A President's Words. A President's Actions

"...true democracy – real freedom – is hard work.”

-President Obama

On September 11, 2012, violence directed against American diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya erupted without warning or at least, that was the official position of the Obama administration. It is now clear that there was not only reason to anticipate something happening on the anniversary of 9/11 but there were warnings as much as 48 hours in advance.

Four Americans, including the American ambassador to Libya were killed; an unnecessary loss of life due to nothing more than careless indifference to the safety of diplomatic staff in this troubled region.

On September 11, there was no statement from the White House regarding the attacks and indeed, later in the evening while appearing on the David Letterman Show, the President was mute about what was happening in North Africa and the Middle East. Mitt Romney spoke out against this silence and was criticized by the administration and the mainstream media for politicizing the issue.

Politicizing the issue?

I think there has been a great deal of politicizing of this issue but it hasn’t come from Mitt Romney or his campaign.

On September 12, President Obama gave a short, terse statement denouncing the attacks and showing firm resolve at bringing those who had committed the attacks to justice. He reiterated that these were spontaneous, random attacks that had nothing to do with terrorism and took no questions. President Obama is very good at the delivery of wonderfully crafted statements but has been proven time and again that he isn’t very good at living up to his words.

Subsequently, violence erupted across the Muslim region with protests and demonstrations against the United States. There were even demonstrations in Australia and other democracies. The cause, the world was assured, was a fourteen minute video that ridiculed the prophet Mohammed and which offended Muslims. Even if that were true and it now appears that it is not, so what? There are millions of Muslims around the world who did not riot, protest or threaten the lives of Americans. They accept, like most civilized people, that freedom of speech includes the right to offend.

President Obama has devoted much of his response to the attacks to apologizing for and condemning those who offended Muslims but it was only in his speech to the United Nations that he ever made reference to all of the offense directed at other religions by others, including his own supporter Bill Maher.

In a democracy, freedom of speech means exactly that; the freedom to speak your mind and voice your opinion even if it offends others. The President felt it necessary to apologize rather than defend that basic American right until it became clear that Americans were outraged.

The video was a convenient excuse for both those who consider the United States an enemy and who are constantly looking for a reason to attack it, as well as, for the administration itself.

By blaming the video, the administration did not have to take responsibility for either its lax security arrangements or having ignored the advance warnings it received from governments in the region.  It didn’t have to acknowledge that it didn’t put any particular plan in place to increase security at is embassies in anticipation of potential threats at its missions in the Middle East and North Africa on the anniversary of 9/11.

Instead, the President and his administration blamed it all on a crudely produced video and characterized all of the violence as nothing more than a spontaneous event. Blaming others is something at which this administration has become quite accomplished.

Nothing is ever this administration’s fault. The economy is the fault of the previous government or the recession. The unconscionable increase in the budget deficit, indeed the lack of a budget in four years, is strictly the fault of Congress despite the fact that the President had a Democratic majority in the senate for two years. Neither the President, nor his supporters, gives any consideration as to whether or not the President had a responsibility to lead and build consensus rather than throw up his hands and simply point fingers at others.

The administration takes no responsibility for anything except what it perceives to be popular successes and then, they are only due to the courageous leadership of the President.

Since September 11^th, that courageous leadership has run television ads in Pakistan apologizing for the independently produced video, denied intelligence information to the house committee for national security that it had in its possession and has yet to send in the FBI to undertake an investigation into what happened in Benghazi. Indeed, so much time has passed since the attack that the FBI no longer sees the value in going to Benghazi as the ‘crime’ scene has been so tainted it will tell them virtually nothing.

So much for the firmly spoken commitment to find those responsible and bring them to justice.

Now, it appears that despite public pronouncements to the contrary, the administration knew within 24 hours that what happened was a planned, terrorist attack and it wasn’t the only one. Attacks took place in other places including America’s largest military base in Afghanistan. It was a coordinated effort by Al Qaeda and its supporters including the Taliban which the administration denied publicly until yesterday.

None of this information has been forthcoming from the President or the State Department but rather from media who are on the ground in the region, doing the job the administration should have ordered done two weeks ago. It is the media who for once are doing their job that forced the administration to admit the truth. I doubt the whole truth has yet emerged but clearly it will and this pitiful attempt at covering up the truth lest it interfere with the President’s reelection will be exposed for what it is.

Recent polls show that support for Barrack Obama’s reelection is increasing which is a tragic and dangerous endorsement of style over substance. Considering his ineffective leadership in every area of the presidency but in particular in foreign policy and national security, it amazes me that he has any support at all.

I can only attribute the President’s success in the polls to the dismal campaign being run by the Republicans.

The President has failed to demonstrate the leadership that would find agreement with Congress on fiscal matters, has defended the only Attorney General in American history to be found in contempt of Congress over the Fast & Furious scandal which cost more Americans their lives and has implemented a mandatory health care plan that is so poorly conceived that it has divided the nation and requires  taking $750 billion from Medicare to properly fund it.

The President’s redistribution of wealth now appears to include taking from the elderly to give to others.

Jimmy Carter did far less and accomplished far more than this president and yet remains mocked and vilified for his presidency by Democrats and Republicans alike. The fact that so many have refused to consider what their support of the past four years will provide them over the next four if they continue that support is a telling indication of just how little thought is being applied to this election campaign.

Many may discover too late that emotion is a poor substitute for analytical thought when it comes to deciding the future government that will decide your personal future and that of your family.

There is an old saying that the people get the government they deserve but once reality hits after the election and the debt, unemployment and confused foreign policy continue, it will be too late for anyone to change their mind. If the past four years are not enough to make people stop and consider the record of this administration, surely to God it’s performance and response to the attacks against Americans and American diplomatic missions in the past two weeks should at the very least give them pause for thought.

If not, God help them.

In his speech to the United Nations, President Obama said, “...true democracy – real freedom – is hard work.” Yes it is. We can agree on that. It is unfortunate that for this president they are too often only words; words that many cling too in the hope and failed belief that this time he will follow through on them.

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If The PQ Win The Quebec Election - You Can Expect More OF This

"I think you merit our contempt for what you are writing in this
blog which is a racist rag. How can a self-respecting
English can write such nonsense."

- Jean BOUGARAN (in a comment left on my blog)

That was a comment left for me on my post about Pauline Marois and the PQ Party’s bigoted and repressive policies towards minorities in the province of Quebec. Even though I live in Quebec, you will note that the commenter referred to me as English rather than as a fellow Quebec citizen. That is because I am not ‘culturally’ and ‘linguistically’ pure enough to merit equal rights in their eyes.

Let me give you an example of the separatist/sovereignist version of democracy and equality for all citizens.

This is the Quebec that Pauline Marois and her PQ party are building. This is the arrogance and intolerance her policies not only encourage but enable.

A group of Asian Canadians, visiting Quebec were accosted by a group of sanctimonious, pur laine bigots because they were speaking English among themselves in a private conversation. Apparently this is how Quebec pur laine fanatics greet visitors to their province who are not only fellow Canadians but who had the audacity to speak anything but French among themselves. Apparently, fanatical French Quebecers no longer believe you even have the right to speak the language of your choice with your friends and family.

There is no other word for it but racism and those in the French community who remain silent about it even though they do not support this behaviour or who who make excuses for it it are enabling this intolerance and paving the way for a society only fanatics want.

You won't hear current Premier Jean Charest, CAQ Leader Legault or any federal politician like NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair who is from Quebec speaking out against this racial attack. They are cowards who opt for political expediency over morality every time.

The PQ agenda has gone far beyond mere intolerance and has now crossed over from bigotry to purifying the culture. We have seen too much of this racism and discrimination in the past in places like Germany, Bosnia, Armenia and Serbia.

No one race, religion, culture, language or hair colour is superior to another. It is only the cowards who are afraid of everything that might force them to actually compete in a global village that focus on the differences between people rather than on all of the things we share in common.

Quebec is in dangerous territory economically and socially. Thanks to a portion of its population that has become entitlement-dependent, xenophobic and anything but democratic, it runs the risk of losing everything it gained as a modern society. If that happens, it can thank the Pauline Marois’, the Jacques Parizeaus, the FLQ and all of those who supported a racist agenda of cultural purity for that.

The PQ are turning Quebec into George Orwell's Animal Farm, an allegory tale where the animals in the barnyard were encouraged by the pigs to rise up against the evil farmer. After they took over the farm, the pigs moved into the farmers' home, they started selling off some of the animals and living just like the farmer and the rest of the animals found they were in worse shape than before.

The pigs reminded them that all animals are equal but some animals were more equal than others in order to justify their actions. In the PQ's Quebec, it is the PQ that are the pigs and the rest of the province that are sheep. The PQ's version of equality is highly selective and self-serving. It is built on intolerance and a narrow-minded view of the world and in the end, all citizens of the province, supporters of the PQ and minorities alike will get sheared.

When a society can no longer tolerate equally all of its citizens, it soon is incapable of tolerating equality for anyone but a privileged and elite few. History has taught us that.

It has also taught us that hatred, bigotry and racism are not the foundations of a successful society.

Did I respond to M BOUGARAN? Of course: "I have nothing but contempt for any group that feels it has the right to suppress the rights of fellow citizens as the PQ and pur laine do. Not being born French should not make a citizen of Quebec a lesser citizen nor should they have to bow to the pur laine. It violates the Quebec Charter of Rights, The Canadian Charter of Rights and the UN Charter of Rights. So spare me your cheap sanctimony. There is racism in Quebec but it isn't on these pages."

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Democracy! "Everybody Knows The Good Guys Lost"

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking,
everybody knows that the captain lied 

Everybody got this broken feeling, 
like their father or their dog just died 

-Leonard Cohen

Merriam-Webster’s defines democracy as:

a) Government by the people

b) a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections

The Oxford Dictionary defines democracy as:

a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives

I see more posts, tweets and commentary on democracy than any other single topic. Everyone talks about it including politicians, the media, academics and every day people. Democracy is not a homogenous thing and it takes many forms. In fact, there are almost three dozen different forms of democracy currently in existence.

Some democracies use a first-past-the-post system of allocating representation. Canada and the United States are examples of this approach. Others, like Italy, Israel and Germany have representative democracies and allocate seats based on the percentage of votes received by each political party.

Some democracies, like Canada and Sweden, are constitutional monarchies while others like the United States and France are republics. Some democracies are actually totalitarian and a few are outright dictatorships which seems incongruous to our basic concept of democracy but which is true nonetheless.

One thing they all share in common, however, is that they are too easily corrupted by those who run for office.

How Much More Stupid Can It Get?

There are days when I have to remind myself that I am living in the 21st Century and not the late 1800s. Some of the commentary and opinion, the beliefs and prejudices that get thrown about are so out of touch with today’s reality that I wonder if the Internet and the iPhone are part of a technological conspiracy to warp us back in time to a bygone era.

This week, for example, Missouri Rep Todd Aikin mused about ‘legitimate’ rape on national television. It wasn’t just his attempt to characterize rape as legitimate and illegitimate that was so bizarre; it was his assertion that the female body can actually prevent pregnancy in cases of legitimate rape. Apparently Mr. Aikin is of the opinion that a woman’s body not only can differentiate between the two but will actually make a judgment call as to whether or not to allow the pregnancy to proceed.

Is it possible, in this day and age, to get more stupid than this?

Well….actually yes it is.

The Irony Behind al-Quds Day

al-Quds Day promoted as an International Day of Peace
is little more than an orgy of anti-semitism

This past week saw quite a bit of debate and controversy over the intention to hold an Al-Qud rally at Queen’s Park, the seat of Ontario’s provincial government. Founded by Ayatollah Khomeni, the al-Quds Brigade is the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and has been active in promoting hatred of Israel and Jews in general.

Canada is a nation that has fairly significant hate-speech laws in place but for some reason despite its history, the Al-Quds Day rally became an issue of free speech rather than hate speech. Even the province’s premier, Dalton McGuinty defended the right of the rally to proceed which sort of reminded me of all those city mayors who defended the vandalism and rioting of the Occupy Movement on the grounds of the right to protest.

Politicians are always eager to appear to be politically rather than morally correct.

My Quebec Does Not Include The Bigotry Of The PQ

"Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another."

– Nelson Mandela

"We must, therefore, insist. . . not only on the need to respect human rights worldwide, but also on the definition of these rights . . . for it is the inherent nature of all human beings to yearn for freedom, equality and dignity, and they have an equal right to achieve that." 

-The Dalai Lama

My post yesterday about the discriminatory nature of the PQ platform in the Quebec Election stirred up a bit of controversy. I’m not surprised. It has been my experience that those with the weakest opinions are the most likely to shout the loudest.

Most of the criticism I received was because I compared Pauline Marois, leader of the PQ, to Adolf Hitler and others of his ilk. They clearly didn’t read beyond their emotions. My statement was that the attitude of both her and of her supporters has much in common with the attitudes of Hitler and the others I mentioned. Like them, Mme Marois promotes a singular version of society that is only fully open to those that she and her supporters deem worthy. The rights of others are treated with disrespect and restricted or taken away.

Her vision is an intolerant, nickle and dime perversion of democracy.

Only The White Hoods Are Missing In Pauline Marois' PQ

Pauline Marois continues her attack on the language
and religious rights of non-francophone/Christians

Sometimes I think we have become so jaded that in our rush to pick over the minutia of political campaigns we overlook and ignore the real threats. We are quick to condemn the other side and even more quick to forgive and embrace the sins on ours. We are particularly forgiving when the mea culpa is accompanied by a few handouts and entitlements.

There is an election campaign in Quebec right now and along with the usual promises to clean up government and hand out more cash, there is a disturbing undercurrent that has more in common with the darker side of human history than with a modern society like Canada.

History is littered with the remains of oppressive regimes led by those who rose to power through oppression and there were always excuses for suppressing the rights of others; racial purity, defending religion, protecting the rights of natural-born citizens and the list goes on. Inevitably, these regimes failed because they were built on intolerance, bigotry and fear.

This Is Honouring Pearl Harbour?

On December 7, 1941 the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked Pearl Harbour damaging all eight of the battleships in the harbour, sinking four of which two were later raised and six later returned to active duty. More than 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 injured.

It was a surprise attack intended to prevent the United States from entering the war. The attack was successful, the intended result was a failure. It awakened ‘the sleeping giant’ and America did enter both the European and Pacific conflicts which ultimately led to the downfall of Japan’s imperialist ambitions.

That happened more than sixty years ago and since then the United States and Japan have been allies and trading partners. Japan has invested heavily in the American economy providing thousands of jobs at American-based plants of Shimano, Toyota, Nissan, Mistubishi, Sony and countless others. When the tsunami hit Japan last year, the United States was one of the first to provide aid and assistance.

In other words, enemies have become friends and that has benefited both nations as well as the broader world.

Yup! I've Had Enough

`Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past

three decades, has been a history

of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

-Thomas Sowell

I’ve been watching the American Presidential race with a sort of detached interest. It doesn’t directly affect me, I live in Canada but I do have a lot of American friends and it affects them and that concerns me. 

Politics in Canada is a blood sport that is only mitigated by the fact that we still have a line called “too far” that politicians cross at their peril. Apparently that line doesn’t exist in the United States.

The rhetoric and campaign advertising for this presidential race is beyond the pale. It is not just personal and vicious; it has become dishonest with flat out lies. How a candidate for the highest office in the nation could possibly believe that they will be respected upon election after their degrading performance during the election completely escapes me and I still can’t figure out how “the people” are served by this.

This isn’t leadership; it is like watching pigs fight in the mud over slop. It is disgusting and demeans the office to which both candidates aspire.

The Satisfaction Quotient

Canadians live in a pretty decent country. Physically it is beautiful and much of it remains uninhabited and pristine, our economy is reasonably stable compared to the rest of the world and except for the odd gang shooting downtown or hockey riot in Vancouver, we’re a pretty safe and stable society.

We have national healthcare and while it is in trouble thanks to years of government dithering and stupidity, it does still provide some measure of health services to anyone who needs it and who is prepared to sit in the emergency room for a few hours waiting for their name to be called.

Canadians are, by and large, a fairly tolerant people although lately we’ve been getting a bit impatient with each other. I think a lot of it has to do with a rising level of frustration with politicians and government but I don’t believe that is the only cause. In fact, I don’t believe it is even the primary cause.

I believe that there is an inability to be satisfied that has gripped too many of us, especially on the left. I call it the Satisfaction Quotient.

Hot, Sticky and Stupid

The weather has just been flat out stupid this summer. 

It has been unbelievably hot, humid and we haven’t had any real rain in over a month. Some days, I feel like a slab of over-cooked meat. Before my friends in the Climate Change Brigade start rushing around yelling “I told you so” and “the sky is falling, flee the village”, we’ve seen this before.

Every now and then, the weather (like some people) just gets flat out stupid.

It has been so hot this summer that my garage door sticks when I press the remote, our grass looks like kindling and all the plants and flowers Maggie worked so hard to plant reach out and grab our ankles as we walk by whispering in parched little voices, “water, water, please…..some water.”

It’s so hot that even our Springer Spaniel, Jasper, is hard-pressed to be his usual psychotic self and spends much of his time sitting in a corner and staring at me with with a far-away accusatory look in  his eyes and his tongue hanging out as if the weather is my fault. It isn’t!

I recycle (not happily but I do it). Even though we live in the country, we use our car less than the average suburbanite and we use only electricity in our home. No green house gas emission there boy. We use air-conditioning sparingly, barbeque most of our meals and bag most of our groceries in ridiculously too large or too small cloth bags. We're careful about energy consumption and do what we can to keep our little part of the world clean.

In other words, we are living the dream. Like so many others we're following the mantra (or at least most of it) of the environmental movement and guess what? The weather is still hot and I personally don’t believe it is because there is Styrofoam in the landfill, gas-driven economies or plastic bags.

The earth is a hostile environment. It is beautiful in many places but hostile. It is filled with dangerous places, dangerous creatures (some so small you don’t even see them before they bite and poison you) and guess what? The earth has a dangerous climate because the earth is part of a dangerous solar system that is powered by a highly volatile star; we call the sun that is constantly throwing off sun flares which have a very dramatic impact on our world.

There were a number of serious solar flares over the past year and here we are with stupid hot weather. The solar flares burn off all that space dust that acts as a barrier between us and the sun’s harmful rays. Less dust, more heat gets through and my lawn turns to hay and Jasper's tongue comes out and his eyes start to roll.

None of this will matter, of course. The environmental fanatics will be down at the climate-change temple complete with its Icon of Al Gore, holding hands in a prayer circle to try and use positive energy to bring the world together in eliminating greenhouse gas emissions. Either that or they will be celebrating the fact that they were right and the end of the world has arrived.

Unless the temple is air-conditioned, I won’t be joining them. I’d rather burn a little more energy to cool down whatever room I’m in and I’m prepared to risk climate change to get my body temperature back down to 98.6 or somewhere near it.

What really annoys me though is not that our weather goes through periods of extremes like it is this summer but that it has those extremes upside down. It really is stupid. Smart weather would put some of the extreme hot period in winter where it would do some good and some of the extreme cool weather in the summer. That way, we might get some balanced temperatures throughout the year. This would be smart weather because it would be environmentally friendly (not to mention people friendly). It would cut down on the use of power consumption for air conditioners and furnaces to start with.

I’d like to blame politicians for the weather because it just seems to fit so nicely with everything else they’ve screwed up but the truth is, the weather isn’t their fault. I do believe, however, that our weather is a perfect metaphor for our politics; extreme and stupid (C’mon, you knew I was going to mention politics somewhere in the post).

But, in the end, this stupid heat wave isn’t the fault of politicians. It isn’t my fault or the fault of greenhouse gas emissions, SUVs or plastic bags either. It’s just part of the natural order of things and I suspect we would be a lot further ahead if we stopped worrying about who or what to blame for it and started devoting more time and resources to learning how to adapt to it and live comfortably and safely with it.

While you guys work on that, I’m going to get a cold drink and go sit in the air conditioning for awhile. It looks like it might rain soon. I’ve been fooled before by the weather (it’s such a tease) but there is always hope. 

Let me know what you come up with.

RELATED


George Carlin & The Bear On Saving The Planet
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2011/09/screw-green.html

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

The Threat

I’m somewhat bemused by my blog posts lately. I didn’t start this blog to comment primarily on government and politics. What got me started was just the general stupidity and hypocrisy I kept stumbling over pretty much wherever I went.

Most of it was simply the result of carelessness or the lack of thinking and effort that went into providing services and almost all of it was easily preventable. 

I encountered it in retail stores, banks, technology, the mainstream media and even in trying to figure out why the instructions to assemble a barbeque had to be so complicated. 

But I have discovered over the past few months that increasingly I am writing about politics and government and I’ve come to realize that it is because politicians specifically, and governments in general, have elevated stupidity and hypocrisy to a level that takes my breath away.

 I honestly believe that there is more hypocrisy and sheer stupidity in politics and government these days that in all other areas of society combined. In fact, I have come to consider our own democratic governments to be a greater threat to our well-being and security, if not our sanity, than terrorism, war and economic collapse. I believe that it is our own governments who are primarily responsible for these things.

Terrorism has been with us for a long time, it isn’t something new.

Britain was under constant attack by the IRA for decades. People were shot. Bombs were exploded in public venues and thousands died.  Japan experienced a horrifying attack in their subway system from a terrorist group who released seron gas and countries like Germany, France, Israel and even staid, old Canada experienced a terrorist attack, that resulted in the imposition of marital law, long before 9/11. 

Terrorism is not new and it is not the sole purview of Islamic extremists.

Terrorist organizations like the IRA, The Badher-Meinfhof Gang, The Red Brigade, The Weather Underground, Black September and the FLQ maimed and murdered thousands over the years. The shooting last year in Norway was not by an Islamic terrorist but by a Norwegian striking out with the same bizarre rationale it seems that is used by all terrorists and it resulted in the shooting of more than 70 young people.

Terrorists have attacked at the Olympics, airplanes, buildings, markets and a thousand other venues in countries on every major continent. Each terrorist group lays claim to some extreme political grievance but their actions always includes the random targeting and killing of innocents. Terrorists are cowards and fanatics who strike from the shadows and their objective is to create fear through viscious violent acts. Nations that succumb to that fear lose to the terrorists by giving them exactly what they set out to achieve.

Fighting terrorism is a difficult challenge but our governments have never figured out the root causes of it or how to combat it effectively despite having more intelligence, financial and military resources at their disposal than all of the terrorist cells combined.

I blame terrorists for the bloodshed and our governments for their inability to come together in a common cause against this threat. I blame our governments for implementing international policies that have raped natural resources of other nations and supported oppressive regimes in exchange for a stable supply of oil. In the end this has only provided fertile ground for extremists to capitalize on the suppression of the rights of people living within those regimes to justify their actions and to recruit new members.

Our governments still don’t get it and the best they can offer is bluster, military adventures and laws to strip away the rights of their own citizens in their fight to curb terrorism. I would suggest that the solution to terrorism does not lie in making everyone, citizen and terrorist alike, a prisoner of oppressive government control. It lies in not allowing terrorism to cause a nation to violate its own way of life, laws and constitution out of fear. When that happens, we not only lose some of our freedom we also enable and encourage terrorists to continue their bloody acts.

We have reached a stage where our governments have clearly sent a message to terrorists that we are afraid and that the actions of a few can successfully cause even great nations to tremble and subsequently undermine its laws and values.

It’s the same with the economy. For decades, governments have used national economies as personal checkbooks to ensure re-election and as bottomless wells from which they could draw whatever they needed whenever they wished.  There was never concern for the future or even for ensuring that all core services, like infrastructure maintenance,  were adequately funded.

They have treated taxpayers as nothing more than a conduit to get elected and as an endless source for more tax revenue. They have raised funds for their political parties and their election campaigns by pandering to special interest with taxpayer money. This included entitlements, and tax breaks to various sectors of society including both unions and corporations.

There was never enough money to end child abuse or eradicate poverty but always enough money to buy a few more votes.

Government has brought a level of complexity to things like the tax system which is not only expensive but just plain absurd. If we were starting from scratch, nobody in their right mind would design government the way it operates today.

And all of that has successfully brought our global economy to its knees. 

National priorities change more often than the score at a basketball game and teenage girls on their smart phones have longer attention spans than most of what passes for political leadership these days. There is no continuity, no vision, no long-term strategy. There is only continual bickering, arguing, pandering and squandering with the odd G8 or G20 meeting thrown in to give the current political leadership the opportunity to at least appear as if it knows what it is doing. 

In the end the faces may change from time to time but the downward spiral continues.

And then there is war.

What confuses me is the take-no-prisoners attitude politicians bring to political campaigns and the tepid way they engage us in wars. They often creep into conflict backwards and usually for every reason except doing what is moral, what is right and without clear defined objectives. 

Once they have embroiled us in a war, they spend money like Bill Gates was personally prepared to underwrite the cost and make decisions that inevitably turn out to be non-decisions that only increase the cost in terms of money and human suffering.

Desert Storm was a brilliant military campaign that politicians stopped short of allowing the military to overthrow the Iraqi regime. The result was ten more years of bloodshed and tyranny in Iraq, including the use of chemical weapons by the defeated Hussein regime that killed more than 10,000 Kurds and the arrest, torture and murder of hundreds of innocent Iraqis. This contributed to the rise of radical Islamist and a second war in Iraq, and is part of the reason for the ongoing terrorism and political instability we’re now experiencing.

Western democracies rushed into Libya to protect the innocent and have stood by impotently as more than 20,000 Syrian men, women and children have been slaughtered in a brutal civil war and there seems to still be no end in sight for the Afghanistan conflict.

Our politicians recognize that the United Nations has become a waste of time and has been overrun by oppressive regimes that are a threat to global peace and security and yet, they continue to support this cumbersome, hypocritical and pointless organization as if it there was still some merit in doing so.

It has come to a point where there is a widening disconnect between what the people in democracies believe their countries stand for and what their governments are actually doing. Democratically elected governments have run up obscene levels of debt, curtailed the rights of their own citizens and have violated their nations’ laws and constitutions in the bizarre belief that it will protect the very principles upon which they were founded.

I believe that it is this that is the single biggest threat to democracy and that the demand by special interest for continuing but unaffordable entitlements and privilege that is the second.

Integrity was one of the first casualties of democratic governments. Politicians mislead, waffle and sometimes just outright lie. Government has developed a language so arcane and confusing nobody understands what they’re talking about including the bureaucracy itself at times.

Greed, pandering  and expediency have replaced vision, courage and leadership.

Elections have become absurdly expensive but ultimately meaningless exercises.  Politicians talk the talk during election campaigns but do not walk the talk once they are in office. There is little difference between the foreign and security policies of George Bush and Barrack Obama. It was a Republican president that opened Guantanamo and it was a Democratic president who kept it open after campaigning on closing it. 

It is the same in other democracies. Talk is cheap and makes for good news stories during the election campaign but once the election is over, it is increasingly difficult to tell the new government from the previous one. In Canada, the Liberal government entered into an agreement to purchase F-35 jets and the Conservatives in opposition criticized the decision. Once elected, the new Conservative government continues the procurement of the F-35 and the Liberals, now in opposition criticize the decision.

My three year old grandson has more common sense.

It isn’t governing, it’s a game. It isn’t about what is best for the people of a nation, it’s about what is best for politicians and for those who help get or keep them elected. Governing is incidental. Winning and holding on to power is everything.

In the end, we all lose. We lose our security, our economic freedom, our rights are curtailed and our constitutions and laws undermined. It is our own governments that are undermining our way of life, not the threat of terrorism or economic recession. Those are the result of inefficient and even corrupt government and they become the excuses politicians use to justify their inability to govern effectively.

Corporations start to fail as the result of greed and stupidity, no problem. Politicians throw tax payer money and tax breaks at them. Union jobs are threatened, no problem Politicians throw some tax revenue to the companies that hire union workers to save their jobs. Farmers who didn't buy crop insurance and who are facing a drought or other natural disaster look to government for help. No problem, there is still some taxpayer money to toss their way.

In the end, it is clear to me that increasingly, our governments have lost sight of the fact that democracy is government by the people for the people and that those in government not only represent us, they work for us. They are not there to rule us, manipulate us, dictate how we should live our lives or protect us from the choices we make. Their job pure and simple is to manage our common resources, administer our system of laws, maintain our infrastructure and to ensure that we have a robust national defense in case of external threat. 

They are failing in every area. The economic blunders are painfully obvious, the misuse of taxpayer money so blatant even store window dummies roll their eyes and the finger pointing and excuse making is as much a part of the political jargon now as it is pointless. 

It is not up to government to decide how we should live our lives. Their role is not to govern us but to govern ‘for’ us. We are quite capable of living our own lives without supervision….well….most of us anyway. We don’t need nanny states with governments acting as surrogate parents or guardians.

It serves little useful purpose to throw off the chains of monarchies, dictatorships and theocracies in favour of government by the people for the people if those we eventually elect only end up acting in the same manner as the leaders of totalitarian regimes.

In the end, even in a democracy there is no such thing as benign government. 

The more government there is, the more it meddles, it interferes and it corrupts. Government does not create jobs, the private sector creates jobs. It does not manage the economy, it is a drain on the economy and it does not provide more freedom, it curtails freedoms with rules and laws and taxes and a constant barrage of regulations that intrude on the rights of citizens to live their lives as they see fit.

It isn’t difficult to understand how this happens in a democracy. There is no standard or qualification required for politics beyond the ability to raise money and get elected. Politicians come from all walks of life and almost none have the prerequisite experience to manage something on the scale of a nation. Apple wouldn’t consider for a moment turning over the running of its corporation to a handful of recently elected former teachers, lawyers and farmers but we do it when we elect our governments and what we turn over to them is much larger and more complex than most corporations.

We demand nothing from them other than charisma, a few promises we know in our hearts they won't keep and the right words to reassure us that everything will be just fine. We care less about what a politician stands for than what bad things they say the other guy stands for. We don't evaluate a political leader on their record, we cling to ideology like a hungry fat kid clings to Twinkie.

In that regard, we are the author’s of our own misfortune and are as much responsible for the mess we now endure. 

It occurs to me at times that we put more thought into selecting our new car than we do into choosing which politicians or political party should be entrusted with the fate of our nations. But then, these days most cars seem to be far more efficient than any government or political party.

The real tragedy is that these days it is easier to find an honest used car salesperson than an honest politician. 

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

The Real Choice In This American Presidential Election

"The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it."

"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

"It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed."

Consider these three political quotes. Each speaks to the idea of government by fear both of its external enemies and of its own people. Who spoke these words is revealed at the end of the post.

There was a time when the United States was the strongest and freest democracy in the world. It was criticized, mocked and even accused but nobody doubted its commitment to freedom and the triumph of the rights of the individual over the power of government.  Even its critics gave grudging admiration for the fierce independence of individual Americans and how quick they were to resist attempts by government to undermine their rights and freedoms. Perhaps no nation on earth held its constitution in such high regard as the United States. 

It is, quite frankly, what set it apart from other nations, including most other democracies.  As a result, it was the first and only choice of millions fleeing oppressive regimes and impoverished nations around the world. 

America has changed.

Canada's Council Of Fools

Canada's Council of the Federation

The provincial premiers of Canada met this past week in what they have come to call the Council of The Federation. These semi-regular get togethers used to be called First Ministers’ Meetings but that appellation was no longer grand enough for a group of political hacks who see themselves as leaders and statesmen.

A better name for the meeting would be The Council of Fools because that is precisely what they are, a group of cynical, self-serving politicians with little to no vision and just enough authority to be dangerous to the nation's prosperity and future.

For decades, this group of provincial premiers gathered regularly to condemn the federal government while at the same time begging for more federal money. They met, had nice lunches and dinners, provided quick sound bites for the television news shows, posed for photographs and then trundled off home after agreeing to study their latest 'agreements in principle'. It was then, as it is now, all talk which accomplished nothing.

Ben Provides Serious Insight About Poop!

“It’s not ok to poop in other people’s gardens right, mommy?”

- Benson Gagnon

Even bears know enough to poop in
their own woods and not the gardens
of their neighbours

When my daughter first shared my grandson Ben’s latest quote, my first reaction as it usually is was to laugh. Ben is not quite three and since he learned to talk, is pretty direct and often quite funny in what he chooses to say. What makes it all the more amusing is that he knows he’s funny and we believe he often says these things just to get a laugh. It’s fairly impressive cognitive thinking for someone his age.

Last week, when my daughter saw him sticking his hand down his pants she asked him what he was doing. He replied that he was tickling his junk and when she asked why, he replied, “because they’re giggly.”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone ever refer to their equipment as ‘giggly’ before.

I posted his latest quote on my Facebook page with a picture and didn’t think much more about it until just a little while ago when it occurred to me that maybe Ben had touched on something just a bit more profound than just leaving your mark in the neighbour’s flowers.

The Official Opposition To Reality

Queen Elizabeth II, Canada's
head of state and a grand and
noble lady.

Canada is a parliamentary democracy. In fact, it is actually a constitutional monarchy but the Queen is tied up with the Olympics right now so we’ll just deal with the parliamentary part of it.

Unlike the republican form of government in the United States, Canada does not have an executive branch. Our government is comprised of the House of Commons (the legislative branch), the Supreme Court of Canada, (the judicial branch) and the Senate (where former political hacks and bag men go to retire in taxpayer funded comfort before dying). Only our House of Commons can pass legislation that has been introduced either by the Commons or by the Senate. Typically it is the governing party that introduces legislation but individual members can also prepare and introduce legislation but these bills seldom get passed.

Our system is a first-past-the-post electoral system. Like the United States, we have political parties because like Americans, we haven’t figured out how to get rid of them yet.  The party that gains the most seats in an election forms the government. If the total number of government seats outnumbers the total number of opposition party seats, it is called a majority government. If the opposition outnumbers the government, it’s called a minority government. (They actually have government committees who come up with the official labels for things like this)

We do not have a president who is elected separately by the people. The prime minister is just one more member of parliament who represents an electoral riding like the other members. He or she becomes prime minister because they also happen to be leader of their political party. 

I know that’s all a big yawn and I apologize but it was necessary to lay it out so that we could get to this point.
The party in parliament with the second highest number of members is called the Official Opposition. Currently, the New Democratic Party is the Official Opposition which provides them with a few extra perks over the other opposition parties; the Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and the Green Party who who get no perks beyond their six figure salary and gold-plated pension.

If you find all of that a little confusing, you should try living under that system for awhile.

Small Dreams: The Decline Of Democracy

2012 U. S. presidential candidates
Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama

As the world watches the United States spend its way through another presidential election campaign, I look at what is being offered for so much expense and scratch my head.

Billions are being spent in a war of words between a Democrat and a Republican, a barrage of rhetoric that is so meaningless that it is little more than adolescent schoolyard bickering.

This isn’t leadership. There is no higher morality or vision being offered, no quiet dignity and sense of connection to the people. It is politics at it most cynical, policies made on the fly in response to polls and the opponent’s mistakes and weaknesses.

Canadian Prime Minister
Stephen Harper

It is not peculiar to the United States.

Canada hasn’t produced a true leader in decades or maybe even longer. The current crop of political hacks is bereft of new ideas and little more than different faces in the same tired suits and ideas of the guys that came and went before them. It is a sad commentary that the best one can say about our current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is that he is merely a little more competent than most. There is no inspiration or vision, just a narrow-minded management of the day-to-day activities of government as if the country was not much more than a large accounting firm.

Germany's Angela Merkel, Italy's former
PM Belusconi and France's former
President Sarkozy

In recent years, Europe hasn’t offered up much in the way of leadership either. Whether it was Italy’s over-sexed clown Berlusconi, France’s Sarkozy or the crowd of inept and faceless politicians that contributed to sink Greece, Europe has elevated mediocre political leadership to an art form. Even the hapless Angela Merkel of Germany has floundered around trying to buy Europe out of a debt crisis not of Germany’s making and without much hope of success. She just doesn’t really know what else to do.

In the end, none of them really know what to do so they spend more money; money we don’t have and can’t afford. 

There is no dignity, no vision and no ability to inspire and unite a nation. It is all about polls, photo ops and the next election. More strategic planning goes into organizing a G-20 meeting than most politicians put into planning the governing of their countries.

South Africa's Nelson Mandela,
an inspiring and uniting leader
with great integrity and quiet dignity

There are no Nelson Mandelas or Mahatma Ghandis leading our nations now, only those who thirst for power for its own sake. They are aided by those who lack the ability to obtain that power for themselves and so content themselves with being a part of the great person’s entourage and war room.  They flutter around the politicians like moths around a porch light and contribute even less. There is no sense of common purpose to unite a people and lead them forward. There is only more of the same senseless dithering and pandering that has become the mainstream of politics in modern democracies.

Is all of this working? Are our democracies becoming stronger and more successful? I would suggest it is not working and that most democratic nations are floundering as a result of a lack true leadership.  

Our nations are divided and the people polarized, angry and frustrated. We are overwhelmed by a level of global debt that is staggering and our infrastructures continue to crumble as politicians dither, squandering money on failed but trendy ideas like wind farms and solar energy companies.  They talk about fiscal responsiblity while throwing more money at special interest and election campaigns. They raise taxes only to squander the additional money on corrupt ideas, poor fiscal management and outright incompetence.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of Iran

The world is less safe today than it was twenty years ago and our political leadership has failed to understand why or how to address the threats.  Democratic governments are inconsistent. They intervene in Libya but stand back and watch the slaughter in Syria. Our leadership is so poor it is unable to effectively address the threat of terrorism and so impose oppressive security measures on their own citizens while failing to deal with the root causes of terrorism at its source.

Our democracies have been so poorly led, that it has undermined whatever moral authority they once held in the world and our enemies no longer fear or respect us. Today, our democracies are seen as weak, confused and self-indulgent by those who would do us harm.

For its part, the United Nations has been overrun by repressive regimes to a point of stasis and the leaders of our democracies stand back unable to do anything beyond talk and watch it happen.

Our governments violate our constitutions and break our laws and the greatest threat to our freedom comes from the lack of moral integrity that fuels the political leadership today.  Where once we were led by those who tried to do what was right, we are now led by those who lead based on what is politically expedient regardless of the legality, the morality or the economics of those decisions.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

In the United States, the Attorney General the nation’s chief protector of law, is found in contempt of Congress. In Canada, it is the Prime Minister and his government that are found in contempt of Parliament.

The current Canadian government is in court defending itself from allegations of election fraud while they're point man on ethics is himself under investigation for possible violation of the elections act. A previous Liberal government just flat out stole more than $1 million from taxpayers and handed it out in brown paper bags to its supporters in Quebec and a Liberal senator was convicted of corruption in 2011 and sent to prison.

In every major democracy in the world, politicians have been charged with and convicted of corruption or some other illegal betrayal of the people’s trust. It is not the left or the right that lack the moral authority to lead with integrity, it is parties on all sides that have violated the oath of office and the laws and constitutions they were sworn to protect.

These are not small issues. When the political leadership is in contempt of the very institutions they lead and are sworn to uphold, it is an indication of a moral vacuum at the heart of our government institutions. When the people take sides to support those who lie to them or steal from them, it underscores that adherence to blind ideology has replaced morality, integrity and even common sense. Together, they are a sign of the erosion of the principles and values upon which all democracies were founded

If a Prime Minister or a President will not defend the constitution and laws of their own nations, who will? If the people of a nation will not stand up and demand their leaders, regardless of political affiliation, uphold the law rather than pervert it for their own purposes, who will?

We are not being defeated by Islamic extremist countries, terrorist groups and other nations that hate us, we are being defeated by politicians that lack the focus of those who threaten our security and our way of life; politicians who place obtaining power far above using that power for the greater good. Our enemies have a strong sense of purpose and are focused. Our governments are unfocused and bloated bureaucracies led by politicians who place obtaining and holding on to power ahead of using that power for the greater benefit of their nations.

We are nations thirsting for inspired leadership. Where once our nations were led by people who dared to dream big dreams, we are now led by politicians who lack the courage and the ability to dream at all.

We perpetuate the erosion of our democracies by supporting those who bring that cynicism and lack of leadership to governing our nations. We enable those politicians who lack the morality and the sense of purpose to lead effectively by allowing them to buy us with borrowed money and with lies and half-truths. 

We are willfully blind and it is that blindness that will ultimately be our undoing. We are, ‘we the people’. It falls to us to decide whether we will continue to participate in the decline of democracy by giving our support to political leaders who betray the very principles upon which our nations were founded or whether we will take off the blinders of ideology, unite as one people and demand something better.

RELATED

Violating The Oath Of Office

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/06/violating-oath-of-office.html

What Ever Happened To Integrity?

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/what-ever-happened-to-integrity.html

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

You Didn't Build That - Somebody Else Did

Throughout the centuries there have been men and women who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own creativity, imagination and determination. They had access to all of the same things to which others had access but it was their vision determination to do something that set them apart.

Others saw the opportunities that presented themselves as a result and built on those original ideas or added complimentary services and products to what others had developed while the rest just stood by and watched.

It started when someone got tired of dragging heavy things around and started to develop an idea to make it easier. Nothing motivates innovation like inconvenience.

Tax The Wealthy

In less than just a few decades, countries around the world have all but managed to bankrupt themselves. It has not just been the result of catastrophe or war but too often the result of bad government and an unwarranted sense of entitlement fueled by greed by too many within our different societies.

Infrastructure is crumbling. Unemployment is rising or is static as jobs are disappearing to more tax-friendly jurisdictions. There is an absurd lack of prudent financial planning for environmental or other catastrophic events thanks to a complete lack of discipline by politicians and special interest. 

Every special interest group has its hand out for more government largesse and politicians and political parties have been only too happy to pander to those demands in order to get elected or re-elected and it has all been financed on borrowed money.

Sharpen Up The Blade Boys, We Have Some Banking To Take Care Of

Mickey Mouse is pretty much the perfect logo
for the way banks do business these days!

I am so angry right now I could spit!

I just got off the phone after speaking to my bank branch about the post-dated check fiasco from last Friday. My concern was not about reversing the transaction, Maggie and I covered it. My concern was that clearly someone had made an error that could have put the money in our bank accounts at risk if that kind of error was allowed to happen randomly.

It wasn’t an error, or at least, my bank doesn’t feel it made an error. Any mistake made was by the bank that deposited the check. My bank feels it has absolutely no obligation to confirm details on a check that has been deposited by another bank before it releases the funds.

This, apparently is the how the Canadian (and I presume the international) bank to bank system works.

It’s all very cozy, isn’t it? The rules they impose on you and I do not apply to them and the reason given is that it would be inconvenient, requiring additional work at some expense. I actually had the manager at my bank say that to me.

 Unbelievable!