legacy

Saturday June 18, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday June 18, 2022

Hence, Mike Pence

The fate of a sycophant is never a happy one.

July 21, 2020

At first, you think that fawning over the boss is a good way to move forward. But when you are dealing with a narcissist — and narcissists are the ones who like to be surrounded by sycophants — you can never be unctuous enough.

Narcissists are Grand Canyons of need. The more they are flattered, the more their appetite for flattery grows.

That is the hard, almost fatal, lesson Pence learned on Jan. 6, when he finally stood up to Donald Trump after Trump asked for one teensy favor: Help destroy American democracy and all we stand for.

Two new photos shown at a hearing of the House committee investigating Jan. 6 tell a shocking story — one of the most incredible in our nation’s history.

August 15, 2017

In one, Karen Pence is protectively pulling a gold-fringed curtain shut in the vice president’s ceremonial office in the Capitol, off the Senate floor, as Pence — sitting beneath a large gilt mirror — stares off into space, probably wondering where it all went wrong.

We learned this week that when the vice president fled down the stairs, followed by an Air Force officer carrying the nuclear launch codes, the marauding mob was a few feet from him.

In a second picture, taken after Pence was brought to a secure location in an underground garage, his daughter Charlotte is anxiously watching him. He is holding a phone to his ear as he stares at another phone showing a video of Trump professing love for the crowd, which included some who carried baseball bats and zip ties and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!”

July 18, 2016

In the early afternoon, as the crowd tore down barricades and fought police, White House staffers worried things were “getting out of hand,” as Sarah Matthews, a Trump aide, testified.

They thought that the president needed to tweet something immediately. At 2:24 p.m., they got a notification that the president had indeed tweeted. But it was not the calming tweet they had hoped for; it was one designed to drive the rioters into a frenzy.

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,” Trump tweeted. “USA demands the truth!”

As Matthews recalled in her deposition, “The situation was already bad, and so it felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that.”

Trump was still steaming from the contentious morning phone call when he failed to persuade the vice president to reject some of the states’ electors so they could be replaced with fake electors who supported Trump. He had railed at Pence with emasculating epithets.

January 20, 2017

As Trump recalled in a speech on Friday in Nashville, “I said to Mike, ‘If you do this, you can be Thomas Jefferson.’ And then, after it all went down, I looked at him one day and said, ‘I hate to say this, but you’re no Thomas Jefferson.’”

In the same speech, Trump had another line that was strikingly delusional, even for him. “For the radical left,” he said, “politics has become their religion. It has warped their sense of right and wrong. They don’t have a sense of right and wrong, true and false, good and evil.”

February 8, 2022

Trump sparked the mob to seek vengeance against Pence the same way Henry II sparked a crew to murder Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170. According to legend, after Becket defied Henry by excommunicating bishops supportive of the king, Henry muttered something to the effect of, “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Four knights immediately rode to Canterbury Cathedral and sliced up Becket.

The line became a famous example of directing loyalists with indirection, cloaking an order as a wish. Who will rid me of this meddlesome vice president?

A Times video, showing how the Proud Boys breached the Capitol, underscored that within the confederacy of dunces, there was an actual organized conspiracy. The group began plotting even before the election to take up arms for Trump. When Trump barked “Stand back and stand by” about the Proud Boys during his debate with Joe Biden, the Proud Boys felt as though they had received a directive, like Henry’s knights.

The Bengal Levee, by James Gillray | The Marquess Cornwallis (1738-1803) was made British Governor-General of India in 1786 and a Marquess in 1792. He held a weekly levee at Government House, making a point of speaking to all those who attended. Here Cornwallis is standing in the inner room on the right, his right hand on his breast and his left in the pocket of his breeches, awaiting chat time with a following of sycophants. Not far off from the current parade of Republicans who gather for meet and greets at Mar-a-Lago.

With each hearing, it becomes clearer that Trump has no plausible deniability. He put the lives of the vice president and his family at risk, as well as the lives of lawmakers, by sending a crowd, stewing in lies, into a frenzy.

Pence did not have the power to do what Trump wanted, and it’s good that he resisted the insane, illegal and unconstitutional plan of the narcissist in the Oval. But Pence still wants it both ways. He has steered clear of the committee. He wants to become president by staying on the good side of Trump supporters, but they’re never going to forgive him.

January 6, 2022

At the end of the day of infamy, John Eastman, the nutty lawyer trying to help Trump overturn the election, sent an email imploring Pence to adjourn the congressional certification so sympathetic state legislators could help with Trump’s fairy tale of a rigged election.

When Greg Jacob, Pence’s counsel, showed the email to the vice president, Pence said, “That’s rubber room stuff.”

The fate of a sycophant is never a happy one. (Maureen Dowd – The New York Times) 

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday June 23, 2022 

Pence did well

Letter to the editor

I really do appreciate Mr. MacKay’s daily offerings filled with wit, insight and hilarious satire, whether I agree with his message or not. I do however take exception with the depiction of Vice President Mike Pence as subservient lap dog to a delusional, narcissistic sociopath, his boss. Mike Pence displayed real courage, honour and dignity in the face of unpredictable violent behaviour and refused to comply with that megalomaniac’s demand to circumvent the peaceful transition of power. Whether you agree with his politics or not, when offered an escape from danger, Mike Pence refused, checking on the safety of staff instead, during perhaps one of the most dangerous moments in American history.

To quote the great Rudyard Kipling, “ if you can keep your head while all about you are loosing theirs and blaming it on you … yours is the world and all that’s in it And, which is more, you’ll be a man my son.” You did good Mike.

Claudio D’Amato, Stoney Creek

 

 

 

Wednesday October 27, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday October 27, 2021

That’s enough, Jean Chrétien

Jean Chretien Cartoon Gallery

The former Indian Affairs Minister has had decades to ponder his failings. It’s not clear he even understands what the residential schools were.

“This problem was never mentioned when I was minister. Never.”

This was Jean Chrétien’s response on Radio-Canada’s Tout le monde en parle Sunday night when asked about the abuse of Indigenous children at residential schools when he was minister of Indian Affairs from 1968 to 1974. It might even be true: Maybe none of his underlings bothered telling him. Alas, that can’t save 87-year-old Teflon Jean this time. If he didn’t know it, he bloody well should have.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission report records that in 1970, Jacques Serre, a child-care worker at the Anglican residential school in La Tuque, Que., advised Chrétien’s Indian Affairs ministry in writing that another employee had “taken liberties (with a student) in the presence of a third party.” The ministry asked its Quebec director to look into it, but no one even bothered tracking down the alleged victim, who had left the school.

A year later the La Tuque school’s administrator, Jean Bonnard, called the gendarmes over his suspicions that another child-care worker was conducting “certain ‘activities’ of a sexual nature” with his charges. Bonnard duly informed Indian Affairs of this. The police interviewed four boys, concluding the behaviour had “been going on for some time,” and then nothing happened.

June 2, 2021

Not only was the La Tuque school Chrétien’s responsibility as minister of Indian Affairs. It was in his riding.

In the early 1970s, Chrétien’s ministry received at least four complaints from the Catholic St. Anne’s residential school in Fort Albany, Ont., including of physical assault and of at least one teacher keeping “guns and live ammunition in class to scare the students.” This week, NDP MP Charlie Angus produced a letter from a teacher at St. Anne’s addressed directly to Chrétien, complaining of a “prejudicial attitude” among staff members to the Indigenous people of the community.

The Truth and Reconciliation report records the case of Harry Joseph, an employee at the Anglican residential school in Alert Bay, B.C., who in 1970 pleaded guilty to indecent assault after having been fired for having “interfered with two other girls by removing (their) bed covers and fondling them.”

November 9, 2018

Perhaps this news never made it down the telegraph to Ottawa. But it was the ministry itself that cashiered child-care worker Claude Frappier from his position at the Catholic residential school in Whitehorse in 1970 — though it didn’t bother informing the victims’ parents or the police. (Frappier was belatedly convicted in 1990 on 13 counts of sexual assault on boys aged eight to 11.)

The Truth and Reconciliation report records the case of Harry Joseph, an employee at the Anglican residential school in Alert Bay, B.C., who in 1970 pleaded guilty to indecent assault after having been fired for having “interfered with two other girls by removing (their) bed covers and fondling them.”

PM Merch

Perhaps this news never made it down the telegraph to Ottawa. But it was the ministry itself that cashiered child-care worker Claude Frappier from his position at the Catholic residential school in Whitehorse in 1970 — though it didn’t bother informing the victims’ parents or the police. (Frappier was belatedly convicted in 1990 on 13 counts of sexual assault on boys aged eight to 11.) (Continued: The National Post) 

 

Friday August 27, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 27, 2021

As the evacuation window closes, Trudeau should focus on the Afghan crisis

Who will be left behind?

As the Taliban’s evacuation clock races to its final, terrible hour, we are left feeling helpless in our minute-by-minute prayers for the Canadian citizens and permanent residents still on the ground in Afghanistan and the thousands of Afghans promised safe harbour in a grand resettlement plan.

The pulse races. Yet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could not have sounded more of a naif when he said, after a meeting of G7 leaders Tuesday, that “we will continue to put pressure on the Taliban to allow people to leave the country in safety.”

November 17, 2015

To state the obvious: he’s not bargaining from a position of strength.

And to restate past assertions in this space, evacuation efforts have been late, slow and confused. How many more evacuees could have been assisted if the government had moved with speed?

It was no comfort to listen to a triumvirate of Liberal ministers Wednesday – Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino and Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau – attempting to express hope and optimism for better days ahead, the better life that Canada offers. In real time, the government’s so-called corridors of protection have not been up to the task of shepherding the desperate into safety at Kabul’s airport.

August 24, 2021

A bombardment of pleas and videos from those desperately trying to flee will continue to rain down.

And in yet another penny-dropping moment, it has finally sunk in that with U.S. forces scheduled to evacuate from their longest war by Aug. 31, a process that will take days, the last opportunity for a Canadian supported exit may be just hours away. And that’s assuming the risk of attack against U.S. troops by the ISIS affiliate — and Taliban enemy — ISIS-K doesn’t become a reality. U.S. President Joe Biden defined that risk this week as acute and growing.

In Wednesday’s press conference it fell to Marc Garneau to acknowledge the obvious: that there’s a “possibility” that the Canadian effort will fail to successfully complete its rescue mission. We’re on the job, Garneau said, “even though there may be some election going on.”

It’s not an easy hand that Trudeau has been dealt. It would be folly to argue otherwise. That the Taliban briskly took the capital on the same day as the election was called should be material for Trudeau’s memoirs. That’s far in the future. How the Biden administration failed to anticipate the Taliban’s lightning-fast takeover will be one for the history books.

July 15, 2021

In the instant, it’s obvious that the Afghanistan crisis has emerged as a trip wire for Trudeau, one that’s becoming more barbed with each passing moment. A month has passed since the government backtracked on its ill-considered 72-hour deadline for Afghan interpreters and others who worked in support of Canadians to file resettlement paperwork. That shemozzle revealed wonky bureaucracy at work.

And it was a signal to Trudeau to prioritize the Afghan file. This he has failed to do.

That has left a broad opening for opposition leaders. When Conservative party Leader Erin O’Toole charges, as he did Wednesday, that Trudeau failed to take timely action on Afghanistan months ago, and that the prime minister put the political interests of the Liberal party ahead of the crisis, it sounds discordant to hear Trudeau on the same day pledging to raise corporate taxes on the big banks.

The remedy would be for Trudeau to get off the campaign trail and high tail it back to Ottawa. The next 48 hours will be crucial to the outcome of the Afghanistan crisis. Getting updates, as the prime minister calls them, as he travels through Hamilton, or Winnipeg or Surrey, B.C., releasing the Liberal platform drip by drip, is not the mien of a seasoned G7 leader. (Toronto Star Editorial) 

 

Tuesday August 10, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday August 10, 2021

Premier Bill Davis was the steady hand driving Ontario’s Big Blue Machine

William Grenville Davis, premier of Ontario for 14 years (1971 to 1985), was a baffling, contradictory figure – a shy, inscrutable man, who liked family and football yet spent his life absorbed by political issues, travelling up to 160,000 kilometres a year; a tradition-bound, non-intellectual with a passion for ideas and experimentation that gave birth to such intellectual playgrounds as the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

February 1, 2019

The press consistently panned the performances of Mr. Davis, reporting that he was bland and boring, but he charmed voters out of the trees. Right-wing conservatives described him as a left-wing socialist; left-wingers attacked him for pandering to the right.

“Bland works,” he once said. “The only time a politician gets in trouble is when he opens his mouth.”

He was renowned for his ability to appear prosperous, calm and confident, to say little, and to lead the province through dramatic, potentially unpopular changes.

Mr. Davis died on Sunday at the age of 92 surrounded by family in Brampton, Ont., a family statement said. He was the fifth consecutive Tory leader to occupy the premier’s office since 1943 and held the office longer than any other.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “deeply saddened” to hear of Mr. Davis’s death. “The former premier of Ontario leaves behind an incredible legacy of service – and I have no doubt that the impact of his work will be felt for generations to come,” Mr. Trudeau tweeted.

Premier Doug Ford said Mr. Davis served Ontario “with honour and distinction” and flags across the province will be lowered to half-mast in his honour.

September 12, 2000

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney said in a statement that “Canada has lost a great statesman today, and I have lost a great and true friend. Bill Davis devoted his life to Ontario, to Canada and to his family. The progress he made on many fronts as premier place him in the front ranks as one of Canada’s greatest premiers ever.”

Mr. Davis supported the controversial energy policies and constitutional endeavours of then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals; under his premiership, the free-enterprise Tory government bought a 25-per-cent stake in Suncor, an oil company, and initiated tripartite industrial strategies advocated by the New Democratic Party. And as education minister, he reformed and vastly expanded the education system – all without upsetting too many of the people too much of the time.

Yet his skills as a politician failed to help his successor. Nearly 42 years of Conservative government ended 138 days after he stepped down as premier on Feb. 8, 1985. His successor, Frank Miller, called an election and failed to win a majority government in the May 2 election. Mr. Miller’s minority government lost a vote of confidence on June 18 and on June 26, he resigned. (Continued: Globe & Mail) 

 

Tuesday July 20, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday July 20, 2021

“I’m Getting the Word Out”: Inside the Feverish Mind of Donald Trump

March 26, 2019

Seventy days had passed since Donald Trump left Washington against his will. On March 31, 2021, we ventured to Mar-a-Lago, where he still reigned as king of Republican politics. We arrived late that afternoon for our audience with the man who used to be president and were ushered into an ornate sixty-foot-long room that functioned as a kind of lobby leading to the club’s patio. A model of Air Force One painted in Trump’s proposed redesign—a flat red stripe across the middle, a navy belly, a white top, and a giant American flag on the tail—was proudly displayed on the coffee table facing the entrance. It was a prop disconnected from reality.  Trump’s vision never came to be; the fleet now in use by President Biden still bears the iconic baby blue-and-white livery designed by Jacqueline Kennedy.

“Used to be” is not a phrase anyone dares use to describe the president inside his Palm Beach castle. Here, beneath the gold-leaf ceiling of winged griffins and crystal chandeliers, Trump still rules, surrounded day and night by applauding fans, obsequious courtiers, and dutiful servants. At the perfectly manicured Mar-a-Lago, none of the disgrace that marked the end of his presidency pierces Trump’s reality. Here, he and his aides work to maintain the gospel according to Trump, with the most important revelations being that Donald Trump was the greatest president of all time and was unjustly denied a second term.

January 22, 2019

Trump had invited us to Mar-a-Lago to interview him for this book. He had declined an interview for our first book about his presidency, and when A Very Stable Genius was published in January 2020, attacked us personally and branded our reporting a work of fiction. But Trump was quick to agree to our request this time. He sought to curate history.

As we sat for the interview, the former president’s press secretary presented us copies of a bound volume: 1,000 Accomplishments of President Donald J. Trump: Highlights of the First Term. On the back cover is an American flag, the presidential seal, and Trump’s thick, jagged signature. The book totals 92 pages and is organized with chapters dedicated to the economy, tax cuts, deregulation, trade, and so on.

January 24, 2017

Trump walked into the room flanked by a couple of plainclothed Secret Service agents, a much smaller detail than he once had as president. He wore his customary dark suit and tie, his face covered with bronze makeup. He sat in his preferred position, a plush armchair of ivory brocade facing the entrance where guests arrive, with us on a sofa to his right. Behind him was a huge window looking out to the Atlantic Ocean; in front of him, the patio facing Lake Worth.

“This is the biggest, the best, the most acreage, the most everything—the ocean, the lake, it fronts both,” the ever-boasting Trump said. “Mar-a-Lago is ocean-to-lake. Did you know that? Mar-a-Lago, ocean to lake. It’s the only place. See that window? That window, when that was built, is the largest pane of glass in the world, okay?”

June 23, 2021

Trump started the interview by pointing out his enduring and unrivaled power within the Republican Party. He explained that he didn’t intend to follow the path of former presidents, who largely bowed out of the nitty-gritty of party politics. He was proud to say he genuinely enjoys this sport he found so late in life, and believes he plays it better than anyone else. The parade of Republican politicians flocking to Mar-a-Lago all spring to kiss his ring had both energized him, he said, and proved the value of his stock.

“We have had so many, and so many are coming in,” Trump said. “It’s been pretty amazing. You see the numbers. They need the endorsement. I don’t say this in a braggadocious way, but if they don’t get the endorsement, they don’t win.” 

But future elections were not front and center in his mind. A past election was. Trump was fixated on his loss in 2020, returning to this wound repeatedly throughout the interview. 

April 29, 2020

“In a certain way, I had two presidencies,” he said. In the first, when the economy was roaring, Trump argued that he had been unbeatable, never mind that his approval rating was never higher than 46 percent in the Gallup poll during his first three years as president.

“I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me,” Trump said.

Then, he lamented, came his second presidency: the pandemic killed his chances.

Trump seemed determined as well to convince us that he actually had won, and handily, had it not been for the many people who had wronged him—the “evil people” who conspired to deny him his rightful second term.

“The greatest fraud ever perpetrated in this country was this last election,” Trump said. “It was rigged and it was stolen. It was both. It was a combination, and Bill Barr didn’t do anything about it.”

Trump faulted not only his attorney general, but Vice President Pence for lacking the bravery to do what was right. (Continued: Vanity Fair)

The Journey of a Hero to the Island of Elba

A satirical depiction of the exile of the French Emperor Napoleon to the island of Elba in 1814. This was Napoleon’s first defeat by the Allied nations of the Sixth Coalition, including Britain, Prussia, and Russia. Less than a year after Napoleon was overthrown, he escaped from Elba and returned to France, forcing the Sixth Coalition to reform. The Allied armies marched against him, and Napoleon was finally and conclusively defeated at the Battle of Waterloo. Pub’d by J. Phillips, No. 32 Charles Street Hampstead road, May 1814. (Source: Age of Revolution)