The formula for NCAA pool success

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 12:10 PM - 0 Comments

To the list of theories on how best to approach your NCAA basketball bracket, you can now add the hedge fund manager formula. Basically, it’s all about managing risk. By weighing collective wisdom (as drawn from ESPN’s “national” bracket) against more disinterested measures (statistics and rankings), the prospective pool winner should look for “bargains” and potentially winning gambles.

Slate Magazine

The risky travails of an Arctic trek

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 12:09 PM - 0 Comments

Late last month, a team of British adventurers began a trek through the Canadian Arctic en route to the North Pole. Their plan is to measure ice thickness along their route. Things haven’t been going well. The group of three has been 17 days without fresh supplies and the re-supply plane is several days late—turned away three times by bad weather, according to the latest entry on the team’s blog. Now, they can do nothing but wait in -40C temperatures inside a tent that’s “like an ice cavern.”  Says one team member: “I’ve got frostbite in my toes, my sleeping bag is full of ice and the supposedly hot food ends up like a roofing tile in seconds!”

BBC News

AccountabilityWatch: Hey, remember that five year ban on lobbying by former public office holders?

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 12:01 PM - 5 Comments

Oh, don’t worry, it’s still in place. But according to a spokesperson for interim Lobbying Commissioner Karen Shepherd, since the new rules came into effect last July, the office has received seven requests for exemption to the five year ban.

Continue…

In the UK, Cheez Whiz is in, organic is out

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 11:44 AM - 1 Comment

Brits have turned their backs on wasabi paste and extra virgin olive oil, while “heritage brands” are seeing spikes in sales. Sales of Bird’s custard powder have risen 25 per cent; Asda’s fish fingers are up 18 per cent; and Bisto gravy is up 20 per cent. Even the “Arctic Roll” and “Wispa,” once kitschy jokes—“the edible equivalent of the lava lamp”—have been “called out of retirement and placed on active duty.” The country’s renewed passion for fish sticks is being blamed on the “desire to sink back into the loving certainties of a simpler time.”

The Guardian

Point of order

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 11:26 AM - 0 Comments

Canada’s UN Ambassador Marius Grinius erred earlier this month when he stopped a UN-accredited speaker from criticizing “Muslim-sourced anti-Semitic material” during a debate on human rights, according to Foreign Affairs spokesperson Catherine Loubier. In response to queries from Canwest News, Loubier acknowledged that Grinius, a career diplomat, had “acted in good faith” when he interrupted David Littman, who was speaking on behalf of the Association for World Education and the World Union for Progressive Judaism. His ruling was based on advice received by a UN procedural clerk, but Loubier told Canwest that the government has concluded that Littman “should not have been cut off.” In an interview with Canwest, Littman says that he has asked the council’s permanent chair to make sure that Grinius’s ruling doesn’t set precedent for future debates.

The Ottawa Citizen

NBC chief defends Jim Cramer's honour

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 11:24 AM - 1 Comment

Jeff Zucker, CEO of the NBC/Universal empire, says that Jon Stewart’s dissing of CNBC and Jim Cramer was “completely out of line” and “incredibly unfair to CNBC and the business media in general.” He added that there have been at least two times in the last six months when Jim Cramer was right about something. Of course, this is the same interview where Zucker predicted that NBC’s terrible ratings may help it adjust to the new realities of TV broadcasting, so he’s always looking on the bright side.

Hollywood reporter

Israeli Army cracks down on women who find religion, then lose it

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 11:19 AM - 0 Comments

A spike in the amount of Israeli women hoping to avoid compulsory military service on “religious grounds” has prompted the government to hire private investigators to catch the women doing “unreligious” things. The army’s surveillance program has caught 520 young women since it began last year, and one video of a young woman in tight clothes caught kissing a man has already been leaked to Israeli media to make the army’s point. In 1991, 21 per cent of women avoided service using devout religious views as a reason but the figure grew to 36 per cent last year (only 20 per cent of Israelis think of themselves as religious in other polls).

Associated Press

Those pens and Post-it notes aren’t free, you know

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 11:16 AM - 0 Comments

Workplace fraud in Canada is overwhelmingly the domain of middle-aged males, according to a study by KPMG. More often than not, it’s committed by people working in operations, accounting or procurement position and usually involves small amounts of money. Still, it all adds up quickly because, as KPMG’s national leader for forensic practice puts it, “It’s happening all the time.” The study found the most common techniques involved the fudging of expense accounts or the theft of cash and other assets.

CTV

Josef Fritzl changes plea to guilty

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 10:34 AM - 2 Comments

After watching 11 hours of videotaped testimony from the daughter he imprisoned, raped, and abused for 24 years in a cellar dungeon, Josef Fritzl stunned a court in Austria by changing his plea from not guilty to guilty on all counts of murder, rape, and incest. Fritzl, 73, had until now denied murdering his baby son, born of his daughter, after he failed to seek medical help when the baby developed breathing problems shortly after birth. Fritzl apologized for his “sick behaviour” and said he now realized “For the first time how cruel I was.” His daughter, Elisabeth, was present in the court room.

The Telegraph

"The rule of law, and nothing else, is what makes us exceptional."

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 10:17 AM - 19 Comments

Anne Applebaum wrote the definitive history of the Gulag. She gets that what happened to U.S. detainees wasn’t the Gulag, but neither can she countenance the proposition that its criminal excesses be ignored. Here‘s what she has to say.

UPDATE: More from Lawrence Wilkerson, noted left-winger, who served as Chief of Staff to George W. Bush’s first Secretary of State. “Utter incompetence of the battlefield vetting in Afghanistan… utter disregard for the fundamentals of jurisprudence… many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should (have been) immediately released.”

Hundreds detained and beaten in Gambian witch hunt

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 10:15 AM - 0 Comments

Hundreds of people accused of witchcraft in Gambia have been abducted and taken to secret detention centres where they are beaten and forced to drink unknown substances that cause them to hallucinate and soil themselves, Amnesty International alleges. The campaign against supposed witches appears to have the backing of the Gambian government, as the “witch doctors” abducting those accused of witchcraft are accompanied by government security forces and President Yahya Jammeh’s personal bodyguard unit. President Jammeh suspects that witchcraft was behind the recent death of his aunt.

Amnesty International

Did Darwin get magazine editor fired?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 10:14 AM - 0 Comments

A magazine editor in Turkey says she was fired because she wanted to put a story about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution on the cover of her publication. Der Spiegel has an interview with Cigdem Atakuman, the editor-in-chief of Bilim ve Teknik (Science and Technology).

Spiegel.de

"…the ill-treatment to which they were subjected…constituted torture."

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 9:13 AM - 80 Comments

The activity detailed in this 2007 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross, if confirmed – and much of it has already been corroborated by public comments by Bush administration officials – constitutes a clear violation of international law and of U.S. domestic law. The prescribed penalties are severe. If members of a previous administration were accused of, say, money laundering, or theft, or lying under oath about sex, today’s administration would have little choice but to prosecute. Similarly, I do not see how the current U.S. attorney general can ignore the mounting evidence of widespread state-sanctioned human rights abuses under his predecessors, and keep his job.

I don’t often write about these sorts of things. I’m more a routine-day-at-Parliament-Hill kind of political writer. But this is monstrous.

WWMD? (What would Macchiavelli do?)

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 8:23 AM - 21 Comments

Y’know, I’m reading Heather Scoffield’s somewhat bone-chilling interview with David Dodge, who was a deputy minister of Health and Finance before becoming Bank of Canada chairman – the one where he calls a return to surpluses in 2013 “totally unrealistic. They’re not going to do it” – and I wonder whether there’s any upside at all to being the prime minister of Canada in the next couple of years. Either Harper will make a wreck of his own forecasts, or Ignatieff will make a wreck of Harper’s forecasts, and Harper will get to blame him and proclaim that he would have done so much better. Maybe they can just give the job to Layton for a couple of years.

SHEEPISH UPDATE: One thing Machiavelli would almost certainly have done is spell his name properly. Sigh.

He can’t swim nude: too many layers to take off

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 4:50 AM - 50 Comments

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Stephen Harper told an audience in Brampton last week, “in times like these I’m reminded of a quote by investor Warren Buffett.”

By “times like these,” of course, the Prime Minister meant “times when my staff gives me a handy Warren Buffett quote for the big speech.”

Most people who found themselves quoting Warren Buffett last week were quoting the bit where he told a television interviewer the economy has “fallen off a cliff,” but apparently that was a bit gloomy for Harper’s purposes. So here’s what the Prime Minister’s people dug up instead. Buffett “once said, ‘It is only when the tide goes out that you know who was swimming naked,’ ” Harper said. “The global economic crisis has revealed quite a few skinny dippers but Canada is not one of them.”

Continue…

Tibet Rally on Hill: MPs, an athlete and serious nails

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 2:38 AM - 0 Comments

A large gathering of Tibetans and their supporters arrived on Parliament Hill to mark the 50^th anniversary of the Tibetans revolt against China’s invasion that resulted in the Dalai Lama fleeing to India into exile.

Former National rower David Kay spoke at the rally. He decided to cycle across Canada in an attempt to raise awareness about Tibet before the Olympics in Beijing last summer. He was upset more athletes did not speak up about China’s spotty human rights record.

Other speakers included Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler.

Continue…

FWIW

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 11:43 PM - 28 Comments

Biography of Marc Garneau (link — opens a .pdf):

Born in February 1949 in Quebec City, Canada. He received his early education in Quebec City and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu in Quebec and in London, England. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Physics from the Royal Military College of Kingston in 1970, and a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, England, in 1973. He attended the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College of Toronto in 1982-1983.

Marc Garneau was a Combat Systems Engineer in HMCS Algonquin from 1974-76. While serving as an instructor in naval weapon systems at the Canadian Forces Fleet School in Halifax, 1976-77, he designed a simulator for use in training weapons officers in the use of missile systems aboard Tribal class destroyers. He served as Project Engineer in naval weapon systems in Ottawa from 1977 to 1980. He returned to Halifax with the Naval Engineering Unit, which troubleshoots and performs trials on ship-fitted equipment, and helped develop an aircraft-towed target system for the scoring of naval gunnery accuracy. Promoted to Commander in 1982 while at Staff College, he was transferred to Ottawa in 1983 and became design authority for naval communications and electronic warfare equipment and systems. In January 1986, he was promoted to Captain. He retired from the Navy in 1989. He is one of six Canadian astronauts selected in December 1983. He was seconded to the Canadian Astronaut Program from the Department of National Defence in February 1984 to begin astronaut training. He became the first Canadian astronaut to fly in space as a Payload Specialist on Shuttle Mission 41-G in October 1984. He was named Deputy Director of the Canadian Astronaut Program in 1989, providing technical and program support in the preparation of experiments to fly during future Canadian missions. He was selected for Mission Specialist training in July 1992.

Marc Garneau reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1992. He completed a one-year training and evaluation program to be qualified for flight assignment as a Mission Specialist. He initially worked on technical issues for the Astronaut Office Robotics Integration Team and subsequently served as Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) in Mission Control during Shuttle flights. A veteran of three space flights (STS-41G in 1984, STS-77 in 1996 and STS-97 in 2000), Marc Garneau has logged over 677 hours in space.

In February 2001, Marc Garneau was appointed Executive Vice President, Canadian Space Agency. He was subsequently appointed President of the Canadian Space Agency, effective November 22, 2001.

Honorary Fellow of the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute. Member of the Association of Professional Engineers of Nova Scotia, and the Navy League of Canada. He was named Honorary Member of the Canadian Society of Aviation Medicine in 1988 and a Member of the International Academy of Astronautics in 2002. Marc Garneau is the National Honourary Patron of Hope Air and Project North Star and the President of the Board of the McGill Chamber Orchestra.

He was promoted Companion of the Order of Canada in 2003, having been appointed as an Officer in 1984. Named Chancellor of Carleton University (2003). Awarded a Doctor of Science degree, honoris causa, by York University (2002) and the University of Lethbridge (2001). Recipient of the Prix Montfort en sciences (2003); Golden Jubilee Medal of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (2002); NASA Exceptional Service Medal (1997); NASA Space Flight Medals (1984, 1996, 2000); the Canadian Decoration (military) (1980); the Athlone Fellowship (1970); and the National Research Council (NRC) Bursary (1972). Awarded Honorary Doctorates by the University of Ottawa (1997); the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean (1990); the Université Laval, Québec (1985); the Technical University of Nova Scotia (1985); and the Royal Military College, Kingston, Ontario (1985). Co-recipient of the F.W. (Casey) Baldwin Award in 1985 for the best paper in the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Journal.

Do the evolution (V)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 11:21 PM - 21 Comments

Gary Goodyear gets some support from, well, pretty much the last person you’d expect to be defending him at this moment.

On Tuesday, Liberal science critic Marc Garneau said that believing in evolution is not a job requirement for the science minister.

“It is a personal matter. It is a matter of faith.… I don’t think it prevents someone from being a good minister,” said the former astronaut, who has been a vocal critic of the government for its cuts to the three granting councils that fund university-based research in Canada.

It is perhaps time to wonder whether this isn’t all just an elaborate production to punk Dan Gardner.

Haiti Fact of the Day

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 11:19 PM - 3 Comments

I knew Haiti was in bad shape, but this still surprised me:

OTTAWA — The world economic crisis has battered Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, causing a 10 per cent drop in the amount of money Haitians living abroad are sending back to their Caribbean homeland…  A 2006 report by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) found Haitians living abroad sent back $1.65 billion to their homeland — a figure that was double Haiti’s national budget and almost one-third of its gross domestic product. 

 

Here’s a story from last year about Haitians eating mud cookies.

Hey look

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 11:15 PM - 1 Comment

John Geddes’ profile of Mark Carney.

Here and there

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 11:06 PM - 4 Comments

George W. Bush comes to Calgary to defend his war in Iraq.

Two MPs go to San Diego to visit with a soldier incarcerated for deserting said war.

George W. on Laura Bush, Putin and getting the Hollywood treatment

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 9:18 PM - 0 Comments

A sampling from the former president’s appearance in Calgary today, which included a post-speech interview with former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna.

On the Hollywood treatment: McKenna wondered whether Bush had seen Will Ferrell’s You’re Welcome America. A Final Night with George W. Bush, a Broadway show that also aired on TV this month. No, said Bush. “I don’t pay attention to Hollywood.” Had he seen any of the films made about him (W., by Oliver Stone, likely uppermost in McKenna’s mind)? “No.”

On Vladimir Putin: “He’s a tough dude. I liked him.” He added: “He and I saw eye to eye on Iran.”

On Laura Bush: After arriving home in Texas, Bush said to his wife: “Baby, free at last.” Replied Laura: “You’re free to take out the trash. Just consider it your new domestic policy agenda.”

ALSO AT MACLEANS.CA: George W. speaks in Calgary: Defends his decision to invade Iraq. Offers Obama help, if he wants it. And “They got the shoe cannon, eh“: While awaiting George W.’s arrival, two worlds collide on Calgary’s Stephen Avenue.

On his mother Barbara’s recent heart surgery: When his departure from the White House neared, Bush called his mother and told her he would soon be home—that it would be like old times. “She immediately checked herself into hospital for open-heart surgery,” said Bush. He maintains, however, that Barbara is a “tough old bird.” Barbara has told him she doesn’t like this expression. “Mom, it’s a sign of affection,” he told her. “Plus you are.” Considering his emotional reaction to his wife’s illness, George H.W. may be less so. “It is clear to me that he can’t live without her,” George W. said.

On the team of economists that have worked on the recession: Bush recalled how former treasury secretary Hank Paulson (“who I came to admire”) and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke (“a good solid guy”) last year marched into the Roosevelt Room and declared: “Mr. President, the situation is dire … could be easily as great as the Great Depression.” Hmmm, thought Bush. “A heck of a way to end the presidency.” He added: “Wall Street got drunk and we got the hangover … I didn’t like it.” Bush said he was reluctant to say I told you so, but: “I actually tried to regulate Fannie and Freddie,” he said, referring to the government-sponsored mortgage enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, because, he said, they were over-leveraged. Bush reminded the audience he’s no economist (he was a history major and likes to tell C students: “You too can be president”). But when Bernanke says–as he did on 60 Minutes last week–that he predicts growth in the fourth quarter, “I trust him,” says Bush. “I don’t know what he’s basing that on.” But: “I like him.”
McKenna later wondered whether Canada’s banks hadn’t got it right. “Seems like your banking system was a lot more sober than ours,” Bush replied. Drink, offered McKenna, “but not the whole bottle.” “Not the whole crate,” said Bush.

On former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi:
After Sept. 11, he said, then-PM Junichiro Koizumi called Bush in the Oval Office. “I’m with you, brother,” Bush recalled Koizumi saying. It is the kind of conversation, between a U.S. and Japanese leader, that 50 years ago would have been unthinkable, Bush said. “Koizumi, by the way, is a piece of work,” he added. Taking the Japanese PM to Graceland and seeing him sing Elvis Presley’s Hound Dog “was one of the great highlights of my presidency.”

On picking Calgary as his first stop on the speaking circuit:
McKenna noted that Tony Blair also picked Calgary as the site of his first Canadian speech after leaving government in 2007. “In Blair’s case he wanted to,” replied Bush. “In my case it was my only choice.”

"They got the shoe cannon, eh"

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 8:11 PM - 0 Comments

Above, in the windows overlooking Stephen Avenue, were the pinstriped class biding their time before heading in to hear former president George W. Bush give his first speech since leaving office. Below, on Stephen Avenue, was the motley crew of protestors, about 200 of them, assembled, placarded, some even hooded, to let Bush know he wasn’t wanted in Calgary.

One storey and the glass of the Calgary Telus Convention Centre separated the two groups, yet they were one in their pursuit of the juvenile. Continue…

George W. speaks in Calgary

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 6:55 PM - 12 Comments

In an at times passionate, occasionally combative and frequently funny speech before a packed Calgary audience, George W. Bush addressed the issues of his controversial presidency and the challenges facing the world in its aftermath for the first time since leaving office in January.

“This is my maiden voyage,” Bush said, after a standing ovation had
subsided, at the outset of his speech today at the Calgary Telus Convention Centre.

But the talk ultimately plumbed the rhetoric of his presidency, as Bush urged his listeners not to forget the “murderers” who struck the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001 and who could do so again. “We must keep them on the run and put them to justice wherever they light,” he said.

ALSO AT MACLEANS.CA: “They got the shoe cannon, eh”: While awaiting George W.’s arrival, two worlds collide on Calgary’s Stephen Avenue. And why Calgary was the first stop on his speaking tour.

The address, followed by a relaxed on-stage conversation with former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna, who briefly served as Canadian ambassador in Washington, D.C. during the Bush presidency, was wide-ranging and anecdote-filled but dwelt for the most part on the impacts on his presidency of terror and the 9/11 attacks.

Arguing that the world is now in the grips of “one of the great ideological battles of all time” between the forces of freedom on the one hand, and freedom-hating extremists on the other, Bush called upon his audience “to never forget.” He added: “I believe freedom is a gift from a universal god.”

He delivered the address before a $400-a-plate luncheon audience of business people who had braved the heckles of boisterous anti-Bush protestors outside, then the indignities of an intimate frisk by security guards inside, to hear the former president.

Though Bush did not refer to the protestors assembled outside with signs and a pile of shoes, a nod to the Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, last week sentenced to three years for the caper, Bush did note that some of  his decisions over eight years as president had damaged his initial popularity. “Popularity is nothing,” he said at one point. “It’s like the wind—it comes and goes.”

He recalled the day that began his “war on terror” with vivid detail. “I was deeply affected by Sept. 11,” he said, describing how he was enveloped on Air Force One by “a fog of war—no one was certain what was going on.” Bush recalled how he had located his wife, Laura, in D.C., and his parents, former president George H.W. Bush and his mother Barbara, in Minneapolis. “They grounded our plane,” she told him.

Defending his decision to invade Iraq in 2003, Bush argued the Middle East is today a safer region than it would have been had Saddam Hussein remained in power to compete with Iran for nuclear supremacy. “The Iraqi people are better off without Saddam Hussain in power, no ifs, ands or buts,” he said.

He urged the international community to squelch the threat of a nuclear Iran by pursuing tougher sanctions and by using the new democracy of Iraq to model a compelling alternative for Iran’s people. Bush also appealed to Canadians to support the Canadian government’s efforts in Afghanistan.

But Bush’s speech also dealt with the challenges of the current economic disaster and President Barack Obama’s efforts to diffuse them. “I want the president to succeed,” Bush said in a thinly veiled reference to conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, who has very publicly hoped for Obama’s policies to fail. “I love my country more than I love politics,” added Bush.

“He was not my first choice for president,” Bush said of Obama, “but when he won I thought it was good for America.” He described being moved when seeing crowds of African Americans on television weeping at Obama’s presidential victory.

Launching into comments focused on the current economic turmoil, Bush cautioned that they should not be seen as criticisms of Obama’s policies. “He deserves my silence and if he wants my help he can pick up the phone and call me,” said Bush. “I think it’s time to tap dance off the stage.” But in a broad hint that Obama’s policies might stifle what Bush characterized as the entrepreneurial spirit of the U.S., Bush cautioned that America should not “substitute government for the marketplace” and disparaged the notion of letting “a bunch of elites sit around and decide” how to spend money.

He warned equally of the dangers of a new protectionist strain in American politics, citing the $1.5 billion in daily trade between the U.S. and Canada. “I’m a free trader to the core,” he said.

Addressing the energy sector that is the heart of Calgary’s business community, Bush argued that technologies that stem the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere could only be developed in a time of prosperity—one that depends on the exploitation of hydrocarbon resources in the U.S. and Canada. “In order to be prosperous, we need to use all the resources at our disposal,” he said.

Though he acknowledged that “global warming,” as he put it, “could” pose a major threat to the planet, Bush ridiculed the notion of the U.S. leaving aside Canada’s oil and gas resources. “I want to thank Canada for being a reliable source of energy,” he said. Try having Venezuela as our major source, he suggested, a barb directed at Hugo Chávez–”and see how that goes.”

There was also levity. Bush recalled the 19th century duel between a former secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton—who died as a result—and Aaron Burr, the sitting vice president. “At least when my vice president shot somebody, it was by accident,” Bush said.

And he told a story he said he had recently related to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, about introducing Vladimir Putin to his Scottish Terrier, Barney. To Putin, the dog “looked like a Monopoly piece.” Later, in Russia, Putin asked Bush if he would like to meet his dog. “So out bounds this huge hound,” said Bush. Putin looked at Bush: “Faster, stronger and bigger than Barney,” Putin, then president of Russia, told Bush.

Quipped Harper when Bush finished the story: “At least he only showed you his dog.”