A Scene From a Tea Party Protest Of Days Gone By

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 10:30 AM - 15 Comments

I actually feel guilty for making fun of these things. Or at least I start to feel guilty and then I read things like this. It’s true that many of the tea-party protestors were never interested in protesting spending or deficits before, but “Government spending” is, in and of itself, not a good or bad thing, any more than any other kind of spending. (Spending can be bad, but it can be good. Sometimes you make back what you spend.) It’s not about spending, it’s what you spend it on. It’s not surprising that conservatives are protesting the spending priorities of a Democratic administration.

But what makes these protests so confused and confusing is that they are being sold as protests against “spending,” in the generic sense, when they clearly are not about “spending,” they’re about what is being spent on. (Remember, conservatives wanted to replace the stimulus package with a package of tax cuts, which would cost the government as much or more. So the issue is not deficit spending; it’s that different sides have different ideas about how to run up a deficit during a recession.) For Fox News, this is a natural strategy: the network is trying to build a counter-cultural image to appeal to viewers who hate liberals but aren’t particularly proud of being Republicans. Focusing on buzzwords like “spending” and personalities like G. Beck helps to build that image. What they wind up doing is stirring up interests in protests that don’t seem to be against anything in particular, but that just helps re-enforce the network as the place to go if you’re upset and don’t really know why.

I do think that the message from the Tea Parties will gain traction, even though it makes no sense. Or maybe because of it. The other cable networks love the idea that “spending” is an all-purpose negative buzz word, at least when applied to domestic spending; they loved it during the Bush administration, they loved it during the Clinton administration, they always love it. The least-fair criticism of Bush was that he was a “big spender” on domestic programs (again, it doesn’t make sense to criticize “spending” independent of what the money is paying for), so it’s an all-purpose talking point that you’re going to be hearing a lot more of.

Principal resigns over anthem fight

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 6 Comments

Earlier this year, when Canadians across the country heard about principal Erik Millett’s decision to stop the daily singing of O Canada at his New Brunswick school, he became the object of national scorn. Now, Millett, who had been on medical leave from Belleisle Elementary School since the controversy reached its crescendo in early February, has resigned. According to friend Richard Blaquiere, the constant phone calls, emails and death threats were “just too hard on him.” Adds Blaquiere: “He felt that his position was now untenable in that community.”

The new anthem policy had been in place for more than a year when parent Susan Boyd went public in January with her outrage over it. But Millett was soon facing derision from across the country, including public complaints from MPs. During the height of the debate, Millett, an environmentalist and former Green party candidate, argued that the national anthem wasn’t sung at other schools in the province, and that his staff didn’t ban the anthem outright—they just opted to confine it to special occasions and assemblies after parents cited a religious conflict. But, in February, the district ordered that the daily anthem singing be reinstated, and the education minister vowed to make it mandatory. Continue…

Gay seniors get a place to call home

By Cathy Gulli - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 5 Comments

Pegged as Canada’s first residence for gay male seniors, Urban Home Rachel is on the outskirts of the city’s gay village. Demand has been so formidable that the developers are days away from closing a deal to immediately open a second gay old folks’ home.

“There’s a crying need,” says Suzanne Bienvenu, marketing and communications director for the Urban Home-Maison Urbaine project. Gays over age 60 “had a lot of trouble coming out of the closet,” she explains, “and then when they went to traditional residences, they faced tremendous discrimination. For them, it was like going back into the closet.” With the 50 apartments in Rachel oversold (leases start at $1,300 a month), Bienvenu and developer André Saindon believe the additional 135-unit building will ?ll up fast.

Continue…

A practical proposal to crack down on pirates off Somalia

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 9:55 AM - 4 Comments

Just in time to catch the attention of Americans gripped by the dramatic rescue of Captain Richard Phillips by the U.S. Navy, the Danish Institute for Military Studies is soon to release a report calling for a regional coast guard to patrol the coast of Somalia. It proposes that Kenya, Tanzania, Eritrea, Djibouti, Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia all take part. Sounds more take-charge than Hillary Clinton’s musings about seizing pirates’ financial assets.

Spiegle.de

State of emergency declared in Winnipeg

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 9:41 AM - 0 Comments

The on-again, off-again story of potentially massive flooding in Manitoba is definitely back on. As the Red River continues to rise, Winnipeg’s mayor, Sam Katz, signed an order declaring a state of emergency earlier today.

Winnipeg Free Press

A Canadian lamb makes history

By Pamela Cuthbert - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 9:20 AM - 2 Comments

Sometimes, sheep don’t follow, they lead. Take Quebec’s Charlevoix lamb, which this spring becomes the first food product in North America to be legally protected based on its region of origin (much the same as champagne wine is exclusively made from grapes grown in the Champagne region of France). Under the Quebec-government-regulated label of IGP (indication géographique protégée), it now joins a worldwide groaning board of exceptional goods, such as Italy’s Parma ham and France’s Roquefort cheese.

Given the iconic Canadian foods that could fit the bill—wild rice, maple syrup, even wild salmon—how did this niche product, albeit hailed for its lean and delicate flavour, manage to gain this precedent-setting status? The catalyst came some 15 years ago when a Parisian restaurateur had the gall to put what he called Charlevoix lamb on the menu, recalls Quebec farmer Lucie Cadieux of Ferme Éboulmontaise. The single most prominent promoter of this IGP project, Cadieux, who raises Charlevoix lamb, had heard of restaurants in Montreal and Toronto making the same claim. “But they weren’t getting it from here.”

Continue…

Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of April 14th, 2009)

Fiction
1 THE WINTER VAULT by Anne Michaels 1 (3)
2 THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows 2 (13)
3 THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE by Alan Bradley 4 (9)
4 GOING ASHORE by Mavis Gallant (1)
5 EVERY MAN DIES ALONE by Hans Fallada 5 (3)
6 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson 6 (28)
7 THE KINDLY ONES by Jonathan Littell 3 (7)
8 LA’S ORCHESTRA SAVES THE WORLD by Alexander McCall Smith 9 (3)
9 LOWBOY by John Wray (1)
10 THE BELLINI CARD by Jason Goodwin (1)

Non-fiction
1 THE CELLO SUITES by Eric Siblin 1 (5)
2 NOT YET by Wayson Choy 9 (3)
3 ALWAYS LOOKING UP by Michael Fox 4 (2)
4 OUTLIERS by Malcolm Gladwell 2 (20)
5 A LION CALLED CHRISTIAN by Anthony Bourke and John Rendall (1)
6 STEPHEN LEACOCK by Margaret MacMillan (1)
7 FOOD MATTERS by Mark Bittman (1)
8 ANGELS AND AGES by Adam Gopnik 7 (10)
9 HOUSE OF CARDS by Wiliam Cohan 5 (4)
10 SHAKEDOWN by Ezra Levant 10 (2)

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Maclean's Interview: Robert Shiller

By Kenneth Whyte - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 2 Comments

Robert Shiller is a professor of economics at Yale and the bestselling author of Irrational Exuberance, in which he predicted the collapse of the stock market. He was also one of the first economists to accurately foresee the devastation that would follow the subprime mortgage crisis. In Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism, written with George Akerlof, he argues that today’s markets are as much driven by human psychology as by finance. Shiller uses the idea of “animal spirits,” a term invented by revolutionary economist John Maynard Keynes, to describe the powerful effect of human emotion and confidence on the economy, and to push for more government intervention and bigger stimulus packages in the U.S. and Canada.

Q: Looking at what’s going on out in the world right now, with all the greed giving way to fear, are we surprised at the notion that the economy’s being driven by “animal spirits”? We can see it all around us, can’t we?

A: Depends on who you talk to. There is definitely an element of human thinking that’s resistant to that idea, especially in the economics profession, because the history of economic thought has tended to emphasize the rational side of human behaviour and it tends not to be aware of or even think about social psychology and culture. Economists’ favourite thing is to talk about the central bank and that’s it, that’s what they’re expert on, so that’s what they think about. The idea that there’s ever some sociological change, a shift in the culture that’s driving the market, is just foreign to economists’ thinking, so they miss it.

Continue…

Girls and gangland

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 8:20 AM - 1 Comment

First came the shooting death of Brianna Kinnear. On Feb. 3, the pretty, blond, 22-year-old crack-cocaine dealer was found slumped over the steering wheel of a black Dodge pickup in Coquitlam, B.C. It had “all the hallmarks of a targeted murder,” say police. So did the shooting death, two weeks later, of Nikkie Alemy, 23, a young mom with ties to the UN gang, who was gunned down in a silver Cadillac in a busy Surrey intersection. Then, last month, 36-year-old Laura Lamoureux was found shot to death in a Langley gutter. Known to police for her involvement in the street-level drug trade, her death, too, bore the “signature” of a “targeted murder,” say police.

Their murders are “precedent-setting,” says gang expert Cathy Prowse: in 15 years of research, the University of Calgary criminal sociologist has never seen a gang-related, targeted shooting of a woman in Canada. Until now, “the code of the street said you didn’t take out women,” says Prowse. But that code runs two ways: women have also avoided involvement in drug distribution—and stepping on the “economic turf of rivals.” Now, with so many young women “getting caught up in the game,” says Charysse, 21, who exited a Scarborough, Ont., gang last year, “the code” no longer applies.

Continue…

Aim high, Eternal President! We’ll be watching.

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 3 Comments

North Korea continues to insist that its rocket launch went off without a hitch, and that its high-tech satellite is in orbit around the planet transmitting “patriotic melodies [and] important data.” Meanwhile, the rest of the world continues to insist that the satellite crashed into the Pacific and is, at best, in orbit around a cod.

What’s beyond debate is that after almost three years of laying low, Kim Jong Il—the dictator best known as Dear Leader, the Sun of the 21st Century and, briefly during a 2004 Vegas jaunt, Mr. Britney Spears—is back. None of us is certain why this real-life Bond villain vanished (maybe he went backpacking around Europe to find himself and/or some weaponized plutonium?), but the Eternal President has re-emerged with his drive, his evil cackle and his megalomania intact.

Like all self-respecting movie villains, Kim Jong Il has returned to the limelight with a completely different scheme for world domination. Back in 2006, he set off a couple of nuclear blasts—an audacious bid for regional supremacy that petered out when military analysts mocked the size of his . . . uh . . . weapon—calling it “tiny,” “pretty small” and “insignificant.” (Ease up! He may be an authoritarian nutbar, but that doesn’t mean he’s not sensitive about it.)

Continue…

Is it just me, or is it starting to feel like we've heard this story before?

By kadyomalley - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 7:53 AM - 52 Comments

So.  According to Richard Wolson, he’s due to finish up his questioning of the surprisingly resilient Karlheinz Schreiber sometime this morning, at which point he’ll hand the floor over to Team Mulroney lead counsel Guy Pratte, who will definitely have his work cut out for him, make no mistake. Unlike Wolson, he does have a dog in this hunt — in this case, a very specific narrative that has to emerge from the testimony, as far as the relationship between his client and the witness. Which means that he can’t just spend the whole time picking holes in Schreiber’s version of events.

It’s important to keep in mind that this isn’t game theory in action; even with the two main players diametrically at odds over what went down, it would be entirely possible for the judge to find both accounts wanting.

Given that crucial consideration, simply destroying Schreiber on the stand isn’t enough. It’s possible, of course, that Pratte will resist the urge to piggyback on Wolson’s meticulous nitpicking of inconsistencies in the various stories Schreiber has told over the years and move swiftly through a very short, targeted line of questioning, simply to get him off the stand, which will allow the inquiry to move on to less wildly unpredictable witnesses.

9:13:53 AM
Another day, another exercise in artfulling dodging the array of morning stand-ups in the hall outside the Victoria room. The sun is bright and the air is sweet, but despite the lure of the great outdoors, the powers that be at the commission still seem unmoved by ITQ’s request to try holding the hearings outside on the lawn. Don’t worry, she’ll keep up her campaign — after all, when it comes to getting to the bottom of murky allegations and shadowy innuendo, sunshine *is* the best disinfectant, right?

All eyes – well, all of ITQ’s eyes, which sadly number just two – are on Guy Pratte this morning, since he’ll soon take over the lectern from Wolson. So far, he seems calm, but still vibrating at a high frequency. He practically hums, even as he sits and waits.

9:32:34 AM
All rise!

Continue…

Harper hires Americans to help him "brand" Canada, presumably as a nation incapable of branding itself

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 6:18 AM - 26 Comments

Ever the generous neighbour, Stephen Harper is unveiling his own little U.S. stimulus package. Our Prime Minister has retained two prominent American consultants to help him get noticed in the United States.

What – the charismatic personality wasn’t doing the trick on its own?

Bottom line: there shall be no recession in the households of former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer and former Clinton mouthpiece Mike McCurry. How much are these guys getting paid to help our PM line up interviews in the U.S. media? Alas, the Harper government won’t say, citing the provisions of the We Didn’t Tell You How Much the Psychic Hairstylist Makes – You Think We’re Going to Tell You This?

But really, you can’t put a price on the PR value of having your Prime Minister go on U.S. cable news and repeatedly rub it in the faces of Americans that, compared to our own, their bankers are laughably inept and spazzy.

“Canada has a very good story to tell, and it won’t tell itself,” Kory Teneycke, Harper’s spokesman, told Canwest in an effort to explain the McCurry-Fleischer hires. At first I almost bought this line, but then it occurred to me Continue…

PMO Employee of the Month

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 11:44 PM - 17 Comments

Ari Fleischer.

John McCallum's secret shame

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 11:27 PM - 39 Comments

He drives a foreign automobile.

Conquest Vacations ceases operations

By Bruce Parkinson, Takeoffeh.com - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 6:09 PM - 2 Comments

One of Canada’s largest and oldest tour operators, Conquest Vacations Inc. has announced the cessation of its tour operations effective immediately. The company has been in business for 37 years.

In a statement posted on its website, Conquest says it regrets the inconvenience caused to passengers due to cessation of its operations. It blames the closure on “overcapacity, price wars among the major tour operators, unrealistic and unreasonable demands by the credit card processing companies, credit squeeze and recent economic hardship.”

No further Conquest Vacations departures will take place, effective immediately.

Conquest was founded in 1972 by Robbie Goldberg, who sold the private firm in 2007.

Conquest is referring consumers who paid for trips with credit cards to their financial institutions, while those who booked and paid using cash or cheque through a travel agency are being referred back to the agency for assistance in filing a refund claim.

TakeOffeh.com has received the following information from CanJet Airlines who have announced that they will operate some return flights for Conquest customers who are currently in or near Cancun, Mexico or Varadero, Cuba and originally arrived on a CanJet flight as follows:

Thu Apr 16 C6 675 Dep 1350 Cancun – Edmonton

Fri Apr 17 C6 683 Dep 1710 Cancun – Edmonton

Sun Apr 19 C6 677 Dep 1455 Cancun – Calgary

Mon Apr 20 C6 671 Dep 2025 Varadero – Calgary – Edmonton

Tue Apr 21 C6 673 Dep 1650 Cancun – Calgary – Edmonton

Air Canada Vacations has advised TakeOffeh.com that they will return all Conquest Vacations passengers who were booked on Air Canada flights and are currently at destination on their homeward bound flights as scheduled and that Air Canada Vacations is making every effort to provide travel professionals with assistance in accommodating customers with their travel plans.

TICO (Travel Industry Council of Ontario) has provided TakeOffeh.com the following information for the assistance of Ontario based customers who may have purchased future trips offered by Conquest Vacations.

• Consumers who purchased their travel services from an Ontario registered travel retailer (travel agency) and paid by credit card and the payment was processed by Conquest Vacations (Conquest Vacations appears on their credit card statement) may contact their credit card company and request a chargeback. Should a consumer be unsuccessful in obtaining a chargeback from their credit card company, they may request a claim form from TICO against the Compensation Fund.
• Consumers who paid by credit card to a registered Ontario travel agency and the travel agency processed the payment (Name of travel agency appears on the credit card statement) should contact their travel agent or request a claim form from TICO against the Compensation Fund.
• Those consumers who paid by cash or cheque to an Ontario travel retailer, may request a claim form from TICO against the Compensation Fund. Please note that there is a legislated 6 month claim filing deadline. Claim forms may be requested by calling 1-888-451-8426 or by emailing a request to tico@tico.ca

Further information will be made availabe on how Conquest passengers can receive refunds or make a claim on Conquest’s website at www.conquestvacations.com.

When Writing Teams Break Up

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 5:05 PM - 0 Comments

One thing about the new animated series Sit Down, Shut Up (premiering this Sunday) that may be of interest to Simpsons geeks is that this show marks the breakup of one of the best-loved writing/producing teams from the show. It was supposed to be produced by Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, who wrote many scripts for The Simpsons and ran the show in seasons 7 and 8. (Those are often considered the last of the “classic” seasons; the duo is also well-liked for their articulate, passionate commentaries, where they really seem to understand the show the way fans understand it.) They also created the one-season animated show Mission Hill, which has a deserved cult following as a late-’90s time capsule. But Oakley left Sit Down, Shut Up during pre-production, and Weinstein stayed.

A post about what happens when a writing/producing team breaks up is not really within my jurisdiction; it’s impossible to know what one writer brings to a partnership, so how he will function on his own is known only to the people who work with him. The one thing that is visible to outsiders is that sometimes a team will break up — usually amicably — and the one of the writers will go on to big things while the other doesn’t. Phil Rosenthal of Everybody Loves Raymond was a writer who originally broke in with a partner (Oliver Goldstick) but went on to become a huge success on his own, while the ex-partner did not.

Anyway, back to Josh Weinstein — not to be confused with the guy from Mystery Science Theater – here’s an interview with him in Animation magazine about the new show and its look, in particular its use of live-action backgrounds. The backgrounds are a nod to the fact that this is based on a live-action comedy, but it is actually a technique that goes back a long way; Bob Clampett experimented with it in a few cartoons in 1940, like “Porky’s Pooch.”

Reading comprehension (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 5:01 PM - 13 Comments

Apparently Peter Van Loan suggested to a committee two weeks ago that Michael Ignatieff supports torture. Asked about it today, Ignatieff rebuts. 

“No agency of the federal government should have any truck, trade, traffic, engagement with any form of torture. The critical point for Canada is that we must never use information derived from sources where we believe torture has been applied and the critical point, and we’ve fallen foul of this once before in the Maher Arar issue, we must never send any person, let alone a Canadian national, to a country, in this case it was Syria, where we have reason to believe torture will be applied.”

“It’s a question of our position as a defender of human rights. But it’s also a question of simple prudence: what is extracted by torture is never reliable.”

See previously.

Everything's coming up science, or, it's a Goodyear to talk about policy

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 4:25 PM - 15 Comments

Three related things about science policy and its intersection with politics.

1. Richard Gordon, a co-author of the paper I blogged about this morning, has been emailing his paper to all comers, so I don’t think he’ll mind if I reproduce the nub of his argument here (I’ve taken out assorted attributions to lighten the text a bit):

If more people who are eligible applied, this would either require an increase in the total budget or a decrease in the amount per grant. But either way the country would gain in scientific productivity since more new ideas and discoveries would be pursued. We may get a rough estimate of the number of eligible NSERC applicants by combining the number of faculty members in mathematics, the physical sciences, engineering and applied sciences, agriculture and biological sciences, which came to approximately 9,000 in 2006 in Canada. Of these 9,000 potential grant applicants, only 3,258 applied to NSERC in 2006. If all of them were given baseline grants of $30,000 per year, the cost would be $270 million per year, or 11% of the Federal research budget. As the present NSERC budget for Discovery Grants is $318.4 million, not counting special programs, baseline grants for all is an achievable goal, and in fact could even be raised to $35,000 per year. We suggest that the best policy is to support all of the eligible faculty members, who ask for funds, with baseline grants. All of these people have passed hurdles of hiring, promotion, and tenure hearings. We claim that there are no effective criteria that will distinguish who will produce important and lasting research. Continue…

Michael Ignatieff's coronation countdown

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 4:20 PM - 0 Comments

Capital Diarist Mitchel Raphael digs deep into his photo archives for a retrospective of Michael Ignatieff from the Liberal leadership race in 2006 to his coronation as the official leader later this month in Vancouver.

Click here to start his photo gallery.

Michael Ignatieff's Coronation Countdown — Photo Gallery

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 4:18 PM - 1 Comment

Media studies

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 3:56 PM - 4 Comments

One of the Post’s excitable bloggers repeats Jason Kenney’s suggestion that the guide provided to prospective immigrants says nothing about confederation.

Silly question for a slow news day. At what point does a media outlet—keeping in mind the industry’s twin crises of economy and credibility—have a responsibility to check the minister’s recollection and clarify, if necessary, the facts in question?

‘12 Angry Men’ in the most unlikely of places

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 3:52 PM - 0 Comments

The Wall Street Journal has the story of an unlikely performance of “12 Angry Men”—staged by prisoners at Roumieh, Lebanon’s biggest penitentiary. The Reginald Rose play—about a group of people, each of whom comes to realize what it means to take another person’s life—was originally a U.S. T.V. drama, then a famous 1957 movie. But inmates at Roumieh may understand the plot on a level that most of us probably don’t—many of the performers are themselves living out the consequences of taking another person’s life. The notion that “we’re all complicit in the tragedy because we’re all part of the system,” actually makes some sense in the troubled region, where summary justice by bomb and bullet often comes first, militias and warlords generate crime, and society keeps mum out of fear, writes Melik Kaylan.

Wall Street Journal

Maureen Dowd goes to Google

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 3:47 PM - 4 Comments

Maureen Dowd, distinguished by an often acerbic tone, today visits Google, a company currently engaged in a “battle royal over whether it has the right to profit so profligately from newspaper content at a time when journalism is in such jeopardy.” The AP is threatening legal action against Google, which uses headlines and newspapers stories without permission or sharing a “fair” portion of revenue. But inside the Mountain View, California complex, the New York Times columnist finds an idiot’s paradise, stuffed, as it is, with volleyball courts, ejector seats, wheat-grass shots, framed stuffed-animals, sugar cereal, Haribo Gummi Bear dispensers and heated toilet seats. And, she finds, “the C.E.O. of Google doesn’t look like a Dick Cheney World Domination sort whom we should worry about as Google ogles our houses, our oceans, our foibles, our movements and our tastes.”

New York Times

About those taxes (V)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 3:31 PM - 6 Comments

Michael Ignatieff scrums in Niagara Falls.

“No honest politician faced with an C$80 billion ($66 billion) deficit will take anything off the table because Canadians do not want — they’re allergic to — long-term structural deficits,” the Liberal Party leader told reporters in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

“But I will do anything I can, and any sensible politician will do anything they can, to avoid increasing the tax burden on Canadians, especially now, and hopefully later as well.”