Canada’s Debate

Sorry I haven’t been around much the last few days. I’ve been preoccupied with some accounting stuff, which is both demanding my attention during the day, and exhausting me (and my eyes) to the point where sitting down and blogging at night is extremely difficult. I will resolve this situation as soon as possible.

Well, there was no review for Lord of the Rings: The Musical as you may have noticed. This is not due to laziness or forgetfulness (qualities I have in abundance) however. My grandmother as it turns out didn’t have tickets for the aforementioned show. Instead, she had two passes for the latest production of The Boyfriend, a lighthearted romantic comedy set in circa 1920’s french finishing school. Needless to say, I’ve been spending the last 48 hours drinking beer and whiskey and watching action movies.

I’m joking of course. Don’t let it be construed that I am disparaging musical theatre in general, or making some sort suggestion about sexuality. Of course it didn’t help that the only male under 30 in the audience besides me gave me his phone number during the intermission.

Instead I’ve been spending the time figuring out what to post next about. (Continue reading…)

No post today, sorry. I had planned to do one, but I am instead going to see “The Lord of the Rings: The Musical” with my grandmother. I will write a review tomorrow.

I forgot to get a girlfriend again this year. C’est la vie!

Not much going on right now. I will post something tomorrow most likely, but for now I’m just putting this up to mark another inauspicious year of single-tude and to see if I can get Technorati reading my blog properly. See you guys later.

Leave it to the great hedonist to put things in perspective. I am wading back into the Mohammed Cartoon fiasco because I feel like I have perhaps presented an unbalanced view of my own thoughts on the subject, so please bear with me. This will hopefully be the last time it demands my attention.

There have been several things that have really bugged me about this whole brouhaha besides the one I mentioned in my last post on the subject. First and foremost amongst these is the incredible double-standard; not in the “well they shouldn’t have printed the cartoons” sense, but rather in the way that riots and protests are being considered. When thousands of people march and even riot in, lets say Quebec City, burn a few buildings and scuffle with police, they are called fringe-lunatics and dismissed, and the other 330 million people on this continent escape judgement. (Continue reading…)

Minority parliaments are unique, not just because they force compromise, but because political prognosticating adjusts from 4-5 years to 3-12 months. Anything beyond is pretty much a completely different generation.

Here’s what to expect over the next twelve months.

The Conservative will have to compromise in order to hold onto power. With a caucus made up of many stubborn MP’s and ghosts in the closet, this may be no easy task. Unless they are smart and careful, the gloss of a new government may come off quickly, something which may have already begun this past week.

Step one is passing the budget in April, something that can only be achieved with opposition (read: NDP) support. If they pass that test, which again will require significant diversion from their policies, the next will come around November, by which time the Conservatives will have had ten months in the spotlight. If they are not successful and positive months, the opposition could assemble the political will to force a change. Finally, the third and most significant test will be the 2007 budget, sometime between February and April. It is very rare that any minority government can pass two budgets; how realistic is it that this one will? (Continue reading…)

Before I begin my post (regarding the Liberal party and the latest unreported fiasco) I want to call attention to a new link on my page. My sister is participating in the 2006 Weekend to End Breast Cancer, and the link (on the right, under Websites) goes to her sponsorhip mini-page. I encourage anyone and everyone who has been touched by breast-cancer to take a look, and consider supporting her in her efforts to contribute.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

It has been an interesting couple of weeks for me as I’ve sat back and watched the two parties which are supposed to lead the country instead work feverishly to master themselves. The Conservatives have naturally garnered the great bulk of the attention, justly so, and it has not been positive. However, I saw something in the paper today that reminded me why so many people voted for the Tories in spite of not really liking them. (Continue reading…)

So rarely do I actually get to mention something before it has been on every daily newsrag on the continent, but here it is. Straight from two other online news sources. (This is as close as I get to a scoop, cut me some slack.)

The National Journal is reporting here that Lewis Libby, the Vice President’s Chief of Staff, admitted under oath to a federal grand jury that he was ‘just following orders’ when he disclosed classified information in the summer of 2003.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been “authorized” by Cheney and other White House “superiors” in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein’s purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

(Continue reading…)