Turning the Ignition Key

I’m going to just start typ­ing, and bear with me, because it feels a bit like start­ing up a car that’s been sit­ting in a garage for sev­eral weeks. Not rusty, but a lit­tle creaky and not quite ready for the open road for a few min­utes, at least until it starts to warm up…

Speak­ing of tem­per­a­ture, today was chilly, and for the first time, it truly felt like fall was in the air. Never mind that sum­mer has offi­cially been over for 3 weeks. Van­cou­ver doesn’t get the spec­tac­u­lar dis­play of autumn leaves that we used to see in New Eng­land, and it was partly what made it my favourite sea­son. Now, I’m not quite as fond of it as I used to be, but I still do like the sea­sonal dishes and pro­duce: Rata­touille, roasted squash, pears and cran­ber­ries, and I also like the fact that it’s typ­i­cally the time of year when I feel as if everything’s start­ing up, that the year is really begin­ning. Jan­u­ary 1^st may be the offi­cial kick-off of the cal­en­dar year, but as the son of two teach­ers and now some­times one myself, the aca­d­e­mic cal­en­dar always seems more appropriate.

Back to classes here also means the return of the Fringe Fes­ti­val, and I’m a fan. That’s over and done with now, but I did make it to a few shows. It was grat­i­fy­ing to see that the annual fes­ti­val of inti­mate the­atre that takes place nearby us on Granville Island as well as through­out the city was more pop­u­lar this year than ever. I’m afraid that I didn’t get to the Inter­na­tional Film Fes­ti­val, which usu­ally comes on the heels of the Fringe, but it also looked to be well attended.

So what’s com­ing up? I’m look­ing for­ward to Bar­Camp, the yearly uncon­fer­ence where every­body gets to be an expert in some­thing. I think I have a sub­ject to talk about this year, and I’ll be putting some of that up before­hand, mainly to tease those who might be inter­ested in it. I’m also antic­i­pat­ing the Cas­soulet fes­ti­val that Oyama Sausage Com­pany cel­e­brates. I’ve writ­ten about it before, and per­haps I will again. After all, it’s not ever day that you get to eat what’s prob­a­bly the most sub­lime dish ever made with beans, herbs and meats.

I’m not look­ing for­ward to the elec­tion back in the US. Pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ment in the US has reached the point of com­plete and utter absur­dity. The Amer­i­can elec­torate is now by and large so irra­tional and dri­ven by Pub­lic Rela­tions manip­u­la­tion that I don’t expect any sane out­come in Novem­ber. I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the audio ver­sion of the book The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son by Susan Jacoby, and I’m becom­ing con­vinced that she is right on tar­get. Polit­i­cal cul­ture in the US is a reflec­tion of gen­eral cul­ture, which has become less and less informed, knowl­edgable and rea­soned. Amer­i­cans have stopped talk­ing about any­thing impor­tant, except the lat­est scan­dal, goofy YouTube moment, or gaffe. Instead of call­ing the Tea Party out on their igno­rance of what the Con­sti­tu­tion says (like for instance, the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers which makes it clear that a Pres­i­dent can’t send in sol­diers to another coun­try with­out the approval of Con­gress, which is exactly what George W. Bush did in Iraq), the TV net­works focus on enter­tain­ing peo­ple with sound-bites. Amer­i­cans don’t read news­pa­pers any more, much less books. With enter­tain­ment trump­ing real infor­ma­tion, it’s clear to me that the most pow­er­ful voice in US pol­i­tics is not any of the politi­cians, but Fox News. Dur­ing my US trip, at cer­tain motels, Fox News was the only cable news chan­nel avail­able on the tele­vi­sion. That would be like Pravda being the only news­pa­per avail­able at a news stand (for those who aren’t famil­iar with the name ‘Pravida’, it was Russ­ian for ‘Truth’, and was the offi­cial news source of the USSR). With Fox the most wide­spread and pop­u­lar source of info-pablum, the US is now effec­tively being led by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

There, it looks like my motor is run­ning again.

Did She Just Say That?

Happy July 4^th to all of my friends and rel­a­tives back in the US. Pam and I tuned in this morn­ing to the news and polit­i­cal talk shows, expect­ing a pretty unevent­ful roundup of pre-Fireworks chat­ter, and were sur­prised to see some news­wor­thy items. One was a final reac­tion by pun­dits to the Repub­li­can National Committee’s head, Michael Steele. For the past cou­ple of years, Steele has been ‘the gift that keeps on giv­ing’ to Lib­er­als like myself, and it was always hys­ter­i­cal when he came out with one of his either undig­ni­fied or ridicu­lous state­ments. The lat­est one, how­ever, seemed to go over the line. At a fundraiser in Noank, Con­necti­cut, some­one caught Steele in the fol­low­ing video that became one of those gaffes heard round the world:

Tran­script:
“The [Gen­eral] McChrys­tal inci­dent, to me, was very com­i­cal. I think it’s a reflec­tion of the frus­tra­tion that a lot of our mil­i­tary lead­ers has with this Admin­is­tra­tion and their pros­e­cu­tion of the war in Afghanistan. Keep in mind again, fed­eral can­di­dates, this was a war of Obama’s choos­ing. This was not some­thing that the United States had actively pros­e­cuted or wanted to engage in. It was one of those areas of the total board of for­eign pol­icy [that was at least?] that we would be in the back­ground sort of shap­ing the changes that were nec­es­sary in Afghanistan as opposed to directly engag­ing troops. But it was the Pres­i­dent who was try­ing to be cute by half by flip­ping a script demo­niz­ing Iraq, while say­ing the bat­tle really should in Afghanistan. Well, if he is such a stu­dent of his­tory, has he not under­stood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? Alright, because every­one who has tried over a thou­sand years of his­tory has failed, and there are rea­sons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan…”

Now I won’t go too much into how wrong that is on so many lev­els (not the least of which is that it’s his­tor­i­cally inac­cu­rate — there was no ‘choice’ involved and the US, led by George W. Bush, attacked Afghanistan after the ter­ror­ist attack on the World Trade Cen­ter and the Pen­ta­gon on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001), but the con­dem­na­tion from Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans has been pretty severe, with the excep­tion of the always-surprising Ron Paul, who said that Steele, “has it right and Repub­li­cans should stick by him.”
At any rate, we did a double-take when we heard this from Cyn­thia Tucker, the Pulitzer prize win­ning reporter of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Wow! It’s not often you hear some­one deliver as blis­ter­ing a cri­tique as that. In fact, I dare say if any­one else had said what she said, (par­tic­u­larly some­one who wasn’t also black) they might have been accused of being racist.

It’s pretty clear that Steele is toast. As I hinted ear­lier, that’s a shame for Democ­rats (Al Hunt a few moments before this clip sug­gested that Steele was actu­ally a Demo­c­ra­tic Mole). How­ever, he (and Ms. Tucker) did pro­vide some early fire­works for this July 4 morning.

Tomor­row

July 5 is also a big date, at least for Pam and me. On this date, 5 years ago, we left Cam­bridge, MA and began our jour­ney to Canada. While I’m always a lit­tle pen­sive on the 4^th, remem­ber­ing those long after­noons on the bank of the Charles river get­ting ready for the fire­works and singing patri­otic songs, I also remem­ber how excited we were to be start­ing a new chap­ter in our lives. These days, I don’t intro­duce myself as a ‘new Van­cou­verite’ any more. I now con­sider the lower Main­land my home, and despite more than a few glances back at the US, we have no plans to return to liv­ing there. The July 4 of 2005 will prob­a­bly be the last one we spent as US residents.

Joe Wong Slays 'em at the Annual RTCA Dinner

Pres­i­dent Obama made the news for doing some standup the other night at the Annual Radio and Tele­vi­sion Cor­re­spon­dents’ Din­ner in Wash­ing­ton, DC, but I think the real news was some­one else on the pro­gram. I’d never seen this come­dian before,  but I was absolutely blown away by how funny he was and how good his tim­ing and deliv­ery were. If this is any indi­ca­tion of his tal­ent, I hope we’ll be see­ing more of Joe Wong:

I also hope he tours Canada soon. How about a dou­ble bill with Rus­sell Peters?

Losing Before the Starting Line

Glen Beck, the lat­est angry US pun­dit, spoke out a cou­ple of days ago against US Pres­i­dent Obama’s (now unsuc­cess­ful) trip to Copen­hagen to lobby the Olympic Com­mit­tee to hold the 2016 Olympics in Chicago. He men­tioned that the Van­cou­ver Olympics had already “lost a bil­lion dollars”.

The White House called him out on the fact that as we all know all-too-well around here, the Olympics haven’t taken place yet:

RHETORIC: BECK SAID VANCOUVER LOST $1 BILLION WHEN IT “HAD THE OLYMPICS.” Glenn Beck said, “Van­cou­ver lost, how much was it? they lost a bil­lion dol­lars when they had the Olympics.” [Tran­script, Glenn Beck Show, 9/29/09]

REALITY: VANCOUVER’S OLYMPICS WILL NOT TAKE PLACE UNTIL 2010. Van­cou­ver will host the 2010 Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games from Feb­ru­ary 12 – 28, 2010 and March 12–21, 2010, respec­tively. [Vancouver2010.com, accessed 9/29/09]

In response, Beck explained that he meant Cal­gary, and then began an account­ing of how much he thinks Van­cou­ver is going to lose, with the final tab com­ing to some­where around a 4.5 billion-dollar short­fall. I’m speech­less. The audio, via YouTube, is below:

Things Only a Republican Could Believe

I haven’t blogged much about US pol­i­tics in a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been fol­low­ing the farce that is the cur­rent debate about ‘Death Pan­els’, Obama’s birth cer­tifi­cate, Con­spir­a­cies about the sub­ver­sive art­work around Rock­e­feller Cen­ter and other inanities.

I saw this on reddit.com, and would nor­mally merely link to it, but it’s so spot-on that I just had to include it here. Sure, it’s got some rude words and is a bit angry, but these days, so are a lot of us:

So, y’all remem­ber that email that went around years ago called “Things Only a Repub­li­can Could Believe”? I’m pretty sure there was a Demo­c­ra­tic vari­ant as well. Well, I’ve put together a new and updated list and wanted to run it by you. Please feel free to add to it or offer corrections\comments. If you like it — email it out to your spam­ming list. I’m hop­ing for a bit of a viral effect to get it cir­cu­lat­ing. Satire is an effec­tive weapon against craziness!

I make no apolo­gies if you con­sider your­self a Repub­li­can. I am a reg­is­tered Inde­pen­dent and have voted Repub­li­can at var­i­ous lev­els of gov­ern­ment, but the cur­rent crop of Repub­li­cans at the national level are off the reser­va­tion. To call them bat shit crazy would be an insult to bat shit.

• Par­ents who don’t want their chil­dren to pray in school are Anti-American zealots — par­ents who don’t want their chil­dren to lis­ten to a speech by the Pres­i­dent of the United States telling them to work hard and get good grades are noble patriots.
• Peace­fully demon­strat­ing against the coun­try start­ing an inter­na­tional war is trea­son — show­ing up with auto­matic weapons to protest health­care reform is democ­racy at its finest.
• Any gov­ern­ment offi­cial with a desk job should have every action scru­ti­nized — any gov­ern­ment offi­cial with a badge and a gun should never be ques­tioned or dis­re­spected. At all. Ever.
• Ques­tion­ing the legit­i­macy of an elec­tion because the “win­ner” was selected by the Supreme Court is sour grapes — ques­tion­ing the legit­i­macy of an elec­tion because the win­ner (by the largest num­ber of votes in Amer­i­can his­tory) is really a Kenyan born Mus­lim despite all evi­dence to the con­trary is being a vig­i­lant American.
• Lying about a blowjob is an impeach­able offense — lying about a war is no big deal, really.
• Inves­ti­gat­ing a shady land deal involv­ing the First Lady is a mat­ter of National Iden­tity — inves­ti­gat­ing the use of tor­ture at the direc­tion of the Exec­u­tive Branch is a par­ti­san witch hunt.
• Exe­cut­ing Japan­ese offi­cers for water­board­ing pris­on­ers dur­ing WWII shows that we have the moral high-ground on human rights — water­board­ing (our own) pris­on­ers of our shows that we have the moral high ground on human rights.
• Sit­ting two rows in front of Jane Fonda in a 1970 anti-war rally is an OUTRAGE!  Shak­ing Saddam’s hand in 1983…meh, not so much.
• Any­one who ques­tions the pres­i­dent dur­ing a time of war is giv­ing aide and com­fort to the enemy and should be deported…unless the pres­i­dent in ques­tion has a (D) next to their name in which case you should under­mine them at every turn even if you have to rou­tinely make shit up to do it.
• Social­ism, Marx­ism, Com­mu­nism and Fas­cism are all inter­change­able words that mean pretty much the same thing.
• Any­one who abuses drugs should be locked up indefinitely…unless they are a pop­u­lar Repub­li­can radio host in which case they need your prayers as they recover from the ill­ness of addiction.
• Health Insur­ance com­pa­nies have your best inter­ests in mind and any­one who thinks oth­er­wise is try­ing to turn Amer­ica into the God­less hea­then nation of Swe­den where every­one in the coun­try dies (eventually).
• Obama is an athe­ist com­mu­nist mus­lim who attended a rad­i­cal chris­t­ian church.
• Believ­ing that human activ­ity could impact the global envi­ron­ment is crazy talk — believ­ing that an invis­i­ble man in the sky per­son­ally told George Bush to invade Iraq to ful­fill Bib­li­cal prophecy is log­i­cally sound.
• The ver­dict is still out on evo­lu­tion — but Jesus Christ return­ing in our life­times is a pretty much a given.
• The media are unques­tion­ably biased against Repub­li­cans — Talk Radio, The Wash­ing­ton Times, The Weekly Stan­dard, The Wall Street Jour­nal, Rightwing Blogs, Fox News and News­Corp are not part of the media.
• The gov­ern­ment should have no part in reg­u­lat­ing multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions as they make deci­sions that impact the lives of mil­lions of peo­ple — gov­ern­ment should reg­u­late indi­vid­u­als by deter­min­ing who they can marry, what kind of inter­course they can have, what they can smoke, how to man­age their preg­nancy and how to pro­ceed with end of life decisions.
• Com­mu­ni­cat­ing with hos­tile nations is a stab in the back to our great nation — Rea­gan com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the USSR dur­ing the Cold War was Polit­i­cal Genius.
• Iran is a mor­tal threat to our nation and any­one who attempts to talk to them is trai­tor­ous scum — sell­ing weapons to Iran and then fun­nel­ing the money to start wars in South Amer­ica is clearly in our National interest.
• George Bush kept the nation safe after 9–11 (NOTE: the Anthrax attacks, the DC Sniper and Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina don’t count. Also, the fact that 9–11 hap­pened on his watch despite receiv­ing a secu­rity brief­ing specif­i­cally warn­ing of the attack doesn’t count either.)
• Social Secu­rity, Mei­d­care, pub­lic school­ing, pub­lic libraries, fire depart­ments, police depart­ments and the US Mil­i­tary are as Amer­i­can as Apple Pie — uni­ver­sal health­care is ZOMGDEATHPANELSOCIALISM!!
• George W Bush is a reg­u­lar ‘ole Texas rancher just like you and me despite the fact that he was born in Con­necti­cut, attended two Ivy League schools, bought the Craw­ford ranch just before run­ning for pres­i­dent, sold it imme­di­ate after leav­ing office and is ter­ri­fied of horses.
• The two guys at the cen­ter of the Water­gate and Iran-Contra scan­dals are trust­wor­thy voices in dis­cus­sions of cur­rent national pol­icy and should be taken at face-value.

…and my addi­tion that I heard some time back on twit­ter and still quote to this day:

Fol­low up:
I loved this bit of video from MSNBC that sums up how I’m feel­ing about a great deal of Amer­ica these days: