Partisan Blues

Abolish the Canadian Senate or leave it alone—but sure as hell don’t make it worse; ‘Accountability’ is Glenn Beck’s middle name, or would be if he could spell it; AND: Bill Frist, reasonable?

A forum for sober second thought? More like an auxiliary battleground for partisan skirmishes, if the Senate were elected. | Pawel Dwulit / The Star

Canada’s useless, antidemocratic upper house of parliament needs to crawl into a hole and go away, and this tight story in the Star today doesn’t make me think twice. Joanna Smith writes:

[Senators’] unelected status and long tenure are intended to shield the senators from the whims of polls and partisanship as they review legislation in the hope of catching flaws in hastily passed bills that could lead to unintended consequences.

They hardly live in a bubble, but it would be fair to say that Senate committees tend to feature more focused questions, longer-term reasoning than the fiery preambles and filibusters that often take centre stage at committees in the House of Commons.

Which has led to what results in Canadian democracy, exactly? The House of Commons, parliament’s lower house, can pass crazy bills and regularly does so. They can be just as easily repealed—by the House of Commons. The court system is supposed to give at least a constitutional check on parliament. And shouldn’t members of the lower house tone down their political BS rather than hand off the mature grunt work to appointed old people?

Oh, and, since when is the Senate some bastion of measured thought and policy innovation free of political bickering?

[Alberta Conservative senator Bert] Brown is quick to provide a solid defence of the Senate, which he has said many believe is filled with "old party bagmen."

There are many changes he would love to see—including election of senators and fewer delays he blames on increased partisanship among Liberals—

Riiight. So let’s make partisanship ["Liberals’ fault!"] worse. Let’s put senators through party-financed elections!

—but abolishing [the Senate] is out of the question.

"You literally have no constitutional words that limit the power of the prime minister with a majority government," Brown says.

"Theoretically, they could just about pass any bill they want to regardless of support in the country, and without the Senate there would be no way to stop it and so it would become very strong—almost a dictatorship."

God forbid voters are given the exclusive power to make or break a powerful prime minister. Best delegate that to partisan hacks.

Instead of leaving the Senate as a worthless, frequently obstructionist, utterly irrelevant body-without-a-nonpartisan-constituency—or better yet, allowing it only an advisory role, or better still, trashing it completely—Brown would make it a worthless, completely obstructionist and thoroughly partisan body like the American senate!

Why don’t we elect judges, too, while we’re at it?

White Question, Wrong Answer

Typical demagogue. Glenn Beck has a big mouth when there’s no one around to hold him accountable—“racist” Obama “has a deap-seated hatred for white people, or white culture”—but the paranoid, race-card-pulling fucker is a hurt little girl in front of Katie Couric.

BECK [on being asked a question]: Really? It’s amazing to me that, for the first time, I think in history somebody can ask a question and say, “Don’t you think that maybe we have several pieces here?” We have several pieces; George Bush says my grandmother was a typical African-American that had, that had her views bred into her. You don’t think maybe we would ask questions about that comment? How is it that the first time I think in history, you should check on it, somebody says, “Hey. There’s some red flags here maybe we should look at?” … How am I? How am I the target for asking questions?

He just <sniff> loves America so much. Except when it involves spelling and being asked questions regarding his explicit race-baiting.

It’s official: He’s a dangerous nut peddling racist conspiracy theories to pander to a radical base of fellow nuts. So should we bomb him, engage him diplomatically, or contain and deter the threat he poses? My money’s on pretend he doesn’t exist and pray he goes away.

Where were you when we needed you to not be unreasonable?

From Swampland:

Were he still in the Senate, "I would end up voting for it," [former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist] said [on the Democrats’ health care plan]. "As leader, I would take heat for it. ... That’s what leadership is all about."

Leadership. Like fueling the extreme right by video diagnosis when it politicized the Terry Schiavo case—not to mention rubber-stamping the entire radical Bush agenda. End.