Son of the Steelers
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - 0 Comments
The brain behind Arizona’s potent offence
It is never too early to start thinking about the Super Bowl, and today Sam Farmer provides a nice glimpse into the forces that helped shape Arizona Cardinals offensive coordinator Todd Haley. His ties to Pittsburgh and the Steelers run deep, and Farmer reveals how much he learned from his Dad, longtime Steelers’ player personnel boss Dick Haley…and one important attribute he got from his mother.
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Snubbed!!!
By Paul Wells - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 8:31 AM - 10 Comments
Poland!!!
South Africa????
RABBIS!!!
Who’s next?!?!?!?!
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Anatomy of an ambush
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 8:30 AM - 1 Comment
How James Roszko killed four unsuspecting Mounties
Dennis Cheeseman and Sean Hennessey insisted all along that they were innocent. But yesterday, both men finally admitted to what the RCMP has long suspected: that they played a supporting role in the 2005 murders of four Mounties in Mayerthorpe Alta. Their guilty pleas—to manslaughter, rather than the original charge of first-degree murder—included an agreed statement of facts that sheds even more light on exactly what happened that fateful morning, when James Roszko gunned down the young officers before taking his own life. It turns out that Cheeseman and Hennessey drove the notorious cop-hater back to his farm in the hours before the ambush, and instead of calling the police to warn them of Roszko’s presence, they gave him a rifle and concocted a cover story. “Somebody could have stopped it, but they didn’t. That’s disturbing,” said Margaret Thibeault, a former RCMP victim services member who has lived in Mayerthorpe for more than 30 years. “How horrendous is that?”
The Edmonton Journal -
Alberta hoardes money as others spend
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments
Stelmach’s spending cuts will cause “economic and social misery in Alberta.”
Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid pillories the Alberta government’s response to the downturn today. As other governments consider massive stimulus spending fueled with borrowed money, notes Braid, the Alberta Tories, who have $20 billion in savings to play with, float massive, 1990s-style spending and program cuts. Irony of ironies, it was the Tories, under former Premier Peter Lougheed, who created the province’s most important savings account, the Heritage Fund, and for just this kind of situation. “As if they never invented that fund, the Tories are talking about slowing work. Next they could start cancelling projects that keep people employed,” writes Braid. “Some of our key politicians are thinking like very wealthy hoarders who have managed to weather the meltdown with their money intact … For a government, though, sitting on the money at a moment like this is a recipe for economic and social misery in Alberta.”
Braid ends his column by appealing to Albertans for ideas on how to spend some of their reserves. -
E-cards warn of STD exposure
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments
Using the Internet to alert sexual partner
The Internet has made it far easier for people to meet sexual partners—just as it’s made it easier to warn those partners of potential exposure to sexually transmitted disease. Public health officials are looking at ways to use the Internet to prevent the spread of STDs, and the e-card (which lets the sender select the disease in question, and includes links to public health services) is part of that strategy, the New York Times reports. Nine U.S. cities and three states are now working with inSPOT, an online partner notification aimed at gay men which is expanding to include heterosexuals, and will launch a national site this year. Men with STDs often don’t tell casual partners about it, according to experts: “They [...] didn’t take the time to follow up with other people they were having sex with,” says Deb Levine, executive director of Internet Sexuality Information Services. “They said to us, ‘If there was an easy and convenient way to do it, we would.’ ”
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Stiller to star in new show
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments
The Station will focus on CIA agents trying to overthrown a Latin American government
Fox has ordered a new comedy pilot produced by Ben Stiller, who created and starred in the cult flop The Ben Stiller Show for the network in the early ’90s. The new show, The Station, will focus on CIA agents in a Latin American country, trying to overthrow the government and install a new U.S.-friendly regime. Colonial skullduggery has never been so wacky!
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What Obama must do about Afghanistan and Pakistan's descent
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 7:30 AM - 0 Comments
Expert pleads for ‘a radically changed policy’ from the new President
In a passionate essay on Afghanistan’s perilous situation, combined with a review of Ahmed Rashid’s new book “Descent into Chaos” (which was also highlighted in a Maclean’s feature article, “Disaster’s Prophet,” last June 20), an expert on the region, William Dalrymple, doesn’t pull his punches. He says “a wave of crime and corruption” blights President Hamid Karzai’s regime. As for solutions-not just in Afghanistan but to the closely related problems of Pakistan-Dalrymple pleads for “a radically changed policy” under Barack Obama.
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Epic security at Obama’s inauguration
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 7:30 AM - 0 Comments
Snipers and undercover agents are mingling in the crowds
Security in Washington, D.C. will be understandably tight today. Officials say there will be as many as 25,000 police officers, security agents and National Guard troops on duty. That includes snipers and undercover agents mingling in the crowds. The secret service has closed down wide areas of the city around the White House and U.S. Capitol building. Much of it will be off limits to any unauthorized vehicles. Bridges over the Potomac River have also be closed. And just so that nothing is missed 100 agents will be watching footage from surveillance cameras: 5,265 cameras to be exact.
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Do do-gooders need a bailout?
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 7:20 AM - 0 Comments
The economic crunch hits non-profits
A commentary from Canada West Foundation’s Roger Gibbins surveys how the recession is trickling down misery to the non-profit sector. He argues that it is far easier for governments to design bailouts for big corporations than for tens of thousands of non-profit organizations, whose invested endowment funds are withered just as their donations are drying up.
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Imitating the pirates
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 7:00 AM - 0 Comments
Can unlimited download services save the music industry
The music industry is still in free fall with CD sales plumetting by about seven per cent a year. Outlawing the digital music piracy hasn’t really worked, and now the big music producers are casting about for new models. One innovative development has been the introduction of unlimited download services, which allow subscribers “free” access to music after paying an annual subscription fee or buying a special mobile phone. The music companies win because they get some of the revenue, and many say that new services such as Comes With Music, which was launched in Britain last fall by Nokia, might finally help to curb illegal downloads.
The New York Times -
Germany seeks to renews its relations with America
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 6:50 AM - 0 Comments
Foreign Minister writes an open letter to Obama
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has written an open letter to President Barrack Obama in which calls for close cooperation between the two country and pledges that Germany will “step up its contribution” to the rebuilding of Iraq.”
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Change envy
By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 2:48 AM - 12 Comments
Shocking news from the world of opinion polling, many Canadians wish they could vote for their own version of Barack Obama.
On the down side, Harper and other Canadian politicians suffer by contrast when compared to the “charisma and style” of Obama, the poll shows. “Canadians are experiencing collective Obama envy,” Graves said.
In all, 47 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement: “Watching the excitement surrounding the inauguration of Barack Obama and comparing it to our own political leadership, I feel disappointed with our options.”
Those struck most hopeful (or least impressed)? The kids. Or at least the less old. Continue…
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That's not change Dan Gardner can believe in
By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 1:06 AM - 5 Comments
Dan Gardner hears a Conservative advert on the radio and arrives at an unsettling conclusion.
If this misleading and alarmist ad is any indication, Stephen Harper has learned nothing from the debacle in December.
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Who can Canada count on in Obama’s new Washington?
By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 12:40 AM - 17 Comments
BY LUIZA CH. SAVAGE
Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the first meeting around Barack Obama’s cabinet table. Wary of yes-men, the president-elect has assembled a “team of rivals”—starting with arch-nemesis Hillary Rodham Clinton for the plum job of secretary of state—but not ending there. On some key issues, his cabinet picks disagree not only with him, but with one another.
On the Middle East, for example, Clinton has in recent years taken a staunchly supportive position toward Israel, while his choice for national security adviser, James Jones, a retired marine general, is seen as more wary. Obama’s nominee for secretary of labour, the Los Angeles congresswoman Hilda Solis, is critical of trade agreements, while his new trade representative, former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, is a NAFTA-booster who wants normalized trade relations with China. His agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, is the former governor of Iowa, where corn and ethanol subsidies are the holy grail of politics—while Obama’s energy secretary, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steve Chu, an expert in biofuels, is fiercely opposed to corn-based ethanol. How Obama, who has never held an executive position, will channel the debates into policies will be one of the most fascinating stories of the coming months and years. For starters, he’ll be leaning on his new chief of staff, the former ballet dancer, Chicago congressman and political pit bull, Rahm Emanuel, to get everyone in line.
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Starbuck vs. Starbuck, or: Don't Make Me Lose Face!
By Jaime Weinman - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 10:59 PM - 8 Comments
I promised myself I wouldn’t write about Andrew Breitbart’s unintentionally hilarious “Big Hollywood” site; it’s too easy and pointless a target, for reasons John Rogers has already explained. But I just can’t help linking to Dirk Benedict’s zillion-word essay on why the new Battlestar Galactica has “castrated” Starbuck. It’s too much (unintentional) fun to resist.
Now, granted, most of it isn’t even new, since the legendarily chest-thumpin’, cigar-huffin’ actor wrote pretty much the same piece four years ago for Dreamwatch magazine when the new Battlestar Galactica started. But transferring it to Big Hollywood opens it up for comments from the BH readership. Anyway, a few samples of the Benedictine Doctrine:
There was a time, I know I was there, when men were men, women were women and sometimes a cigar was just a good smoke. But 40 years of feminism have taken their toll. The war against masculinity has been won.
One thing is certain. In the new un-imagined, re-imagined world of “Battlestar Galactica” everything is female driven. The male characters, from Adama on down, are confused, weak and wracked with indecision, while the female characters are decisive, bold, angry as hell, puffing cigars (gasp!) and not about to take it any more.
Faceman is not the same as Facewoman. Nor does a Stardoe a Starbuck make. Men hand out cigars. Women “hand out” babies. And thus the world for thousands of years has gone ’round.
Given that any of the other A-Team members could easily have kicked Face’s ass — and I’m including Amy — I don’t see where he gets off thinking he’s so tough, but then, this is the same guy who thought that one of the best things about The A-Team is that “the conservative politics of the show make it one of a kind in today’s soft liberal leftist world of sit-coms.” and claimed that “America is dying, basically, from what it feeds itself. Not smoking. We are a gluttonous, lazy, whining culture.” Oh, Dirk. I kind of like what Katee Sackhoff said in 2006, the last time this piece came up:
If you add up the amount of time Dirk Benedict spent playing the character, not the years obviously but the number of episodes, I’m more Starbuck than he is, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Incidentally, since I was talking about Galactica creator Glen A. Larson earlier, I was curious to see how he reacted to the new series. I discovered that he expressed vague reservations until Universal agreed to give him a producing credit on the new show, but as soon as that dispute was settled, he sensibly said that he was happy that “that they went to the core story, and that is what we started with. It’s great to see something have legs after all this time.” I would think it makes more sense to be happy that your show/character can still inspire a “re-imagining” after all these years, however far removed it is from (or better than) the original. (UPDATE: Of course, I should add that the real difference here is that the creator of the original show gets money from the remake; an actor doesn’t.)
Finally, even though the sound’s out of sync, here’s audio-visual proof that Face/Starbuck is a wuss: he gets thrown out of a window and the other three guys have to do the tough stuff.
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The Inauguration Ceremonies Program
By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 10:31 PM - 1 Comment
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'We shall overcome'
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 10:06 PM - 3 Comments
Dean Del Mastro is full of hope.
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BudgetWatch 2009: So basically, they doesn't know yet. Let's ask them again in an hour!
By kadyomalley - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 9:39 PM - 33 Comments
Okay, opposition leaders – listen up:
Just because we relentless Hill journalist types keep asking you the exact same question – for example, “Are you going to vote against the budget?” – every time you stray too near a microphone doesn’t necessarily mean that you should answer it. Even when you’re ostensibly speaking to caucus, and especially if your response can’t be summed up with one of the following three words: yes, no or maybe.
I can understand how you might think that giving every answer possible, sometimes in the same sentence, is better than giving no answer at all, but you’d be wrong. (In fairness, I should probably admit that we won’t stop asking the question – after all, we have to do something to kill time for the next six days – but don’t worry – most of us won’t hold the exercise of artful ambiguity against you – not past budget day, anyway.)
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Snubbed?
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 9:31 PM - 12 Comments
George W. Bush spent part of his last day bidding adieu to his fellow world leaders. Citing the White House, the Associated Press puts lists the recipients of final calls as: “President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia; President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia; President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea; Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark; Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy; former President Vicente Fox of Mexico; Prime Minister Taro Aso of Japan; and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain; President Shimon Peres of Israel; Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva; French President Nicolas Sarkozy; and German Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.”
Is this a final strike against those who seek to damn our Prime Minister by perceived association with the departing President? Or proof that Harper failed in his explicit mission to better relations with the American administration?
Probably almost certainly neither. But, sadly, some will inevitably try to find great significance in these token gestures.
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Obama honours McCain at dinner
By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 7:46 PM - 6 Comments
Below is the pool report:
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French people: they really love us!
By Martin Patriquin - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 7:26 PM - 1 Comment
Jean Charest and Nicky Sarko are BFFs, no secret there. Nick, though, has gone beyond friendship’s call of duty as of late, what with his a) bestowing the France’s highest honour to Quebec media/publishing/insurance/finance/energy/Friend Of Canada™ giant Paul Desmarais; and b) putting to rest that pesky and inconvenient ‘Vive le Québec libre’ business visited upon the province by a wily little scamp named Charles De Gaulle. Giving the Légion d’honneur to über-Federalist Desmarais was a stroke of genius, as far as federalists were concerned, and it (not coincidentally) dovetailed with Sarko’s own policy of loving Quebec–as long as it remained nuzzled serenely in Canada’s bosom. Sovereignists were distraught, deflated and, as per usual, furious. ”What I think is Mr. Sarkozy has maybe misunderstood our project,” Pauline Marois said at the time.
Now, it seems, Sarko has yet again slapped Charest on the back (or his chest)–this time with a Légion d’honneur medal. According to AFP, France will likely make Charest a ‘Grand Officier’, the third highest rank of the order, in early February. This new lapel bling will look great on Charest’s perpetual blue suits, and will send sovereignists into a state of apoplectic shock.
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Poll Dance: They love him, they love him not
By Philippe Gohier - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 6:07 PM - 1 Comment
Canadians don’t know what to make of Ignatieff. Their minds are made up about Harper.
So much for the Conservatives’ hidden agenda: Canadians, it turns out, have a pretty good idea what Stephen Harper is all about.
Only 24 per cent of respondents to a Nanos poll say they aren’t sure what to think about the Prime Minister. Unfortunately for Harper, 30 per cent of Canadians can’t name a single thing they like about him. Still, the Prime Minister can presumably count on the support of the 15 per cent of Canadians who find no fault with him whatsoever. His most popular qualities are his leadership abilities (eight per cent), his honesty (five per cent), his policies (four per cent) and his ability to get things done (four per cent). Those who aren’t as enamoured with Harper say he breaks his promises (11 per cent), is arrogant (eight per cent), is power-hungry (six per cent) and has a bad attitude (five per cent).
Harper’s main rival in Parliament, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, hasn’t left as definite an impression with Canadian voters: 58 per cent of respondents couldn’t name a trait they like about Ignatieff, while 64 per cent couldn’t identify a trait they dislike about him. To his fans, though, Ignatieff is smart (seven per cent) and a “fresh face” (five per cent) —i.e., not Stéphane Dion. But to his enemies, he is a distant (three per cent) newbie (three per cent).
On other issues…
83% of Iraqis are optimistic about the future.
67% of Canadians believe in angels.
64% of Canadians have loaned or borrowed more than $500 from friends or family.
56% of Americans feel “betrayed” by their government over the economy.
47% of Canadians wish we could elect an Obama of our own.
46% of American women would rather give up sex for two weeks than their Internet access.
45% of Canadians feel no sympathy for Omar Khadr.
33% of Americans believe gays and lesbians shouldn’t be allowed to teach in elementary schools.
12% of Canadians don’t read books.
11% of Canadians think George Bush should have pardoned Conrad Black.
2% of Canadians believe the recession will be over by the spring.
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"Baseball helps me forget and it makes me remember"
By Michael Friscolanti - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 5:34 PM - 2 Comments
It is against my deal with the devil to write something nice about the…
It is against my deal with the devil to write something nice about the New York Yankees. Even in those horrible days after 9/11, when the men in pinstripes were desperate to deliver a World Series title to their shattered city, I was rooting for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Believe me, I tried to see the bigger picture—to hope that Derek Jeter drove in that runner on second—but it was no use. As George Bernard Shaw famously wrote: “Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.”Yet as much as I loathe the Yankees—and all who follow their ways—it is hard to say a bad word about Todd Drew. Yes, he pledged his everlasting devotion to the Evil Empire, but unlike most Yankees fans, he actually treasured the game of baseball as much as the team he rooted for. Last month, Drew wrote these words on Alex Belth’s Bronx Banter, one of the many blogs serving the Yankee faithful:
I went to a baseball game after my father’s funeral. I also went to one after finding out about my mother’s brain cancer.
It was selfish and heartless. I felt guilty before and embarrassed after, but for nine innings I felt only the game. That’s the way it’s always been between baseball and me.
It was my friend when I didn’t have any others. And it has always been there to talk or listen or simply to watch.
Baseball helps me forget and it makes me remember. That’s why it was exactly what I needed on the worst days of my life.
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Change Michael Ignatieff wants you to believe in
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 4:48 PM - 12 Comments
An interesting mission statement from Michael Ignatieff, via the Dalhousie Gazette’s account of the Liberal leader’s appearance last week in Halifax.
“My business is to inspire you, but you have to know how much your presence today inspires me.”
Then this from a Dalhousie prof.
“His communication skills are so superb that he is an inspirational leader. The essence of politics is rhetoric – that’s the heart and core of leadership… This is what separates him from Dion.”
