Politics – Page 5 – A Good Beer Blog

Election 2012: While I Still Have The Power To Blog….

I better make some comment on this election, make some statement given the history around here even if the digital world has deemed blogs to commentary what 8-tracks are to fine audio media.

I was over in the states yesterday and found an active economy. My favorite lunch spot, the Fairgrounds Inn where I have been going for at least six years now was hopping on a Friday lunch. I had the Italian Combo, thanks for asking. And I got my hair cut. The guy getting sheered next to me went on about the Biden debate. Unhappy but a bit shallow. Was there really cause to gripe? Businesses were expanding. On the way out of town, my rear passenger side wheel just about seized and we were lucky to come over the hill on #37 and see Frenchy’s Auto Repair right there. An hour was all it took to get a part delivered and see us back heading to the border. We lapped up the warm late late summer air on a gorgeous rural vista out back of the repair ship. Everyone in the place was happy and busy and working. Some were having a beer. One of my favorite things about the slice of the USA I get to see is how it is both so similar to the Maritimes as a bit of a hard luck corner of the nation but also how frankly cheerful and confident folk are. The restaurant was at a dull roar of conversation the whole time we were there. It was hard to tell if the auto repair was a place of work or a fairly hearty social club given all the people coming and going while we were there.

What will America do on 6 November? My take is that Obama has not been passed, the Federal Senate will not budge and a number of member of the House will move to the left, not the right. There will not be a throw the bums out movement. I don’t think Mitt Romney would be a catastrophe any more than four more years would. No wave of nuttin’. But the next four years one way or another will be about managing recovery. Whammo. Not sure the will be a WHAMMO!!! but there will be a Whammo.

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Announcement: I Would Have A Beer With Mitt Romney

Enough! There is a certain point where the pile on the goofy rich kid like we did in undergrad is not fun anymore. Worse is when Canadians weigh in and decide to kick the guy when he is down:

Mercer also weighed in on Mitt Romney’s latest gaffe about the 47 per cent of Americans who don’t pay income tax as freeloaders. “It’s about as offensive as anything I have ever heard,” he said. “He is talking about senior citizens, the disenfranchised, the unemployed and the underemployed, he is talking about the disabled, he is talking about veterans who have suffered catastrophic injuries fighting a very long war for the United States,” he said. “I would have no interest in having a beer with that guy.”

There is nothing worse than the smug Canadian. As offensive as anything he’s ever heard? Get out much? This is not to defend the stupid statement – but, really, what do you expect rich donors want to hear as they write the cheques? I mean these are people who don’t even need super large vanity cheques when then hand on the big money. Anyway, not that I would vote Mitt if I could… and I can’t… but if he wants to have a presidential beer or even have, say, a chamomile tea as I have a beer…? Why not?

See, the smirk of the smug Canadian doesn’t care anymore than they accuse the Mitt-ster of being. But catch them digging out a stump? Fat chance. So, from the land where politics are leveled by the goodness of beer, Mitt… I will have that beer with you. But, really, you’re buying, right?

Vic… Let Me Tell You A Little Something About Me

Canadian Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews has found himself caught in a 1998 style flame war that would be the pride of usenet. As the Federation devolves, this is the sort of thing that entertains. Most fun is not the fact that it appears his nemesis is related to an opposition party but the surprise experienced by so many Canadians this evening that someone in the opposition has the gumption – I said it, gumption – to, you know, oppose:

An IP address connected to what is known as the Vikileaks30 Twitter account — which has been burning up the Twittersphere with claims about Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ personal life — originates within the House of Commons. In a bid to determine the origin of the account, which posted a string of tweets online offering alleged details relating to Toews’s divorce proceedings, the Ottawa Citizen undertook an investigation on Thursday. An email was sent to the writer of the Vikileaks30 Twitter account, containing a link to a website. The website was monitored by the Citizen and only the author of Vikileaks30 had the address of the website. About 15 minutes after sending the email, Vikileaks30 opened the link and visited the page, leaving behind an IP address that belongs to the House of Commons.

Sadly, the needy CBC hipster class of Canadian sees all and learns nothing, considering it “…lovable inclusiveness…a very Canadian kind of protest.” Mr. Taylor is really only upset that his gang did not think of it first.

Friday Bullets For The Week Of The Blackout

The power went out. From 3 pm to midnight yesterday. Sat around in one room for the evening and marveled at the power of the battery. I tweeted and listened to radio. Ice was to blame. Ice from the sky. Fortunately, it appears to have rained all night washing away the coating. A few trees in the neighbourhood fell. Now, there is good reason to have those ribs in the freezer:

♦ I like beer as much as the next guy. Probably more. But I am not sure why one of Ontario’s less interesting brewers deserved $1,000,000 in tax support annually.
♦ Really? I assume the PM does not know every implication of every Federal legal brief. And besides. If the brief was correct in relation to same sex marriage, it also means that the same is true for different sex marriage – if you don’t meet a foreign level of consanguinity in your home country, a Canadian marriage would not be valid. No one believes that.
♦ Let’s be clear, then. I am the guy who backed Harper this week, not the National Post. No Senate reform, please. No need to entirely lock up Federal governance, Steve.
♦ Scots apparently are not free to make up their minds. Time to revive the Declaration of Arbroath. “It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.” Makes you weepy just thinking about it.

There. Done. Gotta work one more day before the gorging of rib fest begins. Thanks, blackout, for reminding me to make time for ribs.

English-Speaking Atheists Lose Their Columnist Saint

I can’t say that I am particularly struck by the loss of Christopher Hitchens but its in the same way that I was not moved by the death of Steve Jobs. Like Jobs, Hitchens was something of a presentation of himself – not a bad thing in itself but it does distract from whether the output was as valuable as claimed. That being said, David Frum has an excellent memorial to the man in the National Post that captures bits of his appeal:

As the event broke up, a crowd of questioners formed around him. I created a diversion thinking it would help him escape for some needed rest. But Christopher declined the offer. He stood with them, as tired as I was, but ready to adjourn to a nearby bar and converse with total strangers till the bars closed. Hitchens was not one of those romantics who fetishized “dialogue.” Far from suffering fools gladly, he delighted in making fools suffer. When he heard that another friend, a professor, had a habit of seducing female students in his writing seminars, he shook his head pityingly. “It’s not worth it. Afterward, you have to read their short stories.”

Frum called him “a man of moral clarity.” I would have thought “amoral” or perhaps ethical was more the proper word. The man he most reminded me of was Mencken. Both had that sort of rhetorical skill that aligned well with their failure to actually meaningfully participate in anything that added to the public good. Both were keen observers and skilled reporters. The sort of person who can tell you what a poor job someone, anyone, yourself even has done but would not actually engage with the doing themselves. Both were famous drinkers.

I am sure that we benefit somewhat from these columnists, folk who can sharply report on the human condition. But they never really get to anything of value as to the why of it all. They have their own belief system which is immune to denting and judge all from that place on the orb with skill, charisma and something of an ultimate pointlessness. Humans already know life is hard and confused, that our leaders make many bad calls. Directing us to that obvious state of affairs, however insightfully or entertainingly, is not the stuff of heroes.

“Oops”? – Can’t A Guy Get A Mulligan Or Two?

Is this really the worst thing a candidate can do in a debate?

“And I will tell you, it is three agencies of government when I get there that are gone,” he said. “Commerce, education, and the — what’s the third one there? Let’s see …. OK. Commerce, education, and the —” He looked helplessly toward the elderly Ron Paul, standing next to him on the stage, who added helpfully: “The EPA?” Mr. Perry replied: “EPA, there you go.” The moderator pressed on, asking if, indeed, he was proposing to cut the Environmental Protection Agency. He said no, but admitted he could not name the third agency. “The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops.”

I haven’t seen the video but surely this was an opportunity to make a joke or at least a chance to give a guy a break for a brain fart. Nothing more. Or is it a case of kicking the candidate to make sure a dead campaign is really dead. Shouldn’t “oops” come with a little dignity, the waving of a small white flag? Otherwise, isn’t it a bit like kicking the dog that only did what a dog does? Shouldn’t recourse to “oops” mean witness ye all the human condition, judge not lest ye, too, be judged?

Oh – Heck – It’s Election Day In Ontario…

Ontario politics are sorta like that. People don’t notice that they are, with all the downloading of 30 years, the most important elections in the life of the nation. Because Ontario is that nice nerdy B+ kid who helps and never gets dates. Gives away the lunch money and gets threatened by smaller rude boys on the way home. Here’s is my guess at the outcome this election day.

Popular Vote:

40% – Grits
34% – Tory
18% – Dippers
2% – Greens
the rest% – the rest

Seats:

52 – Grits
38 – Tory
17 – Dippers

Not a brave guess or even one that makes sense. But I am sticking by it. Hope I remember to vote. Special good luck wishes to Vic Gupta with whom I worked in a bar in 1992 as well as the NDP here in town whose riding association is led by a fine vintage base ballista.

Personally I Prefer “The Government Of Harper”

…because, it’s really the same thing as “the Harper Government” yet it is clearer about his intentions:

Erin Junker, a senior communications adviser at Health Canada, responded by email: “This was a directive I received from PCO.” The Privy Council Office is the bureaucratic nerve centre that serves the prime minister, working in concert with the Prime Minister’s Office. A PCO spokesman responded to a series of questions Wednesday about the Health Canada email exchange by reiterating that “there has been no change in policy or direction.” Raymond Rivet said in an email that he “cannot speculate” on what directive Ms. Junker was referring to: “There may have been instances where the term was introduced but, as I have said, there was no formal directive to use the term Harper Government.”

On one hand, I say run with it. Who cares? Steve wants to be the anti-Trudeau? That’s fine. Chretien beat him to it 15 years ago and Steve has about 35 million in deficit and a hell of a lot of Federal-Provincial agreements to go to catch up. Steve wants to change the symbols, the tone, the constitutional traditions? Go for it. We’ll have his grey and white flag one day, too.

But if I was a Tory I would be livid. Except Mr. Harper is not a Tory. He is not a Progressive Conservative either. He has gotten rid of both those things. And now he is getting rid of conservatives, too. It’s all Steve – Steve – Steve. For now. Because when he is gone? Liberals forever. Or the NDP or whoever. Name the heir apparent if you disagree.

At least the conservatives won’t lose when the house of cards fall. And one day it will.

Friday Bullets For Your Labour Day Weekend

You better be meditating on the benefits we all share from the labour union movement this weekend. “Sure, I’ll take the day off but don’t you dare think for a minute that I like unions.” I can hear you. You hypocritical holidaying ingrates. Me, I will be singing “The International” and all my Billy Bragg 45s and calling everyone I meet comrade or maybe even Leonid.

⇒ WATCH OUT! SPACE JUNK!!!

⇒ Glad that’s cleared up. Italians are now “ethnics” under the rural overlords world view. Next, Scots and Irish and soon New Brunswickers.

⇒ Ernie Eves busts out against those Ontario Tea Party Tory bastards: “I don’t think it was fair and I don’t think it was loyal and I don’t think it was compassionate and I don’t think it’s honest.” Crime: voting for someone. Now, that’s a Tory: anti-democratic and proud of it.

⇒ I have no idea how sad it must be to be a Blue Jays fan. I mean, it’s like they think the team doesn’t suck. See, being a Leafs fan, I know they suck.

⇒ Do we now feel a twinge of guilt for reveling in Conrad’s fall? I will give him this – there is no one else reporting honestly on the state of the back end of the justice system like he is.

Ahh… long weekend. I needed it. I earned it. Really did. Didn’t I. I didn’t? Who says?

Category: Politics