Holy frijole, Batman. Because every Canadian should be forced to watch this.
Justin Trudeau thinks he's Johnny Depp playing Martin Luther King in a bizarre High School variety show skit. And this is a heavily constructed, rehearsed piece: Trudeau wanted us to see him this way.
No question, Trudeau junior is the first wave of an alien invasion. Be careful out there, Canada.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Today's By-Elections
Sayeth the Globe and Mail:
"If the Liberals lose Vaughan, is will be interpreted as a sign of leader Michael Ignatieff's inability to capture the imaginations of voters"
Is will be? Is shouldn't be; the problem is even more fundamental:
Iggy can't capture the imagination of his machine. The folks who show up for no damned reason except to see Liberals get elected don't want to show up. Without capturing their imagination, Iggy loses their ability to deliver voters to the polls.
Tories aren't in a real, if still long-shot, bid for Vaughn because Harpermania has caught on with Sally Leftovers or Marty Metro-rider. His machine, however, does get all tingly every time the Harper calendar shows up at their doorstep. The machines are the difference.
For Iggy, the problem is Paul Martin disease (which, funnily, John Turner had too, we just didn't have a name for the disease at the time). When someone from the blue Liberal flank takes charge of the Liberals, the party flounders. No matter how trendy the eye-glasses or whispy the haircut, you need to be a lefty Liberal to have a shot at enduring.
Blue Liberalism trips up Blue Liberals because it is an intellectual fraud - a base of conflicting pillars assembled by equal parts fashion and emotion without any consideration for logical design. A Blue Liberal leader can't speak coherently for more than a season because the his (her, one day) position isn't coherent. So they end up having many, many priorities or making fake-bold statements like "Canada will be the bestest country in the world by 2017."
Back to the main point: if the Globe and Mail is allowed to make moronic whopper mistakes, so is Tarkwell.
"If the Liberals lose Vaughan, is will be interpreted as a sign of leader Michael Ignatieff's inability to capture the imaginations of voters"
Is will be? Is shouldn't be; the problem is even more fundamental:
Iggy can't capture the imagination of his machine. The folks who show up for no damned reason except to see Liberals get elected don't want to show up. Without capturing their imagination, Iggy loses their ability to deliver voters to the polls.
Tories aren't in a real, if still long-shot, bid for Vaughn because Harpermania has caught on with Sally Leftovers or Marty Metro-rider. His machine, however, does get all tingly every time the Harper calendar shows up at their doorstep. The machines are the difference.
For Iggy, the problem is Paul Martin disease (which, funnily, John Turner had too, we just didn't have a name for the disease at the time). When someone from the blue Liberal flank takes charge of the Liberals, the party flounders. No matter how trendy the eye-glasses or whispy the haircut, you need to be a lefty Liberal to have a shot at enduring.
Blue Liberalism trips up Blue Liberals because it is an intellectual fraud - a base of conflicting pillars assembled by equal parts fashion and emotion without any consideration for logical design. A Blue Liberal leader can't speak coherently for more than a season because the his (her, one day) position isn't coherent. So they end up having many, many priorities or making fake-bold statements like "Canada will be the bestest country in the world by 2017."
Back to the main point: if the Globe and Mail is allowed to make moronic whopper mistakes, so is Tarkwell.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Democracy Doctors
There will always be folks who observe the death of democracy in our time.
Today, our coroners are Marge Atwood and some corners of the Toronto Star. For them, this is not the result of a killer microbe, poor lifestyle or sudden accident: the death of democracy is ruled a homicide.
And in this murder mystery, the butler happens to be Prime Minister Stephen Harper. His weapon has been the tools and rules of parliamentary democracy. Death by doing, they exclaim.
To be fair, when opposition types get hysteric, a natural place to go is the charge of totalitarianism. In a former life, Tarkwell Robotico has indulged. Remember the late 1990s and early 2000s? Everyone thought that what happened after Jean Chretien's long tenure would be a Paul Martin tenure. We all thought Martin was a juggernaut and his tenure would be longer than Chretiens. Democracy was dying: we were sliding into a happy one-party state. It wasn't Chretien or Martin's fault. The opposition wasn't able to put together a respectable challenge to the Liberal colossus.
Atwood and the Star people were as hogs in muck during those days - the days they painted the country in thick coats of red, red paint. So when they checked democracy's breathing and took its pulse, they declared the patient ready for a marathon.
And Tarkwell is equally flipped on the issue: my read is democracy hasn't been better in a long while. We say partisanship is especially bitter these days, but that's a normal stress of minority government. Otherwise, our government runs along a generally concessionary course.
So. Taking the pulse of our democracy will tell us nothing about the health of our democracy. Instead, it is something worse than the uncertainty principle of quantum physics: it only tells us something about the person measuring the pulse. If you think democracy is dying, it is because you are losing the democratic struggle. That's all it tells us.
And yup, I sure do think I'll declare democracy on death's door one day. When I do, I hope you smile and remember this.
Today, our coroners are Marge Atwood and some corners of the Toronto Star. For them, this is not the result of a killer microbe, poor lifestyle or sudden accident: the death of democracy is ruled a homicide.
And in this murder mystery, the butler happens to be Prime Minister Stephen Harper. His weapon has been the tools and rules of parliamentary democracy. Death by doing, they exclaim.
To be fair, when opposition types get hysteric, a natural place to go is the charge of totalitarianism. In a former life, Tarkwell Robotico has indulged. Remember the late 1990s and early 2000s? Everyone thought that what happened after Jean Chretien's long tenure would be a Paul Martin tenure. We all thought Martin was a juggernaut and his tenure would be longer than Chretiens. Democracy was dying: we were sliding into a happy one-party state. It wasn't Chretien or Martin's fault. The opposition wasn't able to put together a respectable challenge to the Liberal colossus.
Atwood and the Star people were as hogs in muck during those days - the days they painted the country in thick coats of red, red paint. So when they checked democracy's breathing and took its pulse, they declared the patient ready for a marathon.
And Tarkwell is equally flipped on the issue: my read is democracy hasn't been better in a long while. We say partisanship is especially bitter these days, but that's a normal stress of minority government. Otherwise, our government runs along a generally concessionary course.
So. Taking the pulse of our democracy will tell us nothing about the health of our democracy. Instead, it is something worse than the uncertainty principle of quantum physics: it only tells us something about the person measuring the pulse. If you think democracy is dying, it is because you are losing the democratic struggle. That's all it tells us.
And yup, I sure do think I'll declare democracy on death's door one day. When I do, I hope you smile and remember this.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Comedy is Canada's Nuclear Stockpile
I have spent most of this week in one of Dante's circles of hell, Las Vegas. And I am late to the party with news in this great white north. But I caught this story about anecdote highlights from G. W. Bush's book, Decision Points.
Our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, contributes to that short-list of top gems in the president's memoirs. The other prime ministers, Chretien and Martin, have much more ignoble presences in the book. Oops. Paul Martin wasn't in the book. Chretien is mentioned once for being rude.
Stephen Harper gets a line in at par with the best of Letterman or Leno in a document that will stand as important history in the United States for generations. Wicked cool, Mr. Prime Minister.
Our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, contributes to that short-list of top gems in the president's memoirs. The other prime ministers, Chretien and Martin, have much more ignoble presences in the book. Oops. Paul Martin wasn't in the book. Chretien is mentioned once for being rude.
Stephen Harper gets a line in at par with the best of Letterman or Leno in a document that will stand as important history in the United States for generations. Wicked cool, Mr. Prime Minister.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Obligatory 2012 predictions
Sarah Palin has no chance. That seems like an overstatement but what happened in Alaska is the harbinger.
Rand Paul sounds loopy. He gave a victory speech that was a trick of boring anger. He promised to go to the senate and lecture everybody - childish and a little solipsistic.
Marco Rubio rocks. Sharpen up his rhetoric and he will mop the floor with Obama in 2012. Put a governor on the ticket to guarantee victory.
Obama should pull a Gerald Ford and not run for a second term. His disastrous presidency seems impossible to repair over the next year.
Even if Obama does run, he should be challenged. Democrats cannot offer up another serving of a slightly slicker Stephane Dion. Hillary Clinton would win the primary challenge and she would be very difficult to beat in the generals.
And if Obama wins the nomination, Hillary should run as an independent.
So, 2012 predictions:
Hillary-Bloomberg vs. Rubio-Christie.
Rubio-Christie win 51% - 49%.
Rand Paul sounds loopy. He gave a victory speech that was a trick of boring anger. He promised to go to the senate and lecture everybody - childish and a little solipsistic.
Marco Rubio rocks. Sharpen up his rhetoric and he will mop the floor with Obama in 2012. Put a governor on the ticket to guarantee victory.
Obama should pull a Gerald Ford and not run for a second term. His disastrous presidency seems impossible to repair over the next year.
Even if Obama does run, he should be challenged. Democrats cannot offer up another serving of a slightly slicker Stephane Dion. Hillary Clinton would win the primary challenge and she would be very difficult to beat in the generals.
And if Obama wins the nomination, Hillary should run as an independent.
So, 2012 predictions:
Hillary-Bloomberg vs. Rubio-Christie.
Rubio-Christie win 51% - 49%.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)