The months fly like weeks now. Even though there is a killing frost today and overnight, it's just a blip. February is almost a full month in the past. Summer sports sign ups start this weekend.
- Find This Guy. Hunt. Him. Out. Update: "It's Gen X. They may look old to you but they aren't Boomers."
- Kottke points us to the greatest idea ever - shoes that make everyone the same height..
- Is the leftification of Stephen Harper complete? Giving the Fraser Institute a raspberry for not appreciating stimulus spending. Contemplating a pro-choice vote? Why doesn't he just run for the leadership of the Grits, win and then we can all give him a majority?
- Ben isn't exactly reinventing blogging but he has had a good week.
- Benny? Not such a good week. But this is the best journalist's name to story being covered combo. Ever.
- This is actually something I had wondered about: "This is a war zone -- not an amusement park."
- Sadly, it took a little Calgary boy to stand for freedom, to point out that when someone is talking stoopid, you laugh and point. Eight year old Omar Mohammed's sign read "I don't have a camel or a flying carpet. Can yo lend me your broomstick?" RIMSHOT!!!
- You have no idea how successful a university program is until their team chokes in the Sweet 16 and then every talking head on US TV and every voice on US talk radio is a bitching and moaning 'Cuse grad.
There may be more. I need coffee. Don't you? Don't you really need a coffee, too?
Update: the greatest moment in my personal cultural history, the launching of the Bluenose. The neighbouring kid in elementary school was Capt. Walter's grandson.
We Nova Scotians are all that kid - dreaming of the high seas and danger, hoping for an income moderately better than the neighbours and comfortable with clothes that smell like fish. I understand her trick was to naturally bite slightly deeper into a wave when she fell upon it rather than being pushed away.
Comments
Ben (The Tiger) - March 26, 2010 10:31 AM
About Harper and abortion -- I remember speaking about it with a family friend who was a senior Chretien Liberal staffer (and had been pushed out by the Martinites) just after the 2004 campaign. (In which abortion came up, as the main weapon against the Tories.) It was a crazy campaign, the Liberal said, because it was an open secret, among those who knew these things, that Paul Martin was pro-life and Stephen Harper was moderately pro-choice.
As for stimulus spending -- well, Harper (rightly) didn't want to do it in late 2008, but he saw that the public demanded it. So he gave it to them, and is now defending it/them. If you're in public life, you have to listen to the public -- even if it sometimes goes against the most efficient public policy.
All of this makes sense if you see the PM as being a fairly consistent libertarian policy-wise but realizing that (a) members of his political coalition and (b) the majority of the general public are not. He had a choice -- he could be pure and run the NCC, or he could go and try to run the country.
Alan - March 26, 2010 11:30 AM
He's our own Dede Scozzafava! The conservative who is so libertarian they verge on socialist.
Ben (The Tiger) - March 26, 2010 1:44 PM
Well, as long as he has a minority government.
If he had four years to play with, he could do a few more conservative/libertarian things, because he'd have time to work with public opinion. (i.e., he'd push where he found there was at least 45% support for that approach. Like that funding cut to political parties, which actually had 61% public support -- but the undying hatred of all other parties. Tory majority = bankrupt Bloc.)
But then, that's why you saw wacky things in 2008 like most of the anglophone press of Canada endorsing Harper, but making it explicit whether they were endorsing "minority Harper for two more years" (the Globe) or "majority Harper for four more years" (the Post).
If you want left-wing Stephen, strategically vote for him to get another minority. (But he'll need to pick up a couple seats, or the Coalition could take over. Still, the Coalition would be so much fun to watch, I'm tempted to root for it...)