Repudiate Teh Stoopid.

Where's Bill Buckley?

Not here, that's fer sure.

Teh Stoopid.

It hurts my brain.

Whatever happened to the reasonable American Conservative? I mean, say what you want about American Conservatives, but there were very few people of any ideological stripe who could sustain any level of B.S. under the withering glare of, say, Bill Buckley.

Buckley was a Conservative. But he was bloody sharp. He was also fair.

I remember 'Firing Line' as precocious 8-year-old. There was Pater Buckley, pen raised to mouth, listening patiently to his quarry. Then he would look down his nose at the interrlocuter, drawl out a patrician 'Hmmmm....but...' and proceed to eviscerate any idiot opposite. One may not have agreed with him, but he was hard to argue against.He took no quarter but rarely would he rub his conquest's nose in his own eviscera.

Now where are the arguments? Most of the goombahs showing up at 'Teabagger' Rallies share one thing (aside from skin pigment): They can't argue. All they can do is hold up cardboard festooned with laughable spelling and shout malformed opinions fed to them by Blofeld, Inc.

Even National Review has been scavenged by the parasitic and feral remnants of Bircher-ism that passes for American Conservatism these days. Well, we know what Bill Buckley would've thought about that:

"We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner."

No you can't. Repudiate Teh Stoopid. Fast.

My Best Friend

This is Kudda, the gentle giant, with our daughter Tuula, Spring, 2006.

Pappa Kudda (October 23, 2001-August 24, 2009

It was 'bloat'.

Monday, he was normal: Smiling, eating, whining for his night walk. We went. He poo'd. He got his cookies at night as usual.

At about three a.m, he started whining. We thought it was diarrhea, because he got that sometimes. So we let him out. By five he was back in, panting. My wife got me up again at about 6:30. We didn't know what it was then. So we checked Dr. Google. It looked like bloat. But there was no good reason for it.

Our vet opened at 8. We called, left a message and said we were coming in. Kudda was in the basement, panting. I tried to rouse him, using his usual 'doo-da-doo' bugle call, which means walk. Nothing. I went down and he looked truly frightened. His tongue was weirdly blue. We got him upstairs and I hoisted him into the car, because he couldn't walk. I raced wrong-way down our construction-wrecked high street and brought him to the vet's. The nice girl in pale pink scrubs at the vet said there were no Dr.'s yet, but that, in any case, if it was bloat I should take him to emerg immediately. The nearest one was Yonge and Davenport, way across the city.

I raced across town, all the way saying, "Kudda? Kudda?" We got there. I shabbily and hastily parked the car and went inside. I shakily related the circumstances to the triage nurse. The vet had called ahead. Immediately, they brought a gurney. I opened the back hatch, where Kudda was. He was not moving. They put a stethascope to him.

Nothing. 8:59 a,m.

I did the business and made the arrangements. Then I went outside into the perfect late summer day and just sat on the curb for awhile.

I drove home without him.

At dinner there are usually a few tossed treats as I cook. Then, after we eat, more. When we put the kids to bed, he whines because he wants his walk. Last night it was quiet.

He pissed me off a lot sometimes. But he was such a great dog. He bracketed my day. His walk was the first thing I did. It was the last thing at night.

He was the first member of our family. My son and daughter have never known a house without him. He always slept in doorways, as Kuvaszok often do. We called him the Shnork. for his habit of sticking his considerable snout into peoples' crotches and sofa cushions, flipping the cushions merrily.

Once, in an off-leash area of the park, he decided he was going to elude me. When he did this little game, he danced around in a kind of 'na-na-na-na-na-na you can't catch me' way, Then he took off. I chased him and watched in horror as he ran across Parkside Avenue. As he did so, he almost took out a motorcycle cop. I continued to chase him for half an hour. Finally, he just ...stopped. He let me leash him up and we headed home. I was so mad, that I didn't notice the siren until the cop wheeled his motorcycle right into my path. I was threatened with arrest and the destruction of my dog. Cooler heads prevailed with the arrival of another cop. I got out of there with my dog, he with his life.

He wasn't so lucky this morning.

Paranoid, American Style

"American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind."

- Richard Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics"


It's hard to look, from a perch up in Canada, at the mass bad craziness surrounding the American health care debate and not think, "WTF is wrong with these people?". Y'know, the ones who benefit from Medicare who are out there decrying any public involvement in health care as Nazism, Socialism, or cause for 'the tree of liberty to be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants'.

But as Hofstadter pointed out (47 years ago), there is a strain in American politics, that while thankfully small, is nonetheless loud. And koo-koo (Scott Horton, writing in Harper's over two years ago, concisely pointed out the symptoms of the current strain of Amerinoid Psycho-Pathology). And, in the age of YouTube and ratings-crazed cable news. the kooks make good pictures. What's going to lead the newscast, the Preznit's sober explanation of the reasonable-ness of a public option? Or an incensed 'patriot' loudmouth screaming, "Don't Tread on Me(dicare)!"? Exactly.

Thing is, this probably ain't about Health Care. It's more about The Fear of Now on the part of angry, white folks facing irreversible demographic change. And that fear manifests itself in the willingness to believe, in the face of all factual evidence to the contrary, that the President isn't a natural born American. That he wants his 'Death Panels' to 'pull the plug on Grandma'. That he's a Nazi. Or Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot or some toxic hybrid of all-of-the-above. Mostly, though, it's likely due, in large part, to the fact that his skin is brown. And that, increasingly, so is a large part of the U.S. population.

Of course, similar ravings about government over(goose)-stepping were heard from the left end of the spectrum during the eight-long years of Bush 43, especially the fulminating about fascism. However, at that time, the fulminators, when depicted in the media, were done so in an incredibly unfavourable light, their patriotism questioned. The current bunch are, more often than not, described as 'ordinary citizens' 0r, (on Fox, say) as patriots.

Jon Stewart and his writers ably skewered this glaring relativity and pointed out the inherent irony of the New Victim-hood by describing these 'conservatives' the 'new liberals'. In deft juxtaposition, they did a 'What they said then, What they say now' segment which was, while hilarious, incredibly incisive in exposing the hypocrisy of the right-wing punditocracy. They are ideologically consistent but morally relativistic (strangely enough, one of the fundamental criticisms leveled against 'Teh Left' is moral relativism).

The most baffling thing is that those griping the loudest seem woefully ignorant that they live in a nation whose government is constrained by what is probably the most elegantly designed and fully considered political document ever, The Constitution of The United States of America. That, and the fact that those most loudly defying a public;/single payer option in health care are also the same group who are safely ensured care under a public;/single payer option in health care: It's called Medicare.

But then it's not really about health care. Rather, it's a manifestation of fearful nativism which is as American as apple pie. Or the right to take a semi-automatic weapon to a presidential town hall.

Facts be damned. Fear the future. Where paranoia is powerful, there is no place for facts.

Update: The Globe's Konrad Yakabuski took on this very subject, Hofstadter and all, on the last day of last year. It's an excellent piece and highly recommended. But, as the folks in the comments say, "First!" Anyway, I am a bit chuffed with my 'ahead-of-the-curve'-iness and all.

Is that so wrong?

Travelling While Brown

Apparently, right now in our country, if you travel abroad and your skin isn't pearly white, or robustly pink (Why did Brenda Martin get a private jet ride out of a fetid Mexican jail, again?), you stand the chance of being denied return to your country of citizenship, the country whose passport you hold. What other conclusion can one reach after the abysmal treatment given Ms. Mahomud? Or Mr. Abdelrazik. Or Mr. Mahar.

Or whomever else may be guilty of the newest (yet un-announced) trespass against Canadian law n' order: Traveliing While Brown.

Of course, ignorance of the law is no excuse. We should all have become aware of 2nd-tier citizenship provisions having been apparently enshrined when the last Israel-Lebanon skirmish occurred. You will recall that Canadian Citizens in Lebanon at the time of the conflict were left to fend for themselves until the current government was pressed to fulfill their (our) obligations to them.

Now that Ms. Mahomud has been returned to her 12-year old son here in Canada, checked for infirmities contracted while detained, she's announced that she will proceed with litigation v. Regina.

Here's what some of our fellow citizens have to say about that. Kinda off-putting, I know.

That noted, one hopes she succeeds in her legal adventure, lest all or any of us set foot out of the country proudly carrying a precious document which has been dangerously devalued by the actions, or lack thereof, of those currently in government.

The Seal Hunt

In the Globe and Mail, Tory hack Tim Powers opines thus:

"I am not very happy with the bureaucrats of Brussels and the nutters at PETA who have pushed for the EU sealing ban. Clearly, neither has a true understanding of the impact of sealing on northern communities nor an awareness of modern hunting practices which are much more humane. Not always a fan of regulation myself I can however attest that the Canadian department of Fisheries and Oceans has a solid base of rules governing the hunt. In fact, they are also omnipresent on the ice during the season to provide on-site adherence to the rule of law.."

Y'know, some months ago, a blowhard named Sean Hannity proclaimed from his Fox News bully pulpit that he would be more than willing to undergo waterboarding to prove that it was nothing more than a corrective sprinkling of patriotic holy water to cleanse the evil of terrorism. When challenged by a rival commentator to do just that - at the rate of $1000 per minute, for charity - crickets were heard. And they are still.

Mr. Powers, along with Ministers Day and Shea, et al, if challenged to similarly subject themselves to the humanitarian and sustainable administration of the hakapik would also, in all probability, demur in like fashion.

One Last Sandbag

So here we are: 1/4 of a basis point from free money. Thank heavens the banks are still making 2% on whoever they deign to give money. Otherwise this whole creaky thing will wobble, fart and fall down.

How in the name of all that's holy was this allowed to happen? Was it a handful of genies chained in the basement of Darth Goldman Sachs? Magic Beans? Vast Psychotic Irresponsibility? WTF?

How do trillions of dollars go *poof*? And, does the Kurrent Keystone Government have any idea what they're doing? I'm not confident. Indeed, after rejecting tax relief as folly, half-assedly budgeting 'stimulus' and, well, just waitin' to see what the other feller does, things look grim for Mr.Harper.

So my guess is this puts the Klowns in a real bad place. So bad that they're willing do to make a deal with )gasp( Socialists!

When there's only one sandbag left, one throws it wherever they can, I suppose.

The Original Six

So, 'E.R.' is gone. Everybody who cares knows. I was never a real die-hard watcher but, still, have to admit that what I saw was mostly pretty good. A little soapy, but well-written, well-shot, edited and produced. So, now, what I assume to be it's replacement has begun to air. The production team behind 'E.R.' seems to have gone outside the ward, left Chicago's meaty fist and submarined their steadicams into the un-rarified air of the howling, violent, trash-tattooed and freak-filled streets of Lost Angeles.

'Southland', at least the episode I've seen, seems pretty good. It's real gritty. And the characters are watchable. The 'Training Cop', the guy that looks like T.J. Hooker, is my favourite. Plus, other characters kept asking 'The Rookie' - who looks like a '90210' character - if he's Canadian. Nice touch. The super-plot was pretty compelling, and the sub-plot was bile inducing. But what really struck me were the production values: Great cinematography and camera work, subtle editing, some really good writing in parts and sympathetic characters. Bonus points for the fact that they used The National's shiver-making "Fake Empire" for the wrap-up montage. Truly inspired.

So far so good, then. What remains to be seen is how they get past the 'Original Six' .

After a show get's the greenlight for its pilot, if that's up to snuff they get the go ahead to make six episodes that will then go out into the world and try to make it on their own. Since failure is always an orphan, everybody stands back and lets the show's creators do their thing. The result is usually some pretty good television because everybody involved is working their asses off to make the most of the limited funds they have. So you get six episodes of really creative Teevee. This is the Test Pattern that I've observed

If a show vaults that six-episode hurdle, well, victory has a thousand fathers. So the thumbprints start becoming apparent: Stories get weaker, craft slips and the budget is pulled places it ought not go (payroll for the six new Executive Producers anyone?). More voices, more second guessing, more at stake for more egos and the thing can potentially get feeble. I really hope it doesn't happen with 'Southland', but my bets are it's off by summer.

It makes me wonder about the British model. Generally, the really good stuff I can recall - 'Hidden Agenda' for example - were six episodes total. As was the original of 'State of Play'. The Gervais 'Office' was, I think, 14 episodes in total. They get in, do the series, and get out before there's a chance for any shark jumping. It just seems like a way better model. It's been used to some effect in Canada - 'Water' or 'Durham County' for example - but we should use it in here more often. More people would be employed, more production would be in play and we could start to really reinforce the industry here.

That said, after five seasons, Brent Butt and David Storey left the crowd wanting more 'Corner Gas'. 'Flashpoint' is in for 26 episodes, I guess. And 'The Listener' has U.S. pick-up. So the model seems to be working for some. I just think it's way too hard to maintain quality over that kind of stretch. People get too fat and happy. A constant onslaught of really compelling Original Six series would, I think, really pick domestic production up and put it on the pedestal it deserves.

Meanwhile, it's 'Southland', 'The Unusuals' and old saved episodes of 'Intelligence'.