Category Archives: News and politics

We’ve written about 9/11 before, recalling where we were when everything changed.  Marking the tenth anniversary it is important to see if we’re any better off than we were that morning in 2001.

According to some reasonable estimates, the US has spent somewhere around $1 Trillion dollars on Homeland Security since 9/11.  Canada has spent around $92 Billion.  The difficulty with the whole subject is four-fold. 

First, how dare one even question the wisdom of Homeland Security spending?  What kind of unpatriotic, vile, Osama FanBoy, bearded degenerate would even consider asking the question of what the government has spent to protect us? 

Second, it’s all classified Secret, so you can’t be told, as you are not trustworthy enough to know what we’ve spent a trillion dollars on, for fear you will immediately tell Osama’s fourth cousin Maurice about our defenses. You want another 9/11?  There’s plenty of room at GitMo.

Third, is the nature of terrorism.  Terrorists only have to succeed once in a million attempts.  Defenders have to succeed 100% of the time, every day, in every situation, in all circumstances against any and all attempts by mainstream enemy, fringe groups and lunatic loners determined to get their fifteen minutes of fame.

Fourth, there is a very strong emotional loading regarding 9/11 in North America that we can’t shake.  Ireland, the UK, Greece, Germany, France and Spain have had their share of violence, going as far back as the 1900’s with the ‘troubles’ in Ireland, up through Basque separatism, Communists uprisings and so forth.  A goodly piece of the architecture of Europe is no older than 1945, the originals having been erased in the Second World War. 

We’re not saying Europe is used to it, but North Americans most certainly are not used to terror strikes, which is why 9/11 left such a big dent in our collective psyches.  The last big wallop we took was the American Civil War, which ended in 1865.  The other hits we’ve taken, like the FLQ Crisis, or Pearl Harbor were smaller and regional in nature.

Tuning out the emotional component as best we can and ignoring the knee-jerk patriotism argument as intellectually vacuous, we come back to what we’ve done to make things safer and have we succeeded?

The CBC’s Adrienne Arsenault, along with Dana Priest of the Washington Post have spent significant time and effort to get a handle on what we’ve spent and the results are not encouraging.

A couple of factoids should suffice if you don’t want to follow the links: 

Liberty Crossing, the new home of Homeland Security in McLean, VA, is bigger than the Pentagon in size.  You can’t go there.  The whole project is Secret and secured.  Don’t ask.

There are some 850,000 people with Top Secret clearance in the US.  That would be more than the entire population of Washington, D.C., most involved in analyzing security data.  Again, don’t ask.

The Shoe Bomber, the Underwear Bomber and the Times Square bomber were not caught by the security apparatus put in place to protect us:  They were stopped by regular citizens who happened to have their wits about them.  There may have been other incidents that we don’t know about.  Again, don’t ask.

The 7/7/7 attacks and the Madrid attacks were not stopped, despite the expansive, extensive and expensive security infrastructure in place to detect and interdict them.  Again, don’t ask.

So far, the score isn’t very good.  Most of it is covered by the Homeland Security blanket:  Don’t Ask.

We can mark the passing of the anniversary of 9/11 with the solemnity is deserves, honouring those who fell and those who tried so hard to save them.  But we still have to ask:

Is it worth it?

Three events this week have expressed the complete disappearance of common-sense on our planet.  Submitted for your approval: Amy Winehouse, the US Debt Ceiling and Norwegian Terrorism.  Why not start with Winehouse?

It follows the usual pattern, international success at 22, lionized by the media as a slightly off-kilter darling with the beehive and tats.  Stir in a couple of public meltdowns, a unique marriage, professional-grade substance abuse, the rehab revolving door and likely a circle of sycophantic cling-ons who do nothing but blow rainbows up their butts.  You have a Betty Crocker Approved recipe for an early death. 

The media must help society kill the popular.  If we can’t kill them, then at least we must gnaw their leg bones with examples of Lindsay Lohan, Brittney Spears, or as far back as Marilyn Monroe serving as sound examples.  We eat our young.

The US Debt Ceiling Debate is simple enough:  The US has run out of money and must either a) cut back on what they’re spending it on, b) raise taxes or c) a wise combination of both. 

There is a choice d)  Declare bankruptcy and throw the entire economy of the planet into the toilet from which it will not recover for at least a generation.  Where common sense is missing is the knee-jerk reaction of the various parties involved.  The Republican-Tea Party morons are adamant that taxes must not be raised especially for big corporations and the fabulously wealthy. 

This is nothing more than the last vestiges of Regan-era trickle down voodoo economics.  It didn’t work in 1976; it didn’t work in 2001; it doesn’t work now and it won’t work in the future.  Would the US please grow up and recognize that you can’t run an economy on the basis of a sound bite?  You can only spend as much money as you have and if you don’t have enough money, you have to cut back somewhere, or get more money by raising taxes.  General Electric earned $5 billion in profit last year and paid no taxes.  Why not try simplifying the corporate tax code and canning about 98% of the tax credit dodges set up by previous administrations of both political stripes to reward their buddies? 

What you have developed is a form of corporate welfare socialism that wraps itself in a free-market capitalist cloak when someone looks too closely.  We can only quote Eisenhower so many times:  Watch the Military-Industrial Complex.  Those guys don’t so much as set their alarm clock unless the government is paying for it in some manner. 

If the sole reason large corporations have for doing anything or being in the US is the tax breaks, then you don’t have an economy. If the US economy is as wonderful as the press release says it is, then they’ll stick around and pay their fair share of the bill while making damn good profits from doing things well.  That would be how an actual economy works.

The Norwegian bombing is very much a story in transition.  Close to 100 killed in two incidents, one a bomb let off in the government area of downtown Oslo, followed by an execution spree at a youth campsite.   

We can hear the NRA doing a logic backflip now decrying Norwegian gun laws as unable to protect the citizens who should have been armed and would have ended the killing spree by massed fire.  Except the shooter was disguised as a police officer. 

The Fox News commentators are disappointed:  The story isn’t about towel-headed bearded terrorists with bombs sewn in their bellies, detonating for Allah.  The perpetrator is homegrown Norwegian loon with a Timmy McVeigh complex.  He allowed himself to be taken alive, one would assume so he can read his manifesto at his trial.

So what happened to our common-sense gene?  Has it gone recessive and like the little toe, will soon be nothing more than a nubbin on the side of our pituitary gland?

We can lay a percentage at our media, who pander to nothing more than our basest, most vindictive instincts.  We love to see the famous and fabulous brought down several dozen pegs at a time, like reading the News Of The World, TMZ.com or the Huffington Post.  At the same time, we’re the ones who insist on there being an entire cultural subset of hollow celebrity presented for our amusement and entertainment.  We are confronted by a fire-hose of minutiae about hundreds of thousands of events, screaming for our attention, demanding their fifteen minutes of importance.

Back in the Golden Era of Hollywood, the publicists did the same thing, building profile for budding stars, grooming the images of the anointed, piling up little mints of image.  Their timelines were measured in months, each week a new photo set coming out, to add another particle to the image of Deanna Durbin being the girl-next- door, or Roy Rogers as the singing cowboy with his loyal horse Trigger.

Today, our timelines are measured in trending-now minutes from Twitter as the measure of success.  We don’t see beyond the next hour, looking for the next data fix masquerading as news.  It isn’t much different from fans writing in for an autographed picture of Cary Grant, except the time scale is compressed. 

That might be where we’re losing our common-sense.  We don’t reflect, taking actual minutes to think about what we’re hearing and seeing.  To close the circle, Amy Winehouse is tragic and predictable.  The US Debt Ceiling Debate could be fixed if someone grew a set and told the business elite to either bucks up, or get out.  The Norwegian terror killings have nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with a hyper-politicized loon.

Two milestones have passed in the last week that cause us to look back a bit and see where we’ve come from. 

The first passing was the terse note from James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corporation that News Of The World would cease publication on Sunday, forever.  It would seem that NOTW’s fascination with hacking into the voicemail of victims, families and celebs along with some serious corruption charges are going to stop the presses for good.  To say that News Of The World was the singularly most tawdry UK Sunday paper in existence would be perfectly accurate and perhaps even a moderate understatement.  However, the line was crossed when it was revealed NOTW was involved in hacking into the voicemail of murdered British teen Milly Dowler to see what kind of dirt could be dug up.  Even the families of British soldiers killed in action have had their mobile phones hacked, purportedly to garner headlines like “Dead Vet’s Nanny Buys Undies Online From Same Store As Posh Spice”  

Being in the same store where NOTW is on sale makes you feel like you need a half-hour shower afterwards.  Not even the National Enquirer  makes you feel that soiled and News Corporation has done the right thing by closing the paper for good.

The Space Shuttle on the other hand was almost always a feel-good story, with a couple of notable exceptions.  Designed in the early 70’s, the Shuttle was the reusable delivery van of the new frontier of space exploration.  The last flight is under way with Atlantis dropping off a years’ worth of groceries at the International Space Station as STS-135.  Of course the Shuttle has been overhauled and updated a few times in the past thirty four years.  Now NASA is going to have to bum rides with the Russians to get to the ISS.  There is no replacement for the Shuttle, except some pretty drawings and PowerPoint presentations that would make a stone statue yawn.  

Perhaps that is the sadder passing of the two.  The end of the Shuttle and no obvious inheritor means we’ve given up.  The various surviving Shuttles will become gate queens stuck on pylons until they rot away. 

In thirty years expect a two line story on your smartphone implant that some old geezers are trying to raise a few million Yuan to restore the rusted out remains of the last surviving Shuttle from a defunct outdoor water park in Toledo, Ohio.  The geezers want to remind us of the days when humans did really cool, heroic things.  Back when we could tackle any problem and solve it with a combination of education, determination and genuine effort. 

Back when we were Good.  Damn Good.

Call this a two’fer as we’re going to deal with Osama bin Laden, then the Canadian Federal election. 

Osama Bin Laden is dead and right now the Black Helicopter Brigade is working up a good lather that:

1: It wasn’t really Osama Bin Laden, but his identical twin brother Stan Bin Laden.  The real Osama Bin Laden is still driving a cab in Cincinnati.

2: The body wasn’t actually buried at sea, but transported to a subterranean medical lab near Quantico where the CIA is using alien technology to bring Bin Laden back to life.  This is the same lab where the crippled JFK lived out his years in a wheelchair after Dallas and where Walt Disney’s brain is kept in cryogenic suspended animation. 

3: It was all staged in a hangar in Area 51

4: Barack Obama had Bin Laden killed to keep him from revealing that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii, or Kenya, but that Barack Obama is actually from Tel Aviv and his Dad owned a fleet of scooters that he would rent to tourists.  Barack Obama’s real name is Moshe Ben Momser and Michelle Obama is actually a white guy named Kenneth in excellent, stylish, fashion-forward drag.

5: The luxurious compound where the fake Osama Bin Laden lived just outside of Islamabad was actually owned by the Russian government and was an abortion clinic designed to harvest stem cells from Pashtun fighters’ wives as a way for the former Soviet government to breed their own super-race of guerilla fighters to take down the Afghan Taliban to secure oil supplies for China.

Or, maybe, just maybe, the US Government got it all right and sent SEAL Team Six in to do what needed to be done.  Then they got it done.  Mind you, we are curious about the ‘hiding in plain sight’ and how Bin Laden was able to pull that off in Pakistan.  Oh, pardon me, perhaps we shouldn’t ask that question too loudly as we might come across as insensitive regarding a putative ally in the War on Terror.

As for the Canadian Election?  We’re going to hold our nose and vote, as any good citizen should do.  With luck, we’ll get a Conservative Minority with the NDP in Opposition.  With further luck, the Liberals will properly implode, taking their leader and most of their membership to a warm, dark, brown, quiet place for the next couple of decades. 

Unfortunately, that means we get our national micromanaging bully back as PM so he can browbeat Cabinet and the Canadian people for the next three or four years, while giving any corporation with their hand out, a Hand Out, masquerading as a tax break, tax credit or some other accounting dodge.  The last middle-class Canadian will be kept under glass at the Museum of Civilization, while the rest of us become indentured slaves to some Calgary oil company.

We’re living in interesting times.          

We decided to opt-out of the Kate and Bill Wales story as we can only tolerate a certain percentage of madness in any given fiscal year.  Royal weddings can easily exceed our mandated maximum, especially if they occur in the UK.  The madness doesn’t necessarily happen because of the media, as it is expected the ink-stained wretches go all sloppy, but more because of the rampant venal merchandising that gloms its’ mitts onto any occasion.

For instance, the ‘replica’ Royal engagement ring only available in this limited time offer, strict limit of one per household, normally priced at $119.00, now just $39.90, with a hinged velveteen box and Certificate of Authenticity.  If one combined folded cigarette foil for the ‘silver’, broken windshield glass for the ‘diamonds’ and a shard of an old Noxzema jar for the ‘sapphire’, then assembled the pieces could be construed as a ‘replica’ of the Kate and Bill engagement ring.  It’s so ugly that the ring itself will scuttle under the fridge if you turn on the kitchen lights. 

By the same rules of ‘replica’ commemoratives, I’m Ray Charles, because I have at least two feet and so did Ray.  We’ll overlook the logic of the comparison as I am younger, Caucasian, untalented, won’t sing, can’t play the piano, am partially sighted and not currently dead.  I can however provide a Certificate of Authenticity.  I’ll even throw in a hinged velveteen box, so you can call me Ray Charles too.

The madness comes from the reaction of supposedly sane consumers who upon seeing the commercials for any kind of commemorative, immediately whip out the credit card and start pounding the phone to order this material.  The Cook Islands, the Franklin Mint and hundreds of other commemorative manufacturers seem to tap into some poorly formed area of the consumer brain that insists on parting with money for commemoratives and collectibles.  Why?  Are we actually that malformed and lacking in self-esteem that we think the possession of recycled-glass-not-even-close replica of some dead Royal’s ring, somehow will convey the status of near-Royalty to our mantle, if we had a mantle? 

Yes.  We are that dumb.  If we weren’t, these commemorative folks would have gone out of business generations ago, but, like mercury in the bloodstream, they’re still with us.

As for Kate and Bill?  We wish them well.