didn't die in his sleep during the 1984 debates, and the rule of "beating expectations" was firmly embedded in the process. Shit, he picked up 22 states just from telling a joke. Nowadays, if George W. Bush or Sarah Palin can get through two hours without actually drooling on themselves themselves, they are thought to have "won" because they have "beaten expectations." In large part, this is why modern candidates go out their way to make themselves look stupid.

Policies don't count for shit. Look at 1988 for proof of that. Michael Dukakis, for whatever reason, was asked if he would abandon his opposition to the death penalty if his wife was raped and murdered. He lost that debate by explaining his position, instead of kicking Bernard Shaw in the balls or something. And nobody bothered pointing out that it was an incredibly stupid question, since no federal prisoners had been executed in several decades at that point, making the issue wholly irrelevant to the presidency. George H.W Bush, the last adult president the United States has had, was sent directly to hell in 1992 for looking at his fucking watch and being confused by some idiot woman's mangled question about the deficit affecting his personal life.

None of that shit has anything at all to do with running a country. I know this might come as a shock to some of you, but it doesn't. It doesn't even make for interesting soap opreas. Okay, Bill Clinton's personal life did, but that was notably left out of any of the debates he took part in.

Canadian debates are even worse, if only because they lack the high drama and superior production values of those in the U.S. We decided as a country that our politicians don't need 37 flags surrounding them, mostly because our flag is pretty cheesy-looking. The last debate moment that anybody in this country remembers at all was Brian Mulroney's "You had an option, Sir" tantrum. And for the record, that was 27 years and eight  (although it feels like forty) elections ago.

Being slightly more mature than our American cousins, we judge who won our debates in a more mature way: By watching to see who blinks and twitches the least when they're lying to us. Oh, and being really patronizing when they're doing it really doesn't hurt them, either.

And when it's all over, we're subjected to three hours of even more patronizing horseshit from every body's jerk-off spin doctors and "political analysts," who want to tell us all "what it means" even though we just watched the whole fucking thing ourselves.  There's one secret that the journalistic class shares with the political one - they all think we're stupid. Actually, that's not true. They know we're stupid.

The worst part is that the Goddamned Liberal Media lets this happen. They bitch constantly about how vacuous and empty everything about these debates are, but they run the show. They let the parties set the rules and pick the fucking moderator, leaving them with the shitty jobs of paying for the intellectual blight and trying to sell it to the rest of us as somehow meaning something.

You know what would be really nice? If the broadcasters all got together and said to the parties, "Here are the debate dates, here are the locations, here's your moderator, and here are the rules. Show up or don't." There would be no negotiation with the politicians. At all. And if a given leader doesn't show up, the moderator begins the program by listing each and every trivial objection that he or she listed as a reason for not going. If you bailed because you didn't get to stand on a goddamned phone book, the great Steve Paikin tells us that, and we decide how we feel about it.

Oh, and the networks would all agree that there would be no fucking post-game show, where they tell us what they think happened. You know what? The fact that you went to journalism school doesn't make you all that impressive. And if the parties want their spin doctors - perhaps the most useless assholes of the media age - on television, they can buy commercial time like everybody else.

No debates at all would be better than the farce that we get now.

But I guess that I should be telling you what I think about the events in the first paragraph, huh?

Look, I don't think that Elizabeth May is any more of a tool than the other leaders, but I don't think she's any less of one, either. Sure, her ideas are half-crazed and her chances of ever winning a seat are lower than mine are, but that's not the objection the other party leaders have. They want more camera time to themselves to lie to you.

As for Harper and Ignatieff; well, it took this country 135 years to find the worst whores that could possibly represent us, but I think we've finally done it, y'know, at least until Justin Trudeau and Jason Kenney get their day in the sun.

As much fun as it would be to watch, a two-man debate between those demented curs is never going to happen.

First, the media aren't going to exclude two parties that, between them, represent well over a quarter of all voters. The combined polling of the NDP and Bloc Quebecois now beats the Liberals, and by a pretty healthy margin at that. Also, they might sue to be involved, and they'll almost certainly win. Excluding the Greens, who would have a fantastic election if they won five seats is one thing. Excluding the NDP and the Block, who have around seventy between them right now, is quite another. Why not say Ignatieff can't come, since there's almost no mathematical way he can win a majority, and probably won't even have a job in five weeks?

Besides, this election is really about a Harper Minority vs. a Harper Majority. Why bother pretending otherwise and just let him debate himself all night? We might actually learn something from that.

Second, neither Ignatieff or Harper actually wants it to happen. A one-on-one debate means that one of them might actually be sleazy enough to clearly win a debate, which necessarily means that the other one loses. These are both temperamentally very conservative fellows and neither has made a career out of taking dumb risks. I don't expect them to start now.

One or both of them will find an excuse to cancel it. I'm betting on the no-standing-on-a-phone-book rule.

And the fact that anyone at all cares about this proves virtually I've said in this post.

Rihanna Is Better Than You Are

There are any number of beautiful women out there and I love you all, some more often than others. You're all fantastic and each of you has a special place in my pants. I'm just saying that Rihanna is better.

The evidence is pretty much incontrovertible at this point. Sure, you can try to beat it, but you'll just wind up looking like a flat-earther, a Birther, or nearly any other faction of the modern Republican party that you want to name. And you don't want to do that, do you? Of course you don't. You all know that you're the smartest blog audience on Al Gore's Internet and you should all be very proud of that.

Besides, just look at her! Even when she tries to ugly herself up by looking like Sideshow Bob, she's still one of the top five most beautiful women alive. Her face is as damn near perfect as they come. And her ass is even better! Jesus Christ and all the Dwarves in Disneyland, I could spend the rest of my life just thinking of new and increasingly sexy things to do with it.

The fact that Rolling Stone hasn't put her on the cover of every single issue in the last five years tells you pretty much all you need to know about the decline and fall of journalism. When editors decide to be that consciously dumb, the print media has no other option left to it but to wither and die.

Sadly, Rolling Stone spent far too much of its time with Rihanna getting her to talk about Chris Brown. There's really only one thing left to be said about that sad chapter of American history, that the judge should've sentenced him to being eaten alive by red ants in the fucking desert. The fact that he wasn't, combined with the ongoing persecution of Lindsay Lohan, is why the entire state of California should be destroyed. And you know what? Everybody already knows that.

Thankfully, the article isn't a complete waste of time. It does finally get around to the things that inquiring minds need to know, specifically;

Rihanna's hit single "S&M" is semi-autobiographical. "Being submissive in the bedroom is really fun," she says. "You get to be a little lady, to have somebody be macho and in charge of your shit. That's fun to me...I like to be spanked. Being tied up is fun. I like to keep it spontaneous. Sometimes whips and chains can be overly planned – you gotta stop, get the whip from the drawer downstairs. I'd rather have him use his hands."

Exactly. I couldn't have said it better myself, and I'm probably the most sexually eloquent man I know.

So yes, Rihanna is better than you are. The sooner you accept it, the better you'll all be as people. Aren't you all amazed that I'm not the world's leading self-help guru already? Maybe I should write a book.




Rihanna - S&M by UniversalMusicGroup

More Fun With Maikeru

Okay, I'm starting to feel like an asshole doing this, but this comment was just too good to pass up;

I'll stand by my own assessment that SH (Stephen Harper) is an astute politician who understands that Canadians are as cantankerous as they are privileged, and that folks must force him to stop spending by electing more conservatives, rather than wailing about how he's not acting conservative enough as overlord of a fat cat nation.

Wow. There isn't a lot that I have to say in response other than that if a Conservative prime minister needs to be forced to stop spending money that he doesn't have, then he isn't particularly conservative. And, amazingly enough, electing a lot of Conservatives was supposed to be the cure to stop the Liberals from pissing away a ton of money, even though they, y'know, balanced the books and everything. At what point is electing Conservatives going to stop costing so much fucking money?

On the other hand, it is an interesting theory, and one that should be applied to other parts of our society. If you argue that electing Conservatives that are promising to spend all the money is going to curtail spending, why not cut down on crime by throwing an endless line of hot, teenage virgins at rapists? The rapists will eventually get sleepy and that'll drive sexual assault rates way down, won't it?

And everyone will feel better, except for maybe the hot, teenage virgins, who might need some counselling. Luckily, the Conservatives have a plan to borrow a whole bunch of money to pay for that.

"Kick Me Like You Did Before, I Can't Even Feel The Pain No More"

"As a conservative, I will cut your taxes and grow the government bigger
than Paul Martin did.  And that's conservatism we can all believe in!
Would a guy in a blue sweater vest lie to you?"

I'm having just the best time of my life debating my friend, Maikeru, in the comments of this post. It really is turning out to be one of the great joys of my life.

You see, on Friday the Conservative Harper Government (which I think I'm legally required to call them) was defeated on a confidence motion and Canada was thrown into the fourth election in seven years that no one wants.

Actually, I take that back. Tory partisans very much want this election because they're delusional enough to think that they can win their long lusted-after majority. They mostly base this belief on a shitload of polls that were conducted before the writ was dropped and reflected nothing except that we really don't want an election at all.

But I've been to this dance before. No fewer than three times, I've seen Harper enjoy almost majestic polling leads - some as high as ten points, easily majority territory - only to piss them away by allowing his candidates to say awesomely dumb shit about abortion and gay marriage, which exactly no one cares about. In 2008, he threatened to cut off the funding to Quebec's art fags and somehow expected to be rewarded for that in la belle province. I can't explain their almost spectacular stupidity, but that hardly prevents me from enjoying it.

At this point, I should explain my recent voting history. I wanted to vote for Harper in 2004 and 2006, but I didn't because I wasn't sure that he could keep the Team Jesus populist wing of his coalition in line.

In all honesty, Team Jesus annoys me every bit as much as liberals do, threatened as they are by the things that don't matter and willing to battle them at the expense of things that do, like money and foreign policy. I've spent twenty years trying to do business with those people, and I've had it. Not only do they endlessly bitch about my extensive pornography collection, they create waves of fucking debt for my trouble.

Look, I've reconciled myself to the fact that I'll never get what I want, which is a small government that does only the very few things that the private sector can't and otherwise minds it's own goddamned business. But what I can - and do - demand is that whatever goodies the shithead voters and lying cocksucker politicians agree is worth wasting money on is at least paid for.

If nothing else, if we decide that we're going to vote ourselves a tidal wave of free shit, then we should at least raise the revenue to pay for it. My problem with supply-side economics is that it ultimately winds up stiffing the next generation with the bill, and they're already mostly illiterate and almost certain to get buggered by the global economy. If you think that your 12 year old drooling retard of a Lady Gaga enthusiast is going to seriously compete with a similarly aged kid from the Punjab who already has an MBA, you're delusional.

Besides, I'm already pissed that the money has run out just in time for us to finance the endless retirement and lingering deaths of the wholly selfish and boundlessly stupid fucking Boomers. There's nothing conservative about doing to our kids what our parents, with their Great Societies and Reagan Revolutions, did to us. They're going to have it bad enough as it is.

And you know what Harper did when he finally managed to get himself elected? He got all the money in a giant pile and set it on fucking fire is what!

First, he cut the GST (Canada's consumption tax) by two percent, which every expert on Earth agrees is  the least productive kind of tax cut known to man because it stimulates absolutely no economic activity among the vast majority of the middle class, which is what tax cuts are supposed to fucking do.

Then he went on a spending spree, hoping that he could somehow buy himself his elusive majority. A $13 billion dollar surplus that was left by the Liberals of all people has been magically transformed into annual $55 billion deficits in less than five years. My (admittedly, very quick and rough) math shows that they've pissed away over $200 billion, and they have absolutely nothing to show for it.

If you factor in the differing sizes of our economies, Harper has spent nearly the same amount of money that Presidents Bush and Obama did during the same period. Only he didn't produce anything cool, like yauchts for the motherfucking bankers' second homes in the goddamned Bahamas, with it. It just went into the mist.

By the way, I'd love to have the debate with Tory partisans that Harper's Keynseian stimulus spending worked and Obama's didn't. Please engage me on that because that what you're effectively arguing. By the way, Obama's stimulus was about 1/3rd  tax cuts. Harper's? Virtually zero. If anything, you can make a pretty good case that Obama's "secular, socialist machine" is comfortably to the right of Canada's Conservative government.

My friend Maikeru, bless his heart, is still asserting that Prime Minister Harper "inherited a nation drunk on government largess, and he's guided it though the DT's nicely. "

I actually clubbed myself in the face with a Johnny Walker Black bottle when I read that, because I thought that I had finally lost my fucking mind. There's no way that anyone could actually write that in public, where everybody could read it, is there? How could anyone ignore not just the facts, but the basic fucking math, like that?

So I did a Google search, hoping to learn that Maikeru was right and that I myself had gone into the DT's. The search term I used, if you want to check for yourself, was "growth of government under Harper."


This is the first article that came up. It was published about five weeks ago in The National Post, one of Canada's more right-leaning newspapers.

Even without the spending burst of the economic stimulus program, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has substantially boosted federal government expenditures during his five years in office, and added thousands of bodies to the federal public service.

(...)

Overall, the federal public service -- which includes civilian employees at National Defence and the RCMP, but not the military members and police officers already counted -- swelled by 33,023 people, slightly more than 13% over five years.

Relative to the growth in Canadian population under the Harper government, the federal public service grew by 7.8%.

Some departments grew even faster than the Prime Minister's priorities. For example:

- Human Resources and Skills Development Canada increased its FTEs by more than 8,000, a growth of 47%;

- Canada Border Service Agency took on nearly 2,662 FTEs (22% growth);

- Indian Affairs got 1,280 (32% growth);

- Citizenship and Immigration added 969 (28% growth).

(...)

Hiring, however, is only one measure of government growth.

Federal program spending during Mr. Martin's final year in power -- 2005-2006 -- stood at $175 billion. By 2009-2010, under Harper, it had climbed to $245 billion.

Economic analysts cautioned that such figures should be gauged against overall growth in the Canadian economy. The question they ask is: as the economy grows, does the size of government grow at the same rate, more quickly, or more slowly? Both the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the right-leaning Fraser Institute recommended using this method to gauge government growth.

Postmedia's analysis found that even relative to growth of the Canadian economy, program expenses -- which include departmental program spending as well as major transfers of money to individuals and other levels of government -- increased more than 25% over five years.

Allow me, for just a moment, to continue Maikeru's DT analogy, if only because it's the cutest goddamned thing that I've ever heard. But it's something that I want to explore.

Under Chretien-Martin, "By 1995, the annual deficit had reached extreme levels, totaling $37.5 billion" ...."In 1994-95, the cost of maintaining this debt load was $42 billion, accounting for approximately 26 percent of the annual federal budget."

They eliminated the deficit and actually paid down about $62 billion of the debt. Those are pretty solid numbers and very difficult to talk your way around.

Harper, on the other hand, is running deficits nearly $20 billion higher than the Trudeau-Clark-Mulroney budgets. And he's doing it after inheriting a $13 billion budget surplus. There was no debt crisis before Stephen Harper came to office. Now there is.

But the Tories, at least according to Maikeru, have found the best way to guide you through the DT's. It involves drinking more. Lots and lots more! The thinking goes, as far as I can tell, if you can drink about 45% more than you did at the very worst part of your alcoholism, you can actually drink yourself sober!

And you know what, it's worked out great for me, but I doubt that the entire country has a liver with the stamina of mine. It might be the perfect rehab program ... if you're Charlie Sheen.

Look, I get that there's a significant  percentage of the country that wants to vote for the Conservatives so badly that they're replacing their own last name with "Harper" in a girlish scrawl in their school notebooks. I get that. And I know that I'm not going to change the minds of anyone who feels that way. Schoolgirl crushes are the worst kind to get over, and far be it from me to suggest that you're not going to be Mrs. Whoever the Twilight Guy Is.

There are lots of so-called conservatives out there that a have a relationship with the Conservatives that isn't unlike that of a battered wife. "He's going to change," they declare. "I just need to know how to love him enough to make him want to." But what they fail to recognize is that there are some guys that just like kicking your ass, and will continue to do so as long as you stick around.

You know what? I might be the world's foremost expert on idiotic, codependent relationships. I know precisely how they work. And sitting around and waiting for Mr. Right to start molesting the kids probably won't end as well as you expect it to.


But please don't tell me that adding zillions of dollars of debt through ward-heeling policies is somehow conservative. I have my intelligence insulted enough as it is.




Update: Now lovingly cross-posted at the Volunteer, thanks to the good offices of the lovely and talented Mike Brock

And Now a Word From Stephen Harper About Coalitions

Ruthlessly stolen from the great Mark Bourre's Facebook page.

Want To Meet a Hero? How About Giving Her a Few Dollars?

It seems to me that I've been shit-talking the United States a lot lately. I only do for the same reason O.J did about Nicole, because I care. But there really isn't a country in the world that I love more. If you watch the video above you'll know why.

American exceptionalism really does exit, just not in the way that most folks think it does. It isn't born of a tax code or a spectacular military. It comes from everyday people like Elissa Montanti. She represents everything America is supposed to stand for better than any president, ambassador, or goddamn Hollywood star ever will.

And you know what? She and her group, Global Medical Relief can probably use a few dollars of your money.

With any luck at all, you'll never see your kids limbs blown off by a natural disaster or a weapon of war. But if you do, it would be nice to know that there are fine people out there who want to help you.

As you might have noticed, I don't ask you teenagers to give to charities frivolously. The last time I did was maybe three years ago. But when I see something that I think is worthwhile, I think I should get behind it and point your attention there as well.

It's a U.S charity, so you probably won't be able to claim the deduction on your taxes. On the other hand, so what? I've never claimed those deductions because it doesn't feel like charity if I feel like my giving is subsidized by the friggin' tax code. And I barely have a pot to piss in right now, so there isn't a lot I can do. But maybe you can.

Actually, you know what? I can help.

Right now I'm declaring that I'm going to sign over my first $100 Google Ads cheque to Global Medical Relief. If any of you know who to contact at Google to forward the first hundred dollars directly from my ad account, whenever I build up that much (right now I'm at about 20 bucks), to Global Medical Relief, let me know, okay?

A few hundred of you pop by here every day, so who knows? Maybe between you, you can match my Google Ads donation. That would be pretty cool, no? Let's think of it as a contest without a prize other than our own self-respect.

The Presidential Whore

"If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for thirty days because they get infections and they don't have upper body strength. I mean, some do, but they're relatively rare. On the other hand, men are basically little piglets, you drop them in the ditch, they roll around in it, doesn't matter, you know. These things are very real. On the other hand, if combat means being on an Aegis-class cruiser managing the computer controls for twelve ships and their rockets, a female may be again dramatically better than a male who gets very, very frustrated sitting in a chair all the time because males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes." - Speaker Newt Gingrich, January 7, 1995 

You know, there are few things as adorable as the idea that Newt Gingrich can be elected president of the United States. He's like the kid who's mother told him that he could be president when he was three and he's holding on to that illusion, some 64 years later.

Say what you will about Barack Obama, but he's young and his numbers are better than they have any business being. If he stays above 40% between now and the end of the year, Obama's a virtually lock for reelection. The idea that he's going to beaten by a refugee from the nineties is actually laughable. Worse, he's a refugee from the nineties that everyone has pretty much roundly hated since his last campaign, thirteen years ago.

People have very short memories and probably don't remember that Newt was very nearly toppled as Speaker by the House Republican conservatives, who included Steve Largent, Joe Scarborough and Mark Sanford. The effort failed, but only because of the duplicity of the incredibly sleazy Dick Armey.

Among Gingrich's perceived sins was what was thought to be the speaker's eagerness to compromise with the Clinton administration on matters of principle. There was also Newt's vexatious habit of opening his mouth and letting impossibly dumb things pop out. thereby destroying any Republican message for several days of news cycles. The most famous example of this was Gingrich saying - in public, mind you - that he shut down the government in 1995 because Bill Clinton made him sit in the back of Air Force One on the way to Yitzak Rabin's funeral.

Here's what you need to know about the current GOP: those Tea Party yahoos look at the Republican class of '94 and think that they're all screaming liberals and sellouts besides. If you think that Newt Gingrich is going to survive for 35 seconds in a primary run by those psychopaths, you're delusional.

Then there's Newt's political batting average to consider. I guess that '94 was a pretty impressive win. But if you credit Gingrich for that, how do you avoid blaming him for the debacle in '98? And that was a particularly galling loss.

The party in the White House hadn't gained seats in a sixth year congressional election since at least FDR's time. Clinton also had a little blowjob problem at the time that you might have heard about. After initially saying that he was going to leave the story alone, he suddenly changed his mind and wouldn't shut the fuck up about it. Newt went out of his way to make his the face of the Clinton impeachment, which was especially ballsy, given that he was banging the help at the time, too.

The GOP ended up losing five House seats in 1998 and Newt quit the speakership and resigned from Congress before his own caucus could throw him out on his rather full ass. From that point forward he's written books that nobody's read and been basically ignored by all but the least serious people, both inside and out of the conservative movement.

On the other hand, he does have the "family values" issue tied up. How could he not, being on his third one? Perhaps the single most priceless thing I've ever heard was Gingrich recently explaining his many infidelities. He actually said - I shit you not - that he was just so busy working for America that he frequently found himself inside a strange piece of ass. He can't really tell you how it happened, but he knows that it did and he wants you to know that Jesus has forgiven him for it ... although he had to change religions for that to happen.

Not only do I love pussy as much as the next guy, I love it a whole lot more. I've not only had my share of it, I've probably had yours, too. And you know what? I can't remember a single instance where an excess of patriotism has landed me balls-deep in another human being. Not one. And I'm a pretty patriotic guy, it's just hard to tell sometimes because I'm also so handsome. Oh, and Canadian. We tend not to be as demostrative about such things.

Even Chris Wallace, the otherwise friendly host of Fox News Sunday, had a hard time not laughing at Gingrich this morning.

As a practical matter, that's where the Gingrich campaign dies. Every minute that he has to spend talking about pussy from a decade and a half ago is a minute that he isn't talking about the present or the future. And if I know anything about politics, it's that everybody would rather talk to Newt about poontang than, say, Libya.

Frankly, Newt himself should prefer it that way, because his views on Libya are a fucking mess! The guy fundamentally reversed his "principled position" on Obama's intervention ... in just sixteen days. That's gotta be some kind of record in flip-flopping. Even Republican bloggers are calling horseshit on Newt, which they're loath to do to any other Michele Bachmann fetishist.

I wasn't surprised by the Libya triple- axle, but I've made Gingrichology a particular study of mine over the last twenty years.

For example, remember this?



That was Newt with America's Sweetheart, Nancy Pelosi, "demanding action" on "climate change" all the way back in 2007. However, that very year, he wrote and published Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less: A Handbook for Slashing Gas Prices and Solving Our Energy Crisis, which reasonable people could conclude is at least somewhat inconsistent with the goal of demanding action on climate change unless, of course, those demands include creating  more of it, which hardly seems like something Nancy Pelosi would agree with him about.

Newt the had to explain this away to the almost reptilian Republican base, which he did with an almost operatic display of contempt for their intelligence.

I completely understand why many of you would have questions about this, so I want to take this opportunity to explain my reasons. First of all, I want to be clear: I don't think that we have conclusive proof of global warming. And I don't think we have conclusive proof that humans are at the center of it.

But here's what we do know. There is an important debate going on right now over the right energy policy, the right environmental policy, and making sure we do the right things for our future and the future of our children and grandchildren. Conservatives are missing from this debate, and I think that's a mistake. When it comes to preserving our environment for future generations, we can't have a slogan of "Just yell no!"

I have a different view. I think it's important to be on the stage, to engage in the debate, and to communicate our position clearly. There is a big difference between left-wing environmentalism that wants higher taxes, bigger government., more bureaucracy, more regulation, more red tape, and more litigation and a Green Conservatism that wants to use science, technology, innovation, entrepreneurs, and prizes to find a way to creatively invent the kind of environmental future we all want to live in. Unless we start making the case for the latter, we're going to get the former. That's why I took part in the ad.

Now Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters might be a gullible child that doesn't speak English as even a third or fourth language, but I'm not.

If you watch the ad with Pelosi, you see Gingrich conceding the existence of global warming in his own goddamned words. He agrees that the country must take action to address it, even. Why then would you implore the country to "take action" against something that you now believe that there's "no conclusive proof" of, particularly as a conservative? Actually, I take that back, Gingrich also wanted America to take action against Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and they didn't exist either.

I'm also not sure how you square "a Green Conservatism that wants to use science, technology, innovation, entrepreneurs, and prizes to find a way to creatively invent the kind of environmental future we all want to live in" with drilling here, drilling now and paying less, but whatever.

If you're a Republican primary voter, there's one thing that you need to reconcile yourself with: Newt Gingrich thinks you're an abject idiot. That's not to say that I don't, but I certainly wouldn't rub it in your face like he does. And I don't think that you're actually retarded - unless, y'know, you think Bachmann can be elected president of anything other than a MILF fantasy league.

The only reason that anyone is taking this douchebag seriously is because he runs a PAC that raises a shitload of money. But the Goddamned Liberal Media doesn't seem to have realized that his PAC raises money for candidates that aren't named Newt Gingrich or have his notably strange relationship with the conservative movement as it currently exists and the basic facts of life. I'd personally be amazed if Gingrich raises enough money to even face the caucuses in Iowa.

Newt is far and away the worst ideological whore in the current GOP field, which is saying a lot since it's currently is the home of Mitt Romney and, potentially, Rudy Giuliani.

And you know what? I'm okay with that. The Republicans need an election cycle where it blows the full-bore fucking crazy out of its system, sort of like 1964, but without the even-tempered philosophy of Barry Goldwater.  I've seen this movie before, and just as the reincarnation of Richard Nixon wouldn't have been possible without Lyndon Johnson's landslide, the GOP won't allow itself to nominate a functional adult like Mitch Daniels unless they overwhelmingly reelect Obama first.

Newt's hysterical horseshit might be the most entertaining of the current "serious" Republican candidates, but he's hardly alone in slinging it. When even a bland accountant like Tim Paulenty starts talking like Rambo, you know that something's afoot and that nothing good can come of it.

But the only way that Gingrich gets elected president is if John Edwards miraculously defeats Obama in the Democratic primaries. That, friends, would be a race worth watching. As things currently stand, 2012 won't be.

God help me, there's nothing I wouldn't give to hear Newt's anti-giraffe platform again.

What About Bob?

"Victory is mine!"

Bob Rae shouldn't look as relaxed as he does. There are any number of polls showing his Liberal Party potentially being on the wrong end of a historic ass-kicking in Canada's 41st general election. That normally inspires deep and vicious Fear, if not actual agoraphobia.

Nobody facing that kind of almost sexual humiliation at the polls, just five weeks hence, should be chilling out at a Randy Newman concert. That's especially true on the very first day of the campaign. Most halfway smart Liberals, even in their Toronto fortress, are trying to map out their own personal survival. In places like Quebec, Liberal members are almost certainly plotting out the best way to fake their own deaths.

But as the good and great Dr. Reverend and I saw last night, there Bob was, hanging out in Convocation Hall and anticipating Mr. Newman's spectacular songs with the rest of us. He and his wife had ready smiles on their faces for everyone that greeted them. Sure, he looked a little tired, but he was otherwise carefree. He's been politically active since I was in grade school, so I know when he's worried about something. And he wasn't last night.

On the other hand, Mr. Rae set a record on Friday afternoon, casting a vote to bring down his third Conservative government (after Joe Clark's in 1980 and the provincial Frank Miller regime in 1985), something I'm not aware of anyone else having accomplished. It's a neat little historical nugget and something I guess he can be proud of.

But highly respected columnists like Chantal Hebert are opening this campaign with scenarios of an utter apocalypse for the Grits, suggesting that not only will they fail to form a government, they might lose official Opposition status to the treasonous Bloc Quebecois. For that to happen, the Grits would have to lose nearly half of their existing seats in Parliament. And if anything even close to that occurs, the Liberal Party of Canada is well and truly fucked. There would be absolutely no surviving such an eventuality for them.

The Liberals aren't like the Conservatives, who at least to do a passible job of pretending to believe in something other than being in power. The Grits are nothing more than a very loose coalition that likes winning elections only slightly more than they hate one another. And if they start losing elections to traitors like Gille Ducceppe and jabbering dupes like Stephen Harper, there's really nothing that binds them together. Their more ideological members will find comfy new homes in the Bloc and the NDP, with their more practical members joing the Tories, and once an exodus like that starts, it would probably be impossible to stop.

As much as I truly respect Mme. Hebert, the scenario she paints is directly out of the Book of Revelations, and not at all likely to happen. Polls aside, I think that the next Parliament is going to look a lot like this one. Granted, that depends almost entirely on what the Ontario Liberal Party does. If they abandon Michael Ignatieff and throw all of their resources at keeping Dalton McGuinty in Queen's Park this October, the Tories might very well get their majority and all bets are off. All things being equal, McGuinty might be better off having a Harper majority and Rob Ford to run against.

If the federal Liberals start losing seats in the Greater Toronto Area, they'll be annihilated everywhere else and everybody knows it. If only for that reason, I think that they'll do whatever they have to hold on to what they have here. Besides, the Ontario Progressive Conservative leader, Tim Hudak, is hopeless beyond words and if McGuinty has trouble kicking his ass he should be physically thrown right out of politics.

But just holding on to what he already has isn't going to be enough to save Michael Ignatieff. It's important to remember that he was given the leadership to resurrect the party after the historic Stephane Dion debacle. If he only does as well as Dion (or, possibly worse), I don't see how he makes it through election night without giving his immediate resignation as leader.

Now, if the Liberals were smart, they'd give the leadership to a Quebecker, like Denis Coderre. The Grits have historically done well with French leaders, and Coderre - unlike Dion - is a respected party organizer in the province. The only problem is that nobody knows who he is, so they won't do it.

That leaves Bob Rae, who has been loyal and has waited his turn since returning to politics six years ago. He's formidably smart and one of the few Liberals left that has experience with both winning campaigns and governing, albeit as the NDP premier of Ontario. Unlike Ignatieff, Rae has a lifetime of political experience and, more importantly, he knows a thing or two about disposing of Tory minority governments.

Ignatieff stupidly renounced the prospect of a post-election coalition yesterday, but that won't stop Harper from running against it. But that renunciation wouldn't be binding on Rae if he assumes the leadership. And the Liberals might suddenly develop a healthy interest in Rae's 1985 Liberal-NDP Accord, that took out the Miller Tories and installed David Peterson as premier. If that's the only way the Liberals can return to power, I believe that they'll take it, especially after Iggy is sent off to teach Sunday school in lower Angola.

The Tories, being Tories and not especially smart, relish the idea of running against Rae, and have for years. Harper's people think that Rae's NDP record in Ontario can be used as the instrument that would destroy the Liberals once and for all. They should be awfully careful in what they wish for.

The Harper Tories have an indefensible economic record of their own, and that could lead to a very interesting debate between Rae and Harper (or his probable successor, Jason Kenney.) Rae could just very coldly look at whoever the Conservative leader is and say "Yes, I was a socialist back then and socialism is very expensive. What's your excuse?"

As premier, he also made the ultmate political sacrifice of burning his core political constituency - public sector unions - in an attempt to tame the Ontario deficit with the infamous "Rae Days." If you assume that we're going to get all Wisconsin-stupid on public employees, who do you think is going to have more credibility on that, the Conservatives, or Bob Rae? Are the Tories seriously going to argue that Rae was wrong?

The Conservatives are merrily asserting that we can just grow our way out of our current mess, which is so hardcore stupid that even small children don't believe it. Jim Flaherty can't say how we're gonna do it, but that doesn't stop him saying that we will.

Under Harper, the Tories have burned through over a hundred billion dollars and have nothing to show for it. If the Conservatives want to dredge through twenty year-old provincial budgets, they'd have to figure out a way to defend their own very liberal - and far more recent - spending. They might be able to pull that off with a halfwit with no political skills, like Iggy, but Rae is a much better natural politician.

If that debate is had after the shit hits the fan, I'd much rather be on Bob Rae's side of the stage, if only because it's safer there.

Nobody loves Randy Newman more than I do, but I don't think his wonderful songs were the source of Bob Rae's obvious happiness last night. I think he's looking to the future past May 2 and very much likes what he sees.

'Cause Tramps Like Us, Baby, We Were Born To Writ

"Maybe I can get another teaching job. I hear Angola is lovely in the spring"

Unless a dozen or so Liberal MPs get a sudden case of rickets this afternoon, the Harper Government (which the prime minister insists you call the government of Canada because, hey, it worked for Nicolae Ceaușescu) will be defeated on a confidence motion, precluding a vote on Jim Flaherty's shopaholic budget.

Ordinarily, I'd be thrilled by this. I've wanted to see Harper's "anything-but-conservative" Conservative regime toppled almost since the day it took office.  As my friend Jay recently pointed out, if I wanted a Liberal budget, I would have fucking well voted for the Liberals, wouldn't I?

Actually, that's not fair to the Liberals, who built up shitloads of deficit-cutting credibility during the Chretien-Martin years, so much so that I now regret not having voted for them in the 90s. Chretien and Martin did what no other government has done in my lifetime - and the only thing I demand of the federal government - balance the goddamned books. I get that they only pulled pulled it off by screwing everybody and raiding the Unemployment Insurance fund, but I don't care. At this point, I'll even take the appearance of fiscal discipline. Stephen Harper is clearly unequal to the task and has governed like George W. Bush on a fucking mescaline marathon.

But Micheal Ignatieff, being Michael Ignatieff, is pissing that natural advantage away. Sure, he's pointing out Tory profligacy every chance he gets, but he's also promising shitloads new, unpaid-for, spending. Think the Conservative's babysitter tax credit just isn't enough for you? Well, the Ignatieff Liberals are practically promising to move your kids into his place, which just isn't credible because he lives in an itty-bitty condo.

Oh, and the election that will be forced on us this afternoon comes in the face of truly daunting polling numbers. Even Liberals who are famous for saying that they always want an election are backing away from that as quickly as they humanly can in the face of last night's Ipsos release. 43% approval for Harper in a four party Parliament is an awesomely tough nut to crack and the Tories have never done that well on the eve of a writ before.

As to the fundamentally worthless 1984 analogies, they're premature, at best. So far as I remember, Brian Mulroney didn't start the '84 campaign with a zillion point lead. But Kim Campabell - another sitting prime minister -  did, and she lost a hundred and fifty some odd seats in a month.

Not that it matters. Ignatieff is out of options. He, like Stephane Dion before him, have supported this government at every turn. Ignore Harper's horseshit "coalition" propaganda because there already is one, and there has for over five years now. With the single exception of Layton propping him up, Stephen Harper has governed at the pleasure of the Liberal Party of Canada. The last five years have been like World War I without the troublesome shooting.

The Count of Cambridge is screwed regardless what he does. If he forces an election, he loses badly. If he doesn't, his rivals in the eternal civil war destroy him. One way or another, his reign of error is over.

Unless, of course, he plays the coalition card. If - as I believe will happen - Harper fucks up yet another "sure thing majority," the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois will constitute a majority of House. And no one is as spooked by a coalition as they were in December of 2008.

The only things that stopped a coalition in 2008 was that the country was unprepared for it, it was a response to a bullshit issue (public subsidies for political parties)  and that Ignatieff was a coward. He was the last MP to sign the letter and refused to defeat the 2009 budget with the coalition. Now the idea is out there and I think that the country could live with a coalition.

Frankly, so could I. There isn't a blogger in the world that has better fiscally conservative credentials than I do. And I forcefully reject the notion that a Haper majority would stop burning up money, if only because Harper would very much want to keep that majority. I'm convinced that these assholes would spend a fucking truckload of money to do it. All things being equal, a coalition that doesn't pretend to care about the deficit is still better than one that can only barely be forced to admit that it exists at all, if only because they want to expand it to buy more votes.

I don't care what the polls say. The balance of power - assuming another Harper minority, which I'm virtually certain is coming - rests with the NDP. And I don't see them coronating Michael Ignatieff, who has historically been to the right of Harper himself. The Dippers have also done the hard work of opposition for the last five years, while the Grits just supported the government. It would be insane for the NDP to reward the Ignatieff for that.

There's almost no way that Michael Ignatieff is cleanly elected prime minister. His chances of winning even a minority government are close to zero. And having him installed in 24 Sessex Drive by Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe accomplishes absolutely nothing from their ideological perspective. At this point, the Conservatives shouldn't be able to call themselves conservative anymore. If I were the Bloc or the NDP, I'd think that that another year or two better than Prime Minister Ignatieff, which means that Ignatieff is finshed.

After five years, on any number of fronts, the Conservative Party of Canada has lost the right to govern. There is no conservative alternative to a coalition.

On "Zoning"

You know what? Bill Maher wasn't wrong last Friday night when he referred to Sarah Palin as a "dumb twat," he was just a little premature.

Having said that, I hope that she runs for the presidency and I hope that she wins. She's far and away the most unserious candidate in my lifetime and she's the ideal figurehead for a collapsing country in an era of almost irreversible decline. Why shouldn't a reality TV star be president of the United States, godfuckit? What national dignity is there left to lose? Besides, Palin would still be a better nominee for the Republican party than Newt Gingrich.

Sarah Palin was Snooki before there was a Snooki. She's more than halfway fuckable, entertaining on TV and everybody knows her name. If that's good enough for "Must See TV," it must be good enough for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue! If the United States wants to take itself down in a truly entertaining way, I can think of no better way to do it than electing a President Sarah Palin. She's easily the angriest potential commander-in-chief since Nixon, yet far and away the dumbest.

If you doubt that, just look at her recent forays into foreign policy.

Hours after a terror attack in Jerusalem, Sarah Palin on Wednesday night hammered President Obama for not standing strongly enough behind Israel, conceding too much to the Palestinians, and interfering in a local “zoning issue” – settlement building on the West Bank.

“I think there are many in Israel who would feel even more comfortable knowing that there is an even greater commitment from those who presently occupy the White House that they are there on Israel's side, and that our most valuable ally in that region can count on us,” Palin told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren in an interview in Naples, Florida.

(...)


Palin struck a pro-Israel tone saying, if she were president, she would take an opposite approach to Obama and stay out of Israel’s way regarding settlements in the West Bank, and take a harder line with Palistineans.

“President Obama was inappropriate to intervene in a zoning issue in Israel,” she said, referring to settlement building on the West Bank. "Let Israel decide their zoning issues themselves.”

Wow. Just .. wow.

There's a lot that can be said about the West Bank, and has been over the years. But I'm almost certain that it's never been called a "zoning issue" by anyone other than a halfway delusional media whore before.

Again, let's look at the history.

Israel conquered the area in the 1967 war and has occupied it ever since. Even they're not shy about saying that. Not only does Israel maintain that position, I'm not aware of a country that doesn't. Israel is, however, pretty much alone in recognizing its annexation of East Jerusalem, which is why almost every country that recognizes Israel has their embassy in Tel Aviv.

Even the Israeli Supreme Court has held that the West Bank has been held under a state of " belligerent occupation, since 1967" and "that the normative provisions of public international law regarding belligerent occupation are applicable. The Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, The Hague of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War 1949 were both cited."

Not only have the Israeli courts agreed with the standing international law, so has every American president since Lyndon Johnson. Without exception, they've held that the West Bank - including East Jerusalem - are occupied territories. Even though the most recent Bush administration was largely silent on it, they never deviated from it.

Problematically, building settlements on occupied territory is also illegal under international law.Were it not, you'd be seeing a whole lot of Iraqis in downtown Kuwait City these days, which you notably don't.

The United States has unfortunately subsidized the building of those Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza through loan guarantees, which was self-defeating in that they complicated U.S foreign policy in the region and committed itself to an illegal policy. The only halfway courageous president since 1967 was George H.W Bush, who suspended those loan guarantees, but he only did that because Yitzak Shamir unnecessarily complicated the promised Madrid Conference following the Gulf War.

America likes Israel, but it needs oil. And Israel doesn't have any. Every administration since Truman's has been able to fudge the difference by propping up Arab tyrannies. But as we've seen in the last few months, that trend has become untenable in the long term. They actually seem to have started taking U.S rhetoric about self-determination seriously.

Which is great ... if you assume that your average Egyptian feels the way about the Occupied Territories that an unemployed Pittsburgh steelworker - the ideal Sarah Palin voter -  does.

The problem is that that they most probably don't. There is absolutely no reason to believe that newly democratic Arab countries are going to feel any differently about the Occupied Territories than their authoritarian predecessors did. They're actuallyy far more likely, following their own liberation, to take an even harder line toward the Israeli occupation. Wouldn't you be?

Many experts think that the United States is essential to Arab-Israeli peace. I actually don't. Absent American influence in the region, I think that some sort of deal would have been made years ago. And a better deal was to have been made with Arab tyrannies than with democracies.

This is about a whole lot more than "zoning," and pretending that it isn't should automatically disqualify you as a serious person.

I want to see Israel survive. But given the demographic time-bomb Israel faces, it doesn't seem as though Sarah Palin does.

Sarah Palin truly is a dumb twat. And she proves it every day.

Does the War Powers Act Even Matter?

"Let's be Best Friends Forever! Some restrictions may apply. Subject
to change without prior notice. Offer not valid in Libya." 

If you thought that I was getting less nervous about the horribly named Operation Odyssey Dawn, you'd be wrong. In fact, my discomfort with the entire enterprise grows the more I learn about it.

Early this morning I watched Charlie Rose's Monday night interview with NBC correspondent Richard Engel. Engel made a very worrying point when he said that a safe haven for the civilians of Libya's contested cities had already been established. Problematically, according to Engel, this isn't what the rebels want. They want air cover as they march on Tripoli, as one would expect they would.

The rebels can also be neatly divided into two groups, defecting units from the Libyan national army and civilian volunteers who would very much like to be done with Gaddafi. The volunteers are rushing out to do battle with Gaddafi loyalist and mercenary forces and, unsurprisingly, getting their asses kicked. Unlike Afghanistan's Northern Alliance in 2001, none of these people have any military experience, let alone of the insurgent combat variety. The defecting units, meanwhile, are staying on their bases and not engaging the government, even with international air support.

This isn't going to end well. I'm more convinced of that each passing day. Everyone seems to have competing interests and objectives, the Arab League is of the opinion that we've already overstepped our mandate, and we still don't know anything about the rebels that we're supposedly supporting. President Obama has declared Libyan regime change to be the official policy of the United States, but there is no indication that the current military exercises will be utilized to achieve that aim. Without ground troops, which the Americans have already ruled out, I don't even think that's possible, since I'm now aware of another government that's been overthrown solely by an air offensive.

There are basically three ways this can work out, none of them particularly attractive. The first is to send ground troops in and take Gaddafi out ourselves, which there has been no political preparation for. Second, eventually abandoning the inept rebels to their fate and reconcile ourselves to an emboldened Gaddafi that has just faced down the world.  The third option is the most likely. Accepting a protractrated stalemate and establish a politically unsustainable permanent no-fly zone, like the one that contained Saddam Hussein for twelve years. If we do that, Gaddafi still wins and probably resumes his sponsorship of international terrorism to test our will.

Oh, and everyone is freaking the fuck out in the United States. Admittedly, they're doing it in the most adorably hypocritical ways. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 has suddenly been resurrected, seemingly out of the ether. Liberals are citing it as a predicate to possibly impeach Obama and conservatives have begun waving it as a bloody shirt, mostly to be a pain in everybody's ass.

The fact is that conservatives have uniformly hated the War Powers act since the day Congress overrode Richard Nixon's veto of it. I'm not aware of a single conservative or Republican holding up the Act as constitutionally binding before this week. Moreover, no president - Democrat or Republican - has recognized its constitutionality. When presidents have committed force abroad, they have without exception stated that they did not require congressional authorization to do so.

Presidents have generally followed the Act, but they made clear that they did so as a courtesy, not a binding obligation. The single exception is Bill Clinton during the Kosovo operation, which the same liberals that now mutter about impeaching Obama were in lockstep supporting. Long story short, everybody's lying.

The only precedent that Obama to follow that makes any sense at all is Harry Truman and the Korean War. Garry Willis details this in his fine book Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State. Truman - and more exactly, his Secretary of State, Dean Acheson - believed that if the treaty establishing American participation in the United Nations was binding U.S law, so then were military directives of the Security Council, making congressional approval unnecessary.

As I've pointed out in the comments over at the great Jay Currie's place, this isn't a completely meritless position. You could make an interesting case that this is specifically allowed by Article Six of the United States Constitution, which states "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding" (italics mine.)

Now that's a thin reed upon which to assert that surrender of Congress' war powers, but it was one that went unchallenged by anyone at the time, which makes it a standing precedent. And as we saw in the case of Goldwater v. Carter (1979), which would have determined if a president has the power to unilaterally abrogate a treaty that was ratified by the Senate, the courts are often too cowardly to resolve such constitutional disputes.

But let's not pretend that this is an unprecedented usurpation of power by a rogue president, okay? It really isn't. Not only do the Truman and Clinton precedents stand, Congress funded both operations without hesitation or even serious debate. If those silly "authorizations of military force" constitute an acceptable constitutional substitute for a declaration of war, so then should the ongoing funding of any military operation. I obviously don't agree with that line of thought. I much prefer actual declarations of war. But I'm not going to pretend that those precedents and the surrounding history don't exist, and neither should anyone else.

However, if there is sufficient outrage in Congress, there are two constitutional remedies available: cutting off the funding and impeachment. In my personal opinion, neither happens nearly enough and that, more than anything else, has created a runaway presidency.

Congress can reassert its prerogative under the Constitution anytime it chooses. The only problem is that it doesn't want to. In that, Dave Weigel was right in a column that has made every idiot blogger on the planet crazy. There are few members of either party who are willing to seriously (by which I mean legislatively, as opposed to holding a wholly useless press conference) challenge a president on matters of war. Even if a proposed resolution to cut off funding or a commencement impeachment proceedings fails, members are forced to take a position on the record. And they don't want to do that because it's politically dangerous.

Congress, like the courts, are cowards when it comes to foreign policy. Either could force the issue and restore a constitutional balance, but they don't because they're afraid to.

Granted, this won't go on forever. The day is soon coming when the United States simply won't have the financial wherewithal to let presidents do whatever they want. It might take twenty or thirty years, but that day will arrive. I just don't imagine that either side will be particularly happy when it does.

The Return of Sweater Vest Steve & the Election No One Wins

One wrong move and the pussy gets it!

Because the Liberals and the NDP are crazy, stupid or both, they've spent the last several weeks agitating for an election that isn't going to end well for them.

Actually, it will almost certainly end with Michael Ignatieff getting kicked right out of the country and sent back to Harvard, which is what I think is what he wants. I wouldn't want to be surrounded by a bunch of Liberals either. But if you're polling in the low 20s and still want to force an election, I can't think of another possible motive other than the determination that politics just isn't for you.

Or it could be that Iggy thought that Jack Layton would abandon his last principle and bail the Tories out this time. There were pretty good reasons for believing that, too. Layton, after all, would be going out on the hustings with a fucked-up hip and a prostate the size of a canned ham. It's also possible that the NDP thought Ignatieff would return to being a professional coward.

I can't really imagine what any of those idiots were thinking, but were getting the one thing that no rational person should want - another federal election.

If you scroll down and look to the left of this page, you'll see Canada's federal debt being racked up by the second. Before the Stephen Harper's reign of error began, that debt was being paid off at an impressive rate. I have to give the Chretien and Martin governments for that, if not else. From a fiscal perspective, they were far and away our most conservative government since the end of the war.

And then the Conservatives were elected and immediately began pissing it away through a bizarre combination of supply-side economics, Keynesism and ward-heeling hucksterism. That so-called conservatives continue to support these assholes tells you everything that you need to know about modern conservatism. The Harper Tories are essentially the Liberals, only without the brains or the cynicism.

Anyhow, Harper's shitheel of a finance minister, Jim Flaherty, today handed down a budget that is giving something to everybody. I won't be at all surprised if there's a ball-gag and cock ring tax credit for perverts in there somewhere. Flaherty continued his proud tradition of pissing away all of the money on nothing, despite his having already put in debt up to our fucking eyeballs. If Stephen Harper was any kind of conservative at all, he'd not only fire Flaherty, he'd have him fucking deported.

About an hour ago, Layton decided that he'd rather spend the next six weeks hauling his fucked-up hip and enormous prostate across the country than spend another minute with this Parliament in session. Unless Ignatieff loses some of his false bravado in the next few days, we'll have an election, most likely on May 2nd.

And you know what means? Harper's going to break out that stupid fucking blue sweater vest out again, pretend to be a human being and plead for a majority that isn't going to be given to him. I'm willing to bet that the next Parliament is going to look exactly like the current one. Ignatieff isn't going to pick up seats because he's Ignatieff, the NDP's leader is about three-quarters of a corpse right now, and nobody likes or trusts Harper enough to give him his cherished majority. The only winner in the coming debacle could very well be Gilles Ducceppe and his traitorous Bloc Quebecois, who could very well pick up a bunch of Tory and Grit seats. If I could, I'd vote for the Bloc and I'm not ashamed to admit it at this point.

If I'm right and nothing dramatically changes, Ducceppe might be the only leader left standing at the end of this. I can't see Harper realistically sticking around after fucking up a "sure thing" majority for the fourth time, Ignatieff is just looking for an excuse to quit and flee the goddamned country, and Layton probably won't survive the full 2011 campaign unless he becomes a full-bore fucking zombie.

There's one - and only one - thing Harper has going for him other than the opposition leaders are just as helpless as he is. Ontario has an election this fall, which I'm fairly confident that the monstrous McGuinty regime is ultimately going to win. But McGuinty is low in the polls right now, which means that the Liberal money and machinery is going to Queen's Park at Iggy's expense. That might swing as many as a dozen Liberal seats to the Tories, which could give them a majority if they hold everything everywhere else.

I personally don't think they will. My best guess is that Harper loses as many as half of his Quebec seats to the Bloc, and if his idiot candidates start ranting about abortion and gay marriage again, that will wipe out any possible Ontario gains. And everything looks pretty much the way it does it does now.

The result of that will be ruinous for this country. If I know the Tories - and I do - I don't see them giving the leadership to anyone other than Jason Kenney, the very picture of a ward-heeling huckster. And he's so stupid that he'll go into office thinking that Harper's biggest mistake was that he didn't piss away enough money. Even if the Liberals elect a registered sex offender as their leader, they couldn't possibly be beaten by a Kenney government, and a Liberal minority government headed by a registered sex offender will piss away even more money to prevent being swallowed whole by the NDP someday.

Canada is in much better shape than the United States is, but we won't stay that way for long if this nonsense continues much longer. There is absolutely no indication that anyone is going to get serious about anything in this country anytime soon.

Monetize This!: A Note on Ads

Over the last couple of weeks, you might have noticed ads on Postcards of the Hanging. I resisted this idea for years, mostly because I didn't want this to become a job or something that I felt that I had an obligation to do. I blog because it's a fun (most of the time) intellectual exercise for me. And to be perfectly honest, I was concerned about content and how mine might make advertisers unhappy.

There was a situation recently that led me to seriously start thinking about asking you good folks for donations, which is something that I always swore to myself I wouldn't do for the reason listed above. That's not to take anything away from the many bloggers that do take donations, particularly those in need for whatever reason, but it would be an untenable situation for me personally.

I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't want to offend or antagonize someone that has just given me their hard-earned money, especially when I would feel that I hadn't done anything to really deserve it, and particularly in this economy. The problem is that I also know myself well enough to know that I would eventually antagonize or offend everyone that has given me money. What can I tell you, it's part of my charm. I decided that I would rather quit entirely than ask for your money under circumstances.

Anyhow, that situation was resolved, but the idea of monetizing this place, if only a little, stuck with me. I know a few people who do okay with their blogs and there are folks out there who actually make a living doing this. I have no delusions that I'll get there, but it would be nice if I could pick up some pocket change for the amount of time I put into it. I reliably draw about 300 people a day here, so I can assure you that this isn't going to make me rich.

And that's where the ads came from. Every time you click one, a couple of cents comes my way. If you see a book, movie or product hyperlinked to Amazon, I get a cut of the sales that come through this page. The vast majority of the time, if a book is linked through here, I've read it, used it as a reference tool and would recommend it to you. If I'm not recommending it, you'll be able to figure that out pretty quickly. Even though I can't imagine it ever happening, if anyone wants to market through my posts directly - which would be insane for any number of reasons - I'll be upfront and tell you that. I'm not going to lie to you, especially not for the nickles and dimes that I'd get out of it.

Again, there's virtually no possibility that anything that can really be described as an "income" is going to come of this, but it might put a few bucks in my pocket. And these posts are taking longer and longer to think through and write. After nearly eight years, I think I deserve to get the odd bottle of booze or a book for the effort. Just because I'm such a scamp.

Think of it this way, some of you have probably thought about how much fun it would be to buy me a drink. Well, now you can! And you won't even have deal with me in person, which I'm told can be exhausting.

So, go ahead, click an ad or buy some cool books through me. You know you wanna. And if you don't, that's cool, too. I know things are ugly out there.

"Where Even Richard Nixon Has Got Soul": Countering Conrad Black

Like Conrad Black, I consider myself something of an aficionado of Richard Nixon and his presidency. He was certainly among the most fascinating men to occupy the office; an introvert in the most extroverted of professions, an accomplished intellect who wore what he considered to be an inferior education on his sleeve, and a truly angry person who prevailed in politics - which is almost entirely dependent on personal relationships and accommodation.

It is a truism these days to suggest that Nixon was the author of his own downfall, becoming the most Shakespearean figure in White House history. The most nominated major party politician in history (five times for president or vice-president, a distinction he shares with Franklin Delano Roosevelt), Nixon mastered both policy and politics in a way that was unequaled by anyone, except perhaps Bill Clinton. As Lord Black reports in yesterday's editorial in The National Post, Nixon's accomplishments were many and legendary, particularly the 1972 "China opening", which I believe was more responsible for the end of the Cold War than any other single event.

It is a truism these days to suggest that Nixon was the author of his own downfall, becoming the most Shakespearean figure in White House history. As he himself conceded in his interview with David Frost, "I gave them a sword and they twisted it with relish." Later in the same interview, he opines "I brought myself down."

Just as a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, a civil libertarian is not infrequently a conservative that has been jailed. Conrad Black has rather famously endured some rather storied legal difficulties over the last decade, and it was in that context that he wrote his most recent biography, The Invincible Quest: The Life of Richard Milhous Nixon (which was published in the United States as Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.) The book, as well as yesterday's Post editorial, serve as interesting legal apologia for Nixon's involvement in the Watergate scandal that eventually removed him from office.

In the Post column, Lord Black doesn't address whether President Nixon committed impeachable offenses. He simply contends that no violations of a criminal statute were committed by the 37th president of the United States, saying that Nixon engaged in "Unworthy actions … but not criminal ones." However, the issue of impeachment is important and should be looked at before addressing Nixon's criminal culpability in Watergate.

My position on impeachment is that it doesn't happen enough. Most modern presidents have been guilty of impeachable offences, and the fact that they haven't been pursued by Congress only makes it more difficult to keep subsequent presidents in check. The Democratic left, for example, is upset that President Obama commenced bombing of Libya this week absent any congressional authorization. Unfortunately, the modern precedent for that rests in Harry Truman's Korean War, with only the authorization of the U.N Security Council, a clear violation of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.

The then-Republican majority in Congress was right to impeach President Clinton in 1998, but they proudly ignored the multiple - and far more serious - offenses against the Constitution and several sections of the federal code committed by President Reagan in the Iran-Contra Affair.

Those that submit that regular impeachments would create anarchy in the Executive Branch overlook the fact that failing to use that tool has incentivized presidents to regularly act outside both the law and the constitutional restraints of their office, creating what historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. rightly named The Imperial Presidency.

The constitutional language requiring conviction of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" aside, impeachment has historically been a political tool rather than a legal one. It is for that reason that Congress is prohibited from issuing a "bill of attainder", leaving that to the judiciary in the event of a criminal convention. Nixon's future vice-president, then House minority leader Gerald Ford put it best when he said that "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history" during the hearings to remove Justice William O. Douglas, which we now know was engineered by the Nixon White House.

If impeachment were considered a singular legal tool, requiring criminal actions, any further legal proceeding would also be prohibited by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. That clearly isn't the case, and it why President Clinton sought and reached an agreement with the Office of Independent Counsel in his last days in office to avoid indictment.

Of the three Articles of Impeachment passed by House Judiciary Committee against President Nixon, only one (obstruction of justice in Article 1) was a clear violation of federal criminal law. As Senator Barry Goldwater advised Nixon on August 7, 1974, there were fewer than a dozen votes to acquit in the Senate. Nixon certainly would have been removed from office, and Lord Black was wise not to make this part of his argument.

However, in making his case, Black frequently mixes impeachable acts with criminal liability, and the Constitution makes clear that the two are very different.

After the Watergate affair came to light, Nixon’s attorney-general appointed a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who had a mandate to investigate anything he thought might be an offence “arising out of the 1972 election.” Nixon’s public contention was that he had known nothing of the June, 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex (in which nothing was stolen or damaged), which was true; had no knowledge of any attempt to cover it up (tenuous); knew nothing of any offers of clemency for the accused intruders (probably true), or of any offers to provide them with funds (not true); knew nothing of the break-in at the office of the psychotherapist of the man who stole and gave to the media the Pentagon Papers (which discredited the Kennedy and Johnson administrations), which was true; and had not authorized subordinates to engage in improper campaign tactics (tenuous). In all these matters, he had a national-security argument that was sometimes a stretch, but precedented and arguable. His opponents sought to incriminate him with, in effect, involuntarily obtained taped testimony of his; and with perjured evidence, which should not have been admissible, of his turncoat counsel, John Dean.

Legally speaking, the cover-up is what matters and that's where the criminal liability on Nixon's part would almost certainly have been found by a Washington jury, had he not been pardoned by Ford a month after his resignation. This is compounded by the June 17, 1972 conversation that directly forced Nixon's resignation.

The so-called “smoking gun” at the end of the process consisted of revelations that a trio of Nixon’s aides — Robert Haldeman, John Ehrlichmann and John Dean — suggested to Nixon that the director and deputy director of Central Intelligence, Richard Helms and General Vernon Walters respectively, be asked to invite the FBI to desist from investigating the Watergate affair on the grounds that the intruders were Cuban and the whole matter could back into national-security areas, including anti-Castro clandestine activities. Nixon agreed with the plan, and the request was made. But Helms and Walters said they would follow a direct presidential order but not otherwise, and Nixon declined to make any such request. This was a pathetically feeble case for obstruction of justice. (Both Helms and Walters told me that they did not think Nixon had committed a crime in the matter.)

(...)

The only area of legal vulnerability Nixon had was on the matter of paying a million dollars to Howard Hunt, one of the Watergate break-in organizers. It is not clear in this case, and certainly not clear elsewhere, that Nixon approved payments in exchange for altered testimony. In a fair trial in a dispassionate atmosphere, Nixon would not have been convicted on the Hunt matter, and certainly not on any of the rest. But no such trial was available to him. He followed, in the circumstances, the best course, and resigned voluntarily. Nixon maintained to his grave (in 1994), and beyond, that he had “committed errors unworthy of a president” but no illegalities.

Since neither Helms or Walters were practicing criminal lawyers - and Helms himself was later convicted of lying to Congress - their opinions are legally irrelevant.

From my understanding of U.S law, it could be successfully argued that the "smoking gun" conversation marked the beginning of a conspiracy to obstruct justice, which is separate and apart from obstruction itself. It doesn't necessarily follow that the conspiracy be successful for overall guilt to be established beyond a reasonable doubt.

Under America's (overly broad) conspiracy laws, what is called "an act in furtherance" is required and those acts themselves need not be crimes in and of themselves. For example, if you conspire to rob a bank with someone else, renting or borrowing a getaway car is considered an act in furtherance. Nor is it necessary for your co-conspirators to even know the details of the conspiracy.

If you accept that a conspiracy began on June 17 with the direction to have the CIA interfere with the FBI's investigation, which it did, an act in furtherance can be established in the March 20 conversation when Nixon told Dean that he knew where a million dollars for Hunt could be found - without having to prove a corrupt motive (likely witness tampering or subornation of perjury) in doing so.

More important, every act of the cover-up following June 17 would constitute an act in furtherance of the overall conspiracy. And there were several dozen of those, almost all of which were captured on tape. A prosecutor could also potentially argue that Nixon's exercise of his constitutional prerogatives in denying the tapes to the Senate and Cox were part if an underlying conspiracy, even if the president felt that he was constitutionally obligated to do it.

Of course, none of that is particularly relevant. When President Ford was considering the Nixon pardon, he was told by the second special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, that a fair trial couldn't be held in the District of Columbia for at least two years. Even then, there would be no guarantee that a fair trial could ever be conducted in the aftermath of the first presidential resignation in American history. Finding twelve jurors that had no opinion on Nixon's guilt or innocence would probably be impossible well into the 1980s, thereby denying the former president his right to a speedy trial.

Then there's the matter of what a federal prosecution of Nixon would have done to the country. The previous decade had seen the King and two Kennedy assassinations, Vietnam and the multiple government lies that arose from it, the downfall of Lyndon Johnson and, finally, Watergate. Even as he resigned, more Americans approved of Nixon than they later would of George W. Bush when he left office. A trial would have only served to further tear the country apart, making the pardon not only the right thing to do, but the only thing.

I agree with Conrad Black that Richard Milhous Nixon was a much better than average president and that history will eventually reevaluate his many great accomplishments. But I would argue that continuing to debate whether he was "treated fairly" only retards and further delays that from happening. Irrespective of his other achievements, no matter how fine and admirable they might be, Richard Milhous Nixon also committed multiple impeachable offenses and engaged in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. The only reason that we're even still having this debate is Nixon went to his grave without admitting it.

Nixon's resignation was the right thing to do, both for the country and for himself. If he had been allowed to escape without consequence after his actions became public knowledge, it would have sent a clear message that future presidents would be a law unto themselves and that nothing would constitute an impeachable act.