Quotulatiousness

August 23, 2020

Trudeau’s hopes for re-election hinge on promising “an organic chicken in every pot and a solar panel on every shed”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Line wonders who the hell the Liberals think they are:

It may have been easy to miss amid the news coming out of Ottawa, but as the government lost its finance minister, appointed Chrystia Freeland to yet another job, prorogued parliament, halted testimony into its latest scandal, prepared for the announcement of a new Conservative Party of Canada leader and braced for a likely second wave of COVID-19, the prime minister promised to announce a transformative agenda. One that promises sweeping social change, and a wholesale re-invention of our economy in line with the greenest ambitions. We here at The Line have but one question.

Who the hell do these people think they are?

It is obvious to anyone who has been reading the news and possesses even residual brain function why the prime minister would like to be talking about a plan for transformative change. Talking about all the amazing things he could do for Canadians with borrowed money beats talking about his government’s bumbling of the WE file and the departure of now-former finance minister Bill Morneau.

Promising an organic chicken in every pot and a solar panel on every shed is obviously more appealing to Trudeau than repeating the last month. But it is astonishing to us — as jaded as we have undeniably become — that the government is talking about this instead of the necessary steps needed to shore up this country ahead of a likely second wave of COVID-19.

This government has a mandate to respond to the emergency, by mere unlucky virtue of being in power at the moment the virus hit. It is the duty of every Canadian government to safeguard the wellbeing of the population, full stop. But the emergency, contrary to what you may believe if you’ve been reading Liberal Party HQ memos, is not over. We have an urgent need to secure more medical equipment, to harden our long-term care facilities, to prevent any further lockdowns from derailing a fragile economic recovery, to ensure the resiliency of critical supply chains, and to shore up our health-care system. This is what every Canadian official should be focused on right now.

[…]

But can anyone maintain faith that the Liberals will stick to their knitting when we hear buzzwords like “transformative” social change? Sweeping climate-change reforms? Engineering a new green economy? They are all fine notions — let’s put them to the people and vote on them. Until calling that election is feasible (mid-pandemic, it is not) this government simply does not have the mandate to undertake such far-reaching efforts.

It’s easy to forget now, but only nine months ago this government was reduced to a minority of seats in parliament. The Liberals lost the popular vote, and saw one million of their own prior voters abandon them. They are only in government because the Conservatives, to the surprise of no one, found several novel and exciting new ways to fail.

July 28, 2020

A rosy hypothetical about the US 2020 elections

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

David Warren‘s not committed to this scenario being accurate, although elements of it are clearly based in reality:

Donald Trump addresses a rally in Nashville, TN in March 2017.
Photo released by the Office of the President of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.

Arguably, the American people have a handle on this. Their strategy is to support Biden and the Democrats publicly, to save their jobs, discourage doxing, and avoid vicious attacks from “friends” on Facebook. Then come November, they vote for a Republican supermajority, including a Trump sweep of the Electoral College, and a GOP landslide in the House of Representatives. Thanks to the secret ballot, they can say they voted for Biden afterwards, if he is still alive. (Has anyone checked on the dear old guy in his basement?)

That Trump will lose badly will be obvious to everyone until the election results come in. The younger constituency has been thoroughly indoctrinated by the radicals who captured schools and universities, but will, as usual, rarely turn up to vote. There will be a huge volume of fraudulent mail-in ballots — nine-tenths of them Democrat — but the Natted States Postal Service will fail to deliver them on time. Desperate efforts by Antifa and BLM to keep the riots going will substantially reduce the urban leftie vote. The meltdown of the meejah talking heads, on the night of November 3rd, will be even more amusing than their meltdown in 2016. Many will succumb to the Covid virus, by morning.

Not to be political, because I never am — but I did have a long history of correctly guessing election results when I was myself practising the demonic art. (Journalism.) I was, for instance, a polite “never Trumper” even after I’d been deleted by my newspaper employers (who felt they didn’t need “token conservatives” any more). But I did think, against all the odds, that Trump would win. This was because I try not to let my own prejudices interfere with my observations. My reasoning was simple. There were lots of people who loved Trump, and very few who loved Hillary Clinton. Therefore, the latter would lose. (This also explains how I predicted Obama’s victories.)

June 14, 2020

The cat’s in the bag … once. Twice is a different matter altogether

Filed under: Economics, Government, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

David Warren discusses some specific cats and bags:

A building burning in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.
Photo by Hungryogrephotos via Wikipedia.

You can get a cat into a bag twice, as someone said (I think it was me); but the second time it has to be dead. This would be the reasoning behind my prediction that a second general lockdown will not even be attempted; but it must be qualified. For many of the people who imposed the first one were demonstrably insane, and they haven’t yet been removed from public office.

The same could be said about our impending “summer of love,” or hot season of race riots, already endured a half-century ago. That cat has been put into that bag before. This time is bound to be a different story.

It is fairly strictly a party question, now. The “theory” behind the lockdowns — to avoid overloading the hospitals in Manhattan — proved a crock, but there is a more cogent alternative theory. The Democrats in Natted States Merica guessed that destroying the “Trump economy,” and encouraging “peaceful” riots in the cities, was the only way they could defeat Trump, having tried other methods to remove him. And for a party of convinced abortionists, defeating Trump takes priority over mere human lives. We’ll see in November whether their Caracas strategy is the final winner.

To be fair, as they say at Instapundit, the Repubs have historically played along with this, and agreed to take responsibility and blame for almost purely Democrat measures. A good example is race, where the party of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, eugenic birth control to reduce the black population, and Jim Crow laws, presents itself to captive media as the champion of the black man against “systemic racism”; while the party of Lincoln apologizes for itself. That the devil is at large in American politics is, to my mind, an irresistible hypothesis.

The refusal of this Trump fellow to play this game, as his predecessors did, drives Democrats berserk. He actually fights back, to their consternation. It didn’t help that they were so proximate to berserk already.

May 24, 2020

Zuby on why Joe Biden’s “you ain’t black” comment is one of the most racist things said by any US politician recently

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I’d embed all the tweets here, but the page loading speed would be monumentally slow, so here’s the initial tweet and I’ve scraped the text from the rest and put it in blockquotes:

Every black person is aware of the power and pain of being considered an ‘outsider’ within one’s own ‘race’.

This happens everywhere, but it is a common phenomenon particularly amongst Black Americans, due to history and culture. (2/14)

—

You are probably familiar with terms like ‘Uncle Tom’, ‘coon’, ‘house n*gga’, ‘coconut’, ‘Bounty’ and ‘race traitor’.

These slurs are used to demean black people by stripping them of their ‘Blackness’. (3/14)

—

ALL black conservatives, libertarians, centrists, or even moderate liberals have been on the receiving end of at least one of these slurs.

Usually levied by another black person, but occasionally by a particularly bold ‘woke white progressive’ type. (4/14)

—

This form of ostracisation is particularly painful for Black Americans. Who are largely disconnected from their African roots due to the horrors of slavery.

As a substitute, many cling to a fuzzy concept of ‘Blackness’. For the sake of identity and community. (5/14)

—

So, to be considered ‘not black’ is like being an outcast of a community that often already feels alienated… (6/14)

—

I am not American and I do not speak on behalf of anybody but myself. These are my own thoughts.

My name is Nzubechukwu and my heritage is of the Igbo tribe in Anambra state in Nigeria 🇳🇬

So NOBODY can take my ‘Blackness’ from me! They will look foolish trying! (7/14)

—

Most Black Americans don’t have this SOLID sense of heritage.

People (of all colours) know this and weaponise it against them to prevent individuals from stepping out of the ‘groupthink’.

Anyone who is perceived to go ‘against’ ‘The Black Community’ must be punished. (8/14)

—

Left-wing politicians, activists and professional race hustlers have used this psychological warfare to keep black people ‘in check’ and voting for them for many decades.

It’s demeaning, discriminatory, and it strips black people of our agency. (9/14)

—

So, when Biden suggested that ‘you ain’t Black’ if you consider voting for Trump instead of him, he exposed a much deeper form of racism.

The sense of ‘ownership’ of Black people. Unearned allegiance and entitlement.

It was a vile statement… (10/14)

—

But it was also honest. Because that’s how a lot of these politicians and ‘progressives’ really feel about black people.

Like they own us. (11/14)

—

If you were born black, then you will die black. There is no such thing as being ‘politically black’. This is nonsense designed to CONTROL you and keep you needy.

NOBODY can take away your ‘Blackness’. Your ‘Black Card’ is your birthright. Regardless of who you vote for. (12/14)

—

I would never dream of telling anyone who they must vote for, based on their skin colour nor genitalia.

That would be extremely arrogant, condescending and discriminatory.

Be VERY suspicious of anybody who talks like that. They want to control your mind. (13/14)

—

That is all. I hope you enjoyed my TED talk.

Much love. 👊🏾

Zuby
#ImStillBlack

H/T to Darleen for posting the link to David Thompson’s blog.

May 15, 2020

Canada’s weird election laws

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley points out some of the oddities of the federal Elections Act:

“2019 Canadian federal election – VOTE” by Indrid__Cold is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

It seems like about a hundred years ago, but one of the disquieting revelations of last year’s federal election campaign was that the Elections Act’s rules covering third-party spending are completely bananas.

Readers may recall Elections Canada warning environmental groups that they couldn’t just go on spending money in the fight against climate change without registering as third parties, with all the paperwork and bureaucracy that entails, all because People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier had supposedly made it a “partisan issue.” Now we have another bunch of overripe bananas on our hands: As the National Post first reported, the Commissioner of Canada Elections is investigating an anti-abortion organization called RightNow for having allegedly “recruited, trained and coordinated volunteers that were directed to over 50 campaigns” during the 2019 campaign.

RightNow’s mission is to identify pro-life candidates with a chance of winning, and connect them with volunteers eager to help them with their nomination and election campaigns. Readers may not find this particularly controversial. Members and supporters of all manner of groups, most famously and numerously labour unions, campaign alongside political candidates all the time. A quick rummage around Facebook from last year’s campaign finds both Toronto NDP MP Andrew Cash (who was eventually defeated) and Nova Scotia Liberal candidate Bernadette Jordan (who is now federal fisheries minister) thanking Unifor members wearing “Unifor Votes” t-shirts for their canvassing help. Photos on Unifor’s own Facebook page chronicle an October 5th event in Winnipeg called “Politics and Pancakes event plus canvassing for (NDP MP) Daniel Blaikie.”

[…]

At first blush, there doesn’t seem to be anything legally untoward with this — or indeed what RightNow was doing on a much smaller scale. (USW claimed $1.1 million in third-party expenses, PSAC $345,000, CUPE $161,000. RightNow splashed out a whopping $8,255.71.) “Volunteer labour” is explicitly exempt from the Elections Act prohibition against third parties donating to political parties or candidates, either in cash or in kind. But in an April 22nd letter to Albertos Polizogopoulos, RightNow’s legal counsel, the commissioner’s director of investigations, Mylène Gigou, argued that “the recruiting, training and coordinating of volunteers are core political activities of a political campaign” — and in performing those activities, RightNow may have “circumvented” the third-party donation prohibition.

This is, of course, preposterous. On what principle would we allow members or supporters of third parties to volunteer in election campaigns — as any healthy democracy ought to — while prohibiting spending so much as a dime to recruit said volunteers? “Training” or “coordinating” could be defined as narrowly as telling people what sorts of things to say on people’s doorsteps and what sorts of things not to. You don’t just turn people loose with your campaign materials, like sheep on a grassy meadow, and hope for the best.

March 26, 2020

QotD: “Gammon”

Filed under: Britain, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I think it’s important to look beyond personalities and current political issues. Yes, Jeremy Corbyn was a repulsive figure, and that played a significant role in Labor’s defeat; yes, Brexit upended British politics. But if we look at the demographics of who voted Labor, it is not difficult to discern larger and longer-term forces in play.

Who voted Labor? Recent immigrants. University students. Urban professionals. The wealthy and the near wealthy. People who make their living by slinging words and images, not wrenches or hammers. Other than recent immigrants, the Labor voting base is now predominantly elite.

This is the Great Inversion – in Great Britain, Marxist-derived Left politics has become the signature of the overclass even as the working class has abandoned it. Indeed, an increasingly important feature of Left politics in Britain is a visceral and loudly expressed loathing of the working class.

To today’s British leftist, the worst thing you can be is a “gammon”. The word literally means “ham”, but is metaphorically an older white male with a choleric complexion. A working-class white male, vulgar and uneducated – the term is never used to refer to men in upper socio-economic strata. And, of course, all gammons are presumed to be reactionary bigots; that’s the payload of the insult.

Catch any Labor talking head on video in the first days after the election and what you’d see is either tearful, disbelieving shock or a venomous rant about gammons and how racist, sexist, homophobic, and fascist they are. They haven’t recovered yet as I write, eleven days later.

Observe what has occurred: the working class are now reactionaries. New Labor is entirely composed of what an old Leninist would have called “the revolutionary vanguard” and their immigrant clients. Is it any wonder that some Laborites now speak openly of demographic replacement, of swamping the gammons with brown immigrants?

It would be entertaining to talk about the obvious parallels in American politics – British “gammons” map straight to American “deplorables”, of course, and I’m not even close to first in noticing how alike Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are – but I think it is more interesting to take a longer-term view and examine the causes of the Great Inversion in both countries.

Eric S. Raymond, “The Great Inversion”, Armed and Dangerous, 2019-12-23.

March 12, 2020

Comrade Sanders

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Arthur Chrenkoff points out the amazing double-standard that has helped Bernie Sanders become a major candidate for the Democratic nomination:

Imagine a credible candidate for a significant elected office – never mind the Presidency of the United States of America, the elected office in the world – who has spent his career cheering on Mussolini, Franco and assorted Latin America authoritarian strongmen, who admires Nazi Germany’s record in job creation and public infrastructure, and who, while eschewing excesses of the past, proclaims himself a proud national socialist, but to reassure all he says he is a democratic national socialist.

Now think of Bernie Sanders and you can once again understand the pervasive double standard in our politics. The hypothetical candidate from the previous paragraph – and he or she are very much hypothetical – would be considered a political and social pariah. Bernie, on the other hand, is lionised by millions and until very recently, prior to the miraculous, Dr Frankenstein-like reanimation of Joe Biden, has been considered a probable presidential candidate by a major political party (coincidentally, of which he has never been a member in his entire career).

To the best of my knowledge, Sanders has never expressed any regret, misgivings or second thoughts about a lifetime of cheerleading for virtually every socialist/communist government around the world, from the Soviet Union to Vietnam and from Cuba to, most recently, Venezuela. It is not like the true nature of these regimes has been a secret until now. Anyone with any modicum of knowledge and common sense could see all long these were all totalitarian dictatorships and mass abusers of human rights, which nationalised poverty and whatever their meager economic or social progress it has been achieved at an unacceptable cost.

[…]

That an old Chomskyite like Sanders came so close to being the Democrat presidential candidate tells of a sickness at the heart of a major political party. Democrats still staunchly believe that Donald Trump is a Russian asset but almost ended up with an actual communist sympathser in charge. History didn’t end in 1989; it repeats itself like vomit rising in your throat.

On a lighter note, Larry Correia is amused at the current top two Democratic contenders:

That is about the most pathetic match up of losers to ever occur in any political contest in the history of ever.

Sanders is a Marxist doofus. His plans are gibberish. His philosophy is bullshit, designed to appeal to wishful thinkers who can’t do math, and greedy ass mooches. But don’t worry, he’s a total squish without an ounce of fight in him, so the DNC’s just gonna roll him over to make from for their chosen one …

Joe Biden! Who is either suffering from dementia, or is just really really dumb. (insert porque no los dos? meme girl here)

They can’t let Joe speak for more than five minutes because they know he’ll go off script and start babbling incoherently. And I’m not talking Trumpian style stream of consciousness yammering, but weird ass, dog faced pony soldiers, corn pop, hairy legs, girl sniffing, finger biting, he’ll slap you, fight me IRL, you wanna step outside?

I’ve known people who worked with Joe Biden years ago, and they all said the same thing. With him, what you see is what you get. There is no act. That’s how Joe Biden is. And he was a weird scoundrel back then, but I’m pretty sure his mind is going now.

On the plus side, Jill Biden moves faster than the Secret Service, and that lady will throw hands. Respect.

All the DNC needed to do was find somebody decent and dignified to run against Trump, but oh no, they went batshit crazy instead, and their anointed one is a doddering, senile, fool, who is so corrupt his son, Crackhead McStripperbang makes millions of dollars for imaginary jobs not at all related to his dad’s position, and they don’t even try and hide it. But don’t worry, Biden’s gonna come from behind, because nothing wins swing states like threatening to slap construction workers who are suspicious that Beto O’Dork actually does want to take their AR-14s.

As somebody who would rather reach into his own chest and pluck out his heart than vote democrat, I will admit that I find it terribly amusing all the liberals I know who are weeping, wailing, and gnashing their teeth about Old Rich White Guys There Are No Women Or People Of Color Running … While Tulsi Gabbard is over there, like WTF?

Sorry, progs. She said hurtful things about Hillary, so the media and Google basically Thanos-snapped her into dust. Meanwhile, the right are eagerly betting on whether Nikki Haley is going to run in 2024 or not … So who are the real misogynist bigots?

March 3, 2020

Michael Bloomberg, self-appointed nanny

Filed under: Food, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Via Instapundit, Karen Kataline shares a look at the things that bother Michael Bloomberg about you:

Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg speaking with supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona on 1 February, 2020.
Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.

Take Michael Bloomberg … please! What drives this man with the freedom to enjoy his wealth in 65 billion different ways, to spend his time trying to curtail the freedoms and choices of others, even down to the size soda they drink and the amount of salt they ought to be allowed to sprinkle on their spinach?

Coloradans know all too well that the former New York Mayor and Democratic Presidential Candidate spent boatloads of cash pushing state legislators to clamp down on their God-given right to defend themselves and their families. He has pushed freedom-sucking and blatantly biased “Red Flag” bills in numerous other states around the country.

Mayor Busybody simply can’t stop telling others what to do. It seems to be an obsession with him — or maybe, a compulsion too. 

I gained insight into this when I returned to a New York Times article from 2009 that described Bloomberg’s eating habits.

    “He dumps salt on almost everything, even saltine crackers. He devours burnt bacon and peanut butter sandwiches. He has a weakness for hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and fried chicken, washing them down with a glass of merlot. And his snack of choice? Cheez-Its.”

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is about control. Controlling one’s out-of-control thoughts, feelings, and behavior by attempting to control his external environment. Consciously or unconsciously, those afflicted do this in vain, to the point where they feel unable to control the compulsion as well (as in excessive hand-washing).

Most sufferers aren’t dangerous unless they have 65 billion dollars and a God-complex.

The Times went on to report this delicious insight:

    “… he (Bloomberg) is known to grab food off the plates of aides and, occasionally, even strangers. (‘Delicious,’ he declared recently, after swiping a piece of fried calamari from an unsuspecting diner in Staten Island.)”

Behavior like this exhibits a staggering and extreme lack of boundaries. The Times seems to only snicker at this, but it’s painfully clear that Bloomberg has great difficulty respecting the basic boundaries of civil society. No wonder it’s so easy for him to help himself to your freedoms and your choices when he can’t stop helping himself to your calamari.

February 28, 2020

Is the world ready for Trump versus Bernie?

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

At Rotten Chestnuts, Severian considers the strong possibility that Bernie Sanders will capture the Democratic presidential nomination and face Donald Trump in the general election:

Before we get into it, can we all just pause for a second to savor the delicious irony of the Democrats suddenly discovering, after all these many many many years, that Socialism is bad? I almost feel sorry for poor ol’ Bernie. For going on four decades now, the Dems have treated him like the little kid at the grown-ups’ table. Who hasn’t been there on Thanksgiving? “Mommy, Uncle Henry’s breath smells really bad.” We’re all thinking it, kiddo, but you can’t say it. They’ve been silently agreeing with him about the need to turn America into the USSA all these years, and now they’re gonna take him behind the woodshed for it? Really?

This is point #1 in the argument, increasingly common out here in the political badlands, that Bernie Sanders is Bizarro World Donald Trump. Back in 2016, the weirdest thing for those of us not wedded to Team Republican — for that vanishingly rare breed, that is, who regard politics as politics, not sportsball in neckties — was how normal Trump sounded. This guy is supposed to be the ultimate anti-Establishment candidate, right? So why is he saying stuff that has been GOP orthodoxy since the 1970s? And why are they hammering him for it?

[…]

This is where he’s most dangerous. Like Trump was in 2016, Bernie 2020 can be seen as a pure protest candidate, a giant “fuck you” to The System. Hell, in my increasingly frequent black-pill moments, I contemplate voting for the guy — we’re not voting our way out of what’s coming, as Z Man always says, so we might as well get started. A few years of life under the Septuagenarian Stalin will give us some valuable prep for when things get really interesting under La Presidenta por Vida Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Moreover, there can be great power in being the only guy in the room who’s willing to state the obvious. In this case, it has been obvious for a long time that the Democratic Party are a bunch of godless commies. Literally commies, or at least Bolshie-curious. Obvious, but always verboten to say … until now. Sanders has a rabid base that, even if you assume the “official” numbers are all lies, can’t be much less than 20% of the entire Party. Those hardcore Bernie Bros can’t possibly have any illusions about who he is and what he wants. That’s what they want, too, and again: twenty percent. The Media paints anyone to the Right of Rachel Maddow as a “white supremacist,” but can you imagine how different American politics would be if 20% of the GOP were open, avowed Klansmen?

Those are the “positives,” for lack of a better term, of Bernie being the Democratic nominee. If this is what The People really, really want — and it’s crystal clear that a lot of them do — then we should at least have a good, long, hard “national conversation” about giving it to them. Cuba, as Bernie keeps informing us, does after all have 100% literacy and free health care, and the Chinese are great at lifting people out of poverty. Let’s talk about that, live on national television, and see where it takes us.

February 22, 2020

Andrew Sullivan on the “inconvenient pioneers”

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Along with a mandatory worry piece on Trump and some positive news on the British economy under Boris Johnson, Andrew Sullivan noted the dog that didn’t bark about either Republican or Democratic pioneers:

Mayor Pete Buttigieg speaking with supporters at a town hall at the State Historical Museum in Des Moines, Iowa, 12 January 2020.
Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.

Every now and again, I take a moment to take stock of how deep gay integration has gotten in my adult lifetime. This past week, our politics featured two relatively young men, on both sides of the political divide, whose sexual orientation is both clear and irrelevant. Pete Buttigieg has been at the top of the field in Iowa and New Hampshire, one of seven remaining candidates, and in the circular flamethrower squad of Wednesday’s debate, he once again held his own. More than that: He was relentless in his attacks on Amy Klobuchar and more than a little blunt about Bernie Sanders’s plans to take private health insurance away from everyone (something that doesn’t even happen in socialized health care in Britain). There was not the slightest whiff of defensiveness about him.

His moderate politics (on most subjects) is filtered through a seemingly brutal, calculating Rhodes Scholar–style ambition. And why can’t gays as well as straights harbor that? It’s fantastic also that he is a man of Christian faith — like countless other gays and lesbians in America. Who would have imagined that the pioneering gay figure of 2020 would be a married Christian who got a standing ovation in a Fox News town hall? But that’s old news now.

It’s also fantastic that, for the most part, his sexual orientation is ignored. Yes, the queer left hates him — but they hate a lot of gay success in public life if it doesn’t exactly fit their ideological niche. And Rush Limbaugh indeed took a slightly homophobic dig the other day. But I doubt Trump would openly use Pete’s orientation as a way to demean him. And that’s not just because Trump is not personally homophobic but because he knows it would look ugly, and be counterproductive. That’s how far we’ve come.

Richard Grenell has not subjected himself to getting elected anywhere, but, like Buttigieg, he’s a classic careerist D.C. meritocrat (and why the fuck not?). From the heartland, he got a degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School and then attached himself to Republican pols — notably George Pataki and George W. Bush, who made him communications director for the U.S. seat at the U.N., a post he held for seven years. Launching his own communications shop, Grenell subsequently worked Fox News gigs even as he was a signatory to an amicus brief in defense of the right of gay couples to marry. By all accounts he has been a disaster as ambassador to Germany, trolling the E.U. and German elites, although I doubt Trump sees his regular Twitter provocations as a liability.

But check out a simple video of Grenell being sworn in for the Germany job. Mike Pence, of all people, officiates as Grenell’s longtime partner, Matt Lashey, holds the family Bible. This week his appointment as acting director of National Intelligence was widely panned — and is not expected to last long. But he nonetheless became the first-ever openly gay member of the Cabinet in U.S. history. You missed that? All the better. But for some of us, it’s a quiet landmark tarred only by the fact that most gay groups won’t even acknowledge it. The Human Rights Campaign’s Twitter feed has made no mention at all — even as they are rightly touting the first lesbian mother in Congress. Why is the first openly gay Cabinet member a nonevent? Because he’s a conservative. And to the activist left and too many of the Establishment liberals in the gay movement, that means he’s not really gay.

My politics tilt more toward Buttigieg than Grenell — but a moment like this should not be filtered entirely through ideology. History matters too. When I was a very lonely openly gay figure in Washington in the 1980s and 1990s, the idea that I would live to see an openly gay and successful presidential candidate and an openly gay Cabinet member at the same time would have been preposterous. And now it’s virtually normal. I’ll take that.

U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell speaking with attendees at the 2019 Student Action Summit hosted by Turning Point USA in West Palm Beach, Florida on 20 December 2019.
Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.

Update: Inconvenient typo in the headline fixed.

February 7, 2020

Modern day Kremlinology and show trials

Filed under: Government, History, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Rotten Chestnuts, Severian explains why the Soviet Union’s Moscow Trials were so important well outside the borders of the USSR:

Krushchev, Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders review the Revolution parade in Red Square, 1962.
LIFE magazine photo by Stan Wayman.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the Moscow Trials set the course of 20th century history. If you want to be a dictator in peacetime, this is pretty much how you have to do it — see e.g. every other Communist regime ever. The downside, though, is that you cost yourself a lot of irreplaceable technical expertise. I’m not saying Hitler would’ve called Barbarossa off if Stalin hadn’t purged all his generals — Hitler was, of course, crazy — but he surely would’ve thought twice about it, the plan relying as it did on the utter incompetence of the now-leaderless Red Army.

The show trials also gave birth to “Kremlinology”, the art and science of reading Soviet tea leaves to find out who’s really in charge. Stalin didn’t invent “elimination by promotion”, but he was a master of it. In Stalin’s USSR, being “promoted” to some big, important-sounding position was an all-but-guarantee that you’re going to get shot. Seemingly minor functionaries, on the other hand, really ran things in the countryside. E.g. Khrushchev, a Red Army commissar — not an unimportant position by any means, but hardly a glory post either. Stalin’s generals knew who he was, but few outside the Red Army’s high command did. And since Stalin liked to signal major policy shifts with articles in obscure publications — he once wrote an article on lingustics that previewed some huge change — you had to be very wired in to figure out who was really a comer.

Let’s imagine, then, that somehow the Moscow Show Trials failed. That Zinoviev, say, was acquitted, because (take your pick) he’d obviously been tortured, the charges were ludicrous, there was zero hard evidence against him, or any combination of the above. Stalin staked his entire position on the outcome of the Trials. What if he’d lost? How long do you think the Boss would’ve remained Boss? A few weeks? A few days? Hours, maybe?

Nancy Pelosi is no Stalin, of course, but whoever survives November’s electoral bloodbath had better start working on Secret Speech 2.0 the very second the last vote is counted. I was doubtful about the 2020 presidential election until they actually decided to show-trial Donald Trump. Since there’s no way in hell they’re going to get a 2/3 majority to vote to convict, the whole thing looks like not just a witch hunt, but a botched witch hunt. No one, not even Koba the Dread, is politically strong enough to survive one of those.

January 21, 2020

Those magical couple of weeks when politicians really pretend to care about Iowa

Filed under: Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Colby Cosh discusses some of those puzzling-to-Canadians electoral oddities of our southern neighbours:

The actual, real, honest-to-God voting part of the U.S. presidential nominating process will begin with the Iowa state precinct caucuses on Feb. 3, two weeks from Monday. Every four years, at around this time, I rediscover the astonishing opacity of this process and marvel anew. The Iowa caucuses themselves, which have been the paramount preoccupation of American politics for months, serve as an excellent example.

You may have seen C-SPAN footage of the weird precinct caucus goings-on. These incorporate no balloting. Instead, you see small roomfuls of enthusiasts forming physical groupings, chatting about who they ought to support, and then merging smaller “non-viable” groups until the number of groups matches the number of delegates to be sent further on in the process.

“Further on to where?”, you may ask. To the Iowa Democratic Party county conventions, silly; but those don’t happen until March 21. These conventions send delegates to the party conventions for each congressional district (on the morning of April 25), and also to the state convention (June 13).

The actual makeup of the Iowa delegation to the national convention isn’t fully decided until that last date — yet an estimate of the statewide “result” will be provided magically on the evening of the 3rd. Even if no candidate drops out before the district and state conventions, this guess isn’t exactly set in stone. If there are dropouts, the final Iowa vote in the national roll call may look nothing at all like the estimates from the evening. Yet it’s these semi-fictitious, inferential estimates that will actually influence the course of the race in the other 49 states (and in the non-state delegations).

From a Canadian standpoint it all seems like a hell of a way to run a country.

January 10, 2020

Pierre Poilievre’s bid for federal Conservative leader

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley on the varying reactions to the notion of Pierre Poilievre as Andrew Scheer’s replacement:

Glee is spreading among Liberal partisans at the thought of Pierre Poilievre succeeding Andrew Scheer as Conservative leader. The theory is he is so pugnacious, so obnoxious, so poisonously, sneeringly partisan as to be literally unelectable.

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre at a Manning Centre event, 1 March 2014.
Manning Centre photo via Wikimedia Commons.

It is true that the man longtime Conservative cabinet minister John Baird nicknamed “Skippy,” in tribute to his enthusiastic Question Period performances, does not suffer from an excess of gravitas — though Poilievre’s reported support for his leadership bid from Baird and Jenni Byrne, a former senior adviser to Stephen Harper, lend him some within party ranks. His candidacy hasn’t made any measurable dent thus far in public opinion polls. And the opposition war rooms would certainly have fun unpacking his baggage.

Never mind Poilievre questioning the value-for-money proposition of compensating residential school victims (for which he apologized), or his use of the term “tar baby” in the House of Commons (for which he did not, and nor should he have, because it was a perfectly apt and inoffensive analogy in the context he used it), or the dreaded Green Light from the Campaign Life Coalition. Having been Harper’s parliamentary secretary, Liberals will blame him for every supposed atrocity of the Harper era.

All that said, the notion that people widely viewed as pugnacious, obnoxious and partisan-to-a-fault can’t win in Canadian politics is belied by reality. A quick glance around the federation brings Jason Kenney, Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau immediately to mind.

That’s not to say they won because of those character traits: Kenney’s and Ford’s leadership opponents would likely have fared just as well. Trudeau hoodwinked many with his Sunny Ways fraud, but he might well have won as the classic born-to-rule Liberal he turned out to be. If his government continues venting credibility at the rate it established late in its first mandate, the next Conservative leader could well become prime minister no matter who he is.

After recounting the dismal tale of Sheer’s “leadership”, Selley recounts a favourite story about Boris Johnson which contrasts strongly with the Milk Dud’s occupancy of the job.

Again, that degree of swagger and eloquence is far too much to ask of Canadian politicians. But it shouldn’t be too much to ask a party leader to have enough confidence in his party, his members, his movement and his ideas to arouse him to at least some degree of annoyance when they’re unfairly deprecated. If Conservative members aren’t excited by the prospect of a Poilievre leadership, they shouldn’t be half as mortified as Liberals think they should be.

January 5, 2020

QotD: Voting for President

Filed under: Humour, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

Voting for president is a lot like sex — and not just because it takes place every four years in the solitude of a semi-private booth. Both are intensely personal activities that nonetheless can have profound public consequences. We might add that both often involve drug-and-alcohol-fueled delusions and morning-after feelings of guilt, shame, and recrimination.

The Editors, “Who’s Getting Your Vote?”, Reason, 2004-11.

December 30, 2019

The federal Conservative Party’s dilemma

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Canadians currently have two left-of-centre federal parties (three if we count the Greens), but only one party on the right (Maxime Bernier’s PPC), leaving the right-of-left-of-centre to the hapless, leaderless, useless, spineless, craven Conservative Party. “Conservative” in name only, of course, for those of you who don’t follow Canadian politics (and neither blame nor shame to you if you fall into that happy group). Bernier’s been labouring under an almost complete media blackout except where engineered drama can be used to demonize him or members of his party, so the roughly one-third of Canadian voters who would prefer an actual conservative alternative don’t really have anyone to vote for.

Jay Currie offers his analysis of the Conservative dilemma (but he’s also a known PPC sympathizer, so good Canadians must pay no attention to what he says):

Frank Graves and Michael Valpy ask the question, “What if the Conservatives had a ‘centrist’ leader?” like Rona Ambrose or Peter MacKay. To their credit Graves and Valpy recognize that while a centrist Conservative party would appeal to the media and various elites in Canada it would effectively maroon the 30% of Canadians who might loosely be described as “populist”.

A billboard in Toronto, showing Maxime Bernier and an official-looking PPC message.
Photo from The Province – https://theprovince.com/opinion/columnists/gunter-berniers-legitimate-position-on-immigration-taken-down-by-spineless-billboard-company/wcm/ecab071c-b57d-4d93-b78c-274de524434c

I think Graves and Valpy are right and I can’t wait for that exact outcome.

Scheer managed to hoodwink a lot of natural populists with a combination of Liberal-lite policies and some goofy socon gestures (I am not sure Pride Parade non-attendance really counts for much with the serious socons.)

Graves and Valpy maintain that this was enough to avoid “orphaning the party’s biggest lump, and he more or less cut off oxygen to Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada (PPC).” It might have been last election but if the CPC goes centrist with its next leader, the lump will be looking elsewhere.

I am fairly certain that the CPC will go for a centrist leader if only because there are really no populist candidates available to it. Pierre Poilievre might fill the bill but it is not obvious that the CPC will be willing to support an MP who is as “direct” as Poilievre.

Which will leave “the lump” looking for a home. Graves and Valpy give a rundown of the lump’s core issues,

    Like the United States, the United Kingdom and sizeable chunks of Western Europe, Canada has a significant portion of citizens — about 30 per cent — who are attracted to the current psychographic and demographic binge of ordered populism. They are profoundly economically pessimistic and mistrustful of science and the elites. They have no interest in climate change, they don’t really see an active role for public institutions and believe there are too many immigrants. Of those immigrants coming to Canada, they think that too many are not white.

Other than the dig about thinking “too many are not white”, that is a pretty good summary. (On the “not white” thing, I suspect it is more nuanced than that: more along the lines of the current Quebec government’s desire to preserve its culture in the face of immigration.)

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