Second Gen (2003-2016, 2016- )
Creature from the Deep
Now that I have an Ikea desk and a sufficiently powerful power bar empowering my computer, I can actually hook everything up including the $129.99 Dell scanner printer and inundate you with old family photos. This particular leg is attached to my first cousin, aka the Waxy Giantess, who ten years ago had issues with getting back into a boat. I love the worried brow.
This is good news. Libya has announced it is packing away the evil – just in time for Christmas. George looked just a little uncomfortable from the White House press room putting Libya with the glad tidings merry merry happy happy stuff. With luck, he’ll get used to these announcements.
Me and Bruce in Paris in Feb. 1986, dodging “Syrians”, drinking red wine
Almost three years before the Libyan secret service blew up a passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, the US had bombed Tripoli in the heady spring of 1986 when a club in Berlin with US service personnel blew up, when I was goofing off in Paris with Bruce, Jamie (of the Hotel Home Latin) and Mark as the bombs were going off there. We missed one explosion in the front of a bookstore by a few minutes as we headed out to supper. During the best part of a month, we never went to the Eiffel Tower, a prime target. Gendarmes with machine guns were in the subways. The word was it was the Syrians, who were the puppets of the Soviets. We thought it wasn’t Islamic-related terror at all – just good old Cold War terror. Bruce ended up a few weeks later in Athens when TWA 840 was blown open. I was interviewed when I returned on CBC Halifax’s Information Morning in what rapidly turned into the most boring piece Don Connellyever did:
“So what did you do when the bombing started?””Ummm, went to a bar…no, we went to a bar in Belgium…umm, no that was later…no, we just went to the supermarket and bought a few litres of Algerian red. Yea, that’s it.”
The place where we are at now with the war on terror was a long time coming. Clinton is blamed for not getting a handle on it soon enough. That is at least two administrations too late.
Later:A detail of Bruce’s greasy 1986 moustache. Moustache, by the way, is the most popular Greek word in English.
Are the NDP on a national rebound? Or is it a really slow dead cat bounce? Who knows but all of a sudden Broadbent is back in town.
The biggest problem they have faced is the lack of credible leadership. Libertarians and evangelicals will gnash and wail that it is the wacky Volvo in cords vision that people reject. Foooohaaa, I say. These days we do not vote vision so much as visuals. With the “New Conservative Party”™ and the “New Martin government”™, Canada politically has just taken one or two tiny steps but firm steps to the right. As a result, the left is wide open and, supposedly, that is where the heart of many Canuck beats, at least on the social side. And when the visuals align with the heart, who knows?
All they need is a solid presence. Jack Layton has proven himself to be a quality leader – neither strident and ideological or shrieking from the pulpit. Reasonable, if opposing and socialist. A recent poll released three days ago places them, with a commanding 14% of voter support, ahead of all parties other than the Liberals (pretending that the joint 21% of the PCs and the Alliance are still separate – as most of their supporters still are).
If I look back over 22 years of voting status, I have voted Green the last two times, NDP, against the Charlottetown Accord, Hec Clouthier as an independent liberal in 1993 and solid NDP before that – when Ed was king…if socialists had kings….which they do not… because they are socialist.
I like socialist politics given that we fundamentally believe in socialist policies in Canada: free universal healthcare, peacekeeping, welfare – even the wacked Ontario Tories only downloaded it and renamed it Ontario Works (expect that last link to die soon). It is just a matter of ensuring no rip-offs and no debt financing which, given the farcical dependency of Canadian conservatives on rip-off and debt, should not to be taken as much of a ideological challenge to the NDP.
Are the NDP on a national rebound? Or is it a really slow dead cat bounce? Who knows but all of a suddenBroadbent is back in town.
The biggest problem they have faced is the lack of credible leadership. Libertarians and evangelicals will gnash and wail that it is the wacky Volvo in cords vision that people reject. Foooohaaa, I say. These days we do not vote vision so much as visuals. With the “New Conservative Party”™ and the “New Martin government”™, Canada politically has just taken one or two tiny steps but firm steps to the right. As a result, the left is wide open and, supposedly, that is where the heart of many Canuck beats, at least on the social side. And when the visuals align with the heart, who knows?
All they need is a solid presence. Jack Layton has proven himself to be a quality leader – neither strident and ideological or shrieking from the pulpit. Reasonable, if opposing and socialist. A recent poll released three days ago places them, with a commanding 14% of voter support, ahead of all parties other than the Liberals (pretending that the joint 21% of the PCs and the Alliance are still separate – as most of their supporters still are).
If I look back over 22 years of voting status, I have voted Green the last two times, NDP, against the Charlottetown Accord, Hec Clouthier as an independent liberal in 1993 and solid NDP before that – when Ed was king…if socialists had kings….which they do not… because they are socialist.
I like socialist politics given that we fundamentally believe in socialist policies in Canada: free universal healthcare, peacekeeping, welfare – even the wacked Ontario Tories only downloaded it and renamed it Ontario Works (expect that last link to die soon). It is just a matter of ensuring no rip-offs and no debt financing which, given the farcical dependency of Canadian conservatives on rip-off and debt, should not to be taken as much of a ideological challenge to the NDP.