Category: Politics

"[A]n appalling stance"

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From today’s Globe and Mail:

Alone among major Western nations, the United States has refused to sign a declaration presented Thursday at the United Nations calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality.

In all, 66 of the UN’s 192 member countries signed the nonbinding declaration — which backers called a historic step to push the General Assembly to deal more forthrightly with any-gay discrimination. More than 70 UN members outlaw homosexuality, and in several of them homosexual acts can be punished by execution.

Another entry on the list of reasons why Americans will eventually regard the past eight years as a shameful period in their history.

How to throw a tantrum with ink & paper

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Do you remember watching The Mighty Hercules as a kid? Remember when Daedalus would think that he’d gotten one over on Hercules and he’d be all smarmy and pathetic and mean? And then, inevitably he’d lose and Herc would drag his ass around town and then the meanness was gone and he’d just be smarmy and pathetic?

That’s kinda like what the Toronto Sun is looking like these days. Here’s their front page from yesterday:

Now that’s professional headline writin’!

A $1.75 MacGuffin

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It would seem that Canada’s opposition parties — the three largest left and centre-left parties: the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois — are about to merge. Agreements have been reached as to who should lead the party and hold cabinet positions, and a missive has been dispatched to the Governor General.

Back in October, following the federal election, I joked that the left wing parties should unite, but didn’t think they’d actually try it. Indeed, I don’t think they would have, but for the strategic error Stephen Harper made recently to change campaign finance rules and take away the $1.75 earned by political parties for each vote they gained. That move, coupled with other intended policies and an empty set of solutions for the current economic situation, would inevitably have brought about a major move by the opposition. Normally this would have taken the form of voting down the budget and spurring another election. Instead, the opposition is uniting and hoping to avoid an election. This would win them great gratitude from the public, who would rather juggle rattlesnakes than vote again this year.

Not surprisingly, though, many are upset about this, and the debate is well underway. Witness the nearly 1300 comments on the Globe and Mail’s article posted just 24 hours ago (which Mathew Ingram dissects) or the nearly 3500 on the CBC article. Unfortunately, because of my schedule, I’ve had little time to absorb any of this. Pity; I suspect we’re witnessing one of the more interesting events in Canadian politics in my lifetime.

"I hope this story has an epilogue."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

More thoughts on last night’s US election:

For all the progress that was made last night, American “morality” politics still has some issues to work out. As happy as I am that Massachusetts voters approved a ban on greyhound racing, I’m appalled that California — California — voted to ban gay marriage. So did Arizona and Florida, but California comes as a surprise. On the plus side, this should help Canadian tourism. Attention gay American couples: your dollar will buy your wedding about 16.7% more fabulous up here. And hey, you might even be able to get Joey to play the accordion at your ceremony.

.:.

Last night, during John McCain’s gracious and eloquent concession speech, I remarked to my wife that the real John McCain showed up the second he knew he could no longer win. It’s bothered us both that McCain stooped to such pandering and self-mutilation in an attempt to win, and we clearly weren’t the only ones. Chris Jones has been writing in Esquire about the McCain campaign for some time, and today had this to say:

The future unfolded exactly as they envisioned it that night. Optimism won.

But something was lost in New Hampshire, too. That was the last time I saw McCain the way I first saw him. By the time Super Tuesday rolled around, he had grown smaller and smaller — not just in my viewfinder, but in my estimation. He had traded optimism for cynicism. He was irritable and sometimes seemed grasping, as though he would do whatever it took to win. John McCain, the politician, seemed to be on the verge of outflanking John McCain, the man.

Then he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. I’d like to think someone else picked her for him, but how’s that the better option? She represented everything wrong with the Republican Party — the same intolerant elements that McCain had fought so hard against years earlier — and now there she was, smiling on the stage beside him. Historians will no doubt cite the collapsing economy and the legacy of George W. Bush as impossible obstacles for McCain to overcome. But for me, he lost the election when he picked Palin, because he lost the last vestige of his former self.

By Election Night, I’d given up trying to find what was left of him.

…

I couldn’t help remembering how this all started, and most of all I couldn’t help remembering the John McCain I used to know. I wondered how long it would take him to shed the candidate’s skin and become the man he was. I wondered if it was even possible in the time he has left.

I hope it is. I hope this story has an epilogue.

Me too. The old John McCain is a lot more valuable to his country than this recent incarnation.

Welcome back

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Four years ago, the day after the re-election of George W. Bush, I wrote this while trying to make sense of the previous evening’s events:

I firmly believe that just over half of those who voted (and those who did not vote who were complicit by their absence) had looked square at the past four years, an era that will, within a single generation, be regarded as a black mark on their nation’s history, and said “Again. Let’s do it again.” I believe they were either hopelessly ignorant, or were more corrupted by their own politics than I could have imagined.

I simply could not reconcile this with what I knew of America. This was a country that had made itself the lone remaining superpower. This was the country of equality and victorious war and comedy and science and cultural ubiquity and remarkable turnarounds. This was a country that had more than once looked at itself in the mirror, hated what it saw and led bloody revolution against its own prejudices and problems. This was my country’s constant ally, closest business partner and friend of a century. This was a country I’d visited often, where I was equally struck by Texas hospitality and the vitality of New York. Whatever concerns I had with the politics of the land — and I had many — I always counted on the people who lived there to make right what had so obviously gone wrong, as ever they had. But, in the end, it was obvious only to me…and, I suppose, to just fewer than 60 million American voters, as Mr. Bush and his administration had indeed been given another four years in power.

Last night a bit of my faith was restored. It remains to be seen what #44 does with the next four years, but at the very least he’d have to work awfully hard to be worse than #43.

Congratulations, America. That sound you hear? That’s the rest of the world patting you on the back and welcoming you back to the party.

[Image via Spacing]

Bookmark me, kids, I'm a reference!

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’ve noticed incoming traffic on my blog from Wikipedia, of all places. This blog post from 4½ years ago is referenced in the English Wikipedia entry for ‘Movie theater’. Presumably they’re linking to me because, scofflaw that I am, I included the full content of the now-archived Globe and Mail article in my post.

Hey, if I’m the presumptive authority on the death of cheap Tuesday, then I’m ready to lead. Can someone grab their general a Tribute magazine on the way in please? Thanks.

.:.

In other news, this is the funniest thing I saw all day. Courtesy of John Moltz, by way of Joey DeVilla.

OK, OK, I shouldn't have suggested "Here Comes Your Man"

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Having now played Rock Band, I can say that while the drums may be more realistic than the guitar or bass, it’ll still little like playing the drums. I almost think I should have cranked it up to advanced as that would be more like playing the actual drum part to a song. Anyway, fun thing to do with co-workers.

.:.

The worldwide polls for the US presidency: not even close.

Americans may still be undecided, but the rest of the world has made up its mind about who should be elected president of the United States.

A Gallup poll of 70 countries conducted from May through September has found widespread international support for Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

Around the world, respondents favoured Mr. Obama 4 to 1 over Republican John McCain.

[From the Globe and Mail]

Yawn

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Another pointless election, another Conservative minority. No one is surprised by this, though Stephen Harper must be disappointed. With the opposition — especially the Liberals — this weak and the Green party sucking up left-wing votes, this was his best chance for a majority, but he couldn’t quite get there.

Speaking of the Liberals, I’d have to think that the party organizers have already put down a deposit on a hall big enough to hold a leadership convention. Stephane Dion has no doubt picked out his cigarette and blindfold. Meanwhile, the CBC is already asking Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff about their campaign plans.

If the Liberals were smart they’d push a big wedge issue to the forefront of Canadian debate, like abortion or gun control, that will create a fracture in the Conservatives between the moderates and old reformers and divide that vote. However, I shan’t hold my breath waiting for any innovative or progressive tactics from the Liberals. Unite the left, anybody?

Just call me comrade

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I am a capitalist. I’m also a socialist. Those aren’t mutually exclusive, they’re mix-n-match. That’s the new reality.

That was a response I sent by email to my friend Colin during one of the dozens of exchanges we’ve had surrounding the recent banking crisis. We’ve always been a pair of interesting contradictions, he being the conservative Scot with many years in banking but a progressive voice for financial technology, I being the one of the few MBA-laden bankers who sits on the far left of the political spectrum. As such, our discussions are usually lively, especially when we’re separated by a small wooden table and several empty pint glasses.

As I dashed off that email the implications of what I’d written sunk in. I’d always contended that I was both capitalist and socialist — I believe markets should be reasonably free but never unfettered, and I believe governments can both foster economic growth and support social goods like health care — but many I talked to said you couldn’t be both. I don’t quite understand how they could make that argument, since the country we live in is an optimal (if imperfect) marriage of capitalist economic policy and liberal social policy. I suppose we have the cold war to thank for the perception that capitalist and socialist were diametric opposites. I’ve long considered that an outdated and inaccurate distinction, but would nonetheless get questioning looks from friends on both the left and the right.

We’re obviously long past the point where general society will accept that pure socialism can work in isolation, but there are still considerable pockets in western democracies who believe the contrary: that pure, unfettered capitalism is a viable option. I don’t believe these Friedman acolytes are any more grounded in reality than those who subscribe to Marxism, and I think recent events in the American financial system support that. It’s hard to argue that more financial regulation would have hurt, given what’s happened. And while this is only a small sample of events on a short time line, you could point to Canada as an outcome of the long-term effects of the afore-mentioned mix of capitalist and socialist policy.

In any case, to argue that even the most capitalist of democracies — the United States — has no socialist tendencies is silly. National defense is an enormous draw on taxpayer dollars. The government provides old age pensions, welfare, police and fire services, snow plows and national parks, public school funding and endowments for the arts. The degree to which these are funded is always in question, but the fact that someone has deemed these things necessary is an indication that sometimes the social good outweighs the capitalist ideal. I find it odd that this would be seen as anything other than a healthy, moral response, but it has always been challenged by ideologues who see this as black or white, and not as a sliding scale. I suspect those voices will temporarily quiet, given recent events, and especially pending the outcome of the upcoming elections. Democracies are wonderful mechanisms with which to overthrow ideologies, and (again, imperfectly) determine where on the sliding scale between capitalism and socialism their country shall sit.

When writing that email to Colin I was surprised at how I had worded it. Not because it revealed anything new about me, but simply because I had the feeling that he was a little less likely to taunt me for saying it than he would’ve been even six months ago (when he’d have laughed and called me a Communist). I’d be tempted to label that progress, but I’m not sure that standing still while the world changes around me counts.