Dipshit Bush Lackey says McCain Best for Canada
According to former US ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci, John McCain should be Canadians' US Presidential candidate of choice because
The stupid, it burns. (Note also the grammatical error in the last quoted sentence -- "understands how important free trade and ease of travel [two items] is [singular verb]." Did this guy take anti-remedial English in the same class as The Shrub?) Apparently neither our corporate media (Canadian Press), nor Cellucci actually understand that nobody here except our corporate overlords really likes NAFTA and pretty much thinks we collectively got screwed by the original Free Trade Agreement. (Gee, years of softwood lumber disputes and various other trade wars, bad rulings by the WTO, jobs draining south like someone pulled out the plug due to so-called "right to work" states, and people are still trying to sell the "free trade is good" line? The Auto Pact worked better, and it wasn't anybody's idea of a panacea.)
Note also the not-very-subliminal anti-union slam. It's not as though a Democrat would do anything because they believe it's the right thing to do, no, it's those nasty, evil unions (like we're all entitled to by federal law up here) pulling them this way. Does Cellucci actually know anything about Canada aside from that he had to spend some time here once upon a time? (Actually, considering what most Americans, especially right-wing Americans think they need to know about the world outside the US's borders -- and inside it, too, at times -- I think I just answered my own question.)
Still, the idea that any Republican would actually give a damn about doing anything that was actually good for Canada, unless it was somehow even better for the US in general and themselves in specific is rather laughable. Of course, the usual Republican (and right-wing) modus operandi is to arrange things such that everything possible is a zero-sum game. They win, and everyone else loses, the more spectacularly the better.
Not, of course, that I think the Democrats are substantially better on doing things that are good for Canada and Canadians per se, since they have what you might call the ultimate "privilege of privilege": They don't care about how their policies affect the rest of the world, because, by and large, they don't have to. (A line from Rudyard Kipling occurs to me: Always her heavy hooves fall/And Rome never hears when we call.) Still, I think the Democrats are, overall, better for Canada, since Democrats aren't in the business of governing to prove, as Ronald Reagan famously said, "that government is the problem." (And, as Grover Norquist famously said, that it needs to be "drowned in the bathtub.") Anything that forestalls the decline such that we don't come down with a serious terminal case of the A6 superflu because of (what Atrios calls) "the Big Shitpile" and/or the slow osmotic diffusion of toxic ideology past the blood-brain barrier of the 49th Parallel, is a good thing, in my mind.
Democrats like Clinton and Obama are dependent on financial and organizational support from unions, Cellucci said. Those unions are often hostile to liberalized trade.
"Any Democratic candidate would be pulled away from free trade because of the unions, and McCain understands how important free trade and the ease of travel is," Cellucci said in an interview.
The stupid, it burns. (Note also the grammatical error in the last quoted sentence -- "understands how important free trade and ease of travel [two items] is [singular verb]." Did this guy take anti-remedial English in the same class as The Shrub?) Apparently neither our corporate media (Canadian Press), nor Cellucci actually understand that nobody here except our corporate overlords really likes NAFTA and pretty much thinks we collectively got screwed by the original Free Trade Agreement. (Gee, years of softwood lumber disputes and various other trade wars, bad rulings by the WTO, jobs draining south like someone pulled out the plug due to so-called "right to work" states, and people are still trying to sell the "free trade is good" line? The Auto Pact worked better, and it wasn't anybody's idea of a panacea.)
Note also the not-very-subliminal anti-union slam. It's not as though a Democrat would do anything because they believe it's the right thing to do, no, it's those nasty, evil unions (like we're all entitled to by federal law up here) pulling them this way. Does Cellucci actually know anything about Canada aside from that he had to spend some time here once upon a time? (Actually, considering what most Americans, especially right-wing Americans think they need to know about the world outside the US's borders -- and inside it, too, at times -- I think I just answered my own question.)
Still, the idea that any Republican would actually give a damn about doing anything that was actually good for Canada, unless it was somehow even better for the US in general and themselves in specific is rather laughable. Of course, the usual Republican (and right-wing) modus operandi is to arrange things such that everything possible is a zero-sum game. They win, and everyone else loses, the more spectacularly the better.
Not, of course, that I think the Democrats are substantially better on doing things that are good for Canada and Canadians per se, since they have what you might call the ultimate "privilege of privilege": They don't care about how their policies affect the rest of the world, because, by and large, they don't have to. (A line from Rudyard Kipling occurs to me: Always her heavy hooves fall/And Rome never hears when we call.) Still, I think the Democrats are, overall, better for Canada, since Democrats aren't in the business of governing to prove, as Ronald Reagan famously said, "that government is the problem." (And, as Grover Norquist famously said, that it needs to be "drowned in the bathtub.") Anything that forestalls the decline such that we don't come down with a serious terminal case of the A6 superflu because of (what Atrios calls) "the Big Shitpile" and/or the slow osmotic diffusion of toxic ideology past the blood-brain barrier of the 49th Parallel, is a good thing, in my mind.
posted by Interrobang at 8:51 PM
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