Tag: Non-partisan blog posts

Friday Bullets For The 4,000th Post At Gen X At 40

Four thousand posts. Why do I do this? It’s just a cup of coffee in the morning. A way to get things going. I’ve met a lot of interesting ideas as well as a lot of tedious egos along the way but the best thing’s the incredible strength I have developed in my fingers. My God they are huge. More like sausages than hot dogs. I’d take any of you on in a finger fight. Piece of cake.

  • Update: should there be an election over the Afghan mission? I know I am at odds with my party of choice and have no home on the point when other policies or key player character is factored in. But isn’t that true for everyone these days?
  • When it comes to strategic alliances in a time of war, no two words give more confidence that “France” and “hinting”.
  • The problem with this study is it compares boomers to Gen Y’s:

    According to new research, teens and young adults are no more narcissistic or self-aggrandizing today than they were three decades ago. Instead, all those overconfident, egotistical kids demanding instant jobs and fame may be a figment of aging imaginations.

    Two sides of the same coin if you ask me. But you wouldn’t. Because I’m Gen X and you don’t care. No one cares.

  • Who knew wikipedia was a pack of cultist lies?
  • Good for Mitt for quitting some time after it was clear he would never win – despite all the money. He did his cause one favour, crystallize one thought that sums up the lack of political tolerance and savvy that is marking this demise of conservatism in America:

    …And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror…

    Because that is what Democrats want, right? A surrender to terror. They want to embrace their own terrorization and would feed the children of conservatives to the dogs. That is what Democrats want. You are warned.

    Nice to have that assurance, though, that he was in his heart utterly unfit for the job. That and his conservatism of convenience. Not that I am one but not that there is anything wrong with it either. If you know what I mean.

  • Seeing as this is the 4,000th post, let me tell you some things you don’t know about Gen X at 40:

    – I never post a post with an even number in the minute column. I have no idea why that is important but it is.
    – There are actually twelve people with authoring rights and I actually play more of an editorial role for all posts labeled “alan”.
    – I don’t own a shot put.
    – English is not the language I grew up with as I am really a Finn.
    – I played a small but important role in the development of hip-hop.
    – If it weren’t for Hans, I would have packed this thing in years ago.

    These, of course, are the least of my secrets.

That is enough for today – probably more than you can handle.

PM Harper Does The Unexpected – Appoints On Merit

I don’t know if Justice David Jenkins was a Grit or a Tory in his pre-bench life but he is a fine judge. He sat on the hearing I was involved with which led to the recognition that political discrimination had to end in Canada’s last hold out for Victorian values, Prince Edward Island. I think my favorite question was something like “so if the other side is right and this is not discrimination, the Government could then set up a Provincial Park and say ‘No NDP supporters allowed?'” My answer was, of course, yes. He also asked, because political belief had never before been proven to be protected by The Charter, how it was that no other government had had it proven against them? I said that no other had the gall and he nodded in agreement.

So good for Stephen Harper in doing the right thing in this case – not a habit he has gotten into when it comes to appointments. And a happy retirement to Justice Mitchell, whose portfolio as Chief Justice of The Appeals Division in Canada’s tiniest province included handling adoptions, including the one in our family. He presided over the event with great pleasure which made the day an ever greater one for our family.

And Now Gomery’s Being Mean to Harper

Now even I am starting to feel bad for the PM. First, Ben says our Prime Minister “doesn’t have enough confidence in himself, sadly.” Now Gomery says Harper has bailed on accountability:

John Gomery, in a wide-ranging interview marking the second anniversary of his final report, expressed dismay that the federal Conservatives have ignored his key recommendations for reform. “I have to tell you, I’m very disappointed,” Mr. Gomery said from the farm in Havelock, Que., where he now lives in retirement. “I worked so hard, and I got other people to work hard, and we gave very serious thought to what we were recommending. I thought it deserved a debate.”
Instead, said the former judge, most of the political and bureaucratic changes he proposed fell into a “black hole” of indifference or were rejected out of hand.

I’m worried. I’m worried that leadership has collapsed to the level that I can’t think of a single leader of any party before Martin became PM who would not now smoke the present Government in an election yet there is no one who can step up and do that now.

I never thought I would miss Deb Grey so much. Or Eugene Whalen.

The Last Friday Bullets Before February

Janufeb. The grey blur before the melt, made more grey those three out of four years without Olympic curling. It is the time when the Morton teeters, when show turns that other colour. We’ve seen the dark edge of the storm and even had double lake effect this week. I heard an ad for large screen TVs telling me how they bring the family together.

  • Australians should be scared of coming to Canada? What a load. I thought Australians were fearless of backpacking though third world gang zones blind drunk, spraying the combatants with obscenities and just emptied beer cans? Bleaters of the right will go on about the terrorist references but note this:

    “Heavy snowfalls and ice in the winter can make driving dangerous. The wind-chill factor can also create dangerously cold outdoor conditions. … The province of British Columbia in western Canada is in an active earthquake zone. Alberta and British Columbia are also subject to avalanches. … Tornadoes can occur in some areas of Canada between May and September. Bush and forest fires can occur any time in Canada.”

    Whimps! This is the real crisis and a funny one as we consider what terrorism and natural disasters really means to an Australian – no access to beer for a couple of days.

  • What happens if two pass too close and the lines tangle?
  • One point on the Manley Report that is important and telling in the brader context is a critique of the Government of One policy that we are living under these days:

    The panel members called the policy unhelpful and said it was undermining public support for the mission and presenting a skewed picture of why Canadian troops are being asked to put their lives on the line in Afghanistan. Chairman John Manley, a former foreign affairs minister, said the decision taken at the “centre” – in the Prime Minister’s Office or the Privy Council Office – to allow only the Defence Department to speak on the mission means Canadians are being told their young men and women are dying without being given “any context in which they can say this is why and this is meaningful and this is tragic but it’s worth it.”

    Leadership tells us why we need to do things, makes it compelling. Shutting up is the same as creating confusion. No wonder he gets treated the same way. Would you vote for Manley now? Who wouldn’t?

  • I haven’t watched tennis for years but maybe that will change now that the log jam has broken.
  • Rampant freeloadery and responsibility shiftery which can’t even get its act together on a 42 year timeline for achieving something!
  • The Economist puts it well:

    Mr Harper has been unable to do much more than survive. Respected for his competence, he has all the charisma of an automaton. “I thought that people needed time to get used to Mr Harper,” says Roger Gibbins of the Canada West Foundation, an Alberta-based think-tank. “But it’s turned out that to know Harper is not to love him.” That is especially true for women. Opinion polls show little change in allegiance since the last election—except for a brief moment of Conservative advance last autumn…This year is shaping up to be Mr Harper’s most difficult so far. But there is not yet any sign that the opposition will feel sufficiently emboldened to bring him down and trigger an election.

    So more of the Great White Yawn…except to Australians. Boo!

How long until The Beat Authority? How long until Darcey posts the Beer and Blues? Lord, how long?

It’s Like No One Really Want To Win This Race

Another day another come back kid:

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who ran as a son of Michigan though he left the state nearly 40 years ago, won a commanding victory Tuesday in the Republican primary here with a message aimed at voters deeply anxious about the state’s ailing economy. Mr. Romney defeated his principal rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, by winning a clear plurality of Republicans and conservatives, who turned out in greater numbers than they had in the 2000 primary, which Mr. McCain won.

Now I am hopeing for Fred or Rudy in South Carolina. A new winner for every state, I say!

Ann Arbor went 9% for Kucinich. Watch out for Kucinich. He is coming on.

Friday Bullets? It’s The First Friday Bullets Of 2008!!

Iowa rocks. It’s a whole new reason to blog. Even though blogging is now like collecting 45s, most people having voted and having voted for the dreary contentlessness of Twitter and Facebook and stuff like that, by standing up in church halls and on basketball courts, the people of Iowa say no, they have listened to Oprah and Chuck Norris and shaken things up by introducing a little reality. To that end, a poem:

What you vote, what you vote today?
For Huckabee and Obammy.
A bad, bad day; who threw the money away?
Clinton and Mitt Romney-ee-ee.

Who writes lyrics on Iowa in the style of an Irish folk tune? Nobody, baby. Nobody.

  • Update: There is a European Vodka Alliance which champions Europe’s diverse vodka traditions. Who knew? Do they have summer jobs?
  • I am now excited for Michigan. By holding its primary on January 15th, it now stands weeks ahead of all other large states and after only the two traditional testing grounds of Iowa and New Hampshire. The Votemaster has his opinion up now and, because it’s unlinky, I will tell you he says it is still a race amongst Giuliani, Romney, and McCain for the GOP and Obama-Clinton for the Dems. Tiger, when not panicking theoretically, prefers following Real Clear Politics but that has none of the statistics theory chatter.
  • In other news, a little recollection of Canada’s role in crushing fascism showed up this week:

    He didn’t think much of it at the time, but as he drove home he considered the bag and its contents and assumed the flag might be the Union Jack. On further reflection, however, he recalled seeing black on the flag, a colour not found on the Union Jack. When he arrived home, he unfolded the flag and discovered it was not what he was expecting. In addition to the giant Nazi symbol that unfolded before him, the flag was signed by Canadian soldiers from the 2nd Anti-Tank Regiment that fought in Normandy in the Second World War. It lists various battles and the soldiers killed in action. A Lethbridge soldier also signed his name, although it is hard to read. Mr. Coburn realized he had found more than just a flag. “The hair stood up on the back of my neck.”

  • Once a pal of mine, with an evangelical bent, proved again for me that God had a great sense of humour by giving him both a telephone number and license plate with “666” in them. Apparently a whole town has had the same problem:

    A town in the US state of Louisiana is to be allowed to change its telephone prefix so that residents can avoid a number many associate with the Devil. Christians in Reeves have been unhappy since the early 1960s about being given the prefix, 666 – traditionally known as the Biblical “number of the beast”. For the next three months, households will be able to change the first three digits of their phone numbers to 749.

    What is “668”? The number of the neighbour of the beast – rimshot!

Busy week. Not really. But I need a weekend all the same. The Session tonight as well.

The Year Of The Infideleolympiad Is Here!

How fun! There’s more than just the Smoglympiad going on:

The Olympic Games’ ability to attract controversy is enjoying a new twist after China’s equivalent of Des Lynam was humiliated at a television ceremony by his wife storming onstage and accusing him of conducting an affair…As Zhang dithered, clearly uncertain as to whether to intervene or not, she began a simple appeal to the country’s sense of honour. “Today is a special day for The Olympics Channel, and it’s a special day for Zhang Bin, and it’s a special day for me too,” she said. In a particularly brave move, she quoted a French politician critical of the Games who said that if China’s “values” didn’t improve, they would have been for nothing. “That French foreign diplomat also said: until China is able to start exporting its values, it won’t be able to become a great power,” she said. “Yet Zhang Bin can’t even face up to his own hurt wife. I think China, to succeed as a great power… Don’t any of you have any conscience?! Let go of me! We’re very far from being a great country.”

I am reminded of my favorite guy and hope that this lady’s cheatastic husband is sufficiently important that she does not get a disappearing for her efforts.

Your Neanderthal Update

Was they we?

Modern humans may well have evolved from hardy Neanderthals who suffered through a dramatic cold spell that descended on Europe about 40,000 years ago, according to a new study that throws another coal into the already heated scientific debate about our origins. The report, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, disagrees with the widely held belief that humans’ early ancestors came in waves out of Africa to overwhelm the separate and distinct Neanderthal populations of Europe.

We heatedly discussed the prospect of the working out of Neanderthal DNA back in Nov. 2006. This new study relates to the number of narrow-skulled voles found near Neanderthal sites. I am all a giggle over this news but the question remains – what will this do to the putative humour of the GEICO ads? Is it not now much the same as saying “So easy a Hittite could do it”?