Telegraph names General Petraeus its first Person of the Year

Nuts to you, Time!


From today’s Telegraph:

Today, we put him in the spotlight again by naming Gen Petraeus as The Sunday Telegraph's Person of the Year, a new annual accolade to recognise outstanding individual achievement.

He has been the man behind the US troop surge over the past 10 months, the last-ditch effort to end Iraq's escalating civil war by putting an extra 28,000 American troops on the ground.

So far, it has achieved what many feared was impossible. Sectarian killings are down. Al-Qaeda is on the run. And the two million Iraqis who fled the country are slowly returning. Progress in Iraq is relative - 538 civilians died last month. But compared with the 3,000 peak of December last year, it offers at least a glimmer of hope.

To appreciate the scale of the task Gen Petraeus took on, it is necessary to go back to February 22, 2006. Or, as Iraqis now refer to it, their own September 11. That was when Sunni-led terrorists from al-Qaeda blew up the Shia shrine in the city of Samarra, an act of provocation that finally achieved their goal of igniting sectarian civil war.

A year on, an estimated 34,000 people had been killed on either side - some of them members of the warring Sunni and Shia militias, but most innocents tortured and killed at random. US casualties continued to rise, too, but increasingly American troops became the bystanders in a religious conflict that many believed they could no longer tame.

Things are far from perfect but, after four years in which events did nothing but get worse, the sight of a souk re-opening, or a Shia family being welcomed back home by their Sunni neighbours, has remarkable morale-boosting power.

Where once Iraqis saw the glass as virtually empty, now they can see a day when it might at least be half full.



Hat tip: NRO's Web Briefing.

The most hated person in Dallas since J.R. Ewing

If that's not what they're calling Jessica Simpson in Dallas tonight -- they should.

The tuna enthusiast and champion hair flipper was in attendance today at Texas Stadium in Dallas to watch her latest boyfriend/prey, Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo. Romo played his worst game of the year, which was only Dallas’ second loss of the season (to the Philadelphia Eagles, 10-6):

Romo was 13-of-36 for 214 yards. All three pickoffs came on balls forced to Owens. He also was sacked four times, all on the final two drives, when his banged-up hand bothered him so much he dropped a ball while cocking to throw.

His quarterback rating of 22.2 was easily the worst of his career. His previous worst was at home against Philadelphia last December, another game attended by a starlet love interest. It was Carrie Underwood then, Jessica Simpson now. When cameras spotted Simpson in the first half, she tugged the front of her pink No. 9 jersey, then mouthed the word “Romo!”

Well, at least she didn't have to spell it.

Now, in fairness, Jessica Simpson does have loads of beauty and talent. Compared to her sister.

But she is a painfully transparent starf***er, having unsuccessfully pursued Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine, before latching onto sensitive singer-songwriter John Mayer. (But he eventually wised up.) Both "relationships" were punctuated by media leaks that obviously came from Simpson's camp.

Now, I don’t really care if Jessica Simpson ruins John Mayer’s career. But my Cowboys? Time to hit the road, Jess.

Update: Chelsea Handler agrees with me:

"Jessica Simpson attended boyfriend Tony Romo's football game. The Cowboys quarterback had the worst game of his career. It's a bad year for the name Simpson. Even O.J. is pissed, he feels like they're making his name look bad."

By the way, I recommend Handler's nighly show on the E! Network, seen in southern Ontario on CH at 12:00 midnight. Her topical panel at the top of the show is very funny, and she has continued to have new shows throughout the writers' strike. (I also recommend E!'s "Talk Soup," which is like three Kimmel monologues in a row.)

Well, Chrétien did publish two ghostwritten memoirs . . .

Allegations that someone at the CBC is the Wayland Flowers to the Liberals’ Madame (ask your grandparents) bring to mind this clip from last week:

Steve Paikin: They wanna call you. Are you prepared for that?

“Fifth Estate” producer Harvey Cashore: Well, I’ve gotta, you know, think about what that means. My job as a journalist is not to go speaking to, you know, to be a function or an arm of a committee like that. My stories speak for themselves. So I would say what I’m excited about is they have the power to subpoena people who I couldn’t talk to. Let’s hear what they have to say.
--“The Agenda,” TVO, December 6

Video here. The above excerpt is about three-quarters through.

Now, of course I’m not saying that Cashore himself had anything to do with ghosting or suggesting Liberal questions to Brian Mulroney (and if they were the questions about the wireless spectrum decision, I very much doubt he did). But it will be interesting to see if there’s any response from the CBC.

Update: The Conservative Party has complained to the CBC, and the CBC is investigating. (h/t: Stephen Taylor)

Liberals tried to delay Mulroney’s appearance until after David Johnston’s report

Afraid Mulroney’s testimony will weaken case for public inquiry.

CBC's Cashore suggests he would not testify voluntarily.


This little nugget, reported on TV yesterday by CTV’s Bob Fife and Globe and Mail reporter Brian Laghi, appears to have flown under the radar:

“Actually Lloyd, the Liberals tried to block Mr. Mulroney’s appearance until late January, after the independent investigator sets the terms of reference for a public inquiry. They were afraid that if he shows up Thursday and he shows he didn’t do anything illegal, that the public inquiry wouldn’t be held. The NDP wouldn’t go along with this.”
--Bob Fife, CTV News, December 6

Presumably, this discussion took place at the in-camera meeting of the committee’s steering committee, after Karlheinz Schreiber gave his testimony Thursday.

Video of Fife’s report is here (titled “CTV News: Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife reports 3:21”). The above comment starts around the 2:40 mark.

The Globe’s Laghi also mentioned the Liberals’ attempt to delay Mulroney’s testimony, on “Mike Duffy Live,” but video is not available.

Interesting. The party that insisted on having the ethics committee conduct hearings and got Schreiber out of jail with a rarely-used Speaker’s warrant – all while knowing that a public inquiry is coming – tried to delay the appearance of one of the key witnesses after only three days of hearings.

Another interesting shoe yet to drop in this story is whether the journalists of interest, such as Stevie Cameron and “Fifth Estate” journalists Linden MacIntyre and Harvey Cashore, will testify before the committee or a public inquiry.

Cashore appeared on TVO’s “The Agenda” last night, and suggested he would not testify voluntarily, but demurred when host Steve Paikin asked him what he would do if served with a Speaker’s warrant:

Paikin: You know who else they [the committee] wanna call (points to Cashore).

Cashore: Uhm, me. Yeah. (laughs)

Paikin: They wanna call you. Are you prepared for that?

Cashore: Well, I’ve gotta, you know, think about what that means. My job as a journalist is not to go speaking to, you know, to be a function or an arm of a committee like that. My stories speak for themselves. So I would say what I’m excited about is they have the power to subpoena people who I couldn’t talk to. Let’s hear what they have to say.

Paikin: I’m sure you’re thrilled about that. But what happens when the Speaker issues his warrant to get you and put your butt in that chair? You gonna go?

Cashore: Well, we’ll have to see what happens. We’ll have to see.

Paikin: We’ll have to see what happens? What kind of answer is that?

Cashore: (laughs) I’m being a politician!

A link to video of the December 6th show is here. The above exchange is about three-quarters through (there is no time counter on the video).

My guess is that no reporter will appear voluntarily before the committee or inquiry, and would fight a Speaker’s warrant in court.

But it would be interesting to see whether the committee would even take steps to obtain Speaker’s warrants for journalists. Stay tuned.

Lend me your vote – and some binoculars

Rae veteran Irene Mathyssen didn’t see what she thought she did on Moore’s computer

As an unjustly-persecuted American politician once asked, “Where do I go to get my reputation back?”

Perhaps that would be making too much of the swiftly-evaporated voyeurism charge, levelled by rookie Ontario New Democrat MP Irene Mathyssen against BC Conservative MP James Moore (for which she has now apologized). But there are few allegations that can be made against a male politician that are more damaging than that he might enjoy pictures of attractive, nearly nude women.

What’s interesting here is that Mathyssen went beyond saying it was inappropriate to view such material on the floor of the House of Commons. She argued that such material is inappropriate anywhere:

“It reflects an attitude of objectifying women and we know that when women and other human beings are objectified and dehumanized, they become the object of violence and abuse.”

As it turned out, however, Mathyssen was more Mr. Magoo than Sherlock Holmes: Moore soon realized that the photo Mathyssen had spotted from several desks away was of Moore’s dog and former girlfriend, who was committing the secular sin of wearing a bikini more than 100 metres away from a gay pride parade (the girlfriend, not the dog).

So, if you’ll forgive me, I couldn’t help but think that Moore could have easily deflected the allegations by saying that he was looking for information about the gay, bi-sexual, lesbian and transgendered communities. Or that he was looking at photos from the 2007 London Pride festival. Mathyssen marched in the parade, and placed an ad in its directory (page 52).

Irene Mathyssen was a cabinet minister in the late-and-unlamented, one-term government of one Robert K. Rae, now carefully drafting the Liberal policy platform for the next general election, which must be just good enough to allow Stéphane Dion to finish second in a minority Parliament. Tonight, he must be grateful that at least he doesn’t have to deal with the likes of Irene Mathyssen anymore. She was Rae’s minister without portfolio for culture, tourism and recreation from October 1994 to June 1995.

Mathyssen’s sputtering outrage over girlie pictures is typical of the attitude that prevailed in the Rae government and still prevails among Old Democrats and Liberals. The Rae government published the notorious Words that Count Women In, a painfully silly “guide to eliminating gender bias in writing and speech” (no, really). Also on its watch, Ontarians witnessed the absurdity of a sex scandal in which a minister had to resign, even though there had been no actual sex performed.

Today, the Liberals were quick to demonstrate that they could still give as good as the Dippers, with MP Karen Redman recklessly piling onto Moore, based solely on Mathyssen’s assertions.

You’d think the Dion Liberals would be more careful these days, having lately been embarrassed that their game of Six Degrees of Schreiber is not turning out how they had hoped. Oh, I forgot: the capacity for embarrassment is unnecessary ballast, to be shed early on the way to becoming a successful Liberal politician.

And now even Mark “Nancy Drew” Holland is pleading that an inquiry, not the ethics committee, is the place to question Schreiber. Um, yeah, that’s what the government said. But in fairness to his suggestion, the benefit now would be that the committee would be free to turn its attention to simpler but more pertinent matters, such as requiring all male Conservative MPs to submit to lie detector tests to determine whether they watched all or part of the "Victoria’s Secret" fashion show on TV last night.

Vote for Schreibergelder!

(But only if you really want to)

My recommendation – “Schreibergelder” – is in the running at Andrew Coyne’s “Name That Scandal” vote. The final four:

Airbust
Schreibergelder
Airbucks
Schreiberbriber

Frankly, I’m surprised I made it this far, as I got little support at the original post. But hey, I’ll take it!

Vote here.

“Me fail English? That’s unpossible!”

More bad spelling* from the Liberals

A federal Liberal Party mailing from leader Stephane Dion into a Vancouver riding about the controversial InSite safe drug injection site is under attack as "fear mongering" by the Conservatives, while the New Democratic Party calls it a "waste."

And the mailing, which misspells the word "minister" in referring to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is a "rush job" and "confusing," say the two parties.
--24 hours Vancouver, today

* see also the post below

Bad timing for glad tidings

McGuinty Fiberals holding fundraising "celebration" on anniversary of Montreal Massacre

Well, I guess this is par for the course for a Premier whose advisers make misogynistic comments about female MPPs. Below is the graphic and text from an e-mail I received from the Ontario Liberal Party.

Also, their graphics people can't seem to spell "holiday."



Join us for the
Ontario Liberal Party
Holiday Celebration!

Celebrate the holiday season with fellow Liberals, including caucus members, Party President Gord Phaneuf and the Premier, at the 2007 Ontario Liberal Party Holiday Celebration.

This year's celebration takes place Thursday, Dec. 6 at the Intercontinental Hotel 225 Front Street West, in Toronto.

Tickets are $75 each or $750 for a table of ten.

To find out more, please call 416-961-3800 or 1-800-268-7250 or holidayparty2007@ontarioliberal.ca

You can click here for a form and fax it to 416-323-9425. Tickets are limited, so hurry.

Have a happy holiday season and a tremendous 2008!

Kindly resume sorting your recyclables

Halifax rejects Celine Dion, and vice versa

I’m a Celine Dion fan. I admit it. I went to Las Vegas solely for the purpose of seeing her show (and didn’t gamble a dime). I bought a program, a mug, and a keychain.

Of course, I am well aware that some people don’t like Dion’s music and/or her. They find her saccharine, bombastic, irritating, etc. They find her husband creepy. Whatever. It doesn’t bother me that other people don’t like her.

Frankly, it irritates me that Bill Clinton seems to come to Toronto every six months or so to speak at some event (for a fee in the neighbourhood of $100,000, I hear). Clinton is a narcissist who embodies everything that is wrong with his generation, plus he bombed my relatives in Serbia. So I really don’t have time for the guy.

But if a ballroom full of fools wants to pay $500 or $1,000 to have Bill Clinton look down their wives’ dresses, I really don’t care. So why should a few reporters in Halifax care whether people want to see a Celine Dion concert?

Celine Dion has never encountered such a negative reaction to a proposed concert as she did from Halifax, her husband-manager has told a Montreal journalist.

In response to a question from La Presse reporter Alain De Repentigny about the cancelled show on the Halifax Common, Rene Angelil said in French: If we’re not welcome in Halifax, we won’t go.

“Si nous ne sommes pas les bienvenus à Halifax, on n’ira pas,” Angelil said in the article posted Sunday on the Cyberpresse website.

This contradicts promoter Gillett Entertainment Group, which said the concert was cancelled Friday because the venue was not suited to the show’s elaborate production needs.

Gillett couldn’t be reached for comment yesterday, but the promoter confirmed to a Halifax newspaper last week that Dion will play a free show on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City for its 400th anniversary celebration Aug. 22, the day before she was scheduled to play on the Common.

Angelil saw negative stories about Dion’s Halifax concert from two different journalists, he said.

“I asked him, ‘Well, maybe two journalists expressed their opinions; it doesn’t mean that the people wouldn’t go and see her sing,’” Repentigny said.

“He said, ‘If it sparks controversy there, if it’s a problem, we won’t go.’”
--Halifax Daily News, today

“Chuck Norris doesn’t endorse. He tells America how it’s gonna be.”

Mike Huckabee has launched his first campaign ad, which premiered on yesterday’s “Fox News Sunday.” It is inspired by the Chuck Norris “facts” that have been around for a few years now, and features the man himself.

British Legion bars wounded soldiers from Remembrance Day parade

Government policy does not permit serving soldiers to march

From The Guardian:

Serving soldiers horrifically injured in the Iraq and Afghan conflicts have been refused permission to join today’s main Remembrance Day parade, prompting angry accusations that the government is ‘ashamed’ to have them seen in public.

Jamie Cooper, 19, the youngest Briton seriously injured in Basra, had hoped to join the march past at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. He is one of a number of young soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan the Royal British Legion had wanted to include in Britain’s centrepiece remembrance ceremony.

But last week, the head of the Legion contacted Jamie’s father, Phillip, to say that government rules for participating in the parade stipulated that only veterans, not ‘serving soldiers’, could take part. Last year 1,500 civilians were among the 9,500 allowed by the government to participate in the official march past. ‘I am absolutely outraged,’ Cooper said. ‘I would not have made an issue of it. But Jamie, who is thankfully recovering well from his latest major operation, said to me: “Dad, do you remember how we always used to go to Remembrance Day when I was younger? Do you think we could go this year?” He feels strongly about it, because he has lost friends on the battlefield and wants to pay tribute to them.’

It is also understood that several soldiers currently recuperating from serious injuries at Headley Court, the military rehabilitation centre near Epsom in Surrey, had wanted to attend, but were also not able to join the official parade.

Cooper said that when he raised the possibility with the Legion, the veterans’ organisation was very supportive and initially suggested that he join the main ceremony at the Cenotaph.

But Peter Cleminson, chairman of the Legion, later phoned ‘apologetically’. Cooper added: ‘He said that he wished he could have arranged for Jamie to take part, as well as some of the others who are recuperating at Headley Court. But he said that the government is in charge of the parade guidelines, and the policy is that no serving soldiers can participate.

The Royal British Legion is running an Honour the Covenant campaign to improve support for British soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. It said that Jamie Cooper had been offered, as an alternative, a vantage point to watch the march past on a specially raised viewing platform.

‘Participation in the march past is subject to ticketing in order to maintain the dignity of the event and keep numbers within the bounds of safety,’ a spokesman said.

Two treats for Carroll

Between salary and pension, Barrie cabmin to collect over $200K per annum -- more than the premier

Premier Pinocchio has appointed newly-elected Barrie MPP Aileen Carroll as minister of culture and seniors’ minister. A former MP and Paul Martin minister, Carroll was defeated in the 2006 federal election. Accordingly, she is entitled to the following payments:

MPP plus cabinet salary: $161,000
MP pension: $49,573

Total: $210,573

This is more than the premier's salary of $196,620.

This issue did come up in the local campaign, at one of the all-candidates’ meetings. I could not find a local news article, but here is an account from an October 2nd letter to the Barrie Examiner:

At last week’s candidate debate at Barrie City Hall, Ms. Carroll, with a face as red as her party’s colours, defended her federal pension by saying she gets a “small” amount.
--Marv Breault, Barrie

Another letter was published on October 9th:

Aileen is collecting a pension from the federal government, reportedly in the range of $49,000.

She apparently considers that that is only a “small” pension, although I would doubt many of the pensioners in this riding would agree.
--Ian J. Rowe, Barrie

A photo caption in the October 9th edition read “Some Barrie residents question why Carroll, a former Liberal MP in the area, is running for a seat in Queen’s Park when she already has a “small” pension from her years of service in the federal ranks.”

But the editors of the Examiner did not agree with their correspondents (who may, in fairness, have been PC partisans). In an October 5th editorial, they implied that Carroll’s pension was not a major issue:

The same goes for the city hall meeting, where Liberal candidate Aileen Carroll had to answer questions about her federal pension - which she is entitled to because she served as this area’s MP.

It resulted in shouting and accusations involving most of the candidates at the debate. What it didn’t result in was non-partisan, undecided voters finding out anything they needed to know about the candidates that might help them decide how to cast their ballot on Oct. 10.
--“Focus on the real issues,” editorial, Barrie Examiner, October 5, 2007

No doubt comparisons will be made to the Harris-era MPPs currently sitting in the Harper cabinet. All three of them were first elected to the Ontario Legislature in 1995. The following year, Mike Harris kept his promise to abolish MPPs’ indexed pensions for those first elected in 1995 and replace them with RRSP contributions equivalent to 5% of MPPs’ salaries, locked in until age 55. Further to the pay increase introduced by the McGuinty regime last year, this has now been doubled to 10%.

On account of a boil, 85 million were lost

“The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day,” Marx wrote to Engels

In case there were any who still doubt that the compassion purported to be at the base of communism is a flaming lie, here’s a dermatologist to present Karl Marx’s flaming boils:

Karl Marx, who complained of excruciating boils, actually suffered from a chronic skin disease with known psychological effects that may well have influenced his writings, a British expert said on Tuesday.

Sam Shuster, professor of dermatology at the University of East Anglia, believes the revolutionary thinker had hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) in which the apocrine sweat glands – found mainly in the armpits and groin – become blocked and inflamed.

“In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem,” said Dr. Shuster, who published his findings in the British Journal of Dermatology.

“This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing.”

Dr. Shuster based his diagnosis on an analysis of Marx’s extensive correspondence, in which he wrote to friends about his health and described his skin lesions as “curs” and “swine.”

“The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day,” Marx told Friedrich Engels in a letter from 1867.

Now, normally I would not endorse a dermatologist extrapolating the diagnosis of a skin condition to a psychological condition, but that last quote would seem to confirm that Marx was gonna make somebody pay for his pain. According to the Black Book of Communism, between 85 and 100 million paid with their lives.

Luca Manfredi has also blogged on this.

Jimmy Kimmel banned from “Monday Night Football”

Jokes about Theismann’s departure and sports betting not appreciated by ESPN suits, but Theismann seems unfazed

This is a story from last week, but I didn’t twig to it until Terry Bradshaw showed up on Kimmel last Friday (I should really start reading the sports section and not just, you know, watch the actual games).

Unfortunately I didn’t see the original incident because when “Monday Night Football” moved from ABC to ESPN (TSN in Canada), I got out of the habit of watching it, and now I’m down to basic cable so I don’t even get it. The story broke in the New York Times, of all places (free registration required):

Jimmy Kimmel’s appearance on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” was his last.

Kimmel, the host of ABC’s late-night talk show, was put on early in the third quarter with the Giants leading the Atlanta Falcons, 21-10, ostensibly to enliven a rout.

He joked about where Joe Theismann was (fired and replaced by Ron Jaworski); cracked that it was Tony Kornheiser who got Theismann axed; asked Kornheiser and Jaworski if they bet on games (they played along); and said, “I’d also like to welcome Joe Theismann, watching from his living room with steam coming from his ears.”

The last remark was ignored by Kornheiser, Jaworski and Mike Tirico.

Jay Rothman, ESPN’s “Monday Night” producer, called Kimmel’s comments “classless and disappointing. It was cheap. The more he went on, the worse he got.”

Kimmel will not be invited back, Rothman said.

Coincidentally, yesterday’s Times carried a profile piece about Kimmel’s show. There was also a good piece about the “Monday Night Football” incident on SI.com, featuring comments from Kimmel:

For a man banned from the most famous sports television property in history, Jimmy Kimmel seemed to be holding up fine Wednesday afternoon. “Technically, couldn’t you say Joe Theismann has also been banned from Monday Night Football?” Kimmel told SI.com in a phone interview from Los Angeles. “If he showed up, they probably would not let him in. I was hoping to get banned from a casino first, but I suppose it’s satisfying in a way to be banned from any television show. I don’t know what I did exactly but apparently it was horrific.”

“As far as sports journalism on television goes, there are so many parties attached to so many other parties that everything you say has major ramifications. When I was at Fox it was the same way. You can’t make fun of Jerry Jones because he’s the head of the committee that decides which network gets the NFL. There are sacred cows and that’s just not honest broadcasting. There really isn’t a place for honesty. That’s why everyone goes so crazy when somebody like Mike Vick does something that is universally reviled. That’s when everyone gets up on their high horse and lambastes him because they know that they can. Everybody is so careful the rest of the time. God forbid, you say something that is not part of the script. It might be the most politically correct of all arenas.”

Opinion on Kimmel’s appearance seemed to split along old and new media lines. Mainstream outlets from Newsday (“a tad obnoxious and overbearing, tossing out cringe-inducing cracks about Joe Theismann and Mormons, among other targets”) and the Orlando Sentinel (“cheap shots were not funny but were cowardly”) took the comic to task. The sports blogsphere seemed unfazed. If anything, Kimmel is guilty of doing what he has always done: cracking jokes and causing trouble.

Speaking of causing trouble, when Terry Bradshaw came out on Kimmel’s couch Friday (that doesn’t sound right, but never mind), he immediately began needling Kimmel about the ban, then presented him with a framed photo of Joe Theismann, inscribed by Theismann with: “Thanks for having my back – love your show.”



This morning, Kimmel made the first stop in his week-long suicide mission of co-hosting “Regis & Kelly” in New York, then flying to Los Angeles the same day to tape his late night show.

I guess that Kimmel is not to everyone’s taste, but I am a huge fan, especially of his monologue and comedy bits.

Maybe this is why "Monday Night Football" avoided Buffalo for 13 years . . .

From a fascinating piece at OpinionJournal.com, about drunkenness and other bad behaviour at NFL games, and how teams are addressing it:

Walking through the parking lot before the game, I witnessed a scene all too common at NFL tailgates: home fans taunting the visitors with four-letter expletives. What made the scene here particularly appalling was the target--a family of Cowboys fans with two small children. And the taunt, repeated throughout the stadium by Bills fans, questioned Dallas quarterback Tony Romo’s sexual orientation (think of what rhymes with “Romo”). I wonder how the parents explained that one.

So what was the tally at the end of the first “Monday Night Football” game in Buffalo in 13 years? There were 58 arrests, 111 ejections and 46 turnarounds at the gate. The charges included three for assault, six for obstructing governmental administration, 17 for resisting arrest, two for criminal mischief, 31 for disorderly conduct, two for exposure, 14 for harassment, 19 for criminal trespass, one for criminal possession of marijuana, and one for unlawful possession of alcohol (underage drinking).

I saw no evidence of this on the game's broadcast, which I watched in its entirety. But reading about this behaviour makes me feel a little less guilty about the Bills' last-minute loss to my favourite team. I attended a Bills game last fall, at which I did not witness any rowdy or illegal behaviour. But then I wasn’t wearing any gear of the opposing team.

Dang, Dang and Double Dang

Western Standard to cease publishing print magazine

From publisher Ezra Levant at the Shotgun (h/t: SDA):

To my deep regret, the Western Standard has decided to stop publishing our print edition.

It's a purely financial decision. Even though our advertising revenues were stronger than ever, with marquee brands like GM, Mazda, BMW and Air Canada filling our pages, and even though we had the most loyal subscribers in the business, with an unheard-of 80% renewal rate, we just weren't close enough to profit.

Over the course of those 82 issues we printed 150 million pages of great conservative news and views, plus 40 million page views on our website, plus hundreds of hours on our various radio shows. We were also truly national -- with 20% of our readers in Ontario, and 19% in B.C. Those are impressive numbers, but it was the independent, tell-it-like-it-is quality that I'll remember.

Thank you to our entire extended family -- staff, subscribers and investors for an amazing project, the effects of which will continue to echo for years to come.

Another classic SNL digital short

Samberg has Ahmadinijad’s number. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

This was the highlight of Saturday Night Live’s season premiere.

Friday Night Lights

Powerful NBC series debuts its second season tonight

Tonight at 9:00 p.m., season two of this beautifully written and acted series, about high school football in Texas, premieres on NBC and Global. Its themes and values run counter to what usually prevails on commercial television, and they are woven into the scripts in ways that are subtle yet genuine.

If you missed the first season, the DVD was released in August and should be available in rental and retail outlets, and online.

Update: Rebecca Cusey has a piece about the show on National Review Online today. An excerpt:

And this respectful treatment of Christianity is intentionally done. Executive Producer and Director Jeffrey Reiner, a self proclaimed New Yorker, announced that the producers went to Texas and met many people as research for the show, saying:

One of the characters is going to find God. And I think a lot of shows would use that to kind of poke fun at it, but I find that I meet the preachers, and I meet people somebody might call kind of weird or zealous. But they're not, you know, and we just end up meeting them as people.

Maybe it’s a revelation into the mind of many people in Hollywood that Mr. Reiner was surprised to find Texas Evangelicals normal, but hats off to him. He was willing to go, to explore, and to create an excellent show that addresses and respects Christianity. Moreover, he created a show that realistically depicts the struggle and the beauty of family life, as well as the toil of high school years lived without parental love and support. In doing so he glorifies what others shows scoff at, and in doing so he offers something remarkably fresh and original. Hollywood would be a better and more interesting place if others followed his example.

“Whoop-dee-damn-doo”*

Clarence Thomas’ autobiography sounds like a corker

The Washington Post got its hands on US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, which goes on sale Monday. (No doubt Indigo will display it as prominently as the Clintons’ doorstops.)

Thomas is appearing on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, and on Rush Limbaugh’s syndicated radio show Monday (noon to 3:00 p.m. Eastern). You can hear a live stream courtesy of Detroit radio station WJR. From the Post’s preview:

After the death of his grandfather and grandmother in 1983 and with his first marriage on the rocks, Thomas says he had a fleeting thought of suicide. “I’d actually reached the point where I wondered whether there was any reason for me to go on,” he writes. “The mad thought of taking my own life fleetingly crossed my mind. Of course, I didn’t consider it seriously, if only because I knew I couldn’t abandon [my son] Jamal as I had been abandoned by C,” which is how he refers to his father, M.C. Thomas.

Racial imagery abounds in “My Grandfather’s Son,” a continuation of his description of the Senate hearings as a “high-tech lynching.”

“As a child in the Deep South, I’d grown up fearing the lynch mobs of the Ku Klux Klan; as an adult, I was starting to wonder if I’d been afraid of the wrong white people all along,” he writes. “My worst fears had come to pass not in Georgia, but in Washington, D.C., where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony.”

Thomas writes that he did not watch Hill’s televised testimony against him at his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and so he does not respond in detail to her charges except to call them lies. He describes Hill as “touchy and apt to overreact” and says: “If I or anyone else had done the slightest thing to offend her, she would have complained loudly and instantly, not waited for a decade to make her displeasure known.”

He writes that Hill did a “mediocre” job at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where he was chairman, and misrepresented herself at the time of the hearings as a “devoutly religious Reagan-administration employee.” “In fact, she was a left-winger who’d never expressed any religious sentiments” and had a job in the administration “because I’d given it to her.”

*“Whoop-dee-damn-doo” was Thomas’ private reaction to the 52-48 Senate vote to confirm his appointment, after bruising confirmation hearings that he famously described as a “high-tech lynching.”

The outlier poll?

Is McGuinty going to lose only 2% of the votes he got last time? I doubt it

A few people seem to think that the provincial vote on October 10th is a forgone conclusion, based on a poll with a 3.5% margin of error that shows the McGuinty Fiberals have increased their support by . . . 3%, to 43%.

I find it hard to believe that the Fiberals are going to lose just 2% of the vote that they had in 2003, when they got 45%. This poll may well be the one in 20 poll results that is, er, wrong.

Ask yourselves this: what has Dalton McGuinty done in the last week that would result in a spike in support? Er, coldly brushing off a terminal cancer patient? Yeah, that was a real leadership moment.

When I saw that, I couldn’t help but think of how John Tory used to get the odd call at home from customers when he was Rogers Cable president, or how he spends an hour a day personally responding to e-mail.

McGuinty’s haughty “That’s not true” -- aimed at a cancer patient without McGuinty even breaking stride -- was staggering in its dismissiveness. Even poor Terri McGuinty was looking at her shoes. I bet Premier Pinocchio had to read her an extra poem in bed that night. (Full disclosure: I am helping out the PC campaign and several candidates.)

Finally, for those still in thrall to this poll, you might want to note that it also found that 74% of Conservative supporters say they are “absolutely certain” to vote on election day, compared to 68% of intended Liberal voters. Telegraphing to PC voters that they needn’t bother voting is a pretty good way to ensure that they won’t.

Footnote: This poll – and all election polling, for that matter – also provides an interesting lesson in one of the phenomena not addressed by MMP: people who don’t bother to vote because cocky pollsters and media outlets have told them how it’s all going to turn out before the fact.