PALIN AND WALLIN: RIGHT WING DIVAS COMING TO COWTOWN

PALIN (holding dead fish) Coming to Cowtown

WALLIN: Broadcasting Diva and political operator will moderate discussion

Once again trying to prove Phineas T. Barnum’s* truism that that there’s a sucker born every minute, a pair of Calgary promoters are bringing in Sarah Palin to impart her wit and wisdom to the residents of cowtown on March 6. See: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Sarah+Palin+sets+date+with+Calgary/2521080/story.html

In case you missed it, Calgary was the first Canadian city that hosted Karl Rove and George W. Bush in their Canadian pickpocket debuts after they had left office. See: http://darrylraymaker.blogspot.com/2009/02/george-w-bush-is-coming-to-town-as.html and

http://darrylraymaker.blogspot.com/2008/08/fraser-institute-invites-you-to-evening.html

I say ‘pickpocket’ because just as gullible Calgarians shelled out hundreds each to hear Bush and his henchman say nothing of consequence, 1000 of them are expected to pay 150 to 200 dollars for a ticket to receive the same from Palin - unless one considers seeing in the flesh a true celebrity from the dumb and dumber era of infotainment as something of value.

Ah, but I’m being churlish.

The star-studded event will be held at the Palomino Room at Stampede Park - yes, home of the Calgary Stampede and a favorite gathering place for the cowtown’s knuckle-dragging hard right. I say ‘star-studded’ because the event will include a question and answer session moderated by Senator Pamela Wallin, formerly a famous talking head on Canadian television news networks and now a formidable political operator in her own right.

Apart from her career in the media Wallin has displayed an amazing talent for getting governments of Canada of any political stripe to advance her career and resume. First of all the Chretien Liberals gave her the cushy appointment of Canada’s Consul General in the Big Apple where for a number of years she entertained the rich and powerful on behalf of Canada at her swanky Park Avenue digs. When she was done with that the Harper Conservatives put her on the laughable Manley panel to figure out what to do in Afghanistan. After having done such a bang-up job on that assignment – remember the panel said that 1000 extra troops and a little more equipment could do the job in Kandahar - the Harperites then appointed her to the Senate. Not bad for a kid from Wadena, Saskatchewan who once was a member of the far left Waffle group faction of the NDP: See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waffle; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Wallin

Just like Bush and Rove, Palin’s Calgary gig will be her Canadian speaking debut. Christian Darbyshire, one of the promoters of the boondoggle believes that Calgary is an ideal spot for Palin’s one and a half hour drivel because Calgary, like Alaska, is into oil and gas. He said, “She’s got some interesting insights and I think people in Calgary will be very interested in hearing what she has to say.” Probably so, given the thousands around town who share her red neck culture and believe that Barack Obama is about to initiate death panels for granny.

Darbyshire’s partner in the project Andy McCreath showed that he too knew his oats saying that the Palin-Calgary match-up was ideal because, “Calgary is a Republican town,” and that “There’s lots of Americans living in Calgary.” Dead on once again. Since the discovery of the Leduc elephant oil field way back in 1947 Calgary has been hands down the most American and Republican – some would say Texas Republican - of Canadian cities.

Indeed the boys do know their stuff when it comes to marketing big names in these parts. Among the has-beens with checkered pasts they have brought to town and whose pockets they have lined with cash from a gullible public are Tony Blair, Alan Greenspan, Rudy Giuliani, and Colin Powell. Although none of those today would likely win a popularity contest, they have also organized gabfests for the likes of Bill Clinton and Lance Armstrong.

No doubt the former governor and vice presidential candidate, Fox News political analyst, author, and university drop-out will toss enough red meat at what will be her largely hard right audience so that at the end of the day they will give her a rousing standing ovation. After which, of course, she’ll chortle all the way back to her bank in Wasila, Alaska to make the hundred thou or so deposit. A sucker born every minute? You betcha. There will be a thousand of them out at Stampede Park to hear the ditz.
* See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There

BILL CLINTON: TIME TO GIVE IT A REST

The Incredible Shrinking ex-President

The Clinton-Bush Toronto snore fest of a few days ago was as revealing as it was reported to be dull. For one thing, the event proved that Calgary isn’t the only Canadian community to be so crass and insensitive that it would welcome a putative war criminal to speak to its citizens for hundreds of dollars a pop each. Nor was it the only city to reward him with guffaws at his ghost written jokes and a standing ovation after listening to his nonsense.

Predictably, Calgary has been joined by its big bucks, greed is good, sister Canadian community – namely, Bay Street. Hell, the Bay Street pin-striped brigade turned out a crowd of 6000 to hear these two clowns. Calgary couldn’t hold a candle to that. However, the cowtown is still well up there in the crass department. By my last count, it has welcomed no less than three of the Bush outlaws to regale its corporate citizens about shock and awe, the war against terror, and other shibboleths of that sorry administration. Karl Rove, then Bush, and more recently Condi Rice have graced Dallas North – at prices ranging from $400 bucks a head (Bush and Rove) to Condi (the most expensive at $500). Hogtown – a label better applied to Bay Street than the rest of the great city of Toronto – have only had two – Rove and Bush, with Rove generating $700 a head. Bush and Clinton in TO again made Calgary look like pikers, getting up to $2500 a ticket.

Read: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1644965

As might be expected for a man whose classy speeches were a staple of derision on the David Letterman show over the past year, Bush’s repertoire of jokes at the affair included two that dealt with animal fecal matter, and another apparently cribbed from the tired joke file of the disgraced Brian Mulroney. Nonetheless, the crowd chuckled and guffawed and at the end of the day, the two sorry comedians left the city like a couple of absconding pool sharks, a few hundred grand to the good.

Apart from the corporate big wigs and their minions shelling out the big bucks to hear Bush and groveling to him with chuckles and ovations, the big story of the day was that neither Clinton nor Bush knew anything about the new U.S. requirement of Passports for all Canadians going into the States. Well, we shouldn’t be surprised. Bush appointed an Ambassador to Canada whose previous Canadian experience was limited to one previous trip to Niagara Falls and who knew sweet tweet about the country. Clinton’s wife thought that some of the 9/11 terrorists had made their way into the United States from Canada, as did Janet Napolitano, Obama’s new Homeland Security Czar. By the way, Napolitano’s only venture into Canada until now was to see polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba. And people like Jack Granatstein believe that we are anti-American when we get fed up with some of this stuff!

All of which is interesting in a sick sort of way. But what really sticks out in my mind is how far Bill Clinton has fallen. I liked Bill Clinton from the moment he arrived on the political scene. He was thoughtful, smart, and could give a speech like no President before him in my memory. I thought his dalliances were reckless but certainly not impeachable, and the resulting attacks on him were launched largely by right wing Republicans most of which lived in glass houses. I thought he was a good President and was saddened when he stepped down from the Presidency. I even paid to hear him speak once.

But what the hell is he doing traipsing around the world at events such as this where he shares the spotlight with such a twit? With a man who sanctioned torture, was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, lied to and divided the American people, pushed the United States into becoming a pariah state, let New Orleans flow into the Gulf of Mexico, did nothing while the economy went to hell, and rewarded greed like no President before him? I guess he does it for the money. And in the process he diminishes himself daily. Indeed, the Toronto Star thought Bush was the more entertaining of the two. See: http://www.thestar.com/news/columnist/article/642978

I think its time Bill Clinton gave it a rest. He had his turn at the plate. If he wants to make some big bread by giving speeches, he hardly needs to do it with riff-raff like George W. Bush at his side. And there is certainly no reason why he should be interested in salvaging Bush’s legacy or reputation. Better he give more help to Barack Obama who is saddled with the responsibility of cleaning up Bush’s mess.
See also:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/05/29/clinton-bush-conversation-toronto.html

JACK GRANATSTEIN: TAKING A PAGE OUT OF THE BOOK OF JOE McCARTHY

Jack

For years I have watched the illustrious career of Jack Lawrence Granatstein wend its way through my generation. I have read many of his writings (I admit I have to be up for it), and I have intently watched and listened to him on the tube and radio. Granatstein is a genuine political and military history scholar who has earned many university degrees from good schools including a PhD from Duke University. He served in the Canadian Army for ten years and so possesses much more than academic knowledge of that field. He has taught at universities and written over sixty books including some distinguished prize and medal winners. We see his avuncular personage frequently on our television screens providing mostly trenchant and wise observations of historical and current events. Honours and medals have followed him throughout his adult life. By any standard, he is a great Canadian. For more on Granatstein’s career read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow_of_the_Royal_Society_of_Canada.

Alas, he has his blind spots. For example, for some years now he has taken every opportunity to hector Canadians about what he sees as our endemic anti –Americanism, particularly from what he perceives as the Canadian left. He believes Canadian anti-Americanism exists, and he believes it is bad and unfair. He was at it again in a column that appeared in this morning’s Calgary Sun. Unfortunately, as of this writing it has not made it on line. However, I will review it and pass on my comments.

His entrée into the subject is Barack Obama's popularity in Canada. Granatstein asks the question, “How will his presidency sit with the great Canadian anti-American coalition, many Liberals, the New Democratic Party, the Greens, the Bloc Quebecois and all those raging grannies of whatever age who despise the United States and all its works?” His answer was, “Not well, is my guess.” He goes on to say that history leads him to believe that by the summer because of their innate anti-Americanism Canadians will be attacking Obama.

To back up his conclusion, he argues that even though Canadians were largely sympathetic to the U.S. Democratic Party, they denounced even John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton during their terms in office. He writes that Kennedy suffered the wrath of Canadians because of the Bay of Pigs Invasion and for risking nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis.

Well, if there were Canadians who felt that way, they were hardly on the radar screen. I was around in those days and paying some attention to the news. I never observed a helluva lot of antipathy from Canada towards Kennedy at any time. The only Canadian I recall as not having cared too much for Kennedy was John Diefenbaker, who was reported to genuinely dislike the man. But let's say there was a bit of it. Was that anti-Americanism or was it anti - American foreign policy on some level - like, say, the Bay of Pigs Invasion or the growing commitment to the folly of Viet Nam? In any event, at the time of the assassination Kennedy was overwhelmingly in the good books of the vast majority of Canadians.

About Bill Clinton, Granatstein says, “those on the left soon complained about NAFTA and his use of American troops around the world, and Prime Minister Chretien tried hard to camouflage his good relations with the Arkansan.”

Well, again, I recall some pockets of criticism in Canada, but it was hardly discernable, even from those on the left. As far as Chretien trying to hide from his buddy – buddy relationship with Clinton, that is pure bullshit and Granatstein surely knows it. And if there were some Canadians who opposed NAFTA or the U.S. led NATO bombing of the Balkans - and there were - does that make them anti-American, or anti - aspects of American trade policy or foreign policy?

Granatstein says, “The Canadian left sees the US. as the great Satan.” I suppose that explains why most Canadians are so hooked on American culture like its movies, pop stars, fast food joints and cities. He predicts that Obama will ask for further troop commitments in Afghanistan beyond 2011, and that “the response from the anti-American Canadian left will be as vehement as if it had been George W. Bush asking.” But whether people are on the Canadian left (as he describes it) or not, if they oppose such a request, does it make them anti-American? Or could they be merely opponents of come components of American foreign policy that is going nowhere and will likely go nowhere unless there is a troop commitment of some three hundred or four hundred thousand strong?

Granatstein continues his rant saying that when Obama does ask for the troop commitment, “The shouts won’t initially include the same sneers hurled at Bush, but Canadian critics, I suspect, will attack the U.S. and the Obama administration with equal fury. Over time, as Obama fails to live up to expectations - no one could meet the high hopes he has created – new personalist slurs will emerge.”

That is highly doubtful. Canadians whether on the left or right, recognize honesty and competence as paramount values in leadership. Obama has both in spades. Granatstein’s pal Bush, had neither.

After a little more haranguing and whining which makes him sound more like Rush Limbaugh rather than the scholar we take him for, Granatstein concludes, “Obama is on his Canadian honeymoon today, but tomorrow he is almost certain to become merely another target for those who reject America’s world view. Canadian attitudes almost demand this.”

That there will be Canadian critics of Obama’s policies there is no doubt. But they will certainly not be critics of the American people and probably not personal critics of the President himself, unless he is perceived to have done something dastardly wrong - like having lied about a war, or condoned torture.

To criticize U. S. policies is not being anti-American. It is to have an opinion about policies. Those who demonstrated in Canada against say, the war in Viet Nam or those who demonstrate today in Canada at the presence of Dick Cheney or G.W. Bush within their environs are not anti-American. They are demonstrating against American foreign policy, or rogues and charlatans who lied to the world. In fact, to paint such demonstrators or opponents of policy as anti-American is akin to Joe McCarthy calling all those on the left or moderate left, or merely those who got in his way, communists. Jack Granatstein, a Canadian icon, scholar, feted author, and so on should be so much better than this.

STEPHANE DION: A MAN OF HONESTY, NOBLE PURPOSE, AND CLASS

A GREAT CANADIAN

Stephane Dion announced intentions to leave as leader of the Liberal Party in the same manner as he has conducted his whole political career - with honesty, noble purpose, and class.

He leveled with the Canadian people as to why he lost. The Conservatives had painted him into a corner with unprecedented attack ads well before the election got under way, and they could do it because they had bucks that the Grits never had. He could have said that the Grits never had the bucks because they had spent too much time and effort fighting each other in the few years before he became leader. He did not have to say that though because people already know. He knew that, and he had too much class to remind them.

He defended the Greenshift plan as the forward thinking good policy that it was. I'm sure there will be the usual neocon bumboys who will rant about that statement. However, I refer them to the hundred or so economists who endorsed the plan, as well as to the recent statements of Bill Clinton giving B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell a pat on the back for the same policy.

The right-wing press never stopped talking about Greenshift's so-called complexity. Yeah, complex - a plan that taxed the big polluters who had been ripping off the world with high energy prices, so that some of their excessive gains could be put back in the hands of the little guy, and so the polluters themselves would discipline themselves to produce greener emissions. What was it about that statement they didn't understand?

Dion also made clear that the Liberal Party had to deal with the new era of fund-raising. The party has got to stop talking about it, and do something about it. They have to take a page out of the book of Howard Dean and Barack Obama on mass fund-fundraising. One of the Chretien legacies - and a good one in my opinion (although not in the opinion of the Gritdom's disloyal, bonehead, narcissist-in-chief Stephen Ledrew) - is that political parties henceforth be funded by people. What could be more noble than that? I thought that democracy was all about people. Whatever program the Liberals settle upon must be broad based, and work has to start in earnest on it yesterday. Dion knows that this has to be done in order to protect the same Conservative personality assassination squads screwing his successors as they did him.

He also intends to preside as leader until the convention that chooses his successor. If anyone has the honor and stature in the party to ensure fairness in the leadership process and unity in the face of the result it is Dion.

Dion has always been a respected figure in the party. Today's substance and style of his announcement sustains that respect. His whole career - which happily remains ongoing - and the manner that he has conducted it will ensure his place in the pantheon of great Liberal leaders.

STEPHEN HARPER'S DESTRUCTION OF CANADIAN VALUES

I’m betting that most Canadians are content with Canadian values. Human rights, a charitable spirit, peace, tolerance, compassion. All of the good basic stuff of a civilized society that has evolved here in he last 350 or so years. It makes Canada one of the best. Most Canadians like it. Indeed they love it. And they will protect it. That's my bet.

And the first line of defense of that protection is not against the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is not in Iran, or Iraq. It is right here in Canada. And the battle that determines whether my bet wins will be the next federal election.

Make no mistake, this Harper Conservative party – the Reform Alliance Tory mishmash (the acronym is, fittingly, RAT) - does not believe in Canadian values.

We know where Conservatives stand on human rights. They have been bitching and complaining about the Charter of Rights since then Minister of Justice Pierre Trudeau introduced the idea in 1967. Conservatives have no respect for the Charter (unless, of course, they are under arrest). Neither do they have respect for judges that interpret the Charter. Conservatives have launched cowardly attacks on judges of Charter cases since the cases began coming before the courts.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, while Alberta Provincial Treasurer during the dark ages of the Klein years made it very clear about what he thought about human rights. In a statement about Clifford Olson – admittedly not a popular Canadian – Day said: “People like myself say. ‘Fix the problem. Put him in the general (prison) population. The moral prisoner will deal with in a way which we don’t have the nerve to do.’” http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-vancouver/2000-November/002788.html

Of course, in April 2007, the Harper Conservatives boorishly refused to take part in the commemoration 25th Anniversary of the signing of the Charter of Rights. http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=76a8a5c9-d036-4985-8e87-cdb0c868d735&k=76569

The Conservatives believing in charity? That’s some kind of joke. Oh, maybe when Conservative politicians put fellow Conservatives on the payroll. The homeless, the young finding ways to pay for their education, the sick and permanently infirm, or the trucker going broke because of the price of gasoline – Conservatives have no time for them. Tough luck, they say. Live and die by the market.

And peace? Had Harper been Prime Minister when his chicken hawk pal in the states went off to war over Saddam’s WMD’s, Canadian soldiers would have been marching into Baghdad lock-step with their American comrades. He and his pal Stockwell even wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal lamenting the Chretien government’s decision to take a pass in Iraq. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/879589/posts

In Afghanistan, we are bleeding more than any other country. Afghanistan is in a helluva mess. Canada is in a helluva mess in Afghanistan. Our so-called allies do little more than wish us well. Ah, but Conservatives like spilled Canadian blood on the battlefield. It gives Canada a seat at the table with the ‘big boys’ as they and their pals have said so often. http://darrylraymaker.blogspot.com/2008/04/general-hillier-hes-no-macarthur.html

And when it comes to tolerance, think of the record of their Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day (the Conservatives gift to the Liberals that keeps on giving). In the dark ages when he was a Minister for Ralph Klein, Day supported a move to ban John Steinbeck’s classic novel Of Mice and Men from Alberta schools because of profanity. When the Supreme Court said that gays and lesbians are protected under Alberta human rights legislation he argued overruling the case by applying the notwithstanding clause. Day’s record on a host of issues is one to be laughed at – and feared.http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0011938

Harper, for his part, refused to attend the Toronto's biggest conference of the year in August of 2006. It happened to be an AIDS conference attended by 24,000 delegates from 132 countries, including Bill and Melinda Gates and Bill Clinton. http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=76a8a5c9-d036-4985-8e87-cdb0c868d735&k=76569

And then there is Art Hangar, the loud mouth ex-cop, soon to be retiring Calgary MP. A former Jasper, Alberta resident, Stan Faulder had spent years on death row in Texas after being convicted of the 1975 murder of an oil rich 75 year old widow. By the late nineties, many were making representations to Gov. George W. Bush for a commutation of his sentence or at least a delay pending appeals. They included Bishop Desmond Tutu, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and the Government of Canada. The basis of the appeals was that for years Faulder had been denied the right to contact his native government for help, contrary to the Vienna Convention.

During Faulder's appeals process, enter ex-cop Hangar MP. He led a delegation to Texas to tell the authorities that Ottawa should stop interfering in the Faulder case. Said Hangar, “We feel he has, indeed, received due process. More than due process, actually. Now the time has come . . . . that he just be executed.”

In 1999 the Texans executed Faulder by lethal injection. http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:1C6otW2krh4J:www.ccadp.org/faulder.htm+Stanley+Faulder+Art+Hangar&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

For years it was the practice of the federal government to lobby foreign governments on humanitarian grounds not to impose the death penalty on Canadians convicted within their jurisdictions. Equally, if a Canadian was convicted and sentenced in a foreign court the federal government’s practice was to lobby the foreign government so that the sentence would be served in Canada.

Ronald Allen Smith of Red Deer has been on death row in Montana for more than twenty years. In November, after considering Smith's plight, Stockwell Day announced that henceforth the feds would not lobby on behalf of murderers “who have been tried in a democratic country that supports the rule of law,” adding that “it would send a wrong message.” Mr. Smith awaits his fate. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/11/01/death-penalty.html

The smart money says that should Harper win the next election, capital punishment will be back on the table in Canada. The names of wrongfully convicted murder susupects Donald Marshall, Guy Paul Morin, David Milgaard, Thomas Sophonow, yada, yada, yada, be damned!

The case of Brenda Martin was little different from the Smith case. It mattered not a whit to Harper and Day that Martin had been convicted in a largely outlaw state ridden by corruption at all levels. The state had no evidence against Martin. She was a maid/cook for a fraud artist. Harper's government did nothing to help her, until she started to scream at the top of her lungs from her Guadalajara jail. It was a high risk action on her part, because the noise she made undoubtedly angered her hosts. However, as a result of her pleas enough Canadians became outraged so that the Harperites finally did something about it. They brought her home on a private jet – after she spent two years in a Mexican slammer for a crime she didn’t commit. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/05/01/martin-return.html

Harper's Conservatives continue their mayhem on Canadian values. Canadians rotting in foreign prisons, many of them for crimes they did not commit, have been advised that before they can be transferred back to Canada to serve out their sentences, they must go though a CSIS terrorism check. The process will take months and perhaps years. One of those affected is a 57 year old former fireman who had voluntarily given himself up to the authorities in respect of some drug offenses. Since Day took office prison transfers back to Canada have been reduced by almost 50%.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080616.wcriminals14/BNStory/National/

The foregoing examples are just tips of the iceberg. Harper's attack on Canadian values continues unabated with daily examples. An increasing number of Canadians recognize what is happening. And they are becoming afraid. If not, they better be. If given a free rein, a Conservative government will change this country to some unrecognizable, mean-spirited neocon replica of Bush’s United States. It will be a country of Harper's values.

Yes, be very afraid.