I've really enjoyed the continuing revelations about Canada's Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ marital and ministerial infidelities, the most recent being the disclosure by the group Anonymous that alleges Toews made a paramour of his, Catherine Everett, a member of the Manitoba judge's bench.
(Photo: Vic Toews, Public Safety Minister)
This is alleged to have happened around 2005-2006, and apparently Prime Minister Harper got wind of it, removed Toews as Justice Minister and appointed him President of the Treasury Board in January 2007.
Shortly after this, Toews, undaunted, was boinking his children's babysitter and got her pregnant, and in all this, Toews was also having an affair with Stacey Meek, a Conservative Party staffer… and my God, can it get any more sordid? This is the man once dubbed the "Minister of Family Values." He's also the man who would approve any transfer of me from the US prison system back to the Canadian system when I put my transfer application in April 2013.
Public Safety Minister Toews’ current legislative proposal is to give draconian powers of warrantless searches of citizens’ online and phone communications to police, ostensibly (but unconvincingly) for the purpose of tracking online child predators. Who needs internet child pornographers to blame when the Minister of Public Safety is preying on young girls?
You'd think this would cause some embarrassment in Toews' Manitoba riding of Provencher, although not enough to vote him out in elections 2008 or 2011, despite the lurid paper trail left behind in the wake of his public divorce in 2009. Toews’ vote totals increase in each election; in 2011 he got 70% of the votes cast.
(Image: Letters in the National Post newspaper by Marc and Vic Toews; click to enlarge)
Toews is a completely incompetent cement-head as a minister. I had the great delight of having my letter published in the National Post newspaper regarding warrantless police snooping (the Toews-proposed Internet Snoop Bill) with Toews’ letter published underneath mine claiming there was no such provision allowing police to go on fishing expeditions or vendettas. Then, a few days later, Toews admitted he hadn't read HIS OWN LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL and was shocked! shocked! he said, to find that indeed the bill did allow unlimited warrantless snooping of Canadians and their email and web use.
Religious Conservative voters in both America and Canada have a big heart when it comes for forgiving the sordid hypocrisy of their own, while condemning anyone else who operates their lifestyle openly, whether it’s sexuality, drug use, abortion or mistresses.
Every day Rick Santorum, Presidential Republican candidate, issues some screed against contraception ("Contraception is wrong because it encourages people to have sex for the wrong reason" was the most outrageous remark, I thought), college education being elitist snobbery (though Santorum himself has two university degrees), fellow Catholic John F. Kennedy's wonderful remark on the separation of church and high office (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAvHHTt2czU) making Santorum 'want to puke', as he said.
Santorum must have a lot of forgiveness in his heart for his wife, as her most intimate and important relationship before Rick was a six-year long love affair with a full-time abortionist doctor. Karen Santorum, who, like her husband, now opposes abortion even in cases of rape, and doesn't condone birth control (as they believe sex is only for procreation), lived with Dr. Thomas Allen for six years in the 1980's while his chief medical practice was performing abortions. In those days, Karen Garver had liberal views on unmarried sex, birth control and abortion.
Santorum's biggest backer in the media is Conservative radio talk show bigmouth Rush Limbaugh. After a woman named Susan Fluke testified on Capitol Hill about the consequences to some of her colleagues lacking birth control coverage in their health insurance, Rush went totally off the deep-end and said these statements regarding what was a very poised and reasoned explanation by Fluke before the Congressional committee on television, which I saw:
"What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke who goes before a Congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex -what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex."
Not content with that deplorable screed, the next day I heard Rush say this on his show:
(Photo: Rush Limbaugh vs Sarah Fluke)
"A Georgetown co-ed told Nancy Pelosi's hearing the women in her law school program are having so much sex they're going broke, so you and I should have to pay for their birth control. So what would you call that? I called it what it is. So I'm offering a compromise today: I will buy all of the women at Georgetown University as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want. So Miss Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here's the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay you to have sex, we want something. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."
Note that along with calling her a slut, Rush insists she video tape her sexual activities and put them online for Rush and his fellow ditto heads to enjoy.
I listen to these depraved and wretched right wing talk shows every day and often gasp at their unrestrained bilious rants. Laura Ingram, Rush Limbaugh, and several religious-based talk shows (like Focal Point on the FRN radio network) are the worst. Dennis Miller, who was once clever and bitingly funny when he was a liberal on Saturday Night Live, is a pathetic shadow of his former self, shilling on the Dennis Miller Show for a whole range of intolerant malicious bigots.
But no one tops Rush. In endlessly circular arguments with himself, he is deplorable. Finally, this man – who for years used his maid as a drug mule to go out and illegally buy huge quantities of prescription drugs for him while he was berating illegal drug users on his show and urging they be sent to jail – is finally suffering from his excess of bile. Advertisers are withdrawing from his program. But when Wolf Blitzer asked Rick Santorum to condemn Limbaugh, Santorum could not do it, saying "Mr. Limbaugh is an entertainer… er, uh, ahem… we're in two different worlds…" and it was a long squirmy sweaty performance by Santorum while Blitzer had a very serious condemning look. Santorum gets the support of all the most vituperative of the right wing on radio, including Limbaugh and Laura Ingram, and he will not deny them, as they are his principle cheerleaders in his quest for President.
I thought Santorum had sweatily sabotaged his own Presidential aspirations right there on the screen by refusing to condemn Limbaugh's appalling attack on the woman – but I was wrong. As Santorum's primary wins in Oklahoma, Ohio, Tennessee, and strong showings elsewhere on Super Tuesday showed, Americans embrace this guy.
Entertainer and commentator Bill Maher, despite my disappointment in his giving $1 million to the pro-Obama PAC instead of the Ron Paul PAC, has a point: America is full of religious fundamentalist intolerant bigoted hypocrites, and they go vote. What never ceases to amaze me are the depraved sick values of those American voters, especially ones who call themselves Tea Party voters, whom I once thought I agreed with, and the self-righteous religious people called 'evangelicals', 'born-again' or 'values voters.'
(Image: The choices for US President. Who's best?)
Ron Paul virtually founded the original (and respectable) Tea Party, and has been married for 53 years to the same woman, is a proper Christian, is the most incredibly decent, consistent, respectful man ever offered up as Presidential candidate, and he opposes (as he has always opposed) all the wars, opposed the war on drugs, opposes the surveillance state, opposes any invasion of privacy, would pardon all non-violent drug offenders in federal prison, pardon all those with federal drug convictions on their record, abolish the DEA and the office of the drug Czar, end the federal reserve, slash spending, and much more to restore the United States and save the lives of people worldwide.
Lobbyists don't even both talking to Ron Paul. If it’s not specifically authorized in the Constitution, he's against the federal government doing it, so he can’t be corrupted or bought out. Ron supports Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, internet privacy and freedom. Ron Paul is the most faithful and dignified defender of the proper interpretation of the US Constitution ever put before voters. But do these self-identified Tea Party types, these Christian evangelicals, support him in the Republican primaries? They do not. They support overwhelmingly Rick Santorum and – get this – Newt Gingrich.
Now, I hate Newt because he once said he'd approve of the death penalty for anyone caught dealing in even a few ounces of pot. Although Newt has since retreated on his positions from the 90's Congress he led as Republican Speaker of the House, regarding severe sentencing with incarceration as a successful way to deal with prohibition and crime, when asked during his Presidential campaign in late 2011 about medical marijuana, Newt said he would maintain a strict prohibition at the federal level and use federal resources to attack it absolutely at the state level. Newt's explanation was that the message that 'marijuana was harmful to American society' was more important than disrupting the lives of those who genuinely needed it for medical reasons. Yes, he actually said that.
Newt's current wife Callista was having an affair with him for six years while Newt was married to his second wife. When Newt came 'clean' and told wife #2, it wasn't to apologize or confess or renounce his affair; it was to ask his wife if she would share Newt in a more public way with Callista. Then when that didn't fly, Newt decided a divorce was not going to be helpful to his political career, so the affair just continued until wife #2 got multiple sclerosis and was, at least to Newt, of no use whatsoever, then it was over.
Newt was doing this all while railing on television, in Congress, and in the press about Bill Clinton's occasional and infrequent extra-marital blowjobs. Newt met wife #2 and had an affair with her while still married to wife #1. Now, let me just say that what distinguishes me (or you) and the idea of 'private sphere' or 'nobody's business' is that I've never advocated or endorsed putting anyone in jail or compromising their liberty or lifestyle based on sexuality, drug use, internet pictures downloaded, guns owned, abortions had, contraceptives used (or not), money decisions, or even freaky religious beliefs. I'm against all prohibitions on peaceful choices. The only people I demonize are hypocritical politicians, and perhaps in a lesser way, their enablers in the media and the voters who wrongly support and keep them in office even after they’ve been revealed as hypocrites.
Since leaving office, both Santorum and Gingrich have taken millions from powerful vested interests to lobby Congress. Both were completely corrupted insiders while in Congress, but nonetheless the Republican's who identify themselves as 'Tea Partiers', 'values voters' or 'strong conservatives' support Gingrich or Santorum in the main. Santorum and Gingrich would take America to war against Iran, and both want to maintain a vigorous and aggressive military policy. This is red meat with the so-called devotees of the 'Prince of Peace' Jesus. Mitt Romney tries to emulate these two in out-machoing them, and is also bellicose for war and intervention.
These 'values voters' don't seem to support Ron Paul, who has not said a single embarrassing or unkind remark during the whole Republican primary campaign. Ron Paul called out Rush Limbaugh for his grotesque remarks against Susan Fluke, referring to Rush's words as 'crude, 'inappropriate' and 'wrong'. Not surprisingly, a shrill right wing harpy like Laura Ingram disdains Ron Paul and shows great love for Rick and Newt. Limbaugh, Brian Kilned ('Kilned & Friends' on Fox), Laura Ingram, and most all other populist demagoguing right wing talk shows all despise Ron Paul. These vulgar right wing radio hacks (about all that you can get on AM radio in Mississippi, which is why I listen) try at all opportunities to ignore him, insult him, or misrepresent him, while blocking Ron Paul supporters who call their shows.
Obama is a bad President, increasing the debt by trillions of dollars, pursuing the drug war in the US and worldwide, betraying the cannabis culture, repealing nothing from the Bush era except 'Don't ask, Don't Tell'. Without Ron Paul on the ballot in November, it’s only Gary Johnson (Libertarian) I’d consider for President. But I have no faith in the majority of Americans to choose a sane, rational person for President, and that is dispiriting.