Canadian Cincinnatus

Harry Reid, Martin Scorcese, mob lawyers, and black eyes

Over at the Powerline blog, John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson are speculating about something I had been wondering about myself. Harry Reid’s black eye looks a lot less like an ‘exercise accident’ and more like the result of an encounter with somebody who knows how to throw a punch. They point to rumours floating around Nevada that Harry Reid’s injuries were the result of a meeting with organized crime associates that went bad.

One salacious detail left out the Powerline stories is that Harry Reid is one of the few politicians in office today who has been featured as a villain in a Martin Scorcese gangster film. It’s true. In the film Casino, there is a pill-popping, prostitute-using, freebee-grubbing State Senator and chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission played by Dick Smothers. That character represents Harry Reid.

The film is based on real-life mafia activities in Las Vegas in the 1970’s. The film was adapted from a book written by Nicholas Pileggi, a former New York crime reporter who now makes a living producing books about organized crime. The Scorcese classic, Goodfellas, was also based on one of his books.

Incidentally, one other current politician depicted in this movie is Oscar Goodman, the recent mayor of Las Vegas (and Democrat, natch). In fact, he is literally in the film, playing himself. He was a mob layer at the time the events depicted took place.

The fact that the Dick Smothers character represents Harry Reid is mentioned in the Wikipedia site for the film. What used to be on Wikipedia was a mirror site describing the real-life events that the film was based on. It went in great detail explaining where the film was faithful to reality and where it deviated from actual events. The two sites were extensively cross-referenced. That site is gone now. No explanation.

Interestingly enough, on the film’s Wikipedia site, there is currently a note that reads, “This article’s plot summary may be too long and excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise.” Six paragraphs to describe a three-hour movie with a complicated plot doesn’t sound ‘too long’ nor ‘excessively detailed’ to me. Some sanitizing going on?

I can't be the only one who finds these goings-on unbelievable.

Co-pilot sabotages Flight 9525: what to do to about it?

One of the solutions that the authorities seized upon after 9/11 was to barricade the pilots into the cockpit. The thinking was, even if the hijackers manage to take over the passenger compartment of an airliner they still can’t control the aircraft because they can’t get to the cockpit. The recent crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 illustrates the flaw built into the plan: what if the real danger lies among the crew?

For this reason, the crash of Flight 9525 in the Alps creates a dilemma for the aviation authorities: how should cockpit procedures be modified to both stop Mohammed Atta as well as a suicidal pilot? Gaming out the various scenarios illustrates the difficulty of preventing willful sabotage. Because somebody must be in charge, it seems that, at the end of the day, you will be forced to trust somebody. By this logic, beyond finding the most trustworthy people possible to fly your airplanes, there is nothing more you can do.

Or is there?

I submit that the solution to the dilemma posed by Flight 9525 can be found on the very day the procedures that helped cause it were inspired: September 11, 2001. To see this, we must first ask the question, what worked on 9/11? The answer is the passengers on United 93. Entirely upon their own initiative, they overpowered the terrorists and prevented United 93 from crashing into its intended target in Washington, either the Capitol or the White House. Their only shortcoming was that it took time for them to mount their counterattack. Initially, they followed the then-conventional wisdom that cooperation is the surest course of action. We now know this isn’t always true. The next United 93-style spontaneous militia won’t make that mistake. They will attack immediately. Indeed, this has already happened a number of times. Indeed, last week an airline passenger started yelling, “Jihad, Jihad” as he tried to storm the cockpit. He didn’t make it.

This tactic has been one of the indisputable success story of counterterrorism within the past 15 years but it is one that the authorities in charge of preventing terrorism are determined to ignore. Instead of disempowering the passengers by confiscating their penknives and nail clippers, and locking the flight crew into the cockpit (thereby enabling any suicidal co-pilots that may be on board), we should instead be enabling the passengers.

A pack of a hundred passengers can identify and eliminate the threat posed by both Mohammed Atta and Andreas Lubitz. The solution doesn’t have to be either-or.

Hillary Clinton and the perils of inevitability

To those who say that it is inevitable that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Party nominee, I have a two word rebuttal: Paul Martin. My American readers will respond, who? My Canadian readers will immediately know what I am talking about.

To understand my allusion one must look back 10 to 15 years in Canadian history. In the late 90’s, Paul Martin was Canada’s finance minister. He became a national hero for balancing the budget and was the most popular Liberal politician in Canada. His boss, the wily Jean Chretien hated him. In the early 2000’s, when it was clear that Jean Chretien’s time was coming to an end, the Canadian news media played up Paul Martin the way the US media played up Barack Obama in 2008.

To believe the press, Paul Martin was the colossus that bestrode the Canadian body politic. He is fiscally conservative and socially liberal, just the way we like our politicians. In a word, Paul Martin was inevitable.

Just one little problem with that analysis: when he took over the Liberal Party from Jean Chretien, he fizzled. Completely. He became the party leader (and therefore Prime Minister) in December 2003. In the June 2004, he led the Liberals for the first time into a Federal Election. He lost Chretien’s majority. He hung on for a year and a half with a minority, but in the Feb 2006 election, the new Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper defeated him. On election night, the now-former Prime Minister Paul Martin resigned, a broken man.

So what happened? How did he fall so far from so high? Why did the colossus of Canadian politics barely hold on to power for 2 years, while his predecessor, the hyper-ineloquent Jean Chretien, won three back-to-back majorities?

The answer, I think, is that Paul Martin didn’t stand for anything besides himself. He didn’t champion anything. Everybody supported him – the Liberal leadership race of 2003 was the closest thing to a coronation that Canada ever had – because he was inevitable. The problem with inevitability is that you are inevitable until you are not. And then, if you have nothing else to fall back on, you are nothing. For this reason, the inevitable candidate is vulnerable everywhere, all the time. One misstep, one stubbed toe, and you are ruined. Because, with the first mistake, you are no longer perfect.

This is, I think, Hillary’s problem. In a CNN/Opinion Research poll taken between March 13 and 15, Clinton has the support of 62% of Democrats; 47% higher than the next highest potential candidate. So far she is riding high. I think a lot of that is because people currently perceive her to be the inevitable nominee. Her problem is that the Clinton scandals of the 90’s are back, and with a vengeance. How long before Hillary is no longer perceived to be inevitable? When this happens, fresher candidates who stand for something substantial – Warren (progressivism), Webb (blue-collar populism), and O’Malley (middle-aged, wanna-be rockers) - can move up in the polls. Perhaps quickly. Right now, the polls just reflect name recognition - and perceived inevitability.

On second thought, instead of invoking a Canadian example to illustrate the perils of inevitability, I could have chosen something more recent from US history: Hillary Clinton’s own campaign for the 2008 Democratic nomination, where she played the role of the colossus that bestrode the Democratic Party – until she was humbled by a former Illinois State Senator and community organizer.

 

Russia threatens Denmark with nuclear weapons

Recently, the EU competition commissioner, a Danish politician, has been pushing the investigation of Gazprom for anti-competitive behaviour. Gazprom is, as you may recall, the Russian natural gas monopoly controlled by Vladimir Putin and his cronies. It has been widely reported that the Putin gang use Gazprom as their own personal bank. In completely unrelated news, the Russian ambassador to Denmark threatened Denmark on Saturday with a nuclear attack.

This leads me to ask a question of all the Putin aficionados out there: do you still think Putin is the standard bearer of Western civilization?

But I guess he makes up for it by banning gay pride parades on Moscow. Or something.

Stephen Harper the incrementalist

One of the comments I received about my Jeb Bush post was about the best description of the nature of Stephen Harper’s leadership style that I have ever read. As a result, I will reproduce commenter autoguy’s post. It is well worth the read:

“Harper is an incrementalist. Sure, his detractors say he's not conservative enough, not libertarian enough, too autocratic, etc... But he has been arguable the most successful Tory PM we've ever had.


Why do I say this?


When Harper took over, he was dealing with a significant amount of political momentum leftward in the Canadian electorate. Things had been going left for a LONG time and he had to change that. Attempts to reverse course quickly were too fraught with danger (note the last minute electoral failure in his last failed bid) and he was dealing with a minority government. Since then, he has slowly and surely changed the direction. A nudge here, a statement there, and now we have a significantly different situation. Compare Harper's stance to Mulcair and Trudeau. Trudeau prays at a radicalized mosque. Mulcair can't even bring himself to call the Parliament Hill attack "terrorism". Harper, on the other hand, has used some of the most direct language on this issue of any world leader. Read some blogs - for example, the Daily Caller ran an article that headlined "When did Canada become so bad-ass?" The US thinks he's tough, that’s for sure.


Furthermore, his ground breaking speech in Israel to the Knesset was actually out of character. THAT was not incrementalism. THAT was international leadership.


There is a long way to go, no question. But if Harper tried to bridge that gap in one stride, he would be out on his ear. Harper has shown in the past that he will get us there. It will just take a little more time.”

To me, what makes Harper an astute politician is that he understands what is possible and what is not possible.

Some might ask, so what is the difference between an incrementalist and a craven surrenderist like John Boehner or Mitch McConnell? The difference is that the latter cave in to Obama to get themselves out of a crisis, while Harper is always moving the ball forward.

On gun control, he eliminated the long-gun registry and is in the process of deregulating the ownership of restricted firearms. On immigration, he has quietly changed the entire system. This has received little notice in the papers, but the immigration system he inherited was little more than a Liberal voter importation scheme. Quietly, he has been able to turn it into a system for attracting quality Canadians, and he did it while increasing the appeal of the Conservative Party brand to ethnic voters at the same time. With regard to the civil service, he has modified their pension and benefits plans significantly. He has also increased the age when Canadians qualify for CPP. These changes will do little to the bottom line today, but will have great effect on Canada’s unfunded liabilities down the road. Tell me, which other Canadian politician has done anything but kick that can down the road? Even during the height of the mid-90’s debt crisis, Paul Martin didn’t have the guts to do that. Yet, Harper pulled it off, all under the media radar.

One criticism you hear from conservatives about Harper is that he allowed the federal budget to go into deficit in 2009. Fair enough, but consider this: in 2009, Harper ran a minority government in a Parliament where he had zero natural allies. Every other party was clamouring to spend money as fast as possible. If Harper had argued the folly of Keynesian pump-priming, he would have lost control. What do you think would have happened to the federal deficit with Ignatieff, Layton and Duceppe at the helm? As it happened, Harper kept the stimulus to the absolute minimum and confined it to programs that could be neatly rolled up once the program ended (such as the home renovation tax credit). This is a much different experience to what transpired in the US.

Running something as big as a country involves many constraints. It’s not just about what you would like to do. Turning dreams into reality is tricky and hard work, and the shortest distance between two points is often not a straight line.

Harper has his critics among the Right, but I suspect that they will grow to miss him when he is gone, and I certainly think they wouldn’t have been able accomplish a half of what he has been able to do had they been running Canada.

 

 

Is Obama secretly stoking Hillary’s e-mail scandal?

When the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal broke out, something smelled fishy to me. The Mainstream Media seemed to be covering it a bit too eagerly, considering that she is the most likely Democratic candidate in the next presidential election. Why would they not be providing her cover? It just didn’t make any sense.

Then I see this interview of Ed Klein, the author of the book, Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas, which came out last year and describes the testy relations between the two political families. He said:

“It’s not only me who thinks this, Bill Clinton thinks this as well. He has said, according to my sources, that the White House is leaking to their friendly — their friends in the mainstream media stories about the Clintons, not only about Hillary, but about him and about what she did while she was in the State Department. And it’s my understanding that — and this is from sources within the White House, that the Clintons know that Hillary is under not one, but six different investigations prompted by the White House.”

Hmm. If this is true, then it is the best news I’ve heard in a while. The best thing the Republicans could hope for is open warfare between the two camps of the Democratic Party, the Clinton wing and the hard-left wing, commanded by Barack Obama.

As Hillary Clinton is no pushover, this has the potential to turn into a good slugfest. Best thing to happen going into the general election.

Globe and Mail: victims of communism “pales … in comparison with the victims of capitalism.”

The opponents of the Victims of Communism Memorial, to be built in Ottawa, claim that while they feel that it is a worthwhile endeavour, their opposition is only due to its ‘botched’ execution rather than to the goal itself. I have always suspected that these criticisms are specious, designed to hide their real motivation.

Well, a columnist at the Globe and Mail, Roy MacGregor, let the mask slip. In a column attacking the monument, he said:

“Only a fool would deny that millions have been the tragic victims of communism, but that number pales, surely, in comparison with the victims of capitalism. If we agree to date communism to the Russian Revolution of 1917 – feel free to argue the point – the dating of capitalism’s crimes would have to extend back beyond the Crusades and the spice wars to the very first deal that went badly sour. [emphasis added]”

He said it - he actually said it - he believes capitalism has killed more people than communism. Leaving aside MacGregor’s historical illiteracy - capitalism only came into existence as an explicit ideology and an economic system in the late eighteenth century (even Karl Marx recognized that – before capitalism, he said there was feudalism), I think this quote demonstrates what’s really eating MacGregor and, I suspect, many of the monument’s critics: they are secretly sympathetic to communism.

Say Roy, I have a question for you. Since communism killed a hundred million people, and the Holocaust ‘only’ killed six million, does this mean that you think that every Holocaust memorial should be squashed too?

(Psst. Roy. The Canadian Holocaust Monument is being built in conjunction with the Memorial to the Victims of Communism. Here’s a hint in case you didn’t know: they have the same official website.)

He began his column with this sentence:

“It takes a while – sometimes a very long while – but the nation’s capital eventually gets around to dealing with the truly ugly.”

Just so. And you know what? I think you, Roy MacGregor, are a part of Ottawa’s truly ugly.

The moral turpitude of the Liberals for opposing the Victims of Communism memorial

Against entrenched opposition from the bureaucrats, the Harper Conservatives have succeeded in getting a Memorial to the Victims of Communism to the planning stages. Groundbreaking is set for this spring, but the Liberal Party and the Ottawa media is hell bent on stopping them. They offer a series of excuses, none of them convincing.

First, they say that it is “disrespectful” and “inappropriate” to place such a memorial in front of the Supreme Court of Canada. How exactly is it disrespectful to the Supreme Court of Canada to place a memorial commemorating the memory of the 100 million people who were deliberately murdered by an ideology of hate? What exactly do you think the Supreme Court represents that they would be miffed by such a memorial? As MP Peter van Loan put it (who is half-Estonian):

“There is also a strong thematic connection with its proximity to the Supreme Court and Parliament, underlining that we must never take for granted our core values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”

Exactly, which is why the location is so appropriate. Communism is a good example of what happens when the rule of law is abandoned.

And speaking of disrespect, what exactly do you think all of the Canadians who personally, or whose families, suffered under communism feel when you trot out these specious arguments? Do you not think that you disrespect them? As one such person, I can tell you, you are spitting into my face, and the face of all of my relatives who suffered under communism.

They claim that building the monument where the Conservatives want to build it would interfere with pre-existing plans for adorning the Supreme Court. The property in question is a freakin’ empty lot, vacant since Confederation. If building the adornment to the Supreme Court is so vital, why wasn’t it done in the 12 years of the Chrétien-Martin government? You know, this sounds an awful lot like a cheap excuse.

Yet another argument, made by Liberal MP David McGuinty, is that while a monument to the victims of communism is a very worthwhile goal, building it without the approval of everybody involved (for instance, the Mayor of Ottawa is against it) disrespects the cause it means to commemorate. Or something like that. So let me get this straight, because a monument to the victims of communism is so all-fired important, everybody from the local dog catcher on up should have veto power over the project. Huh? Was total unanimity required for any other project the Federal Government has undertaken in Ottawa?

Another transparently specious excuse is its cost. For instance, this article is entitled:

“As cost of 'Victims of Communism' memorial soars, questions persist about landmark's value”

The article goes on to say the taxpayers’ portion of the cost rose from $1.5 million to $4 million (while $2 million is being raised by private donations). Excuse me if I am underwhelmed by this revelation. Ottawa loses more money under the seat cushions every day. I find this complaint hard to take, especially considering the hundreds of millions of dollars the CBC squanders every year, with little oversight. Say, if saving money is all of a sudden so important, why don’t we take it out of the annual CBC grant? It’s so huge they would hardly miss it.

Another objection concerns the brutalist design of the architect. OK, fair enough. I have reservations about the design as well. So what is the alternative? Until I see one, then I support this one. We can’t allow specious quibbles to derail this worthwhile endeavour.

Now Justin, and here I am just speaking specifically to you, your family has a shameful history when it comes to communism. At the height of the Cold War, when the fate of the world hung in the balance, your father, Pierre, hung out with one of its chief butchers – Fidel Castro. In fact, they were so close that Castro was the only world leader to attend your father’s funeral (besides Jimmy Carter, who only came as a private citizen). I know that the sins of the father do not pass on to the son, but still, you have never publicly disowned your father’s behaviour in this regard. Supporting this monument would be a great way for you to separate yourself from your family’s shame.

You know, generally I try to keep political differences political and not personal. But the utterly shameful, and unjustifiable opposition by the Liberals and the media to this moral endeavour cannot be anything other than personal to me. Their opposition shows gross disrespect to all 100 million people who were killed or starved to death by communism, and their families and kin after them. Shame on you Liberals. Shame.

Why Jeb Bush makes my skin crawl

The usual reasons given by conservatives for their disapproval of Jeb Bush are his apostasies on illegal aliens, and his support for Common Core. While I also hold these same reservations, that is not what creeps me out about the guy.

For instance, my opinion of his tenure as Governor of Florida is generally positive, and all indications are that he was an able leader of that state. But lately, he has been justifying his pro-illegal alien stance with saccharine-schmaltz like:

“Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love. It’s an act of commitment to your family.”

This was the first such pronouncement (which caused everybody’s heads to turn), but since last April, there have been more nausea-inducing statements like this. I guess why I find them so offensive is that he confounds sentimentality with morality. To make an analogy with the art world, it is like confusing Thomas Kinkade with DaVinci’s Last Supper.

This type of moral error is popular among the ditzier elements of the left. For instance, I remember a documentary from the seventies where some bleeding-heart activist-type spoke about the violent crime problem in New York’s ghettos, “all these people need is love.” Riiight. My reaction to Jeb Bush when he speaks this way about illegal immigration: riiight.

(Incidentally, unlike the new-age crowd, the hard-core left has no illusion about how the world works. Read the blood-curdling works of Lenin, Trotsky and Saul Alinsky. They are absolutely hardheaded and realistic about how to get and keep power).

For what it’s worth, Jeb’s brother, George W, is also prone to this kind of fuzzy thinking, particularly in his second term when he allowed it to get the better of him. I think this was one of the reasons that allowed the punitive expedition against Iraq and Afghanistan to morph into an unending missionary war for democracy. Secretary of State Condi Rice was once asked if the she thought the Palestinian people in the Gaza strip wanted democracy. She replied yes, everybody wants democracy.

Earth to the Bush Administration: no, they don’t. A significant segment of the populations in Venezuela, Argentina, the Middle East, Russia and China have no taste nor desire for democracy or freedom. They yearn for a barrel-chested strongman. In Germany in the early 1930’s, a clear majority voted for explicitly anti-freedom, anti-democracy parties: the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or the communists. Even among North American conservatives, some isolationists seem to admire Putin and other tyrants (cf Pat Buchanan). Are these people wrong? Yes. Are they blockheads? Absolutely. But their opinions, as wrong as they may be, have to be realistically accounted for.

One of the President’s roles is to be the United States’ chief strategist. The worst sin a strategist can make is to refuse to see the world as it really is. For this reason, there is absolutely no place in any President’s world-view for wishful thinking. Sound moral principles yes – schmaltz no. That is why, every time Jeb Bush makes a sanctimonious pronouncement about illegal aliens (while passing over the criminal and welfare-seeking and terrorist elements within that group in silence), he further demonstrates to me his unfitness to hold the high office he is seeking.