Christmas In Winnipeg

Merry Christmas, Regina!

I’m in Winnipeg.

While I've lived in Regina for a decade and consider it my home, it's an inescapable fact: I was aged to my current, tragically well-documented state of imperfection in this town once dubbed “One Great City” by its deluded and desperate boosters. And because I’m related to people who still live in this sprawled, violent and IKEA-obsessed burg, I often head back here at Christmas time.

The highlight of my semi-annual visits, besides seeing family of course, is catching up with friends. Met some pals last night at the Round Table, a south-end restaurant/pub that seems to be the official Yule gathering spot for the old “gang”.

The service was sketchy — what kind of pub lets thirsty patrons stare at empty glasses? — but the nachos and conversation were good.

One fellow conversant was Jake “nom de plume “ Fiddler, a PhD student who just moved back after a couple years at a university in the States. Jake is the still-recovering youngest son of socialist internationalists. He spent a lot of his childhood in developing countries where his do-gooder folks associated with Marxists, leftists and other hippies—the kind of people who, when they weren’t building schools, helping refugees and digging wells, were complaining about Ronald Reagan and U.S. imperialism.

(I know this because in junior high school I often ate lunch at the Fiddler's and thus listened to their leftist propaganda, their stories about the MNR in Mozambique and death squads in El Salvador and race murders in South Africa and stuff like that. I fear I may have been corrupted. But enough about me.)

So I had to ask this friend who grew up in a household polluted by anti-American sentiment what it was like to be a guy like him in the States for two years. How is the U.S. different from Canada? What did he learn?

“You gotta fight for health care. That’s it,” he said.

Jake says that in the United States, when politicians talk about universal health care they’re talking about making it illegal not to have privately administered health insurance. And that’s the best to be hoped for. The prospects for publically-administered universal health care along the lines of what Canada (and basically THE REST OF THE DEVELOPED WORLD) has are, according to Jake, precisely squat.

There’s a lot I love about the country to the south of us but in too many important ways it’s broken beyond conceivable repair. Too much military spending. Too much corporate lobbying. Too much demagoguery around crime and taxes and patriotism and God and “family values”. Out of control racism and gun violence. The Phoenix Coyotes.

The fact that the United States can’t establish universal health care, though, is probably the best symbol for the nation’s failures.

Yet another reason I get frustrated when the majority of my adopted home province votes for the Conservatives, Canada’s most American-style political party.

So that’s what I’m thinking about while I’m up waiting for Santa at three a.m. Christmas morning.

Don’t tell me I don’t have an ass-full of holiday spirit.

Am I For GM? Not So Much.

At home, I get all my media online. I watch the Daily Show on the Comedy Network website and I read newspapers on a laptop. So about the only time out of a year that I get soaked in big media -- advertisements and all -- is when I'm at my folks' house for xmas.

I've only been here a day and a half and, boy howdy, am I soaking in it.

Have CNN anchors always mugged for the camera so much? I've seen them wink, burst into song, and do spontaneous impressions. (I'm hoping to see a spit take from Anderson Cooper before I leave.) All this in a day and a half. In between stories about child murder, natural disasters and financial collapse. Yeah, I know this isn't the age of Cronkite any more. We're not to expect dry, dispassionate news coverage that strives for impariality. Sure. I get that. But I'd expect the luminaries of the news universe to conduct themselves with a little more decorum than, say, your average prairie dog writer. I mean, if sophmoric hijinks are what reporting is all about these days, why aren't I making more money, I ask you, dear dog blog reader?

But buffoonery on CNN is mere cause for amusement. What's rankled me enough to get me blogging this xmas eve is GM's fullpage ad in Tuesday's Edmonton Journal. It's a page of text headed with the question "What does it mean to say, 'I'm for GM'?" (I'll try to edit this post later and include the text of the ad... it's worth puzzling over.)

Their message is that GM is a good company that's striving to be more efficient and environmentally responsible. It also tries to dispel some of the nasty myths about itself, arguing that it had already been working towards those goals. Why, it's been implementing a restructuring plan since 2005 and during that time has produced a great mid-size hybrid in the Malibu, won Car of the Year awards in 07 and 08 and has... wait a second??!?? 2005??!?? [spit take] They've been restructuring since 2005? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that like only three years ago? And isn't three the first number in our counting system to be classed as "a few"? If they'd started their restructuring plan any later in the game their ad would have to read "about a couple years ago, it occured to us oil might not last forever". Any later than that and they'd be writing "Environment?!? [spit take] Oh crap. We'd better get on that!"

Okay. Sorry. I'm just a schmuck from Saskatchewan not a player in the auto industry. Maybe waiting until the early part of the 21st century to start gearing up for the end of oil and runaway climate change is what counts for taking the long view in the world of big business.

But I digress. Ultimately, what GM is trying to say with this ad is thanks for your money. (Mind you, they use the code word "support" to stand in for "your tax dollars.")

They end this way: "We are asking Canadians to look differently at GM. We thank everyone who continues to stand by us. We are changing quickly to become a leaner, greener, sustainable company. So maybe, if it comes up with friends, in the lunch room or around the dinner table, you'll consider saying, 'I'm for GM.'"

Sorry, GM, I just can't say that. First of all, I expect to get paid for PR work. And second, I have deep misgivings about the bailout. It offends my sense of justice.

I thought the whole deal with the self-regulated free market thing was that it rewarded companies that produced things the public wants and those that didn't, died. Fear of corporate death is supposed to be the stick that inspires corporations to innovate, change, respond to the market and the environment, become more efficient, expand and grow. That's the logic pundits, economists and captains of industry have used to justify everything from privatizing health care, cutting off funding to the arts and culture, and just generally starving the public sector at every turn.

And yet, the second the corporate sector gets into trouble, they're knocking on the government's door, looking for a handout. The auto industry has squandered tonnes of public cash and gov't support, they ignored years of warnings about the perils their industry was going to face, and they're being rewarded for that. Way to go, capitalism!

Now, granted, when I'm not busy being Indignant Paul, I'll admit that in the long run, when you consider how many people rely on this industry for their livelihood maybe a bailout of some kind is the way to go.

But, you know, I hear tell of these car companies that aren't on the verge of bankruptcy, that're actually building small, fuel efficient vehicles. I hear they have factories here in Canada. They're companies with foreign-sounding names like "Toyota." Why aren't we giving them money?

No seriously. Educate me. Why aren't we giving money to Toyota and Volkswagon? I know next to nothing about cars. I don't own one. Not planning to. But if we're going to hand out big loans from the public purse, shouldn't we be gambling on companies that seem to have a clue?

Or how about this? We could put the money into passenger rail so we wouldn't need cars so much and wouldn't have to rely quite so heavily on the auto industry to keep our manufacturing sector healthy. I think they call that diversification.

I don't know, I'm just brainstorming here.

The Grinch Who Stole Democracy

You're a mean one, Mr. Harper.
You really are a heel.
You're as cuddly as a cactus,
You're as charming as an eel.
Mr. Harper.

You're a bad politician
With virtually no appeal.

You're a dictator, Mr. Harper.
Your heart's an empty hole.
Your brain is full of schemes,
You've got meglomania in your soul.
Mr. Harper.

I wouldn't touch you, with a
thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole.

Lazy Sunday Pop Culture Post 2

It's that time of year again, when Canadians in one snow-bound, jerkwater burg hop on planes and fly to other snow-bound, jerkwater burgs and flop with their families. Count me among them. I'm Edmonton bound tomorrow. Now that's a vacation!

In honour of this most Canuck of holiday traditions, here's a little tune by the sadly defunct Molestics. It's the only song I know of to grapple with this subject.

By the way, I found that mp3 on their abandoned website and also discovered that lead singer Mike Soret has some kind of semi-functioning Molestics blog. Seems he's writing a book about his time in the band. Groovy.

Not Busy Being Born, Coalition Now Busy Dying

This is a piece I submitted for the coalition feature in the latest issue. I've been assured it was left out because of a lack of space and not because it sucks. (And I'm sure I didn't help my case for inclusion by turning this in a day late and 200 words longer than asked for.)

But thanks to the miracle of the interweb, all that typing won't be wasted.

A note about writing this.... My conversation with Donald Gutstein ended with his comment about how the coalition has missed its moment. I liked the way he put it and thought the remark important so I opted to start writing with that. After doing so, the article naturally became an inversion of the way the interview played out. You'd think, then, it would leave us in a happier place. But it doesn't. And so it goes....

====================

Not Busy Being Born, Coalition Now Busy Dying

A deathknell is sounding for the coalition. And there seem to be two camps ringing the bell announcing its demise: those who welcome the news and those who hear the tolling with a certain amount of sadness. Among those in the latter camp is Donald Gutstein, senior lecturer at Simon Fraser University and co-director of NewsWatch Canada.

“The moment has passed,” he says with regret. “What’s happened is the resumption of traditional politics in Canada. We have Harper on the right and Ignatieff on the centre-right and that’s going to be the range of debate. And, I think, that’s it.”

With the entry of “prorogue” into our vocabulary and Ignatieff into the Liberal command chair, the media has declared the nacent centre-left uprising done. You could almost hear a sigh of relief in the coverage. We’ve already written these stories, the media seems to be saying.

“They’re part of the corporate elite too so they’re happier with this kind of political and economic system,” says Gutstein. “What twigged it for me was the morning after Ignatieff was crowned, Margaret Wente said, ‘Yes, we can live with Ignatieff.’”

But how did it all unravel so fast?

From the moment the coalition became a possibility, the spin machine in every party’s warroom fired up. On one side, Harper was portrayed as akin to a tyrant, a petty man out to wreck petty vengence on his opponents. From the other, the coalition was depicted as a naked power grab by the Liberals inspired to action by a threat to their government welfare cheque.

While Harper’s reputation took a bit of a hit, opinion polls showed over 60 percent support for his government -- a pretty clear indication that his message had the most traction.

A few factors contributed to this, not the least of which being many Canadian’s lack of understanding of their own political system. Coalitions are de rigeur in many parliamentary democracies, but to a populace more familiar with the idea of an American-style republic they can sound pretty threatening.

“They filled a void by creating a myth about how the Canadian political system works,” says Gutstein of the Conservatives. “Patrick Muttart, he’s the guy in their warroom who’s in charge of the master narrative, and in the 2006 election he spent time in Australia and spent time in the US. So I think the master narrative is to move Canada more in the direction of an American-type republic. Even voting for senators and everything is part of that. And the left was totally incapable of correcting that message.”

At the same time though, he notes there were many on the left who weren’t behind coalition either, and he points to the perceived weakness of its leader as the key reason for that.

“I think one of the things was the problem with Dion,” says Gutstein. “I think it was more of a tactical concern than a strategic or ideological one. You know, with Dion as the leader of the coalition, what is it really?”

Ultimately, Gutstein argues that the mainstream media itself should hold much of the blame for putting paid to the coalition message. He notes that it was the way the coverage framed the situation as a “crisis” that first set off his alarm bells.

“What’s this crisis? There really wasn’t one,” he says. “The crisis was the possibility of a centre-left government. For the corporate media and for corporate Canada that could have been a huge crisis. So, at the outset, they chastised Harper for getting into it in the first place. He shouldn’t have done what he did, so they were after him at first. But then they totally switched over to attacking the coalition.”

Is it any wonder, then, that so much of the recent coalition coverage reads like an obituary?

A Little Bit of History Repeating

It’s been almost a week since the outing of Bernard Madoff’s investment firm as a gigantic Ponzi scheme. Apparently the day before his arrest, Bernie told his senior employees his firm was "all one big lie" which managed to bilk investors out of $50 billion. (Here’s the wikinews article on his arrest.)

As the Globe notes in it's coverage of the Madoff probe, the timing on this couldn't be worse as "the Madoff scandal has further weakened already-battered investor confidence in securities markets and has raised more troubling questions about the effectiveness of the regulatory system."

Sometimes the parallels between now and events of the late 1920s are a little spooky. For instance, John Kenneth Galbraith in The Great Crash tells the tale of Clarence Hatry whose fall from grace is one of the events that, along with the collapse of the stock indexes, pricked the investment bubble:

In England on September 20, 1929, the enterprises of Clarence Hatry suddenly collapsed. Hatry was one of those curiously un-English figures with whom the English periodically find themselves unable to cope. Although his earlier financial history had been anything but reassuring, Hatry had built up an industrial and financial empire in the nineteen-twenties of truly impressive proportions. The nucleus, all the more remarkably, was a line of coin-in-the-slot vending and automatic photographic machines. From these unprepossessing enterprises he had marched on into investment trusts and high finance. His expansion owed much to the issuance of unauthorized stock, the increase of assets by the forging of stock certificates and other equally informal financing. In the lore of 1929, the unmasking of Hatry in London is supposed to have struck a sharp blow to confidence in New York.

It's funny that not only are these two frauds linked in the ill-timedness of their unmaskings, but also in the humbleness of their origins: Hatry started out in vending machines, Madoff's initial investment stake was earned working as a lifeguard and sprinkler installer.

It's also funny that while Hatry was notorious in his day, he doesn't even warrant a wikipedia entry of his own now. I wonder if we'll find a way to conveniently forget Madoff in time for the next big speculative mania?

If the Shoe Fits

If there's one skill that soon-to-be former U.S. president George W. Bush is going to need in the years to come it's the ability to duck. Judging from a recent incident that occured during a news conference held as part of a pre-Xmas trip he made to Iraq to bolster troop morale, he's already mastered the ability, like Neo in the Matrix, to dodge projectiles directed at him. Don't know how well he'll fare though at ducking responsibility for all the ill-fated policy decisions made during his two-terms in office that have placed his country, and the world at large, in such peril environmentally, economically, geo-politically, etc.

Panic in Detroit

One of my favorite sports blogs is The Wayne Fontes Experience, run by a Detroit Lions fan -- yes, they're still fans of an 0-13 football team. It's well written, insightful, and his live-blogging of Lions games reminds me of my state of mind when the Saskatchewan Roughriders sucked and were so incompetently managed that I despaired of ever seeing competitive football at Taylor Field ever again.

But it's not just the disastrous state of Detroit football that's on his mind: it's also the disastrous state of the Detroit economy, thanks to the Big Three meltdown and the outgoing Congress' 'let them eat cake' attitude. And -- surprisingly for a sports blogger, he provides a glimpse into the state of mind in Detroit's coffeeshops, bars, and hangouts. (Might not be entirely safe for work).

My anger at the southern GOP, led by DICK Shelby, is palpable. Their
grandstanding is going
to affect every single one of us who lives in the Midwest, the Rust
Belt in particular, and not in a good way. Personally, I'm scared to
death for my family and friends who work in the auto industry, and
thanks to union busting politicians, like DICK Shelby, it's going to
get ugly for them.

He also links to a column from a Michigan newspaper. Oh boy. Jim Bunning, former pitcher for the Detroit Tigers was supposed to be at an autograph-signing thing in Michigan. Except that he's now a Tennesee GOP senator -- and voted against the federal bailout package.

Lazy Sunday Pop Culture Post

Technically I should be working right now so, naturally, I instead decided to write a post promoting the podcasts I like and think more people should pay attention to. I considered submitting this to the prairie dog proper but figured it was too slight and self absorbed even for that (types the guy who recently had published a Top 6 Comic Book Plot Devices). Plus I can't get it up to six items needed for a Top 6 because in all honesty I only regularly download five.

So, without further ado, here's my...

Top 5 Podcasts I'm Following These Days

1. Skeptic's Guide to the Universe
A weekly science news show that focuses on debunking all the nonsense and pseudoscience to which we're subjected on a daily basis. Sure, call me a nerd, but I find it somehow cathartic to spend an hour each week listening to five people mock creationists and climate-change deniers.

2. Tiki Bar TV
A monthly comedy vidcast made, up until recently, in a Vancouver apartment done up to look like a tiki bar. Each episode Doctor Tiki, Lala and Johnny Johnny encounter some crisis that is eventually solved by a cocktail. What I've described here rather clinically is actually very funny and cleverly written. Yeah, I've mentioned this show in stuff I've written in the paper before but I reckon it's worth repeating here because a) it's Canadian and b) it's just that good.

3. Diggnation
Two guys sitting on a couch drinking beer talking about what people on the internet are talking about. Sounds dull but is strangely addicting. Plus, it's a great way for out-of-touch, aging hipsters to stay au courant with what's happening on the intraweb.

4. Wormwood
Bi-weekly (sometimes monthly) radio drama about an occult investigator and his adventures in the town of Wormwood. Similar in tone to Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- has that same blend of supernatural horror and comedy. Favourite moment in the series so far: reanimated decapitated heads making out on the floor of a morgue.

5. Search Engine
Probably not fair putting a show from the CBC up against all these amateur endeavours, but Search Engine has always been Mother Corp's bastard child (as evidence: it got pulled from a regular spot on Radio One and now exists only as a podcast). It's a tech and web culture show not unlike other fare on CBC. But, unlike most fare on the CBC, it's edgy and political.

Gee, Premier. Wall ...

You won't have to hurry that Senate election legislation, eh?