Seriousness Gap

How does The Globe compute Pawlenty's moderate record as Minnesota's Governor with the fact that he's gone way off the deep end of conservative nuttery since angling for the Republican Presidential nomination?  How can you consider this phony a serious candidate for the Presidency?

Hat tip to Impolitical.

Conservatives have no credibility in regards to the Senate

Conservatives, especially of the populist Western variety, have argued that democratic reforms are needed in order to 'shed the elitist and corrupt character' of the Canadian Senate.  Since the 1980s there have been two 'elected' Senators nominated to the Senate; Stanley Waters, nominated to the Senate in 1990 and Bert Brown in 2007.  Both of them were nominated from Alberta.  Since then the Tories under Harper since 2006 have completed ignored the idea of promoting an elected Senate in Canada by nominating 38 Conservatives to the Senate in total, including three more today.

In a gift to Layton, Harper decided to nominate defeated House of Commons candidates Larry Smith, Fabian Manning and Josee Verner to the Senate.  The optics of the Conservatives' press release are terrible.  It states that the "government will continue to push for a more democratic, accountable and effective Senate".  To which Layton and the NDP predictably replied that "there's nothing democratic about appointing three people who were rejected by voters three weeks ago."  How does one compute those statements in a way that accepts the Conservative perspective?  Conservatives in the past could rightfully point at the Liberals and correctly argue that they also indulged in such abuses of the Senate, muddying the waters as they did during the 'in-and-out' scandal; they can't make such defenses with the NDP in opposition.

Adam Radwanski over at The Globe and Mail thinks that this issue of nominating failed Senate candidates is potentially a pretty nasty narrative running against the Conservatives out in Western Canada.  Possibly, but I've been cynical about conservatives' vision for the Senate for a while.  In particular I think that they view the Senate as a mechanism for the institutionalization of conservatism in Canadian federal governance; in particular through creating a new veto point for left-wing legislation.  There's certainly a 'western' element to Canadian conservatives' view of the Senate's role as well.  Western conservatives feel that an elected Senate could yield a solid voting block of Senators who can prevent the sort of 'abuses' that Central Canada has 'inflicted' on the West.  The visceral loathing of Pierre Trudeau and his National Energy Policy comes to mind in this regard.

The example of the United States is the best way of analyzing the effects of 'balancing' representation by provinces in the upper house and making it 'effective' and 'equal'.  Small states tend to yield particularist Senators who are easily bought and paid for by capital eager to make a massive 'return' on its 'investments' in political elections.  These Senators thus act as a conservative bloc that denies liberal Democrats the capacity to bring sweeping changes to the country through the legislative process by blocking or watering down bills.  The best tool in the US Senate at the moment is the abuse of the filibuster; forcing all legislation to obtain 60 votes in order to pass a cloture motion has been a godsend for conservatives who feared that the election of Barack Obama would yield another round of sweeping liberal legislation.  Considering the challenges, it's a bit of a miracle that the Obama Administration was able at all to pass any sort of health care reform that didn't act as a buck-naked give away to the private health care industry.

Recounts

There's four recounts resulting from the elections on the second of May:

• NDP candidate Francois Lapointe was declared winner by just eleven votes over incumbent Conservative MP Bernard Genereux in Montagny-L'Islet-Kamouraska-Riviere-du-Loup.
• Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux retained his Winnipeg North seat over NDPer Rebecca Blaikie by 44 votes.
• In Northern Ontario, Conservative Jay Aspin won his seat by 18 votes over former Liberal caucus chair Anthony Rota.

There's still one recount to go, which will be starting on the 18th of May in Etobicoke Centre.  Currently Conservative challenger Ted Opitz is leading by a small margin over sitting Liberal incumbent Borys Wrzesnewskyj.

It was all about the Sixties

The Roman Catholic Bishops of the United States commissioned a study to "analyze patterns of sex abuse".  It's conclusions?

WASHINGTON - Researchers commissioned by U.S. Roman Catholic bishops to analyze the pattern of clergy sex abuse over decades have concluded that homosexuality, celibacy and an all-male priesthood did not cause the scandal.

The report from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York said about 44 per cent of the known abuse cases involved priests who were ordained in the 1940s and 1950s, at a time when seminaries did not properly train them to live a celibate life. These men were not equipped to withstand the social upheaval of the 1960s, which was a time of an increase in sexual deviancy and a spike in crime in society at large, the authors said.

Apparently the reasons were primarily that they were not properly trained to live a celibate life and the 'increase in sexual deviancy' and crime during the 1960s.  Looks like they got it all figured out!  Also, this about sums up the whole debate between 'liberals' and 'conservatives' on the matter.

The debate over what caused the crisis has fallen along ideological lines, with liberals blaming mandatory celibacy or the lack of women in positions of authority. Conservatives pointed to gay priests, since the overwhelming majority of known victims were boys. 

Yep, it's a debate between whether there are administrative and doctrinal issues at play, or 'gay priests'.  Apparently the conservatives think that the Roman Catholic Church is full of 'em.

The Battle of Ideas

Monte Solberg does a pretty good job of beating the Liberals over the head on the issue of their current 'big idea' problems.  I don't see anything particularly wrong with anything he says in this article.  The Liberals aren't going to get anywhere through endlessly barking about how 'centrist' they are.

If anything is true, it is that the Tories are winning the 'battle of ideas'.  At first glance it seems ridiculous that Don Cherry is becoming a focal figure in a redefinition of Canadian nationalism, but conservatives have been working steadily to change Canadians' perceptions of themselves; in particular regarding the military and Canada's role in the world.  This new 'combative' form of Canadian nationalism doesn't bode well, especially given how prone it may turn out to be towards misogynous perceptions of women and 'nativistic' sensibilities regarding multi-ethnic immigration from abroad.

Also, remember those days when Canadians were willing to finance significant expansions of the Universities, to send our youth to far away lands on the public dime to learn about the world and spread Canadian values?  Trudeau certainly believed that these were worthy of the government's attention.  He also believed in reducing the economic influence of the United States in Canada.  Nowadays we see Liberals endlessly talking about how awesome they were at hacking apart services in order to solve our national calamity, the dreaded budget deficit.  And running on the continued generic expansion of free trade reinforces all of the Conservative narratives.  After all, it's so much easier as a conservative to tear apart the welfare state when you can get progressives to do it for you.

The Liberals increasingly no longer have the ability to agitate for progressive ideals, especially economic ones, with any kind of authority or credibility.  Their entire history since Chretien won a majority in 1993 has been to adhere to all of the long-term structural decisions made to the economy by the Conservatives.  All of the Liberal ideals of resisting free trade and American domination; Canadian nationalism based around the protection of social services.  Canadians are only willing to accept deficit spending grudgingly, a considerable achievement in working public opinion over the past decades on the part of the political right.  Now the Conservatives can use that advantage to advocate spending cuts over any form of upward flexibility in tax rates, putting progressives in a continual bind.

To respond to this long-term process I think the replacement of the Liberals with the NDP is a beneficial thing.  It's difficult to agitate for progressive social democratic ideals when the primary left-wing party at the federal level is full of people like John Manley, Paul Martin and other 'blue liberals' who have been at the forefront of bashing away at the institutions critical to the long-term well being of Canadians.  It'll be a difficult slog, but re-vitalization of the movement with the inclusion of organized labour from the ground up as well as the potential re-introduction of Quebec's significant progressive movement into the national sphere are promising signs.

One of these is not like the Other

The CBC reports on a press conference held by the NDP discussing its desire to raise funding for the arts in Canada.

The Globe and Mail trashes the same press conference.

Guess which one discusses substance at any length?

Is Anyone Surprised?

Donald Trump, potential candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, has regretfully decided against running for the Presidency.  His candidacy would have done wonders for the potential of a massive Johnson-like landslide for the Democrats, yet his influence will continue to be felt into the future.

Is anyone actually surprised that this phony didn't seriously intend on running for the Presidency?  Regardless of how much 'the blacks' liked him or how hard he worked to appeal to the basest elements of the Republican Party, Trump never intended on doing anything past pushing himself into the media spotlight in the United States. There was no potential candidacy, just the desire of this pathetic man to flash a shiny light around that the press predictably followed.

Republicans Holding America Hostage with the Debt Ceiling

Today the United States expects to hit the debt ceiling currently set at $14.3 trillion as mandated by the US Congress.  While there have been a lot of attempts to fully explain what the debt ceiling actually is, the simplest answer is that the amount of debt that the US Treasury can legally accumulate through borrowing is fixed by Congress through legislation.  After hitting the ceiling the Treasury can get a hit of extra leeway through finessing a few hundred billion dollars extra, but Congress must pass a bill expanded upwards the debt limit for the American federal government.  If they fail to do so, the United States will default on its debt and all kinds of economic nastiness will occur.

With that in mind, the Obama Administration is now facing a game of Russian Roulette with the Republicans and some Democrats in Congress, who apparently are going to use the crisis-like urgency of the current situation as a  means of forcing through significant spending cuts in exchange for their votes.  The debt ceiling has been the subject of a lot of posturing in the past, but as Matthew Yglesias notes here, those episodes never involved the holding of the country's financial health hostage as a means to extract policy on the part of politicians in Congress.

What I'd add is that this constitutes a classic episode of Kleinian shock doctrine.  Use a crisis of some sort, in this case the reaching of the debt ceiling, as a means of passing radical market reforms to the economy over the heads of the mass of the American people.  After all, the urgency in which decisions have to be made naturally precludes much involvement from the citizenry, direct or indirect; hence this is the perfect moment to undertake a market fundamentalist's wildest dreams.

Conceding to the Republicans in this case could potentially create a precedent for the usage of the debt ceiling in the future as a political weapon.  President Obama and his Democratic allies on Capital Hill have to hold firm against the desires of the Republicans and the moral weakness of some Democrats to implement structural changes to the fiscal policy of the US Government.

How Not to Explain a Foreign Election - Time Magazine Edition

Erik Heinrich of Time decided to chime in on the Canadian federal election today with an utterly dreadful article that essentially argued that the flip of Quebec towards backing the NDP could be setting up the country for another referendum (surprise!).  Also, the oozing level of condensation aimed at the 'junior jacks' of the NDP's Quebec caucus is palpable:

Many voters in Quebec said they had voted NDP to give federalism a last fighting chance, after what they view as the failure of other national parties. But what chance does the new official opposition have of satisfying Quebec's traditional gripes — which include the call for autonomy over language and immigration policy — while relying on a large contingent of MPs with training wheels? 

It's fair to say that many NDP candidates did not expect to win seats, and they face a steep learning curve that will include language lessons for unilingual Anglophones representing French-only constituencies. 

"The NDP will need to turn its mind to how it can consolidate support in Quebec without alienating supporters in the rest of the country," says Robert Drummond, professor of political science and public policy at Toronto's York University. 

That balancing act could well prove to be the undoing of NDP's hold on the role of official opposition. Throw in inexperienced MPs more used to writing exams than they are to Question Period on the Hill, and it's easy to imagine Quebec voters again feeling shut out in Ottawa. That could lead to another independence referendum in Quebec in four years, in which separatists would argue that Ottawa has proven itself unable to deliver. But before such a rendez-vous with history, at least Canada's newest MPs will have a few years to work on their French.

Yes, what chance do they have when people like Erik Heinrich decide to take the quick route in gawking at the amount of young MPs in the caucus and pontificates upon his belief that they naturally cannot accomplish the tasks they've been thrown into?  "Has Canada lost its marbles?" he wonders.

I really hope that the reason why this article is so bad is because of the poor editing on the online edition.  Heinrich refers to 'Salty Jack Layton' as if that were either his real name or a moniker that readers are supposed to understand.  I imagine the intent is to remark upon the colour of his hair and mustache.  Similarly there's reference to the NDP's new MP from Pontiac, Mathieu Ravignat who apparently used to be a 'Community Party' candidate, when I know that he was in fact a Communist Party candidate back in the 1997 federal election.  The article concentrates on his executive status in the 'Ottawa Medieval Sword Guild' as if his Masters in Political Science and status as an organizer in the Canadian Union of Public Employees didn't matter.  It took me five minutes to dig up that information, but apparently it was too boring to make it into the article.

Americans apparently don't know a lot about Canada, but articles such as these are -definitely- not the way in which the readership of Time should be educated on Canadian politics.

The Separatist NDP Quebec Caucus

Jean-Louis Fortin of QMI concern trolls the NDP's Quebec caucus:

MONTREAL - Quebecers elected a good number of separatists when they voted en masse for NDP candidates in the May 2 federal election - perhaps without even knowing it. 

Alexandre Boulerice, the NDP's new MP for Montreal's Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie riding, proudly confessed to QMI Agency he continues to campaign for Quebec Solidaire, the provincial leftist party that promotes independence.

Apparently the running definition of a 'separatist' in Quebec is someone who has at any time in their lives supported the cause of or voted for a separatist party, regardless of current opinions:

Gilles Rheaume, Quebec independence activist and spokesman for a group that claims to fight "Canadian francophobia," said he isn't surprised by the number of Quebec NDP MPs who are separatists or who had professed support for sovereignty. 

"(The NDP) was infiltrated by sovereigntists since the beginning of the 1990s," Rheaume said.

Rheaume estimated at least a dozen new NDP MPs voted yes in the 1995 referendum, or had supported the sovereigntist movement in some way.

Rheaume believes that the NDP has been 'infiltrated' by separatists; maybe akin to how the party was 'infiltrated' by the democratic socialist wing of the party, "The Waffle", during the 1970s?  How well did that work out for that particular entryist group?

During the 1995 referendum on independence 49.4% of Quebeckers who voted did so in favour of independence.  I suppose that these individuals should be discounted then from federalist politics forever for the future?  Painted and smeared by the broad brush of supporting Quebec's national aspirations at a time when it seemed as if the bruised relations between Quebec and the rest of Canada could never be mended again.  Shouldn't it then be viewed as a significant good sign for Canadian national unity that Quebeckers who once voted to separate from the country are now embracing a federalist party over a sovereigntist one?

As pogge noted the other day, there will be a lot of journalists aiming to undermine the NDP by conjuring up all sorts of 'tid bits' on whatever these new NDP MPs from Quebec might have said or did say sixteen years ago.  However, there's also a tinge of elitist condensation from the two establishment parties (the Conservatives and the Liberals) that the NDP with all of its new 'brat pack' MPs cannot possibly expect to be capable and competent enough of 'managing Quebec' when they themselves failed with almost catastrophic consequences for the country.  They're the new players to Quebec federal politics who have had no electoral success in the past, let alone traction amongst the Quebec public.  Now after a single election the party now holds 59 of Quebec's 75 seats in the House of Commons.

Many have and will say that the inclusion of former separatists into the NDP's Quebec big tent is going to cause chaos within the party.  I believe though that it's possible that the Quebec caucus as well as the grassroots that the NDP is going to be working hard to development, could become a source of policy development in the future on the political left in this country; in addition to acting as a sort of forge for the construction of a consensus for the task of bringing Quebec into the Constitution.

Fiscal Conservatism

Via the Toronto Star:

OTTAWA—As Conservatives prepare to recall Parliament, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is setting the stage for a clampdown on federal government spending under the newly elected government, that would include cutting the public service by 80,000 — or one-third.

The Conservatives now have the power to cut spending to bring down the deficit, says Flaherty, a message that could foreshadow a round of deep cuts to services and programs in coming years.

I've made my own opinions clear on the causes of Canada's current fiscal deficit; a combination of tax cuts and the recession has pushed Canada into a sea of red ink.  Not surprising the Tories' solution to fixing this rather fixable problem is to choose austerity by axing a third of the entire civil service.  The Tories are arguing that they want to concentrate on the economy by focusing specifically on the deficit; yet spending reductions, especially the kind of hardcore austerity that results from hacking apart a third of the civil service, are only going to add further downward pressure on the Canadian economy.  Precisely as the British Conservatives have done and experienced across the pond.  This increases the likelihood of a double dip recession and will only serve to depress revenues and increase outlays through social spending programs such as EI, widening the deficit in the process.

The Conservatives aren't stupid, they know that this is the case.  Which leads us to another matter, which is the intentional underfunding of the public sector with the purpose of undermining the welfare state.  If you can't simply destroy the Canadian Pension Plan, Medicare or Employment Insurance through direct legislation (this would be political suicide), then why not underfund and under-staff them so they are indirectly denied the ability to preform the services to which they are intended?

Quoting Mrs. Ducharme, national executive vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada:

“If we went back to the 1990s, the federal government cut around 45,000 jobs, and they realized pretty quickly that they didn’t have the people to actually do the work that Canadians expect.”

She said the people who suffer in this scenario are those most dependent on government services such as immigrants, the unemployed, pensioners and military veterans.

“I think this government really needs to stop and think through some of their ideas before they, quite honestly, destroy the public service and services that are expected, needed and delivered as part of everyone’s day-to-day lives,” Ducharme said.

 They did think it through, which is why they're doing what they're doing.

Could American-Style Supreme Court Struggles Come to Canada?

Kirk Makin says that with now two vacant positions on the Supreme Court, that Harper has the opportunity to entrench a conservative majority:

In an opinion piece he wrote for The Globe and Mail in 2000, in which Mr. Harper explained why he was trying to have a federal election law overturned by the courts, he offhandedly endorsed criticisms of so-called activist judges: “Yes, I share many of the concerns of my colleagues and allies about biased ‘judicial activism’ and its extremes. I agree that serious flaws exist in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that there is no meaningful review or accountability mechanisms for Supreme Court justices.”

While Judge Charron was conservative when it came to criminal justice issues and the Charter, Judge Binnie, a skilled jurist in every area of the law, was one of the few liberal voices on the court.

The notion of a liberal bloc forming is quickly moving out of reach. Legal experts believe that Madam Justice Rosalie Abella, the only left-leaning judge on the court, is now doomed to perpetually find herself on the wrong end of 8-1 court decisions.

If there's anything to be learned from the efforts of conservatives in the United States, it is that they are more than willing to play the long game of using judicial bodies such as the Supreme Court and lower courts as a means of entrenching and institutionalizing conservatism into the very fabric of the state.  Harper's previous complaints about 'judicial activism' is classic rhetoric pulled directly from the play book of conservatives in the States.  Conservatives attack the courts as 'activist' in the sense that they use constitutional documents as precedents to expand civil rights to individuals or groups; this was the case in regards to same-sex marriage where they were expanded exclusively by judicial rulings across the country.  Yet conservatives find little wrong with judicial decisions favorable to their interpretations which have absolutely no precedent in tradition or legal statute.  In the United States this happened with Citizens United v Federal Election Commission which overturned the McCain-Feingold Act and paved the way to a massive influx of corporate money into American politics; in particular the campaigns of conservative Republicans.

If anything can be gleamed from progressives' stances on the court in the United States, it is that inaction or ignorance to the intent and actions of conservatives regarding judicial appointments is a colossal mistake that can lead to enormous political defeats.  Progressives in Canada can not allow themselves to merely think that prior traditions regarding the Supreme Court are going to hold firm in this country, especially with a modern conservative movement intent on denying the left the capability to enact any significant social change in the future.

In a significant way the strategy of using institutions such as the judicial courts as mechanisms of institutionalizing conservatism is similar to conservatives' position on the Canadian Senate.  The intent isn't to 'bring democracy' to the 'Other Place'.  It is designed to strengthen a veto point on future legislation drafted by a theoretical left-wing House of Commons, through entrenching conservative Senators into a position where they can block or diminish the strength and relevance of progressive legislation permanently.  It is a long game that progressives must be aware of, lest they end up forced to fight from behind.

Your New Right-Wing Media

Pogge ruminated today on the subject of how he believes political pundits are likely to treat the NDP moving into the future:

I would expect that more articles like the column by Jeffrey Simpson in today's Globe and Mail are in our future. I'm sure that speculating about the possibility of internal dissent in the NDP will be a new national pastime for political pundits. At least, for that portion of the nation's pundits who want to undermine the NDP.

The Canadian media almost exclusively is a business elite media.  I can't think of any significant and influential working class papers other then the Sun franchise, which itself is just a mouthpiece of capital.  Canada doesn't have any papers that have acted as organs for socialist thought on a wider scale such as The Guardian has done for the United Kingdom.  This puts the New Democrats at a disadvantage as they're going to be confronting an almost united hostile editorial stance to its ideological disposition.  It's true that the Toronto Star endorsed the NDP this election around, but they were one paper amongst many and a Toronto-based news print can't be expected to move minds that far outside of Ontario.

Papers such as The Globe and Mail and the Winnipeg Free Press generally take liberal positions on civil rights and social issues such as same-sex marriage, multiculturalism, etc. but they also rigidly support capital on issues such as free trade and corporation taxation.  While the Liberal Party fit this liberal-conservative position most of the time and some of these papers were in fact founded as Liberal Party organs many decades ago, the NDP's social democratic positions on the economy are viewed as a potential assault on the integrity of the market as far as they're concerned.

Deficit Woes

Apparently hoping the media wasn't noticing, current Finance Minister Jim Flaherty waded into the American political scene by warning the Americans that they must rectify their deficit issues pronto; then the Government indicated on the same day that they were likely to break a campaign promise by failing to balance the Canadian federal budget by 2014-2015.  Firstly, why is Flaherty even bothering to lecture the Americans on this issue?  His management of the deficit while Finance Minister in Ontario under Harris was horrendous.  And how good does he think the optics are of meeting with Rep. Paul Ryan, the architect of the infamous budget that would have privatized Medicare in the United States.

Secondly, the Tories have pressed hard that the deficit is a major issue in the country.  For the most part the deficit I figure is cycle-related.  Even back in 2009 when the deficit reached its high, most of the extra spending was related to the auto industry rescue, which turned out to be a massive success, along with increased EI pay outs and decreased revenues from the recession.  The cyclical nature of the problem thus makes cutting stimulus spending absolutely absurd, since it along with cuts to government spending through a sort of United Kingdom-like austerity program will merely act to suck away aggregate demand from the economy; diminishing a recovery and increasing unemployment in the process.

For me though this is the kicker,

Mr. Flaherty said he often gets questions from his American counterparts on Canada’s experience dealing with a fiscal crunch. “It’s an opportunity for me to talk about our view that we are on the right track, that this is doable” Mr. Flaherty said.

He said he thinks there are lessons for U.S. politicians in the way Canada ended a generation of budget shortfalls in the 1990s.

“I think the recent history of Canada shows we can move from a time of dramatic deficits where the (International Monetary Fund) was eyeing our country and our currency was weak to a time of stability and solidity with a good plan going forward,” Mr. Flaherty said. “That’s useful generally because we have been through difficult times.”

In the early 1990s Canada was facing a significant debt problem which threatened to cut off international financing, potentially forcing the country to take a loan from the IMF; presumably with all of the baggage of a restructuring program aimed at dismantling all sorts of public assets and elements of the welfare state.  What is missing from this discussion is the part where the Liberals are the ones responsible for balancing the federal budget during the 90s, partially by raiding education, military and provincial transfer expenditures.

Also missing is the part where the Conservative Party's remarkably weak record on deficit management is discussed, specifically the colossal amounts of debt collected by the Mulroney government during the 1980s and then the move from surplus into structural deficit through GST and corporate tax cuts during the first Minority under Stephen Harper.  Overall, Tory governments at the federal level have tended towards the creation of massive amounts of debt for the country.  Presumably this is why Flaherty's trying to carpet it over by attempting to speak with some authority on the subject of how the deficit was eliminated in the first place during the 90s, even if the Tories were out of power and the Liberals were the ones actually responsible.

In a way this is comparable to if a foreigner asked a Republican for help in attempting to implementing expansions to health care access; there's a clear credibility issue at play.

Serious People having a Serious Debate

Paul Krugman, who has been on a serious tear as of late, wrote a post on a speech by Alan Simpson; the co-chair of American President Obama's debt commission,

Actually, the rude gesture (more detail, please?) was the least of it. If you follow the link, you’ll find Simpson repeating a whole series of zombie lies about Social Security. He repeats the idea that nobody collected benefits in the beginning because life expectancy at birth was only 63 (life expectancy at age 65, which is what matters, was almost 80 for women and 78 for men). He claims that nobody saw the future burden of the baby boomers, when the Greenspan commission reforms in the 1980s were all about precisely that. And on and on.

And when confronted with contrary numbers taken straight from the Social Security Administration, he claims that they’re left-wing fabrications.

He goes on to ask whether we should take the advice of people who apparently understand nothing about the subject in which they speak seriously.

There's two ways you can interpret Simpson's comments.  Either he actually doesn't understand anything about Social Security in the United States, or that he's simply lying to his audience on purpose.  Given that Simpson used to be a Senator from Wyoming I expect that he's simply lying about the subject, but you never know.  Regardless, this kind of strategy is classic strategy for attacks on the welfare state.  Parts of the American welfare state are in trouble, but it isn't Social Security, it's Medicare, which was the target of last year's land mark expansion of health care access.  In fact, if nothing is done about the Social Security 'crisis' in the United States, the program will be able to pay out all of its benefits until 2037; when it'll be forced to cut pay outs to 78% declining to 75% of pay outs after 2084.

Since there is no actual crisis in the American Social Security system, people like Simpson and other individuals/groups interested in destroying the welfare state have worked at inventing a crisis instead.  The manufacturing of the 'crisis' of Social Security is enabled by another manufactured 'crisis' with the spiraling of American public debt, which structurally is more a result of elite-driven tax cuts, rather than an actual problem with expenditures of the American government, even while waging two wars overseas.

Glendale Update

In a 5-2 vote the Glendale City Council decided to fork over $25 million to subsidize the Phoenix Coyotes for at least another year.  For eager Winnipeg hockey fans all eyes are now on the Atlanta Thrashers.

Liberal Party Death Watch

Liberals, despite being demolished at the polling booth are still fighting amongst each other for the few scraps of influence that remain within the party. By the way, this?

Liberals are already talking hopefully of a quick implosion by the huge, untested NDP Quebec caucus, leaving the province wide open again four years down the road.

Don't sit around hoping that the NDP stumbles, because do you guys really think that if Quebec sours on Layton that they're really going to back the Liberals over returning to the Bloc?  If the Liberal Party expects to do well in 2015, they're going to have to do better than just expecting things will go their way.

Winnipeg Jets Watch

Tomorrow the Glendale council is expected to vote to cover the losses of the Phoenix Coyotes for the next season, but if they choose for some reason against doing so the franchise is expected to be sold to the True North Group, packed up and then shipped here to Winnipeg.  I have mixed impressions of seeing the return of the NHL to Winnipeg, but I have to sympathize with the people of Glendale who'll presumably have to pay through their tax dollars for the continuing presence of a sports franchise that has never made a penny in profit since being relocated there from Winnipeg in 1996.  The Phoenix Coyotes have been a financial calamity and are the poster franchise for the failure of the NHL's expansion into the Sun Belt.

Glendale, Phoenix and Arizona in general have suffered dreadfully from the fallout of the collapse in construction and the bursting of the housing bubble.  The accumulation of wealth in these sectors during the 1990s likely drove the NHL to consider the area as suitable for expansion.  Now that the bubble has burst, the NHL remains committed to the idea that they can somehow turn Phoenix into a hockey city, despite attendance figures demonstrating the opposite being the case.

Progressives Better Prepare for Disappointment in 2015

Seems that since the New Democrats have eclipsed the Liberals to become the Official Opposition that nobody is interested in the Layton camp to attempt to work with the third party to attempt any sort of united progressive opposition to the Conservatives.  I figured that this would occur, given how eager the New Democrats and their earlier incarnation the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation were in replacing the Liberals on the left-wing side of the spectrum.

I think this is still a mistake if progressives intend on attempting to remove Stephen Harper and the Tories from government at the ballot box in 2015.  I believe that the New Democrats will in fact solidify their hold over the progressive vote in the country and further relegate the Liberals to a more marginal third party status, but that process will not be quick enough to produce a change of government in four-years time.  New Democrats may think that the re-alignment on the left will eventually be beneficial to the country, and that's possible, some will argue probable, but you may regret not making the tactical decision to work with the Liberals in the short-term if the Tories are able to institutionalize the full wrath of neoliberalism and all of its social woes into the Canadian federal government.  If you're victorious in a theoretical 2019 federal election, you may find it extremely difficult to reverse the decisions made by the Conservatives and especially the effects of those decisions.

Right on Cue...

A week ago I made these comments on RedTory's blog,

Originally I had a feeling that the ‘Quebec gambit’ that the Tories put together to rebuild the ‘Quebec-West’ coalition of the Mulroney years was just a ploy to win a majority. Now that Quebec has swung to the NDP and the Tories won a majority using rural and suburban Ontario, I imagine that nobody in the Conservative Party will give a rat’s ass about ‘whatever Quebec wants’.

And right on cue, "Harper faces golden opportunity, For the first time in half a century, Quebec agenda will not dominate".  This isn't the Tories per say, but the point I figure still stands.  Regardless, you can sense the ridiculousness of this argument in light of how dominated by Western interests the modern Conservative Party is?  Surely you could write this same article back in 1993 when Chretien won a majority with Ontario, exchanging Quebec in the article for 'the West'.  The main point is thus; Quebec has been 'annoying' for federal politics in Canada, especially since it's always in 'need of attention' and therefore the formation of a majority without the need for significant representation from Quebec is 'good for the country'.  Guess the Tories' 'French kiss with Quebec' was for the most part limited to cynical majority mongering, which wouldn't surprise me.

Update: It strikes me that there's an underlying point here.  Notably that Quebec has been a bastion of progressivism in Canada; since the Tories no longer need to 'placate' it, they can now conceivably get to the business of chipping away at the welfare state.

Thoughts on the Federal Liberal Leadership

On Wednesday apparently the Liberals will be naming an interim leader for their federal caucus.  If the rumours are correct and the party expects to wait for a year or so before holding a leadership convention to elect a permanent leader, than it stands that the best candidate for the interim job would be somewhat not expected to hold ambitions towards the permanent role, or has outstanding factors at play.  In this case, I feel that the best candidate for the job would probably be someone like John McCallum who is likely too old to challenge for the leadership.  I don't think that the interim leadership is as critical as some seem to think and hence the choice isn't as important, so long as it isn't someone who has obvious intentions on the permanent position.

As for the permanent position, I think that the Liberals are in an unenviable position; considering the rump nature of their caucus and the diminishing amount of attention that they're going to be receiving from the media.  Choosing a 'blue liberal' is a mistake and given that the election on Monday was primarily one of realignment on the left in Canada; choosing a centrist is a mistake that the NDP will punish them for through consolidation of the progressive vote.  Aside from ideological questions, there has to be significant attention paid to rectifying the most obvious and glaring problem with the Liberals, which is the increasingly non-national nature of the party.  It's clear that the Liberals can't expect to put together a challenge for prominence again by merely sweeping through Anglophone Montreal and Toronto, they'd be stuck at where they were during the 1990s.  There has to be work done in the west to rebuild what is now a completely discredited vision of Liberalism on the prairies.  The western Liberals are a mess, and have been reduced to two marginal seats in downtown Vancouver, then Wascana and another marginal seat in Winnipeg North.  The only member from the west which I figure has the stature to be a leader is Ralph Goodale, yet his incapability to speak French is a problem that makes this impossible.

It stands to reason as well that the Liberals will prefer someone younger without the taint of the endless internal wars of the 1990s and 2000s.  There will be a lot of people tempted to throw Justin Trudeau into the leadership.  I think he's too intelligent to be convinced by the party elite that this could in any way work.  Not to say that he himself is a bad candidate, but the family baggage he carries just isn't going to fly in the country, especially if the party wants to be relevant outside of Ontario and Atlantic Canada.  Dominic Leblanc's candidacy I feel is stronger than Trudeau's.  He was House Leader under Martin and has expressed leadership ambitions before.  He's also francophone, although not from Quebec.  David McGuinty's candidacy will be a problem if the Ontario Liberals lose the next election.

Bob Rae is probably the most prominent Liberal left in their benches.  His candidacy is strong because he has experience governing the province of Ontario before, although this is also a weakness, since Ontarians remember how well that fared.  The most problematic part of his candidacy is that he's low hanging fruit as far as the Conservatives and NDP are concerned.  Both parties can dump a lot on him and by proxy the Liberals in general.  Rae's position as a former NDPer though, along with some comments before on merger talks puts him in a position to facilitate discussions with the New Democrats towards closer co-operation between the two parties.  Something I feel will be important for left wing politics moving forward at the federal level.

Probably my most preferable candidate other than Rae is Denis Coderre.  A francophone Quebecker who sits in a tough riding and has since turned it into a Liberal fortress over the years.  The Liberals absolutely have to work at rebuilding the party in francophone Quebec, and a leader from Quebec is likely needed to attempt this at the very least.  Coderre was Ignatieff's Quebec lieutenant before a spat over the nomination of candidates and gained a reputation for being a fighter in Parliament, something that will be appreciated given now that the Conservatives hold a majority.

Overall the Liberals have good bench strength, but many of its candidates carry at times a significant amount of baggage.  My more preferable candidates at this point are Rae or Coderre.

What's Up with Scotland?

Britain just went through a bout of elections are various levels of government, including a referendum on proportional representation that was thoroughly smashed at the ballot box.  More interesting to the broader shape of the country's political makeup is the results of the elections for the Scottish Parliament which have left Alex Salmond's Scottish National Party with a majority.  A mandate they believe to hold a referendum on whether Scotland should separate from the United Kingdom.

I can't help but think that this divide in the makeup of the United Kingdom isn't at its core the result of the fundamental shifts in the British economy since Margaret Thatcher's government in the 1980s and the drastic effect it had on Scotland.  Deindustrialization and financialization destroyed the Scottish economy as it was and the traditional party of the working class, Labour, shifted towards the centre and accepted the fundamental tenants of Thatcher's reforms.  Without a party willing to go to bat for the region economically, Scotland began to drift towards acceptance of the SNP.  After this election Scottish Labour is a complete mess and Salmond has the opportunity to demand the devolving of extra fiscal powers to the Scottish Parliament, in addition to pushing for a referendum on independence.

A significant problem for English proponents of the United Kingdom, though, beyond all of the economic factors at play, of which there are many, is the apparent incapability to articulate a modern vision of British union.  Englishmen can't merely expect that arguments that Scotland can't 'go it alone' are somehow going to convince Scots, especially given how the Cameron governments spending cuts are likely to hit Scotland hard, working right into the SNP's arguments.  Few of the papers in the United Kingdom have even bothered to wonder about the broader issue of British identity and how the articulation of Scottish identity, amongst others, fits or doesn't fit into it.  This seems particularly jarring considering how significant the discussion of these issues have been in Canada.  Even the question raised by The Guardian as to whether it was a mistake to grant devolution to Scotland in the first seems ridiculously short-sighted.  Scottish devolution was originally widely advocated for by Scots since the late nineteenth century and ending Holyrood isn't about to fix any fundamental fault lines in British union.

Big Surprise

Ignatieff announced he's taking a position at the University of Toronto.  This probably would have been a better decision than quitting Harvard to lead the Liberals to begin with.  He's a natural academic with a prestigious career in political science, it just wasn't his skill type to lead a political party.

Heads on Pikes

On June 21st, 1621, 27 Czech Protestants were led to the gallows in Prague's Old Town Square; convicted of having rebelled against Bohemian King Ferdinand II.  After their deaths, the Habsburgs had their heads impaled on pikes to adorn the sides of Charles Bridge, an old 14th century bridge decorated with statues of Roman Catholics saints which spans across the Moldau River.  The message conveyed by the Habsburg crown to the mass of Czech Protestants was clear, this was how justice would be done for committing treason against the King.

This sort of bloody threat of violence that would occur if anyone dared threaten the United States is apparently on the mind of Sarah Palin.

Yep, apparently you have to show the bullet ridden corpse of Bin Laden because you can't be 'pussy-footing around' when it comes to a 'mission' as important as the drifting morass that is Afghanistan.  Regardless, this effort to force the Obama Administration to release photos of Bin Laden's corpse has no intrinsic value.  There is nothing to be gained by showing the photos other than to glee at the already evident demise of the infamous terrorist.  Republican Presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty's assertion that conspiracy theories regarding the belief that Bin Laden is actually still alive could be nipped in the bud with the release of the photos is ridiculous.  Look at the re-release by the American Government of President Obama's birth certificate.  Did it end all of the birther conspiracies? No, of course it didn't.

Which comes back to the story of the Protestant Czechs.  This isn't about the 'death deniers' as far as Sarah Palin's concerned, it's about demonstrating the greatness of America's ability to marshal overwhelming power to inflict pain and death on its enemies abroad, and finding pleasure and reward in observing the gruesome aftermath.  The Habsburgs' decision to mount the heads of the Czech rebels on Charles Bridge was not about finding pleasure in killing Protestants, for Ferdinand II and advocates of royal power it was about justice and punishment for treason against the crown.  For Sarah Palin and many other Americans who argue her case, this is a demonstration of American power.  Their conception of 'justice' in this case is more akin to self-satisfaction in instilling pain in others, similar to the distressing tendency of Americans to believe in the value of torture in interrogating detainees.  Torture has never been an effective means of exacting intelligence, and always has been a psychological means of demonstrating power over others, in particular the power to inflict pain.

For many Americans 9/11 was a wound that refused to close, partially because many did not want it to close.  It was too useful to have an electorate with the memories of pain and death inflicted on fellow Americans.  In return they wanted an 'eye for an eye' and 'justice' that ended up channeled through irrational displays of violence.  Americans for the most part celebrated news of Bin Laden's death, just as they often try as hard as they can to find reasons, any reasons, no matter how small, to rationalize the use of torture.  The instinct of Americans is driven by a sudden feeling of vulnerability because of a crack in the invulnerability of American power.  The response is predictable and Sarah Palin's demand for display of the consequences of challenging American power is the exemplar of this reaction.  The heads that adorned Charles Bridge after June of 1621 were about justice for challenging the 'divine order of the universe' Ferdinand II's supporters argued; Palin's 'heads' are about revenge and satisfaction.

Why Thomas? Why?

Thomas Mulcair decided to get the NDP rolling off to a great start in the Official Opposition today by opening his big trap and suggesting that there's a conspiracy afoot; that the 'Bin Laden photos' in the possession of the Americans in fact do not exist.  To make things -even better- he suggested, quoting the Globe article, that 'legal issues might surround the decision to kill the Al-Qaeda leader', as if charges could be theoretically brought up on the Americans in this case.  Why begin the campaign with such a complete and abrupt collapse in media discipline?  From a purely political standpoint I don't see the benefit to this, nor does it endear anybody to the NDP foreign policy positions.  I even agree with Tory MP Chris Alexander's reply to Mulcair in this case that the comments are just moronic.

As I've stated before, the only significant danger the NDP faces to holding onto its significant electoral gains is self-inflicted wounds; it speaks badly to the party's prospects that it's Quebec lieutenant and effective deputy leader is making these kind of dumb comments two days after the election.

Picking up the Pieces

Well first off, I don't think we'll ever experience a more bizarre and interesting evening electorally for a long time.  This electoral campaign began originally as a boring and dull replay of 2008 and to a lesser degree 2006, even politicians and pundits lamented upon the seemingly irrelevancy of going to the polls.  The trends were there for Canadian politics to structurally settle into the circumstances of increasingly durable minority status.  All parties stuck in a perpetual circumstance in which nobody could break out of the regionalized vote splits across the country.  This wasn't the case in 2011 for two reasons.  The Liberal Party of Canada and the Bloc Quebecois both collapsed.

The most important take away is that the Liberal Party is finished as a party of government.  Its supporters will likely continue to fight to restore the party to its former glory, however that's likely to merely produce another vote split along the left in the next election, whenever that may be.  The party has faced electoral calamity before in 1917 when Laurier's Liberals were devastated by the Conservatives' Unionist government during the First World War, again in 1958 under Pearson and then in 1984 under Turner.  In all cases the Liberals rode a weak opposition on the left, their brand as a natural governing party as well as the maintenance of regional electoral 'bases' to sustain them until their Conservative opponents imploded.  Montreal and Toronto provided these bases in the past, but in 2011 the Conservatives and NDP smashed into the Greater Toronto Area, while the NDP broke through taking most of Montreal.  These bases are no longer reliably Liberal, and Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton don't provide adequate springboards to electoral success in Central Canada.  Atlantic Canada has in the past been willing to hold onto the traditional parties of government.  They did so with the Progressive Conservatives during the 1990s and appear to have done so with the Liberals this election.  Old habits die hard, but they do die, and the NDP is creeping ahead of the Liberals in urban areas.

Another important factor for the Liberals is that they are no longer a national party.  Despite the terrible results in Ontario, finishing third behind the NDP, the Liberals finished fourth in Quebec in number of votes and barely held onto seats in Vancouver.  The Liberals were increasingly a party dependent since 1993 upon good results in Ontario and in particular upon vote splits between Reform/Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives.  The Chretien majority in 1993 won every seat in Ontario except for one and then did it again in 1997.  Once the Alliance and PCs merged in 2003 this wasn't possible anymore and predictably the artificial nature of Liberal dominance in Ontario was revealed.

If the Liberals return to prominence, it will not be a result of their own actions, but rather a result of mistakes made by the New Democrats.  The New Democrats face the challenge of attempting to manage a gigantic new caucus now dominated by 57 new MPs from Quebec alone, many of whom were 'posts' placed there to fill the party slate.  It still seems inconceivable what took place last night, but the precedents are there in Canadian history for rapid and jarring switches in party allegiance amongst Quebecers.  Diefenbaker's Quebec caucus in 1958 and then under Mulroney in 1984 saw Quebec flips from strong red to blue almost instantly.  In 1993 the Bloc Quebecois won francophone Quebec and reduced the Liberals to mostly Anglophone Montreal.  The NDP's near sweep of the province is within that tradition.  It's important to note however that as sudden as these movements occurred, they often switched back.  The NDP will be hard pressed to maintain its strength in Quebec, however if the primary attribute of Francophone support for the NDP is ideological then it is conceivable that the new relationship will be more durable then people think.

The NDP also faces the challenge of attempting to build its party constituency in Ontario, likely over the dying husk of the Liberal Party.  It is in Southern Ontario however, where there is room for local agreements between the Liberals and the NDP to take place.  There's already consideration floating around for mergers between the two parties (they could be called the "Progressives".  You read it here first!), however I figure that a better solution in the short term might be to have the two parties agree not to run candidates against each other in some ridings where vote splitting was particularly jarring.  This was also a problem in Manitoba where Anita Neville lost her seat to the Tories probably because of a strong showing from the New Democrats in Winnipeg South Centre.

I think eventually there will be some kind of temporary or permanent relationship between the New Democrats and the Liberals in the future, there are simply far too many similarities ideologically between the two parties, especially as Jack Layton has moved the NDP towards the centre during his leadership.  This is probably likely to accelerate as he settles into Stornoway.  The idea floating around the interwebs that the NDP is somehow a 'socialist' party is a joke, either perpetuated by attempts to label the New Democrats as either too 'radical' for Canada or simply by historical and political ignorance.  Chantal Hebert's analysis that Canadian politics is likely to polarize within a left-wing and right-wing two party system is astute and likely on the money as to how events will play out in the future.  It also means though that the 'Liberals in a hurry' will be replacing the Liberals as the only really relevant left-wing party, isolating the Liberals in the centre where they will likely 'go with the flow' and have little direction ideologically.

This election sets up an interesting future in Canadian politics, where we'll likely see the development of a two-party system based around polarized ideological platforms.  The creation of a Conservative majority without the involvement of Quebec as a fundamental part of it might have been more threatening to national unity if the NDP had not of almost swept the province.  Providing in the process a counter-balance to Quebec's dislocation within Canadian power politics by offering it a place within the opposition under the expectation that the NDP will challenge someday for the reins of government.  For political scientists and historians of Canadian history, this election will likely become one of the most written about in Canadian academia.  The randomness of it all, including the enormous ramifications for the ideological disposition of Canadian public life and the end of the 'Big Red Machine' as a party of government.

Live-blogging the Orange Crush

7:31 CST - Polls close here in Manitoba in just under thirty minutes.  Can barely wait at this point!

7:44 - Polls have closed in Atlantic Canada.

8:04 - And now polls have closed here in Manitoba.

8:15 - CBC Newsworld at 8PM was showing results from Atlantic Canada and then 'mysteriously' had technical difficulties, and then went back to a timer waiting until polls closed in British Columbia.  Damn you election laws!

8:31 - Now the blackout is lifted here.  CBC tells me that the Tories and NDP both picked up 3 seats each from the Liberals who've lost 6 total in Atlantic Canada.  Apparently the NDP is leading in the only Quebec seat reporting.

8:35 - Apparently the vote split in Atlantic Canada was 37% for the Tories, 30% for the NDP and 29% for the Liberals.  A six percent increase for the Tories, a three percent increase for the New Democrats and a six percent loss for the Liberals.

8:36 - Gaspesie-Iles-de-la-Madeleine with 70 out of 235 polls reporting has the New Democrat ahead by a couple thousand votes.

9:00 - It's pretty ugly out there for the left, it seems like the Conservatives may be about to form a majority, and the Liberals have collapsed.  CBC is showing that the NDP is preforming very well early on in Quebec.

9:10 - Quebec is going to look very orange tomorrow, and it appears as if the Bloc has been demolished at the polls.

9:12 - The CBC is indicating that the New Democrats will be forming the Official Opposition after this election.

9:17 - Apparently vacationing in Vegas during a campaign doesn't destroy your election hopes.  Gotta keep that in mind.

9:22 - Michael Ignatieff is losing in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, seems like he may be the victim of a vote split with the NDP and a general sinking in Liberal support.

9:23 - The Bloc appears to be stuck at four seats on the big CBC seat graph thingy.

9:24 - The NDP has pierced 100 seats.

9:25 - This is a bizarre election.  The Tories will likely form a majority based around the West and rural and suburban Ontario, while the NDP will be forming an official opposition based around British Columbia, Quebec and urban Atlantic Canada.  An over 20% swing to the NDP in Quebec.

9:31 - Given how well the NDP has performed in Quebec, a major problem for their caucus in the future is going to be the quantity of neophytes being elected.  A significant challenge for retaining such enormous totals in Quebec in the future.

9:33 - With 14 ridings yet to report, thus far its the Conservatives with 153, the NDP with 106, the Liberals with 31 and the Bloc with just 4 seats.

9:35 - The Tories have just passed the magic 155 number.

9:51 - CBC projects a Conservative majority.

10:02 - Looks like May is narrowly ahead in Saanich-Gulf-Islands.

10:10 - Olivia Chow is on the teevee, she seems pretty happy about the result considering that the Conservatives will be forming a majority this evening.

10:20 - Michael Ignatieff giving a pretty good speech, looks like he'll not be returning to Ottawa as he was defeated by the Tories in his seat.  His speech is echoing the party's long history, as befits his academic familiarity with the subject.  I think it'll really sting him in the future to think that he was leader while it proceeded to be demolished at the ballot box and relegated to third party status.

10:26 - Elizabeth May is ahead 45% to Tory Gary Lunn's 36% thus far.  Almost 1,000 votes ahead at this point with 40/245 polls reporting.

10:51 - At this point I'm rather fixated on how well May does.  At this point it appears she will win her seat unless there's a major swing to the Tories.

11:00 - And May wins in Saanich-Gulf-Islands with nearly 48% of the vote tallied thus far.  The first elected Green candidate to the Canadian Parliament.  Good for them.

11:30 - I still can't believe that Ruth Ellen Brosseau won in Berthier-Maskinonge.  That's how strong the NDP was in Quebec.

Election Projection Stuff

For a more detailed statistical analysis of polling you can go check out Teddy's blog here.

Election Projection for this Evening

Here's my projection for this evening:

CPC - 145 Seats, 37%.
NDP - 81 Seats, 28%.
LIB - 58 Seats, 22%.
BQ - 24 Seats, 6%.
GRN - 0 Seats, 6%.

I expect this evening to see the Conservatives hold onto their position as a minority government, however that isn't the real story of this election campaign.  The Liberals' position as the official opposition will be taken by the New Democrats, while the Bloc will have been humbled in Quebec.  I do not expect May to win Saanich-Gulf Islands, nor do I expect Arthur and Guergis to win in Pontneuf-Jacques-Cartier and Simcoe-Grey respectively.  The obvious point of interest in this election will be the replacement of the Liberals as the Centre-left party with the New Democrats, whose final seat total for the most part will depend on how well they do amongst Francophones in Quebec.  Many Liberals are expecting that they'll be able to pull out second place, but I doubt this and I think many Liberals do as well.

Have a good day everyone!

The Election will be Live-Blogged

I will be doing a live blog of the election results this evening, as well as posting my own projection of those results this afternoon.

Anyways, off to vote!

Osama Bin Laden Finally Dead

Via The Guardian.  It seems that finally Osama Bin Laden has been killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan.  It's been a long time in coming, and makes a particularly good coda for a ugly era of global history.  Since September 11th, 2001 we've seen a wide expansion of American military adventurism, arguably not even related specifically to the bombing of the Twin Towers some would say.  Potentially hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of the fallout from 9/11 in addition to the destabilization of states around the world, the erosion of civil liberties in the west as well as a significant expansion of the military-industrial complex in the west.

Despite these political developments, Americans as well as others around the world should feel contented at Bin Laden's demise.  Not necessarily at his death, but at the diminishing of his influence in the Muslim world as the Arab Awakening has created new circumstances in which Muslims can successfully resist authoritarianism in the Middle East.  No longer does it seem as if the adoption of Al-Qaeda's example is the most logical course to dismantle the military dictatorships, as revolutionary overthrow of the regimes through popularly-directed action from below has accomplished far more than Islamist-inspired bombing campaigns ever could.  Not only therefore does Bin Laden's death echo the shrinking of Al-Qaeda's influence in Middle East affairs, but provides in retrospect the clearest example of the fundamental shift in the Arab World to a new mechanism in which to public manifest their discontent and overthrow the military dictatorship.  Bin Laden died hidden and removed from the world in a compound in north-eastern Pakistan, while in the meantime Arabs around the Middle East and northern Africa have attempted and in cases succeeded in public programs of popular resistance and mobilization.

Arabs and Muslims in general shunned away from Bin Laden's example and succeeded where he and his cohorts failed miserably.  The regimes that they both loathed and sought to see removed are increasingly being laid low and threatened far more than Al-Qaeda-style terrorism ever could accomplish.  The trends before the Arab Spring indicated that the influence of Islamist terrorism was in decline.  Afterwards it most certainly is dead and buried, as the media indicates Osama Bin Laden is as well.  It is this fundamental shift in the Arab World that Americans, as well as all people around the world, should rejoice in.