Category: Politics

Comments on recent political activities and developments primarily in the U.S. and Canada.

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Cry Me a River

I just watched Bill Clinton’s State of the Union Address. Coming as it does, in the middle of impeachment hearings, it was extraordinary. It may well be the best political speech I have seen in the past ten years. You could not have guessed that the man delivering it was living his life under a cloud.

The Republicans are playing a peculiar game. The State of the Union Address was a no-win situation for them. Sit and growl and you look like sore losers. Stand and applaud, and you have to answer the question: why are you trying to impeach him? Conservatives say that the Republicans are showing a lot of principle here– they are willing to buck a year’s worth of polls that show, with uncanny consistency, that the voters utterly reject impeachment.

Is this really “principle”? I don’t believe it. Remember, we’re talking about politicians here who routinely accept large donations from big corporations in exchange for altering or creating legislation that favours their interests. Remember, we’re talking about politicians who want to rely on chemical companies to tell us if they think some of their products might be doing harm to the environment. Remember, we’re talking about politicians who not only give away our forests to the lumber companies, but also charge the taxpayers for the cost of building logging roads, and who think that “global warming” is a left-wing hoax. Remember, we’re talking Jesse Helms, and Bob Barr, and Henry Hyde here. They ask us to believe that nothing matters more to them than “principle”.

I suspect that many of the hardcore conservatives in the Republican Party have come to believe that polls reflect the effects of some kind of magical spell woven by the Clinton administration and the media, which will evaporate like moon-dust the minute Clinton is actually removed from office. They firmly believe that in two years, the voters will not care who impeached whom, and will once again vote for the “righteous” party, the party of self-interest, the party of guns, the party of big military bands, the party of Star Wars, the party of Kenneth Starr.

* * *

If anyone needed any further convincing that Kenneth Starr is a modern day Grand Inquisitor, consider the case of Julie Hiatt Steele. (If you haven’t already been convinced by his treatment–harassment, rather– of Webster Hubbell and Susan McDougall).

Julie Hiatt Steele got a phone call from Kathleen Wiley one day. Kathleen Wiley was going to tell the media that President Clinton had groped her on a visit to the Oval Office. She didn’t want anyone to think she had made up this story after hearing about all the other scandals involving Bill Clinton so she asked Julie Hiatt Steele to tell a reporter that Wiley had told her about the groping long before the headlines about Monica Lewinsky. Long before the book deal.

Julie Hiatt Steele agreed to do so. She called a reporter and confirmed the story.

A few days later, she called the reporter for whom she had confirmed Wiley’s story and told him that she had lied, and that Wiley had asked her to lie. The story wasn’t true.

I don’t think any of us will ever know why exactly.

Julie Hiatt Steele has now been charged, by Grand Inquisitor Kenneth Starr, with perjury and obstruction of justice. Her tax, bank and telephone records have been seized by Starr’s office. Her brother, accountant, and former attorney have been called in to testify. She could receive up to 54 years in jail. Julie Hiatt Steele has no other involvement in this case. She has never been to the White House. She has never had any contact with any person from the White House. She has recently adopted a Romanian orphan. She is a single mother. Her sin was to dispute Kathleen Wiley’s account of what happened after her meeting with President Clinton, testimony that Starr wanted very badly in order to persuade the Senate to impeach Clinton.

Kenneth Starr, beneath that smug, pious exterior, is a fanatic with unlimited power who is out of control. If the Republicans really believe that he has been impartial, they should sign a pledge that they will renew the Independent Prosecutor’s position when it comes up again even if there is a Republican President.

Kenneth Starr believes that Julie Hiatt Steele conspired with the Clinton White House to sabotage Kathleen Wiley’s allegations. This is kind of a strange idea, because, until the reporter called on Ms. Steele, nobody even knew who she was. It’s hard to imagine how the White House could have gotten to her before anybody in the media knew her name.

It is also hard to imagine an act more cynical, unscrupulous, and devious, than to indict this woman for perjury on the day of the State of the Union Address.

If you get a chance, watch Julie Steele in interviews. She seems like a very bright, articulate, decent person. She answers questions directly, quickly, with apparent candor. She is frightened and astounded that this indictment could happen to her in the United States of America, under the statute that gives Kenneth Starr almost unlimited power. We’re talking about a single mother here who has never committed a crime in her life being threatened with 54 years in prison. Even Marlin Fitzwater, the press secretary for George Bush, said he was appalled.

It appears that Kenneth Starr is punishing Ms. Steele for failing to collaborate his increasingly hysterical views of the Clinton White House.

Remember we all laughed when Hillary Clinton alleged a right wing conspiracy. Well, I sort of laughed. I thought it was a cheap shot, a political statement, not meant to be taken seriously. It’s smart to be skeptical of both sides on this issue.

Now I’m beginning to wonder. You have to keep in mind that the Jones case itself only survived judicial scorn through the efforts of wealthy Clinton foe Richard Scaife.

I suppose it is possible that Ms. Steele is an amazing liar. Either that, or Kenneth Starr is one amazing little fascist.

* * *

If the Senate does call witnesses, as everyone says they will, it becomes increasingly difficult to comprehend the Republican “strategy”. It is said that they favour calling Monica Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan, and Betty Currie.

I can’t imagine what they expect to gain. Monica is likely to repeat her statement that nobody promised her a job in exchange for her silence, or asked her to lie. If the managers from the House hope to intimidate her or shake her testimony, they will have to resort to some rather ham-fisted tactics, which don’t play very well on tv. I would expect the Republicans will try to have these hearings closed to the public, but, like I said, Republican strategy here is baffling.

How will it look on TV, to have frisky little Monica Lewinsky testify in front of 91 white men who are all old enough to be her father, and 9 women?

Betty Currie is another dangerous witness for the Republicans. Picture the svelte, sensitive Bob Barr, or Henry Hyde questioning this middle-age black secretary about who really arranged for the gifts to Monica Lewinsky to be returned. If she says, “I don’t really remember”, will one of the Inquisitors really go, “Come now, Mrs. Currie!” In front of the nation? Will William McCollum crack his whip or his wit? Will Trent Lott offer her a smoke, courtesy of the Tobacco Industry he has served so well in exchange for generous contributions, or invite her to a meeting of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a racist group to which he has given fawning keynote addresses?

How many people, besides myself, will glance around the Senate at that moment to determine who many black members are sitting? Take a guess.

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Trent Lott (2nd from left) with CCC members.

Then there is Vernon Jordan, the real bogey-man for the Falwell-inspired conspiracy buffs. Who is this mysterious man, operating in the shadows, elusive and silent in the face of all this cacophony? Well, by all accounts, he is a very shrewd, very intelligent man, who might just slice the Republican inquisitors to ribbons with his replies. The Republicans want to play with this witness?

And what if the Democrats call Linda Tripp? What if they call that slime-ball book agent from New York who first advised Linda to tape her conversations with Monica Lewinsky– Lucianne Goldberg? One could not imagine more appealing witnesses favourable to the prosecution other than Dracula and Frankenstein. What if they highlight Linda Tripps’ perjury, when she declared that she had no interest in writing a book on the subject to a Grand Jury— while tapes show that she was discussing with Ms. Goldberg how much information to hold back from Newsweek so she would still be able to command big bucks for an exclusive book contract?

* * *

Perhaps one of the most hysterically absurd myths about the Clinton scandal is that the media is in cahoots with the Democrats. I am in cahoots with the Democrats, and I have never been as infuriated with the media as I have been for the past year. I have watched endless hours of CNN– the 24-hour impeachment channel– and ABC and NBC and CBS. I’ve seen Dan Rather summoned back from Cuba to analyze the profound social and political implications of a semen-stained dress. I’ve seen reporters stare into a camera with a straight face and tell the world about the gravity of a situation which I found utterly hysterical and ridiculous. I’ve seen Larry King–divorced and re-married five times himself– solemnly pronounce that the entire nation was disgraced by Clinton’s sexual behavior.

And these are Clinton’s allies?

Well, lately, maybe they are. CNN has taken a more sober perspective. Jeff Greenfield now finds the impeachment somewhat bizarre. Greta Vansusteran now concedes that no reputable prosecutor would have proceeded with the case. Larry King arches his eyebrows and frowns while interviewing the indicted Julie Hiatt Steele. Bernard Shaw appears to grimace just a little while interviewing Bob Barr.

But Sam Donaldson still looks pretty solemn as he interviews Larry Flynt.

For the record, I would defy these people to name a single commentator in a major American television news department or news magazine who has given a “liberal” view of things, which is, that this has never been and never will be anything else but a desperate attempt by the Republicans to sabotage and destroy a Democratic administration. Yes, some of them may genuinely believe that Clinton’s offenses were serious. Most of them have simply been absorbed into the hysteria. They have no idea of what is up or down, left or right, rational or hysterical. They are simply in the middle of a political vortex that continues to spin out of control.

The real truth was accidentally revealed by Henry Hyde on Saturday. He said, “you may disagree with us, but at least we believe in something”. In other words, we arch-conservatives can’t believe that we are wrong. We refuse to accept. We can not admit it. We can’t tolerate those who disagree with us because their values are not real. We are the only arbiters of truth and justice. If we only had an army….

* * *

What made Clinton’s “State of the Union” speech so good? He struck a tone of non-partisanship. He showed no sour grapes. He touched upon all of the current hot-button issues for voters and took the “correct” position. He pre-empted the Republicans on every issue except tax cuts. He laid out a clear, specific agenda, with realistic goals and achievable results. He reminded America that times are very good, indeed, knowing that most Americans will identify the current levels of prosperity and growth with his administration.

The Republicans keep parroting that history will remember Clinton as the first President, since Andrew Johnson, to be tried for impeachment. To the contrary, I believe history will remember this era as “the good old days”, and exciting period of change and innovation–and prosperity– and it may well become known as the Clinton era.

On the other hand, some politicians may be remembered for voting to impeach the most popular president of the past fifty years. Or they may be forgotten as voters cast them aside.

When people look back today to assess presidents, what do they remember? Who is currently the most popular?

John F. Kennedy, who really accomplished very little, but looked like he had a lot of potential. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who carried on an affair for many years. Why is Roosevelt remembered so fondly? Because he communicated very well. He led the country through a decade of prosperity and continued growth. He made sane, rational decisions that seem, in retrospect, to have been the right ones to make.

Ronald Reagan? He was liked on a personal basis, but a lot of people have not forgotten that, thanks to his fantastical “trickle down” economic theory, he took the budget from a $45 billion deficit to a $540 billion deficit. I’m not kidding. You can look it up. How is it that the Republicans continue to pass themselves off as the “fiscally responsible” party?

Clinton has taken the budget from hundreds of billions in the red to about $80 billion in the black. The Republicans like to say they did it, all by themselves. But they also want you to believe that Ronald Reagan was a great president. But he couldn’t have done without the Democratic Congress. I guess we remember what we want to remember.

Think about it. This is a fact, confirmed by the most extensive scientific polling ever conducted– and the November elections: Bill Clinton is the most popular president in forty years.

The bottom line, for many Americans, is really quite intuitive. Two ships are in the harbour. Both are going to the same destination. One of them is captained by Kenneth Starr, and he introduces his officers to you: Bob Barr, Lindsey Graham, Asa Hutchinson, Newt Gingrich (hey– he got this ball rolling), and the rest of the gang. They explain that there is going to be lots of rules and they will be enforced strictly. Homosexuals are not allowed on board. No smoking or drinking, or rock’n’roll. Rich people get all the big cabins. They have to pay more for them, but only rich people get to dine with captain or use the pool. Religious services are held every Sunday and attendance is obligatory. Let’s pray first. And you’all be sure and have lots of fun.

The other ship is captained by Bill Clinton. He introduces his officers. Vernon Jordan, Betty Currie, William Cohen, Al Gore, and Hillary. You notice there are lots of buxom maids with big teeth. Can’t afford a ticket? You can work your way across the ocean in the kitchen.

Which ship will you choose?

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Republicans of Virtue

Who are these noble men who seek to purify the government by removing that festering pustule of delinquency, Bill Jefferson Clinton, from the sacred repository of all that is noble and good? Let’s meet some of them:

Bob Barr – when he is not busy addressing the John Birch Society or White Supremacist rallies, Bob likes to commit a little adultery himself. In all fairness, Bob claims that he doesn’t really understand what those white hoods are for.

Sonny Bono – died, before he could win a single Grammy for song-writing. But that’s okay: in democratic, freedom-loving America, his wife can have his job, ruling the country and impeaching presidents.

Zach Wamp of Tennessee opposes all government spending, unless it goes to his district.

Henry Hyde had a little fling on the side himself back he was Clinton’s age, but don’t let that fool you: he believes in something, not like those atheist, pagan Democrats!

Helen Chenoweth thinks all people who commit adultery and lie about it should be removed from office. Oops. Seems she committed adultery. I guess she didn’t lie about it. “Hi there. I’m Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth and I’m having sex with your husband.”

Steve Stockman of Texas likes to hang around with those militia groups that stockpile arms for the day of reckoning, when blacks and Jews try to take over America.

Enid Green Waldholtz, Utah, got elected with a little help from her father: $2 million worth of illegal campaign contributions. Oops. Let’s not investigate that.

Wes Cooley slightly exaggerated his war record. Seems he wasn’t part of that patriotic special operations unit in Korea after all.

Newt Gingrich. Aside from a few dozen ethics violations, such as trying to hide the income from his best-selling books, and the fact that he, like Dan Quayle, avoided military service, and the fact that he is the most ego-centric and unpopular politician in the country…. oh yes. Don’t forget that he engineered a complete shutdown of the federal government in November 1995, one of the most colossal political blunders of all time, because he was still in a snit over not being invited to exit the front door of Air Force One when it arrived in Israel for the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin.

Governor George Bush Jr. Well, let’s just hope Kenneth Starr isn’t still looking into lifestyles of the rich and elected by 2000…. but then again, Starr doesn’t investigate Republicans. That’s what we mean by “independent”. Let’s just say that George enjoyed his youth and leave it at that, shall we?

Fred Heineman of North Carolina thinks most middle class families earn around $700K.

Dan Burton… oh dear… that adultery thing again. He also raised the art of political discourse to a new high with his formal description of the president as “a scumbag”. Can you spell “statesmanship”?

Bob Dole. Let’s not speculate too much here about Mr. Family Values, but merely note, with dignity and restraint, that Mr. Dole’s first wife’s name is not Elizabeth.

Dan Quayle. War record, Dan? You weren’t one of those despicable draft dodgers were you? Chicken-hawk. Indiana National Guard? Oooo. Did you get a chance to lob a few grenades at Birch Bayh?

Robert Livingston. A good decent man who happened to have committed adultery too. What a shame. Good, decent men like Bob Barr forced him to resign.

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Dutch Treat

Everybody knows that the Dutch are crazy. While we North Americans spend billions of dollars every year fighting marijuana use, the Dutch have virtually legalized it. What a crazy country! Amsterdam, with its numerous legal hash joints, is known as the “dope capital of Europe”. Here, we call that place “Washington DC”.

But, well, life is strange. According to a recent study by the Amsterdam University and Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics, only about 16% of the Dutch population, over the age of 12, have ever tried cannabis. The equivalent percentage for North America is 33%.

Zowie! That is really weird. Can anybody explain this?

Maybe it can be explained with the old “forbidden fruit” theory. Because it is illegal in the U.S. and Canada, our teenagers want to try it, to prove that they’re not sissies who listen to their mommies and daddies. In Holland, it’s the mommies and daddies (the politicians) that are saying, “Here, try it”, and the kids are saying, “What? Are you nuts?”

Maybe it’s like when your kid threatens to run away from home. One day, you hand her a suitcase and say, “Okay.” That usually stops them dead in their tracks. Maybe it’s the same with marijuana. Now that Dutch society says, “go ahead, use it if you like.” And the kids are going, “Why? Maybe I don’t want to.”

Well, I think we owe it to common sense to give it a try here. If it reduces drug use to legalize drugs, I’m all for it.

But why hasn’t it worked for guns?

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Robbing the Poor

While Americans pour billions of dollars, through charities, into foreign aid, American banks rake back more than ten times as much, in interest payments on loans negotiated with illegitimate military dictatorships. Most of these loans were used to line the pockets of the generals and their cronies, or buy weapons from U.S. and European manufacturers. The weapons were used to put down rebellions by their own people. The people were rebelling against governments that squandered their money on weapons instead of schools, agricultural development, roads, and hospitals.

This is an unbelievable fact but it is absolutely true: the so-called “third world”, the poorest countries on the globe, pour billions of dollars into the economies of the rich West, while receiving barely a trickle back in foreign aid. Their schools, hospitals, and transportation systems are starving for funds. Their people are literally starving. Yet we shamelessly continue to demand that they pay us back every last penny of the money borrowed by scumbag generals who seized power illegally, ruled by force, and tortured and exploited their own people.

Any person with common sense can see that if a bank chooses to lend money to a dictator, they have no right to expect the oppressed victims of that dictator to repay the loans. First our banks raped these countries; now they demand that they make us dinner.

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Pants on Fire: Analysis of a Scandal

Pants on Fire

After six months of debate, personal attacks, screaming, hollering, and fits of hysteria, there’s really nothing new to add the Clinton debate. The biggest, most flatulent paradox of the whole thing is when all these Republicans line up with their phony serious faces and insist that this is “painful” for them and they didn’t really want to do it but they have to impeach the leader of the free world for lying. They even claim– and this is an outrage– that Nixon had similarly high approval ratings on the day he was impeached.

Let’s get this straight. On the day of the Watergate break-in, Nixon’s approval ratings were, in fact, decent– around 60%. But as the Watergate scandal unfolded, and as testimony revealed more and more about the criminal activities (not merely immoral: criminal) of the White House, Nixon’s approval ratings plummeted, down to a low of 27% on the day he resigned.

So those Republicans who claim that Nixon’s approval ratings were the same as Clinton’s are, of course lying. They are also lying when they claim that they are paying a political price for their “principled” stand. Almost all of the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee face no serious opposition for re-election in their own ridings. The truth is, they could go around wearing a dress and throwing custard pies at Vernon Jordan and still be re-elected in their solidly Republican districts. The truth is that they receive so much money from the corporations that benefit from their corrupt legislative agendas that they will be re-elected until, like Strom Thurmond, they are pretty well senile.

They give all these interviews where they say they have to see the evidence first, and they haven’t made up their minds. Then every last single one of them votes “guilty”, like we all thought they would.

There has never been so much lying in any single repository of political deliberation since the Nixon White House.

The bottom line is very simple. If Clinton had clearly committed “high crimes and misdemeanors”, as Nixon did, there would have been at least five or six Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee voting for impeachment, and at least 30-45 Democrats in the House voting for impeachment. That’s all it would take to establish that there really are objective criteria at work here and that they are really being applied fairly, and that this is not a partisan political attack. Unless you seriously believe that every single member of the Democratic Party is a lying weasel.

Well, the Republicans want you to believe that every single Republican Representative is voting their conscience.. That is what they are saying. They ask you to believe this. Do you believe they believe it themselves? If they don’t believe it themselves, they are lying. If they do believe it themselves, they either fanatic or clinically insane or both. If they believed itself, there would be no backroom dealing, no arm-twisting, no secret meetings, no closed-door caucuses….. Come on… do you believe it?

What does this remind you of? The old Soviet Union? The Communist government would declare that this writer or that dissident was a threat to the state and must be expelled or imprisoned or whatever. And every single member of the government would vote for this measure. The vote would be something like 350-10. Just as the Republicans now vote 220-5 in favour of impeachment. Nobody doubted then that the vote was farce, just as no one should doubt it now.

The Republicans keep insisting that it’s up to the Democrats to break the partisan logjam. In other words, we can be bipartisan as long as you vote the way I tell you to.

That is the prosecution–and they clearly are the prosecution– insisting that the defense prove that their client is innocent. “If he really didn’t do it, prove it.” No such burden in law exists. It is the Republicans who want to impeach. It is their job to convince at least some Democrats and the majority of Americans that Clinton should be impeached. They have utterly failed. And if they had any respect for the democratic system of government, they would admit that they simply cannot carry out an impeachment along purely partisan lines, and therefore must stop.

But they don’t care. The most frightening thing about this debacle is the way it has laid bare the Republicans bald contempt for democratic values whenever it stands in the way of their partisan agenda. They literally do not care what anyone thinks. They have the muscle– just barely– to impeach, and a legal technicality to hang it on, and so they will. It is very troubling that so very few Republicans–about five–have the integrity to admit that, no matter what they believe personally, they simply cannot carry out such a momentous process without some bipartisan support. You simply can’t do it, without doing serious damage to the institution of government. No matter how convinced you are that you are right, if you have any integrity or respect for democracy, you can’t go forward. You admit that you failed. You say, “well, if the American people really want him, and we can’t persuade anybody else that he’s guilty, so be it.” Instead, the Republicans say, “what do we care what the voters want or whether the process is credible. Look at CNN? Analysis is about as deep as Tupperware. Everyone will forget this within six months.”

The moment of truth in this debate was the moment that Henry Hyde said, “You may disagree with us, but at least we believe in something.” In other words, this is really a religious battle. We are God’s chosen, and you are the apostates. We know we are right, because God told us the truth, and it is our duty to enlighten you. Why should we consider other points of view, when we’re right? Debate is utterly useless. This, spoken by a man who, when he was Clinton’s age, also had an adulterous affair.

Reagan got off very lightly with the Iran-Contra scandal, largely because most Democrats, as much as they disagreed with Reagan, respected the fact that he had commanding support (almost as good as Bill Clinton’s) from the voters. And they didn’t think it would be worth turning the government upside down just to shove their own views down the throat of the body politic. Unlike the Republicans, they realized they could not proceed without wide public consensus that the offenses committed were serious enough to warrant impeachment. The Republicans have no such compunction.

The extremism of the Republicans has forced moderates too far to the right. Not only were Clinton’s offenses not worthy of impeachment, they are not even worthy of censure. They are not worthy of a hiccup. Unlike Watergate and Iran-Contra, they had nothing to do with the exercise of power. The real question to ask yourself– and most American voters appear to have asked it– is what harm was done. The affair was consensual. Paula Jones’ case, by all credible accounts, would have died in any court room (she could never prove that she had suffered any harm, even if the incident in the hotel room really happened). The initial Paula Jones lawsuit, and the now-repudiated testimony of the state troopers, has well-documented links to multi-millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, an arch-foe of President Clinton. Jerry Falwell has links to the film company “Jerimiah Productions” which created “The Clinton Chronicles”, a farcical video that alleges murder and mayhem in the Clinton White House and gives new meaning to the word “paranoid”. Several “witnesses” who provided derogatory stories to the Financial Post and other newspapers were paid by “Citizens for Honest Government”, an anti-Clinton organization with links, again, to Falwell.

On the other hand, Ronald Reagan unsuccessfully traded weapons to an enemy of the U.S. (Iran) in return for the release of hostages in Lebanon. He broke the law. He showed poor judgement. And to any but the most gullible, he lied about it.

It looks like a big mess now. The country has been tied up for months with this insane investigation. Character assassination and invasion of privacy is now accepted as political stratagems. Perhaps the most cynical development in the whole scandal is the party line of the Republicans: “See what Bill Clinton hath wrought!” This is, without a doubt, what Kenneth Starr and the Republicans have wrought. It is only due to their incredibly stubborn and devious machinations that this affair continues to dominate the headlines.

The media have performed about as badly as Republicans, and continue to make the insane assertion that Clinton’s presidency is now permanently “tainted” with this scandal. CNN is the 24-hour Impeachment channel, with music and graphics that make it seem like a great sporting event, complete with colour commentators and sponsors.

I firmly believe that within five years, this scandal will be rightly regarded as one of the ugliest examples of partisan political muckraking in the history of the U.S., and the blame will be squarely laid on the shoulders of Newt Gingrich, Kenneth Starr, Bob Livingston, Henry Hyde, and their fellow raving hypocrites.

Finally, I have to express my utter astonishment at the resilient good sense of the average American voter. I did not believe that public opinion would withstand the onslaught of six months of raving lunacy, by the Republicans, by CNN, by NBC, ABC, and CBS (who recalled Dan Rather from Cuba to cover the stained dress), and even so-called “liberal” papers, like the New York Times.

Why did the media treat the story the way they did, if Clinton’s actions did not justify impeachment? There are three basic reasons. (1) it was a cheap story: all talking heads and free interviews. Very few mobile-cams, travel expenses, research, or paid experts. The profit margin is enormous. (2) The Republicans made it a story by releasing all the scandalous details from Grand Jury testimony when they should not have, and holding press conferences, and calling for Clinton to resign. (3) because sex sells.

Consider, as an alternative, the cost of providing in-depth coverage of the Kosovo crisis: you have reporters travelling and staying in hotels. You have research into the history of the area and its peoples and culture. You have related developments at the U.N. and Moscow and European capitals. It takes longer than five seconds to explain.

But if people didn’t buy the story why did they tune in to CNN to watch it unfold? The outrage effect. Even people who hated the story probably tuned in regularly to see just how outrageous and contemptible it had become. It was, indeed, spectacular. It was ridiculous to the degree of absurdity. It was, at times, insane. But it was always a spectacle, and people will watch a spectacle, no matter how horrifying.

Have the Republicans done permanent damage to their party? Do the voters realize how utterly cynical and contemptuous of them this party is? The Republicans seriously believe that the voters will either change their minds about Clinton, eventually, or they will completely forget, in two years or less, that they did everything they could to obstruct, marginalize, and remove a popular president.

They may be right. Maybe not. The Republicans may have underestimated the effect that this debacle has had on the people who really do shape opinion. Once the vampires in the media have sucked all the blood out of this story, they will need a new one. The reporters and editors who help shape public opinion are always looking for an “angle” to a story. The primary angle of the Lewinsky scandal is Clinton’s immorality. The secondary angle is the intolerance and puritanical zeal of the Republicans.

Clinton will be gone in two years, at the latest. But the Republicans running for re-election in two years, are going to have the same pinched faces, and editors and reporters are going to remember the fanatic intolerance and hypocrisy they introduced into political discourse. Reporters may remember how immune the Republicans were to common sense, decency, and public will. They may be inclined to colour their coverage of Republican candidates with those factors. For example, if future presidential candidate (God help us) Dan Quayle attacks sex education programs for promoting promiscuity, reporters and editors may add a sly comment or two about how Republicans always seem concerned about personal sexual ethics.

Future generations will not remember this scandal for the disgrace it brought upon Bill Clinton. They know that Kennedy fooled around, and Rooseveldt fooled around, and Reagan was divorced and remarried (which means he probably fooled around), and even Dole and Gingrich were not faithful to their first wives. What’s the big deal? What was so different about this case?

They will remember that a fanatic corps of self-righteous Republicans use the flimsiest of pretexts to embark on a holy jihad to remove a popular president from office, and that they never succeeded in convincing anyone other than themselves that there was any reason for it.

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The Wilder and Crazier Lawyers

New Approach to Gun Control

Since the lawyers have finally taken care of the evil tobacco industry, let’s think about some good things lawyers might do for us.

I have an idea. The lawyers sued the tobacco industry because the tobacco industry markets a product which has been proven to cause serious medical problems for the consumers that use it, and which costs our society billions of dollars to provide medical treatment for these consumers.

That line of reasoning sounds simple and logical enough. But the tobacco industry is just a start. Why not sue the companies like Browning Arms (Utah, makers of the Browning shotgun), or Smith & Wesson that make guns? Here again we have a product which is bad for the consumer, but which the consumer stupidly buys anyway, deluded into thinking the product enhances his manhood or femininity, and which causes death and untold suffering, and which costs us taxpayers billions of dollars every year to provide medical treatment for the casualties.

This is really not much of a stretch, folks. The government routinely analyzes products or activities that are harmful to the public and, if it is proven that the harm they produce exceeds their usefulness or value, they enact legislation to prohibit or restrict it. The government does this for pornography, cigarettes, alcohol, toxic chemicals, radiation, drugs, and so on. The government even assumes that anyone who buys a recordable CD might be thinking about duplicating a copyrighted piece of music. It doesn’t wait to see if you are actually going to do it or not. It ASSUMES you are, and taxes you for it. Gives the money to the recording industry so they can pay their lawyers.

Now, the government looked the tobacco industry and came to a weird conclusion. It said, well, you do a lot of damage to people’s health. You lie to them and deceive them. You probably put additives in that increase the users level of physical addiction. Pay us and we’ll let you continue to do these bad things.

If Mosanto corporation, for example, produced a fertilizer that caused cancer in the people who eat the food grown with it, would we accept a payment from Mosanto in exchange for letting them continue to sell it? Only if we were complete idiots.

Guns are dangerous. Only an idiot would believe they do more good than harm. Think about it. Would we be safer in a world where everybody had a gun, or where nobody had a gun?

Since the government has already made a bargain with the NRA to allow the continued sale of almost any kind of gun you can imagine, we have no alternative but to hire lawyers and sue the gun industry.

Of course, if the end result is an agreement similar to the one reached with the tobacco companies (Clinton had a much better proposal but the tobacco lobby bought off enough Republican Congressmen to get it killed) what we will end up with is this: the gun lobby acquires immunity from further prosecution in exchange for about $250 billion dollars, almost all of which goes to the lawyers anyway. The $250 billion dollars are earned back by the gun lobby mainly by applying surcharges to sales of weapons to the military and police departments. Not only does the taxpayer get to fund the legal challenge, they also get to pay the penalty. And the icing on the cake: we have the same problem as before, except that it’s worst, because the gun manufacturers will have immunity from prosecution.

We could do the same for weapons manufacturers. Sue them for hundreds of billions of dollars for all the suffering and death they contribute to people around the world. Give all the money to the lawyers. We get to continue providing weapons to every 2-bit revolutionary or reactionary government in every sad, pathetic little starving country in the Third World, while, once again, the lawyers make a killing.

Don’t look at me. You elected the fools.

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Those Wild and Crazy Lawyers

Quick– who made more money this year? Microsoft Corporation or a couple of lawyers in Texas?

Right. The lawyers. Well, almost. You see this group of lawyers represented the State of Texas in negotiating a settlement (read “sell-out”) with the tobacco companies. In exchange for lots of bucks, paid to the lawyers— ooops! Paid to the Plaintiffs! That’s you and me! —the tobacco companies get to continue marketing death and disease to American children. What a wonderful country!

So how much did the lawyers bill the State of Texas for their noble services, defending the innocent consumer against evil, ruthless, greedy corporations?

How much you say? Well, these are lawyers, after all. So the amount might be a little excessive. What d’ya think? Take a guess? How much should a lawyer be paid for a couple of years of work, doing research, bribing employees to turn over internal documents, and ordering health studies already paid for by the tax-payer through government funding of Universities and Research Organizations? How much?

$10 million?
$20 million?
$50 million?

Oh, come on now. These are REALLY SMART TALENTED LAWYERS. After all, the average lawyer would have tried to get tobacco companies out of the business altogether. But that would have made the tobacco companies very unhappy. So these superior lawyers actually found a way to make everybody happy. The government gets money. The tobacco companies get to stay in business. The taxpayer gets to continue smoking away.

$100 million?
$200 million?
$500 million?

Come on– don’t be shy! These the same intelligent, compassionate, competent professionals you see every day in the movies and on television, except that you never see the scene where they present their bills and take almost all of the settlement money they weaseled out of the greedy, amoral, unfeeling corporation. How can a lawyer live off of a measly $500 million dollars nowadays? Be reasonable! There are SO MANY expenses. Postage. Clerical work. Filing. Thinking. Reading. Subscriptions. Donuts. Get SERIOUS!

$1 billion?

A mere BILLION? When Michael Jackson makes almost a tenth of that? When Bill Gates makes ten times that much! And how much more important is a Texas lawyer than the owner of the greediest corporation on the face of the earth? Give me a break.

$5 billion?
$10 billion?

Now you’re getting reasonable! But not too reasonable.

$25 billion?

Right on! Yes, these Texas Lawyers are asking for $25 billion dollars for negotiating— GET THIS– a $17 billion dollar settlement. In other words, for recovering $17 billion dollars from the tobacco companies for the lucky tax payers of Texas, they ….. well, they want to keep all the money. Yes ALL of the money. YES, ALL OF THE MONEY. But that’s not all folks! The taxpayers of Texas, in compensation for all the medical costs of taking care of all of the victims of smoking addictions, get to PAY these Texas Lawyers an additional $8 BILLION! You lucky Texans! Not only do you get to have tail-gate parties at Huntsville State Prison where they execute completely worthless, disgusting, evil, unredeemable human beings almost every night— you also get to pay a bunch of lawyers $8 billion dollars for……. well….. for…..

Well, fortunately, the lawyers and the tobacco companies got together and decided that it wouldn’t be fair to hit the citizens of Texas with such a large bill. They said, “What? Are you crazy?” Well… And they decided that those Texas Lawyers should ONLY receive $3.3 billion.

Whew! Here I was all upset over nothing! A mere $3.3 billion! How many lawyers were involved? The New York Times doesn’t say, but several other states had teams of three or four leading lawyers and their staffs. But– get this– some lawyers represented as many as 30 states. Do they get paid once? Are you an idiot? Does Michael Jordan get paid once even though he plays in 30 different stadiums?

Well, yes he does. But that’s Michael Jordan. He’s not a lawyer.

One of the lawyers for Florida, Steven Yerid, said the costs are justified. Why? Because that’s how much lawyers should make? Because their work is so terrible, so risky, so dangerous, that even a $14.95 an hour coal miner wouldn’t take it on? Because they are so smart that they scare Stephen Hawkings?

No. He said the fees were justified because “the costs come from the industry”. In other words, we’re justified in taking any money we can lay our grubby hands on because we are lawyers. We just ARE.

Furthermore, he says, the lawyers might have ended up with nothing if they had lost the case. So, because these lawyers might not have won the case, they are entitled to demand as much money as they please.

Remember, this line of reasoning is coming from a lawyer, someone you might need to depend on for your life if you’re ever charged with a serious crime in Texas.

Pity me. I thought this case was about public health and liability. Instead, it is clearly some new kind of industry, in which clever entrepreneur can sue somebody out of the blue on the off chance they might collect a few billions. Who do they sue next?

What does the public have to do with it? Go suck a camel.

The industry will pay it? Ha ha ha. The industry?!!! Where does this idiot think the “industry” gets its money? From the smokers! So, not only will very little of this money from the tobacco companies actually find it’s way into the medical facilities of Texas (aren’t most of their medical facilities used to gas convicts anyway?), but the smokers will pay more for cigarettes in order to pay the lawyers who negotiated a deal in which tobacco companies can now market their disease- causing product with impunity.

Now, who was this lawsuit supposed to benefit?  Who were the victims of the corporation’s malfeasance?  Who was harmed by the evil practices of these public entities who profited from their misery?  That’s right: the smokers.  The same people who are paying for the settlement!

There are some scandals that shock you. There are scandals that boggle the mind. There are scandals that baffle you, because the scale of the moral atrocity is so far beyond normal human experience that you can’t even begin to comprehend it. The Savings and Loan Scandal. The loans to 3rd World Dictatorships at usurious interest rates. Windows 95.

And then there is the king of all scandals, the mind-blowing, baffling, stunning, incomprehensible, MOTHER of all scandals. And this is it.

So while you’re sitting there eating your chips and watching the sanctimonious republicans try to impeach the president for consensual groping in the Oval Office— consider where your hard-earned tax dollars are really going.

And weep, wail, gnash your teeth, bash your head against the wall….. what else are you going to do?

Get yourself a lawyer?

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Liars

You ever tell a lie? Me neither.

According to some theologians, the Bible itself does not condemn lying. The Good Lord knows that in some situations, lying is the correct thing to do.

“Does this dress make me look fat?”
“Are there any Jews in this house?”
“I’m slow and stupid and nobody will ever love me.”
“This won’t hurt a bit.”
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

With all the talk about impeachment, an astonishingly absurd myth is being foisted upon all of us: that there is an established standard of moral decency to which almost all politicians adhere and that whenever anyone departs from this standard, they must be impeached.

The discussion is so absurd, it is mind-boggling. We have those Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee with a collective straight-face, proclaiming that they are going to punish the politician who lied.

They will tell you, of course, that Mr. Clinton lied under oath. In other words, it’s one thing to lie in the course of your normal day-to-day activities as a congressional representative, but to lie under oath!

Egads!

Shriek!

Sob!

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The Feminist Critique of Pure Immanuel Kant

There is an ad in the latest New York Times Review of Books (November 20, 1997) that really shook me up. It is for a book called “The Feminist Interpretation of Immanuel Kant”. It is edited by Robin May Schott, in case you want to order it.

Now, hey, I’d be the first person to say that it’s about time someone over-hauled the old transcendental critique of pure reason, I mean, after all, it’s only been out of date since about fifteen minutes after it was printed, but even I would never have guessed that the feminists would be the ones to put the last nail in the coffin. I’m not sure Immanuel would be pleased. I think he said something like “feminism is destroying our society” or something like that at one point in his career, probably just after his wife left him.

But you know, the next time some dark-minded pundit goes on and on about how our society is just falling apart and things have never been so bad and our youth have really lousy manners, and Hollywood sucks, and so on, I’m going to think about those feminists out there reinterpreting Immanuel Kant and breathe a quiet little sigh of relief. If there is one thing more amazing than any other about our society, its our ability to chew up and regurgitate almost any idea, any image, any concept, and spit it out again as lively and ripe as if it were new.

Like Immanuel Kant. It would have been audacious enough if the feminists had taken on Wittgenstein or Popper, but Kant? So what do the feminists have to say? I don’t know. I haven’t read the book yet. But I’ll bet they accuse Kant of building his entire rigid, rational system of thought on some misdirected patriarchal impulse to rule reality with an iron fist. And I’ll bet the feminists believe that a view of reality more harmonious with natural, empathetic impulses would have worked better. If I remember my college philosophy correctly, Kant was trying to rescue Reason with a capital “R” from Descartes’ radical critique, which consisted of declaring that the only thing you could know for sure was that you existed. Both of them sound a little anal retentive to me. The women probably point out that doing the laundry, cooking, and cleaning, require some pretty fundamental ontological conclusions about cause and effect that can’t be justified by going for a walk every day trying to think up new categories of existence.

Then along comes Sartre who believed we don’t exist in a static sense at all. We are constantly in the state of becoming, and that’s why we are free, unless, of course, your wife expects you home for supper. I’ll bet Simone De Beauvoir had a few precious thoughts about this herself.

Wittgenstein thought we basically constructed a reality in our language, and so our society is really nothing more than a construct of the words we imagine to describe it with. I think the feminists might find a home there. You know how they love to get together and talk. Then there was Martin Heidegger. He believed that mankind had forgotten something very, very important about existence, but what it was we had forgotten he couldn’t seem to remember either, so he joined the Nazi party and continued to teach at a university in Germany throughout World War II. Nothing like a philosophy that stimulates you into positive action! I think the feminists wouldn’t like him. They would think that it’s not that hard to remember the important things, as long as you care about people.

Microsoft Philosophy 1.01

You can tell what philosophy Bill Gates believes in by running a spell check on little known recent philosophers in Microsoft Word and then analyzing the results. Watch:

Philosopher Result Meaning
(Martin) Heidegger headgear groovy
(Imre) Lakatos lactose milk for the mind
(Paul) Feyerabend no suggestions vacant
(Albert) Camus cameos we only see reality in hazy profile
(Dan) Quayle quarrel don’t go into politics
(Hannah) Arendt aren’t we don’t exist, unless we’re banal and evil

Hannah Arendt is the only woman on the list, and I don’t think most philosophers would place her next to Heidegger or even Imre Lakatos in terms of importance, but she did come up with one great idea. While in Jerusalem covering the Eichmann trial (Jewish agents had kidnapped Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal, from Argentina and spirited him away to Jerusalem for a show trial), she found herself at a loss for words to describe the utter mediocrity of this minor functionary who was partly responsible for the deaths of six million Jews, so she coined the phrase “banality of evil”*. Later on, she was sorry that she became so well known for that phrase alone. I have to admit, that’s about the only thing I know about Hannah Arendt myself, but I like the phrase, because it captures the idea that incredibly evil things can result from the actions or inactions of people who perceive themselves as being only minor cogs in a big machine. Raul Wallenberg was a minor functionary, but he saved hundreds of lives. Eichmann claimed that he was only following orders. The crew of the Enola Gay were only following orders when they dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima (victors get to write history so we don’t seem to regard them as villains the way we regard the Germans, Italians, or Japanese). The crew of the Titanic sent lifeboats away half-filled because their orders were “women and children first” and the third-class women and children were still below decks, and the only other people present were men.

That’s the way most people behave– just following orders–and that may be the tragedy of the human race.

So if the feminists find a new way of thinking about reality that can convince most people that they should always do the right thing, even when it goes against orders or policy or whatever, then, hey, I’m all in favour of it.

* It appears that Hannah Arendt was wrong.  The discover of more information about Adolf Eichmann revealed that he was, in fact, virulently anti-Semitic, and fully on board with the plans to exterminate the Jews.

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Newt Gangrene and the Pacs

Newt Gangrene and PACS

This reminds me– during the height of the cold war, the evil Soviet Union, of course, had a TOTALITARIAN government. The United States, on the other hand, was a DEMOCRACY.

In a DEMOCRACY, the people are free to elect the leaders they choose. In a TOTALITARIAN country, the people have no choice: you have to elect whoever the party tells you to elect.

Of course, in a DEMOCRACY, special interests are free to give as much money to politicians as they want to in exchange for special favours, like laws extending copyright protection…. oops! Forget that. That wouldn’t be right! That would mean that we really don’t have a DEMOCRACY at all, that America is actually ruled by wealthy, special interests! Not true. They are free to give as much money to the politicians PAC as they want to. There. That’s better. Then the PAC gives the money to the politician.

Senator John McCain wanted to change that. He wanted new rules to enforce what the old rules were supposed to enforce: limitations on how much “soft” money a politician can receive.

John McCain doesn’t have many friends these days.

I watched Newt Gangrene speak to his PAC tonight, thanking them for helping preserve freedom and DEMOCRACY.

But, hey, this is a DEMOCRACY. So we go to the polls and exercise our choice. Those poor Russians! In our country, we regularly elect the people we choose.

Of course… it is a little strange… during all the years of the cold war, which country, do you think, most often re-elected the same guy who’s been in there for ten, twenty, thirty years already, who is fat and corrupt and tired and bloated and isolated from the the people he represents?

That’s right: the good old U.S. of A.