It’s not just me

Even the Toronto Star says Dion’s English is getting worse

“It might be politically incorrect to say, but Dion's spoken English is bad – and may be getting worse. Because of it, he's turning off many English-speaking voters. While his command of the English language is excellent, his diction and cadence are so terrible that he is often harder to understand than Jean Chrétien. Dion should work with a speech language pathologist, some of whom make big dollars training recent immigrants to speak without an accent.”
--“A summer makeover for Stéphane,” Bob Hepburn, The Toronto Star, today

Over the past few months it seemed to me that Dion’s English in Question Period was actually deteriorating. And this was with material that he presumably had some time to reword and rehearse. I guess I wasn’t alone. Better spoken English is number one on Hepburn's ten-item makeover agenda for Dion.

What has Premier Pinocchio got against Canadians?

Clintons’ fartcatcher addressed Fiberals in 2006, this year it’s Blair’s fahtcatcher

Pull of foreign gurus not new to McGuinty

The Ontario Liberal newsletter arrived today to remind me that the star attraction at the Ontario Liberal party’s AGM this weekend is Tony Blair’s communications guru Alastair Campbell.

If you are a member of the “Red Trillium Club” (minimum donation: $1,000), however, you will have an opportunity to attend an exclusive reception with Campbell and have Campbell’s book, The Blair Years, signed by Campbell himself. This is in addition to your personally signed photo of Dalton McGuinty. (No, really!)

This comes less than two years after the McGuintyites hosted Clinton stalwart James Carville at their meeting in October of 2006.

The blurb in the Liberal newsletter describes Alastair Campbell thus:

Alastair Campbell is best known as a journalist and former Director of Communications and Strategy for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He was a key figure behind Mr. Blair’s rise to power and was often described as “the real Deputy Prime Minister.” With the Labour election victory in 1997, he became the Prime Minister’s chief press secretary, setting up a formidable Whitehall communications machine.

Here’s a reminder of what that “formidable communications machine” was capable of:

On September 11th, just an hour after those planes slammed into the World Trade Center, Jo Moore, a senior adviser to Britain’s Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions, turned away from the TV and composed an e-mail for departmental circulation:

It’s now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury.
--Mark Steyn, National Post, October 11, 2001 (republished in The Face of the Tiger)

On 9/11, I happened to be working (briefly) for then Ontario health minister Tony Clement. Our executive assistant’s first thought was not along the lines above, but that he should ask the deputy minister to make some calls to ensure that our hospitals were ready to handle American victims, or patients diverted from northeastern US hospitals.

But back to McGuinty, who has long sought the advice of foreigners to a degree that conservatives would be crucified for. (Frankly we've been crucified for less, such as consulting Mike Murphy during the 1995 election.)

McGuinty travelled to the U.K. for education ideas prior to the 2003 election, and hired Michael Fullan as an education adviser. He then spent $25,000 to travel to Chicago for advice from Obama fixer David Axelrod.

Play Tax Tag – it’s fun!

If you haven’t checked out the Conservative Party’s “Will You be Tricked?” website about Stéphane Dion’s will-he-or-won’t-he carbon tax, I recommend you do so and click on the “Tax Tag” button.

This leads you to a page of various people and characters, and when you click on them the site tells you whether they will or will not pay Dion’s carbon tax.

The cast of characters includes: Liberal/Green candidate Elizabeth May, caucus stinkbomb Garth Turner, and even Liberal blogger Jason “Britney” Cherniak. Congratulations, Jason!

Clark unveils his inner Elvis on Parliament Hill

In an act of vanity on par with Barbara Walters’ lighting and Americans choosing the “thin Elvis” postage stamp, Joe Clark unveiled a portrait of himself – circa 1975 – on Parliament Hill Tuesday.

If only the Sex and the City movie (opening this Friday, in case you hadn’t heard) could have been rendered entirely in CGI by Patrick Douglass Cox, who has given us Joe: Portrait of a Young Fogey, now adorning the halls of Parliament like a still from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Retouched Me: imagine the Botox and light filters that might have been saved.

On the other hand, perhaps we should be grateful that Clark resisted the urge to ask that Cox depict him dressed as Evel Knievel jumping a Harley-Davidson over Pierre Trudeau’s cabinet, while Ann-Margret waits just beyond the landing ramp with arms outstretched.

In his remarks, Clark urged greater respect in public life:

“We are a country of immense diversity. We are going to have our clashes. We have to try to understand the origins, the point of views of others. We have to show them a sense of respect that’s based on the sense of worth that they bring,” he said, drawing applause from the audience.

But that was the thing about Joe, wasn’t it? He had respect for the views of everyone except the citizens of the province that elected him to Parliament in 1972, 1974, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1988 and 2000. When it came to the “others” of Alberta, Joe’s attitude seemed to alternate between disgust and embarrassment.

But you didn’t have to go as far as Alberta to find people whose opinions Clark had little time for. As Clark would be well aware, many members of his own caucus on his first go-round as leader found themselves sidelined and ignored. Luckily Brian Mulroney was always happy to take their calls and sympathize with their frustrations. Or maybe Clark remains blissfully oblivious to this still: given his conduct in recent years, that seems quite possible.

Clark’s paean to r-e-s-p-e-c-t came less than 24 hours after he took the opportunity of an appearance on "Mike Duffy Live" to take another kick at Stephen Harper’s goolies (coincidentally, another Albertan), a kick that was better aimed than most of Joe’s tactics or strategies as leader:

“I’ve not had a prime minister before whom I didn’t think I knew where he really was, what his real concerns were. I didn’t always agree with him, but that’s the situation I’m in ...,” the former prime minister said yesterday in an interview with CTV Newsnet’s Mike Duffy.

“Even the Afghanistan mission it seems to me is, in effect, a reflection of the interest of working with the U.S., which is a good thing but not alone,” he said. “And Canada’s reputation internationally, which is an immense asset to the country, depends upon using both sides of the Canadian coin ... I don’t think he [Mr. Harper] is inclined to that and I don’t think his government has given a leadership to an excellent public service to be able to do that.”

Sadly, Duffy did not interject to remind Clark that the Afghanistan mission is NATO-led, and was initiated and extended by two Liberal prime ministers, one of whom – Paul Martin – Clark endorsed as “the devil we know” in the 2004 election. Now why would Clark urge Canadians to re-elect a corrupt Liberal government, instead of a Conservative one led by a man who had succeeded where he had failed?

And, yes, I am going to say it, because I always have to: my vote for Joe in the 1998 PC leadership is the only vote I wish I could take back.

Mike McGuire has also posted on this.

Little to lose

Dion’s early days not unlike Chrétien’s last

At first blush, one would be hard-pressed to identify many similarities between Jean Chrétien and Stéphane Dion, other than they are both Québec federalists. Chrétien is a gregarious, instinctual, lifelong politician who prized winning elections and a clean desk, and was so relaxed that he went home for lunch every day while Parliament was sitting. Dion is a quiet professor who probably toted his own lunch in his backpack, and brought thoughtful letter-writing back to politics.

But as I see Dion rush headlong into his roll-the-dice carbon tax election, I can’t help but be reminded of the last days of Jean Chrétien’s tenure, characterized by his declaration to the effect of “I am not running again. I can do what I want.” (Not much of an endorsement for consulting voters before acting – i.e. democracy – but never mind.)

After Chrétien announced in the summer of 2002 that he would not run for a fourth term, he unleashed a whirlwind of hard-left initiatives, including the legalization of marijuana (or de-criminalization, if you prefer) and political finance reforms, including banning corporate and union donations to parties (later on, the Harper government extended the ban to ridings and candidates also).

It is debatable whether Chrétien did these things because (1) he really believed in them, or (2) he wanted to damage Paul Martin, whose leadership he was now powerless to prevent. Either way, he was indifferent to the effects these policies would have on the Liberal party. “Après moi le deluge,” as they say. As Elections Canada’s quarterly financial returns show, banning corporate donations continues to harm the Liberal party to this day.

In the case of Dion, despite reports that he is deaf to most advice, I suspect that he has at least figured out this much: the Liberal party is going to give him but one chance to win an election. After the next election, Stéphane Dion will either be Prime Minister, or an unemployed professor.

In the leadership, Dion was the first-ballot choice of just 18% of Liberal delegates. He has few supporters in caucus. He has little base in the party and has been unable to build one (which is near-impossible while you're leader, anyway). He has a limited personal fundraising capacity, evidenced by his stubborn leadership debt. The party’s overall fundraising has continued to suffer. Liberals fared worse than they should have in the by-elections that have occurred on Dion’s watch, partly because of Dion’s insistence on hand-picking two of the candidates.

There were rumblings about somehow getting rid of Dion last fall, after the disastrous Outremont by-election, but Liberals realized that there is simply no legal or practical way to force out a leader before he’s fought his first election. And so the Liberal caucus became quietly resigned to the notion that Dion would be allowed his one grab at the brass ring.

But surely Dion has deduced that many in the caucus have little enthusiasm for him, and are concerned mainly with keeping their own seats. And Michael Ignatieff’s and Bob Rae’s supporters have made little secret of their readiness and desire to see their guy run for leader again. Soon.

Should Dion be foolish enough to contest a leadership review after a losing election, the Ignatieff and Rae camps would likely make short work of him. (The more likely scenario is that a group of eminent Liberals would approach Dion and, in exchange for retiring his remaining leadership debt, secure his resignation.)

But instead of making Dion more cautious, these intramural heel-nippings seem to have made him less so. The stark reality of what awaits him post-election is actually a bizarre incentive for Dion to use his one chance to “do what he wants,” whether it’s carbon taxes, reviving a national day care scheme, or even raising the GST. If he wins, he may get to implement a platform he believes in. If he loses, any fallout for the Liberal party will be someone else’s problem.

Short memories at the Globe

Mark MacGuigan went straight from Minister of Justice to Federal Court judge after losing Liberal leadership in 1984

Perhaps no one at the Winnipeg Free Press or the Globe and Enquirer is old enough to remember the late Mark MacGuigan, who went straight from being Liberal Minister of Justice to a seat on the Federal Court of Canada, after losing the Liberal leadership in 1984.

Then again, maybe the Globe is aware of this history, but thinks that Mrs. Toews’ monthly household expenses, as disclosed in her divorce filings, are a more pressing matter of public interest. And of course, they had to include in their "news" story their oh-so-informed speculation about what Toews' Christian constituents must think about his marriage ending. 'Cause if anybody knows how Christians think, it's the Globe.

Well, for the benefit of you younger kids: according to MacGuigan’s parliamentary bio and this page at the website of the Federal Court of Canada, MacGuigan’s appointment to the court occurred on the same day as his resignation as MP and Minister of Justice: June 29, 1984.

MacGuigan had run and placed poorly in the Liberal leadership contest that elected John Turner earlier that year, winning just 135 votes.

I don’t recall any cries of conflict of interest at the time, though MacGuigan’s appointment was certainly part of the orgy of patronage appointments made by the exiting Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, appointments that dogged new leader John Turner in the election campaign that began on July 9 and ended on September 4.

MacGuigan served as a judge until his death in January, 1998. He was eulogized in the House of Commons the following month by Liberal minister Herb Gray, Reform MP Randy White (!), NDP MP Bill Blaikie and Bloc MP Louis Plamondon.

I acknowledge that a judicial appointment for Vic Toews -- should one occur -- would raise uncomfortable yet fair questions for Toews and the government but, you know, a little bit of context from major news organizations would be nice. For a change.

Update: Oh, speaking of context . . .

Here’s a lovely story from the Toronto Star’s reliable Richard Brennan, on Bob Rae’s question in the House yesterday about Maxime Bernier’s air fare to Laos for a Francophonie summit:

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has to travel first class to "stand tall" on the world stage, Conservative government House leader Peter Van Loan says.

Van Loan was defending Bernier, who has been dogged by criticism since taking on the portfolio last August, including over his relationship with a Quebec woman who had close ties to biker gang figures.

The latest has to do with his spending $22,573 on return airfare to Laos for a Francophonie conference, when one of his own staff made the same trip for $2,676.

"I wonder if that makes the government House leader blush, just for once," Liberal MP Bob Rae (Toronto Centre) said to Van Loan.

Well, why should Van Loan or anyone else blush? Rae certainly wasn’t blushing in 1992 when he used an OPP helicopter to visit his family cottage. He explained to reporters that he was entitled to his entitlements:

Premier Bob Rae used a government helicopter to fly him to and from his family cottage during the Victoria Day weekend.

"I had not seen my children for about eight days," said Rae, who has three daughters. The Rae family cottage is on an island in Big Rideau Lake, near the town of Portland in eastern Ontario, about 350 kilometres (220 miles) east of Metro.

Rae said he had no apologies to make, since he is eligible to use the OPP helicopter as part of his security package as Premier.
--Toronto Star, May 26, 1992 (you can look at the excerpt for free in the Star archives).

I believe the seasoned Brennan was even a member of the Queen’s Park press gallery then. Funny how he didn’t remember this to put it in today’s story. It certainly would have put Rae’s feigned outrage into – what’s that word? – context.

Happy Victoria Day, everybody.

Charles Caccia: career ended by Martin, life ended by stroke

I’m guessing there will be some throat-clearing and dagger looks amongst former and current Liberal MPs when they attend the visitation and funeral of their former colleague, Liberal MP Charles Caccia, who died this weekend from the complications of a stroke.

Caccia was one of the lower-profile victims of the Paul Martin steamroller. In 2004 he was the longest-serving Member of Parliament, having been MP for Davenport since 1968. He lost the nomination, however, to then Toronto city councillor Mario Silva. This occurred thanks to Paul Martin’s opening of nominations after finally wresting the Liberal leadership from Jean Chrétien’s vise grip in 2003. Unlike Sheila Copps – who put up a spirited fight against Tony Valeri in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek – Caccia had no chance against the ambitious Silva, who had been signing up new members for months.

I happened to be president of the Davenport Conservative association when all this was going down. The head of our candidate selection committee thought we should, as a courtesy, approach the defenestrated Caccia and inquire whether he would be interested in running for the Conservatives. Caccia agreed to meet with us at his constituency office, and cordially informed us that he intended to run as an independent. In the end, he decided to retire quietly from Parliament.

Update: Nicol DuMoulin also has a post, on his experiences as Caccia's constituent.

If you want more money, Ralph, you’ll have to ask the voters

Goodale thinks Stephen Harper drank his milkshake

Liberal hothead Ralph Goodale gamely attempts in the National Post today to frame the next election around the notion that the federal government is being rendered into a deficit-burdened weakling under Stephen Harper (actually, that sounds like the Liberal party under Stephane Dion, but never mind).

This is to distract from the frame that the Liberals have already hung around themselves: namely that they would have to raise taxes to pay for their yet-to-be-revealed social and environmental schemes, currently being wordsmithed by Bob Rae (aka “$40 Billion Deficit Man”).

Ralph writes of his glory days as Paul Martin’s finance minister, before it all came crashing down on him: “the government of Canada was working on its 10th consecutive balanced budget.” Translation: “After years of waiting for Jean Chrétien to retire, I was in my robe and slippers writing my second kick-ass budget, and then out of nowhere that f***er Jack Layton pulled the rug out from under me, and the RCMP wrapped me in it!!”

The inflamed gum at the root of Ralph’s latest tantrum is that the only way a Liberal government would have enough cash to launch massive, new social or environmental programs (like the day care program the Liberals promised for 13 years and never got off the ground, despite having blown $250 million, or the $250 million they spent on Kyoto, while our CO emissions increased by 30%) is by . . . raising taxes.

Ralph feels personally betrayed that the surplus he dreamed of spending himself has gone into things such as restoring the military after the Liberals’ dark decade, and Arctic sovereignty. What do these things have in common? They’re national responsibilities (more on that later). And here’s something you don’t hear too much about: federal transfers to the provinces are increasing under the Conservatives. Federal transfers to Ontario are budgeted to increase by $1.2 billion over the next two years (Ontario Budget Papers, p. 93). And that number is assuming Ontario stays a “have” province.

Admittedly, some of the surplus that Ralph believes is the rightful property of the Natural Spending Party, has also gone into the taxpayers’ pockets whence it came: horrible, horrible taxpayers who blow their cash on big screen TVs, World of Warcraft, and memberships in Liberal riding associations where Dion ends up appointing the candidate.

Unfortunately, Ralph’s claim that the GST cut “does nothing to improve tax fairness, disposable incomes, household savings, productivity or competitiveness,” is flat wrong.

In terms of fairness, it is widely accepted that consumption taxes have the greatest impact on low-income individuals, who spend most of their disposable income and likely do not qualify for income tax cuts. That’s certainly what I remember from back when the GST was introduced (to replace the Manufacturers’ Sales Tax), because that is what all the GST’s opponents were screaming at the time. And that’s why the Liberals under Jean Chrétien said they’d “axe the tax.” So by reducing a tax that hits hardest at the poor, the Conservatives have increased tax fairness.

And I think even Ralph can figure out that if you pay less tax, you have more disposable income. But then Ralph’s concern for people’s disposable income seems a little suspect, given his membership in a government that increased CPP deductions, and kept EI premiums higher than they needed to be. Yes, there was good reason to increase CPP premiums, and the Liberals obviously believed they outweighed the impact on people’s take-home pay.

As for savings, well, you’d be surprised how many people put aside their loonies and/or toonies and deposit them in the bank at the end of the month. Surely a 28% cut in the GST adds up to a few more loonies? One notable exception to this habit, of course, is Jean Chrétien. Chrétien kept giving his spare change to his legion of homeless pals. Why do you think he had to go home for lunch every day like a five-year-old? By the time he got to work, all he had left in his wallet were fifties and hundreds.

What Ralph’s beef boils down to is this: Liberals think that giving citizens more than a little taste of their own money is a really bad idea. Instead, the federal government should take that money, keep some for itself, hire consultants to research and write papers on day care or global warming (keeping some money for themselves), set up pilot projects (those need money, too), and give some money to the provinces that are going to play ball with the Liberals (there goes some more money). Then if the Liberals happen to lose power (“God d*** you Layton and Zaccardelli!”), they blame the Conservatives for destroying their brilliant, about-to-be-rolled-out program.

But seriously, Conservatives are not opposed to government. We are opposed to incompetent, unfocussed government that majors in inserting itself into the provincial sphere, while minoring in (1) letting national responsibilities slide, and (2) demonizing conservative governments in Alberta and Ontario.

Provincial governments already run the big social programs (health, education, welfare), they are closer to the people than the federal government, and they have the income tax, sales tax and business tax revenue to pay for social programs. Federal equalization helps poorer provinces offer similar social programs. In the Liberals’ eyes, Stephen Harper’s sin is that he respects federal/provincial jurisdiction. This is what Ralph calls an “ideological obsession to stop the federal government from being an instrument for good in the lives of ordinary Canadians.”

Canadians seem pretty happy with their GST cut, so I guess if the Liberals want another massive program that will be an “instrument for good,” then during the next campaign they will just have to tell Canadians (1) they will raise taxes if elected, and (2) what they want to use the money for. Good luck, Ralph.

Or, they could just try to do what Dalton McGuinty did: promise they aren’t going to raise taxes and then raise them anyway. Liberals seem to be able to get away with that.

Whose system is it, anyway?

Yes, it’s that time again. Time to re-post my award-winning (no, really!) op-ed from 2005, arguing why we should take our public services back from unions.

An interesting wrinkle to the TTC situation is that, in addition to the TTC being a statutorily-protected monopoly, in recent years the City of Toronto has been implementing land use and other policies that are heavily biased against car ownership. So not only do Toronto residents have no other public transit options, they are increasingly unlikely to have their own private transit options (i.e. a car). Thanks, union bosses and socialist politicians!

Take back our public services

Organized labour has some clever slogans about all the good it has done for society, such as “Unions: the people who brought you the weekend.” But what have they done for us lately?

Think of the state of our roads, the quality of our education and health care, the cleanliness of our streets. The overall tax burden has grown, but this has hardly been matched by an increase in the quality of government services. Yet the wages and benefits of public sector workers continue to rise. Of course they do: by their very nature, public sector unions tend to drive up the costs and size of government. Union dues – themselves a cost driver – go to employ officials whose full-time work consists of filing grievances, lobbying the government for more workers, coordinating with other unions and supporting sympathetic candidates.

Much of the impetus for contracting out the delivery of public services stems from roadblocks faced by politicians attempting to meet the demands of taxpayers or deliver on good-faith election promises. Unions label such activity "privatization," but it's not. From their point of view, it's de-unionization. Scratch the surface of any of the recent campaigns against health care reform, and you will find that most are organized and funded by unions. They oppose health care reform because they are afraid it will result in new services or facilities outside the current unionized health care sphere.

Of course, nothing is preventing unions from attempting to organize workers in non-unionized facilities, but after 30-odd years of public sector unionization, a sense of entitlement takes hold. And it's easier to protect existing union turf by holding citizens and politicians hostage through work-to-rule and illegal strikes, than to convince non-unionized workers it's worth handing over part of their paycheques to Sid Ryan et al.

Since public servants began to unionize, the public has gradually lost control of its public services. Some have argued for outlawing strikes by teachers and other public sector workers, but this would be mere tinkering. The only way for the public to take back control of the services it owns is by decertifying public sector unions and restoring a direct employment relationship between government workers and democratically elected governments. Here’s why it makes sense:

Once the public has decided that a particular service is to be provided by the government, then that service is, by definition, essential. Many try to make a distinction between services that relate to safety and other government services. But public schools, transit and most other public services are legally or effectively monopolies, in that most citizens have no practical alternative when those services are not available.

Public sector collective agreements take away the public’s democratic right to decide what public services are to be delivered and what terms of employment are to be offered (provided those terms comply with employment standards laws and the common law). The wages, benefits and working conditions of public sector workers should be open to the democratic process as are all other aspects of government. They should not be decided in backrooms in negotiations from which the public is barred and on which the public’s elected representatives are forbidden to comment.

It is not the role of government to engage in unfair labour competition with the private sector. Some people think it is noble for the government to “set an example” for the private sector through higher wages and benefits. Such people don’t understand economics. The increasing taxes that those business will have to pay to support the government’s “example” mean that they will be hard-pressed to pay the employees they already have, let alone pay them more.

Thousands of private firms have policies and procedures for dealing fairly with employees; so would a union-free public sector. If the public through their elected government provides wages, benefits and working conditions that can’t compare with private employers’, then it will find itself with fewer and less capable employees.

Public sector workers would continue to be free to advocate for themselves through the democratic process. But those who interfere with the provision of government services will, like private sector workers, be subject to the appropriate civil or criminal sanctions. Those who fail to show up for work will not be "on strike," they will have quit.

Let’s put the “public” back into the public sector, by putting citizens and their elected representatives back in charge of our public services.

Never mind: Gorbachev insists he's still an atheist

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made clear this past weekend that he is an atheist after European news agencies last week claimed that he had confirmed his Christian faith during a visit to the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi in Italy.

Gorbachev, the last communist leader of the Soviet Union, confronted speculations that he had been a closeted Christian during an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax.

"Over the last few days some media have been disseminating fantasies – I can't use any other word – about my secret Catholicism, citing my visit to the Sacro Convento friary, where the remains of St. Francis of Assisi lie," Gorbachev said, according to an Interfax article posted Friday.

"To sum up and avoid any misunderstandings, let me say that I have been and remain an atheist,” he stated.
--The Christian Post, March 24

Well, okay, then.

Gorbachev comes out

Reagan suspected Soviet leader was a closet believer

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Communist leader of the Soviet Union, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying a surprise visit to pray at the tomb of St Francis of Assisi.

Accompanied by his daughter Irina, Mr Gorbachev spent half an hour on his knees in silent prayer at the tomb.

His arrival in Assisi was described as “spiritual perestroika” by La Stampa, the Italian newspaper.

“St Francis is, for me, the alter Christus, the other Christ,” said Mr Gorbachev. “His story fascinates me and has played a fundamental role in my life,” he added.

Mr Gorbachev’s surprise visit confirmed decades of rumours that, although he was forced to publicly pronounce himself an atheist, he was in fact a Christian, and casts a meeting with Pope John Paul II in 1989 in a new light.

Mr Gorbachev, 77, was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church and his parents were Christians.

In addition, the parents of his wife Raisa were deeply religious and were killed during the Second World War for having religious icons in their home.

Ronald Reagan, the former United States president, allegedly told his close aides on a number of occasions that he felt his opponent during the Cold War was a “closet believer”.

Mr Reagan held deep religious convictions himself. However, until now Mr Gorbachev has allowed himself to express only pantheistic views, saying in one interview “nature is my god”.
--London Telegraph, March 19

Gorbachev’s coming-out reminds me of a short story that appeared in Toronto Life magazine many years ago. Set in the future, it describes the last hours – prior to execution – of a man who is unnamed, but clearly the “last” pope. Grim and shocking as the story was, it seemed terribly plausible at the time. What was implausible then was the fall of the Soviet empire, aided in part by an historic pope.

Those of us conservatives who tend more towards despair than happy warriordom should take note.

The Jerk

Candidate Franken ridicules conservative student’s facial tic, then refuses to shake his hand:

According to Fritz, things started out fine with him taking photos of fellow Carls (that's what students call themselves) with Franken. Then Franken's curiosity was raised about why Fritz didn't want to be in a pic.

He's a conservative, another Carl yelled out by way of explanation.

At that point, Franken reportedly began peppering Fritz with questions about supporting President George W. Bush and former President Ronald Reagan's tax hikes. Fritz told me he got tense and, as he does in those situations, started chewing the inside of his mouth, a gesture he said was mimicked by Franken; Fritz also thought his style of speech was mocked by Franken.

An aide eventually interrupted Franken's act, Fritz said, by announcing to the candidate that it was time to go.

Fritz told me Monday that he then stuck out his hand to shake Franken's. "Well, at least it's nice to meet you," the GOPer said he told Franken, who reportedly replied, I can't say the same.

There was no handshake, said Fritz.

***********************************************

Fritz told me Wednesday he was stunned by Franken's behavior: "I usually expect politicians to, at least, pretend as though, even in that kind of interaction, that they can convince me or have some kind of reasonable dialogue -- the whole Minnesota Nice thing, at least."

Fritz's version of the encounter was backed up by Pablo Kenney, prez of the Carleton Dems.
--Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, January 23, 2008

Somehow, I don't think Stuart Smalley would approve.

Hell freezes over

David Mamet explains "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'" in the Village Voice

Mamet is acknowledged to be one of the greatest dramatists of our time:

I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, some seats still available). And as part of the "writing process," as I believe it's called, I started thinking about politics. This comment is not actually as jejune as it might seem. Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed.

But my play, it turned out, was actually about politics, which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter.

The play, while being a laugh a minute, is, when it's at home, a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.

**********************

And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace.

"Aha," you will say, and you are right. I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.

Continue reading here. And be sure to share this with all your friends studying drama or screenwriting.

H/t: NRO's The Corner.

A New York politician’s presidential ambitions may be finished (but not the one you think)

Spitzer makes brief appearance at delayed news conference: apologizes but makes no announcement about his future

A news alert from the New York Times:

Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring
By Danny Hakim

ALBANY - Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials that he had been involved in a prostitution ring, an administration official said this morning.

Mr. Spitzer, who was huddled with his top aides early this afternoon, had hours earlier abruptly canceled his scheduled public events for the day. He is set to make an announcement about 2:15 this afternoon at his Manhattan office.

Mr. Spitzer, a first-term Democrat who pledged to bring ethics reform and end the often seamy ways of Albany, is married with three children.

Just last week, federal prosecutors arrested four people in connection with an expensive prostitution operation. Administration officials would not say that this was the ring with which the governor had become involved.

He had a difficult first year in office, rocked by a mix of scandal and legislative setbacks. In recent weeks, however, Mr. Spitzer seemed to have rebounded, with his Democratic party poised to perhaps gain control of the state Senate for the first time in four decades.

Mr. Spitzer gained national attention when he served as attorney general with his relentless pursuit of Wall Street wrongdoing. As attorney general, he also had prosecuted at least two prostitution rings as head of the state’s organized crime task force.

In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island.

“”This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,” Mr. Spitzer said at the time. ”It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring.”

Albany for months been roiled by bitter fighting and accusations of dirty tricks. The Albany County district attorney is set to issue in the coming days the results of his investigation into Mr. Spitzer’s first scandal, his aides’ involvement in an effort to tarnish Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, the state’s top Republican.

Would Obama ask Parliament to reverse its decision on Afghanistan?

Foreign policy adviser promises additional US troops, but expects Canada to maintain its combat role “as long as it possibly can”

N.B. This post has been corrected.

In case anyone missed Leslie McKinnon’s long piece on Barack Obama on last night’s "National," here’s what one of his foreign affairs advisers, Susan Rice, said about Obama’s hope that Canada would extend its combat mission in Afghanistan:

Rice: Barack Obama has also said that he would add at least two additional combat brigades to the American contribution in Afghanistan.

Reporter voiceover: this would add 15,000 troops: a gift to the Canadian military effort. But Parliament has all but agreed to withdraw from combat in Afghanistan in 2011. This doesn’t sit well with the Obama team.

Rice: And we will look to our allies in NATO to step up their contributions. In Canada’s case, we’d hope very much that Canada would continue and sustain its very important contribution.

Reporter: Continuous combat role?

Rice: Yes.

Reporter: Really. Because you know there’s a big a debate.

Rice: Yes, I understand. I think it’s fair to say that an Obama administration would hope very much and work in partnership with Canada to encourage Canada to continue and maintain its contribution for as long as it possibly can. This is crunch time in Afghanistan

These comments start at about 43:00 min.

Now, I don’t know when this interview was filmed, but by now all the US presidential candidates should know that the House of Commons has passed a motion to end Canada’s combat mission in Afghanistan in 2011. Correction: the motion is expected to be voted on this week. My apologies.

Unfortunately, in recent days NDP leader Jack “troops out now” Layton seems focussed on auditioning for an internship in an Obama White House. So I doubt he will be raising the fact that his hero wears combat boots, and would like Canadian soldiers to keep wearing theirs indefinitely.

“Friday Night Lights” reportedly coming back for a third season

Nikke Finke’s Hollywood Diary is reporting that the high-quality, low-rated NBC drama “Friday Night Lights” has a deal for a third season, after several weeks on the bubble:

I’m told that Jeff Zucker, Marc Graboff and Ben Silverman had been searching for a way to renew the critically acclaimed but low-rated Friday Night Lights for a 3rd season so that it would still make financial sense. The answer came in a deal with DirecTV, now owned by John Malone’s Liberty Media. Clearly Malone is looking to distinguish DirecTV from its rivals on a content as well as price basis. “It’s an innovative deal where NBC found a partner who will share costs and exhibition windows,” an insider explained to me. So both NBC and DirecTV will be airing Friday Night Lights across multipurpose platforms.

My back is sore from shovelling snow, so I am doing the end zone dance in my mind. Woo hoo!

For those who haven’t seen it, FNL is a brilliantly written, cast and acted drama about marriage, family and growing up, with less football than you might think. NBC is not airing episodes at the moment (and will not be doing any more new episodes this season), but Global has just started showing reruns on Wednesdays at 10:00.

h/t: Lainey’s Entertainment Update.

McGuinty took nine months to provide details for “fast-tracked” jobs fund

Qualifying industries have also been changed twice

Imagine my surprise yesterday when I received a news release from Premier Pinocchio announcing that his nine-month old “Next Generation of Jobs Fund” (originally titled "Next Generation Jobs Fund") is now accepting applications.

Now, why would such an announcement need to be made at this time? Could it be because (1) McGuinty is in a bun fight with federal finance minister Jim Flaherty over McGuinty’s crappy management of Ontario’s economy, and (2) next to nothing has happened on this file since the fund was announced last June?

As I wrote last September on the “Election Battle Blog” sponsored by TVO’s “The Agenda (I was the Ontario PC party’s designated blogger):

With the election looming, McGuinty announced something called the “Next Generation Jobs Fund” in June. Here’s what its web page says today: “Program details to follow.”

But there have been a couple of interesting changes to the “fund” since September, all while it was impossible to actually apply to the fund for a grant. Eligible investments were expanded from clean automotive and other “green” technology, to encompass health and biotech R&D, creative industries, and pharmaceutical research and manufacturing. Here's what the web page said last September:

The fund will invest in:

- The manufacture of green cars and auto parts
- The development of clean fuels, and
- The creation of clean technologies and products.

At some point since then, this was expanded. Here's what the site said on February 20:

- Clean automotive and other green technology,
- Health and biotechnology research and development,
- Creative industries (digital media and ICT), and
- Pharmaceutical research and manufacturing.

Now, the eligible industries appear to have expanded yet again, to include:

- financial services that involve global or North American mandates and the establishment of new, discrete operating units
- anchor investments to support cluster development, including in the services sector
- opportunity based or unique investments.

Yup, the McGuintyites really have a handle on this thing.

Hillary's campaign puts reporters where it all goes down

Think Harper disrespects journalists? Well, he hasn't forced them to cover his events from a public toilet like Hillary Clinton did.



Reporters work on their laptops in a men's bathroom as Democratic presidential hopeful US Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) speaks during a campaign rally at the Burger Activity Center, March 3, in Austin, Texas.(AFP/Getty Images/Justin Sullivan)

H/t: NRO's Media Blog.

P.S. Mmmm . . . burger.

Will the real pornographers please stand up? (don’t worry – it’s not a confidence vote)

Cherniak sets off wet firecracker on Conservatives; forgets Liberal thongs and rubbers

Undaunted by the fact that his last attempt at nailing the Conservatives blew up in his face, Britney Cherniak is at it again, claiming the Tory yout’ have borrowed an image from a porn site.

Of course, burned from his most recent fiasco, Britney is careful to insert this blanket caveat:

. . . please note that I do not take credit for the research. Somebody else sent me the information and I wrote the post.

Unfortunately for Cherniak, the Liberals hardly qualify for membership in the anti-sex league described in George Orwell’s 1984:

Politics isn’t sexy? Tell that to the thousands of delegates at the Liberal convention.

Forget the hunt for undecided delegates, people here want to get their hands on the sought-after “I’m Liberal” thong underwear.

Five hundred pairs were ordered, in both official languages, and already size medium is sold out in French and English.

The $16 underwear has generated a lot of interest from delegates stopping by the Liberal merchandise table.

“I should get one of those,” retired senator Marian Maloney said when she spotted the mini black cotton underwear.

Ms. Maloney, who is 82, bought a pair. They’re for her daughter-in-law, she said, after playfully posing for a picture.

Condoms are also being distributed at the convention. More than 2,000 bright red contraceptives bearing the Young Liberals of Canada logo will be given out throughout the weekend.
--CanWest News Service, December 1, 2006

Well, it looks like the condoms were a good idea. Here's a tale told by an anonymous commenter on Big City Lib's blog:

My longtime "friend" who I accompanied to the convention went out to "vote" friday evening and although she made it back to the hotel alright she must have had a little too much of the free, cheap wine because she ended up in the wrong room, in the wrong bed!

It was her first convention and I guess she must have known that liberals go to get laid so didn't want to let the party down. This inciddent has now started in motion a chain of events that will ultimately reflect very poorly on her and her riding. But on the up side the sex was apparently great and she did get a free scarf!

Bush takes Hillary fishing on Lake Tahoe

White House clarifies that it’s Hillary who’s holding up release of her records as first lady (as if there were ever any doubt)

The White House on Wednesday blamed the Clintons for a month-long delay in the release of some 11,000 pages of records relating to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's years as first lady, despite Sen. Clinton's contention at Tuesday night's debate that she has "urged that the process [of releasing documents] be as quick as possible."

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said that Clinton representatives have known since Jan. 31 that the documents -- Hillary Clinton's daily public schedule during her husband's presidency -- have been deemed ready for public release by the National Archives.

But under a November 2001 executive order, the White House can't make them available to the public until approval is given by a designated representative of former President Bill Clinton.

"Presently, we have not received notice that the Clinton representative has reached a decision on the release or withholding of any of Mrs. Clinton's schedules," Perino said, adding that the White House has not objected to approval of any of the more than 550,000 pages of documents released so far from the Clinton years.

"It is our intent and has been the practice to act on any requests as quickly as possible," Perino said.
--ABC News, today

Perhaps George W. Bush had finally had enough of Hillary’s stump speech line that refers to Bill having to “clean up” after Bush 41, and her expecting to do the same after Bush 43.