So nice to see you again, Mr. President

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 10:51 AM - 8 Comments

Afghanistan, energy, trade and the economy were on the agenda during the “brief but productive” meeting between the prime minister and the president, CTV News reports. On the economy, cautious optimism was the order of the day for both leaders: President Obama noted that the two agreed that while there are some “signs of stability”, we’re “not out of the woods yet.” Harper agreed, calling the recovery “fragile.” As for the ongoing mission in Afghanistan, the PM came out in favour of the so-called “surge”—the increase in troop strength that Obama has proposed—but was firm that Canada’s military focus will end in 2011.

But forget that 42 minute photo-op in the Oval Office—as far as the Globe and Mail is concerned, any real business to be done during the Prime Minister’s whirlwind American trip will happen behind closed doors with legislators, where Stephen Harper is expected to mount an aggressive campaign against the protectionist provisions known as Buy American. In what is described as “an unusual series of meetings,” the Globe reports that Canada has put an offer on the table that would allow American companies to bid for provincial and municipal contracts—in exchange for a bye on Buy American. To succeed, Harper needs more than Obama on side—he has to gain the “political blessing” of senior Democrats in Congress, including Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. According to Jayson Meyers, who heads up the Association of Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, today’s visit comes at a “crucial” moment in Canada/US trade relations. “It’s clear that the White House is very, very sensitive to what the Congress is saying,” he says—particularly given the ongoing fracas over the Obama health care proposals. “I don’t think we want our Buy American concerns to threaten to become a divisive issue among the Democratic members of Congress.”

CTV

The Globe and Mail

Crowdsourced punditry – hung parliament edition

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 10:28 AM - 41 Comments

Is Canada broken? Observing that we might be headed for our fourth federal election in under six years, John Ibbitson wondered if this instability is the sort of dysfunction that could “break a country.” In today’s Globe, Gordon Gibson says that parliament is “poisoned” and we need an election, followed by a majority, to set things aright.

One under-analysed angle to all this is that the situation is not entirely unprecedented. We had federal elections in 1957, 58, 62, 63, 65, and 68 — which means that there were two spans in which we had four elections in six years.

The current near-consensus on that period is that it was an effective and productive time for the federal government and that all the parties were able to make parliament work in a way they can’t today. But I’d be delighted in knowing what the pundits were saying about parliament at the time, whether the instability was seen as a temporary abberation, or whether there were concerns that parliament had become permanently hung. Any historically-minded political scientists out there?

The secret to happiness?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 10:23 AM - 0 Comments

Exercising in groups seems to increase the level of endorphin hormones naturally released during exertion, causing feelings of happiness, a study suggests. According to research from Oxford University, which looked at 12 rowers after a taxing workout on a rowing machine, those who trained alone had a lower tolerance for pain than those who worked out in groups (endorphins protect against pain). After 45 minutes of rowing either separately or in a team of six, researchers measured rowers’ pain thresholds by how long they could tolerate an inflated blood pressure cuff on the arm. Endorphin release might occur during a range of communal activities, from religion and dancing to laughing, the authors suggest. “The exact features of group activity that generate this effect are unknown, but this study contributes to a growing body of evidence suggesting that synchronised, coordinated physical activity may be responsible,” lead author Emma Cohen told the BBC.

BBC News

UPDATED: What did ITQ tell you about breaking out those party hats?

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 9:36 AM - 77 Comments

And how you might not want to do it just yet? Well, she’s sticking by that caveat, because at the moment, the short-to-medium-give-or-take-a-few-weeks fate of the 40th Parliament rests in the increasingly clammy hands of NDP Leader Jack Layton, and in the fine print of the employment insurance reform package that he was so quick to call a “very serious proposition” earlier this week, and which the government is planning to table later today.

Continue…

Coyne. Wells. The Bout to Knock the Other Guy Out (With Logic!)

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 5:09 AM - 30 Comments

If you’re a fan of democracy or yellow, you’ve probably noticed the advertisements at Macleans.ca alerting you to next week’s Coyne v. Wells live event, which is being touted alternately as a “political showdown” and a “political roadshow.” (We use both terms to describe it because we forget which one implies more hair-pulling.)

Why is Coyne versusing Wells? Because OUR DEMOCRACY IS BROKEN and someone needs to muse about talking about pondering the topic of speculating what to do about thinking about fixing it. I mean, come on: Our national beard isn’t going to thoughtfully stroke itself.

I know what you’re thinking: Return our BROKEN DEMOCRACY to the manufacturer. Get STORE CREDIT. Come home with a nice new Continue…

The political sewer pipe from Carleton County

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 1:59 AM - 17 Comments

In light of Republican Joe Wilson’s shoutiness during the President’s address to Congress last week, U.S. legislators have dusted off ye olde Section 370 of the House Rules and Manual to review the precedent. Turns out you can’t call the President a “liar.” But you can refer to his government as “something hated” and/or his message as a “disgrace to the country.”

Likewise, the Speaker of the House of Commons has fairly wide latitude to censure members for overly hostile language. Indeed, at least on paper, “remarks directed specifically at another Member that question that Member’s integrity, honesty or character, are not in order.”

By recent standards this has generally meant that you cannot directly accuse another member of lying. I seem to recall a discussion at some point over the last year as to whether it was improper to call someone a hypocrite, but permissible to suggest that someone’s actions were hypocritical. Though perhaps I hallucinated that.

Various lists are available—see here and here—of specific phrases that have been ruled out of order. It is to our eternal loss that “dim-witted saboteur” and “inspired by forty-rod whiskey” have been removed from the official lexicon.

Janet Napolitano, secretly Canadian

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 11:37 PM - 17 Comments

Mark Holland, April 23. Mr. Speaker, while the minister is in denial, the homeland secretary is making quotes like this, “To the extent that terrorists have come into our country…it’s been across the Canadian border.” Does the public safety minister think this statement is acceptable, that we should just leave it out there, that terrorists come from Canada? Does he realize that such myths cost Canadian jobs and that in a tough economy we cannot afford to have him sitting on the sidelines with his fingers in his ears? He should stand up, speak for Canada, protect Canadian jobs, and confront this appalling lack of knowledge.

Janet Napolitano, May 27. Let me say once again, we know and I know that 9/11 terrorists did not cross the Canadian border.  I regret that the Canadian media only seems to hear an early misstatement by me to that effect.  So let me be perfectly clear: we know that.

Canadian Press, tonight. In the Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey, conducted this summer in the United States and Canada, 29 per cent of Canadian respondents said they believed some of the hijackers accessed the U.S. through Canada eight years ago. Only 19 per cent of American respondents agreed.

Dan Brown Day

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 8:21 PM - 8 Comments

Dan Brown Day, Sept .15, 2009, dawned as auspiciously as anyone—fan, critic, quasi-disinterested cultural observer—could have hoped. The Lost Symbol finally rolled into bookshops (as well as some slightly less standard places), and everyone seemed to find something to enjoy. Brown himself, in the manner of those fortunate authors whose names appear on book jackets in letters larger than those of the title, has apparently gone all meta on us. In the most eagerly anticipated novel since Harry Potter VII, he has his hero Robert Langdon meet a female character who comments on Langdon’s scholarly exposé of the hidden codes embedded in Leonardo da Vinci’s art: “You do enjoy putting the fox in the henhouse!” That’s just what an actual female fan said to Brown about The Da Vinci Code novel of the hidden codes embedded in Leonardo da Vinci’s art. Which is to say that words once applied to a supposedly fact-based novel are now applied to a fictional non-fiction account. Deep.

In a more commercial corner of the Brown phenomenon, the price wars have been every bit as absurd as predicted. When the publishing world latches on to a good thing, one of its seemingly irresistible impulses is to sell it at a loss. To be fair though, a new Dan Brown novel simply escapes the category of “book,” and the control of booksellers. It becomes general merchandise. In Britain, a three-way battle between supermarket chains—yes, you read that right—saw the cover price of approximately $35 fall first to $15 at Sainsbury’s, and then  $12.50 at Tesco, before Asda cornered the market at $9, even as it loses an estimated $7 on every copy it sells. Soon all three stores will be handing The Lost Symbol out for free with the purchase of a bag of frozen peas. The whole process makes Amazon.com, that renowned bookshop killer, look like a piker with its British price of $17 a copy.

Others jumping on the bandwagon include the U.S. capital’s tourism arm. Unlike Parisian churches hostile to Brown-inspired tourists, Destination DC is looking forward to the rush. It launched a web page even before publication day to help readers plan their trips to places and themes expected to show up in The Lost Symbol, including the Capitol building (on the book cover) and the nearby U.S. Botanic Garden (referenced in a Today Show clue).

Popular media was hard at work leaving no Brownian stone unturned, with one enterprising journalist playing time zones to advantage by calling Masons in Australia, where Sept. 15 began hours before it did in North America. Not that they were burning with Vatican-level rage. To the contrary. Greg Levenston, Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory for the Freemasons—and an evident speed reader—pronounced his group well-pleased. “There is nothing in this book that will offend my organization.” Levinson even echoed the brave lemon-to-lemonade hopes expressed by the Catholic organization Opus Dei after the Code and its albino Opus Dei hit man swept the world. “It does give us the opportunity to open up a bit.” (In fact, local Masons were so excited by the novel’s arrival, the Sydney-based Levinson added, that they’ve started a book club. “Of course the first book we are reviewing is The Lost Symbol, I think it’s a wonderful start.”)

As for the writing itself, always grit between the teeth of Brown’s critics, it may actually have improved some. The Telegraph newspaper’s list of the 20 all-time greatest Brown clunkers includes 16 entries from The Da Vinci Code, including the title: “da Vinci” is a geographical locator, not a surname, and referring to Leonardo by it is the same as asking “What Would Of Nazareth Do? But the newspaper’s list contains only one passage from The Lost Symbol, the first chapter’s, “He was sitting all alone in the enormous cabin of a Falcon 2000EX corporate jet as it bounced its way through turbulence. In the background, the dual Pratt & Whitney engines hummed evenly.” Then again, perhaps the reviewer couldn’t get past Chapter 1, even if it is just four pages long. It’s safe to say that literary critics, who have always treated Brown with vastly more vitriol than they ever spewed on the likes of Robert Ludlum or Danielle Steele in their bestselling days of glory, won’t have to eat their words.

But enough of the fun the carpers are having. What about the Brown nation, has their man delivered what it’s been waiting six years for? On the whole, and bearing in mind that—even in America—George Washington is inherently less interesting than Jesus Christ, yes, he has. Brown has protected, even entrenched his brand. He’s upped the pace from the Code both in storyline (unfolding over 12 hours rather than 24) and in structure: 133 chapters over 507 pages of text delivers a puzzle or suspense moment every 3.81 pages, compared to its predecessor’s relatively sedate one jolt per 4.32 pages.

The same sort of Fact page that provoked much of the controversy swirling around the Code opens The Lost Symbol too (“All rituals, science, artwork, and monuments in this novel are real”); the new killer bears the same highly visible Mark of Cain—one of Brown’s weirder quirks—as the last one (tattoos this time, rather than a melanin shortfall), and Langdon’s new female counterpart is again more than she seems (although Katherine Solomon’s last name is more of a giveaway than Sophie Niveau’s). Most characters still resemble living encyclopedias, constantly spouting enormous amounts of interesting if dumbed-down history; tourist-accessible secrets are hidden in plain view in well-known architecture; ingenious puzzles abound. And the key pieces of the book—the missing mentor, grotesque corpses, hints of hidden sources of “unfathomable power”—look more than a little familiar too. It’s a mix that even Brown’s worst critics have to admit—given the sheer number of imitators who have failed to pull it off since the Code began ruling bestseller lists—that nobody pulls off as appealingly as he does.

The Commons: This is a crucial time, apparently

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 6:15 PM - 61 Comments

The Scene. Having not had the opportunity a day earlier to add his unique voice to the discussion, Conservative Gord Brown stood a few minutes before Question Period with a bulletin.

“Mr. Speaker, throughout my great riding of Leeds-Grenville there are shovels in the ground, there are roads, sewers and other infrastructure works being built and repaired and folks are looking forward to the future. Everywhere I travelled in my riding this summer the people told me they are pleased with the direction our government has taken to help position Canada to face tomorrow,” he reported. “My constituents have one message: ‘Remain focused on the economy and do not have an expensive and unnecessary election.’ ”

No doubt. Our last exercise in electoral representation cost the national treasury some $280 million. Even with a drop in the price of oil, another one might add approximately the same to our already overdrawn account.

Mind you, that surely pales in comparison to the cost of sending several dozen men and women to Ottawa after each election so that they might stand in their places every so often and repeat the rote partisan rhetoric of the day.

Not that one should fuss too much over the numbers. For who among us, really, can put a price on precious democracy?

Continue…

Particularly edifying exchange of the day

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 5:58 PM - 16 Comments

From Question Period this afternoon.

Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North, NDP): “Does the minister realize H1N1 is not a postal code?”

Leona Aglukkaq (Minister of Health, CPC): “Mr. Speaker, the only party that thinks H1N1 is a postal code is that party.”

See Eddie run

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 5:57 PM - 0 Comments

With only five weeks training, the British actor starting running an über-marathon around his country. Six days a week he ran the required 42 km before soaking his body in ice baths to “to stop your legs inflating to twice the size of an elephant” to say nothing of enduring blisters on top of blisters. On Tuesday, he finally stopped the pavement pounding in London’s Trafalgar Square. Why did the eccentric comedian run more than 1,700 km? To raise “billions” for charity.

BBC

Preview of CRTC Coming Attractions

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 5:06 PM - 1 Comment

I’ll have a post up later (one that’s more than three words, I mean), but here’s Will Dixon writing about the upcoming CRTC policy review, and today’s submission by the Writers’ Guild of Canada. The November policy review will of course be dominated by the fee-for-carriage issue, but there are a lot of other Canadian TV issues that need to be addressed and might get lost in the fee-for-carriage coverage. The other issue — of how much to spend on Canadian programming, how much of it the broadcasters should show, and whether the state of Canadian drama would be improved by deeper investment in drama programming — aren’t going to go away. Or shouldn’t, at any rate.

And speaking of Canadian drama, an hour-long drama success story from last season (“success” in this case meaning “was generally entertaining to watch and didn’t get canceled”) is returning next Tuesday; Being Erica‘s second season starts then. I have not yet seen the season premiere, but the description of the new season’s premise reminds me that the basic idea of treating every season as a separate unit, the way shows as different as 24 and Mad Men do, has spread even to light comedy-drama:

Having re-lived some of her lightest and darkest moments, Erica is starting to make the most of her life. Her publishing career is taking off, she is connecting her disjointed family and building stronger relationships with her friends. Finally united with longtime love Ethan (Tyron Leitso, Wonderfalls), it all seems to be coming together for Erica. But an encounter with someone who shares a secret with her (Sebastian Pigott, Canadian Idol) could change it all. He’s slick, he’s captivating and he’s caught Erica’s eye.

Traditionally, a show with a premise like Erica‘s would not re-tool the basic premise after only one short season, but that’s because, traditionally, a show like this would not have a big season finale or an ongoing story thread. The new tradition is that a season needs to have some kind of closure, and that if you get picked up for another season, you start with the character in a somewhat different place from where he/she was at the beginning of the previous season. It’s another reminder that even shows with episodic formats are, by comparison with shows of 15 years ago, heavily serialized today. And that means that few shows can simply pick up in the second season with the hero’s situation exactly as it was last year. Which is one of the differences between Being Erica and Quantum Leap (whose only concession to a second season was to have a present-day scene where characters delivered exposition about the hero’s continuing, unchanged situation).

Horse and buggy

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 4:09 PM - 45 Comments

Liberals employ an antiquated form of transportation to make a point about something.

The Bureau Blog had to ask: “You’re standing in front of a horse and buggy with a big banner, and you’re saying you’re taking the high road?”

“Uh… yes we are,” Mr. Easter replied. “We’ve always taken the high road. We’re outlining the facts in terms of Stephen Harper and his word.”

The three-candidate circus

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 3:53 PM - 0 Comments

Short of culminating in a Three Stooges-esque slap fight at the final candidates’ debate, I don’t know if the ADQ leadership race could get any more ridiculous. And the way things are going, I’d be reluctant to rule anything out.

Today brings word that Gilles Taillon, the party’s no. 2 and the frontrunner in the race, is seriously considering dropping out, leaving only Larry and Curly to duke it out for the party’s top job. (For the record, Taillon says he would be quitting for health reasons and not because the race is embarrassing. Either reason would have been acceptable.)

If Taillon does quit, he’ll be leaving behind…

• A party’s that’s torn over whether or not it matters that Éric Caire, Taillon’s main rival for leader’s job, lied about having a university degree. Caire’s CV listed a bachelor’s degree in communications from Laval University among his academic accomplishments but, as it turns out, he never graduated. When Caire begged for a bit of clemency from Taillon, Taillon responded by calling for Caire to release his transcript, presumably so everyone could laugh at Caire’s grades. (I’m probably projecting here—that’s what would happen if my transcript came out.)
• A party whose third candidate for the leadership, Christian Lévesque, admits he collected signatures for a potential rival, Jean-François Plante, in exchange for Plante’s promise not to behave like boor when people might be paying attention (i.e., at the candidates’ debate). Plante, you’ll recall, was the party’s nominee in Deux-Montagnes in the last election, but he got the boot over his none-too-kosher arguments against the commemoration of the Polytechnique massacre.
• A party that ended up rejecting Plante’s bid for the leader’s job because he couldn’t get a measly 1,000 people to sign his nomination papers. Plante has since hinted he might retaliate by suing the party.
• A party that just might become vulnerable to the same anti-referendum backlash that’s marginalized the PQ since… well, since the last referendum. Lévesque recently said that, as premier, he wouldn’t rule out a referendum if negotiations with Ottawa over provincial jurisdictions were to break down.

And to think, just two short years ago, these guys were the official opposition in Quebec and their leader was the province’s “premier-in-waiting.”

"What this is is a shift in pain"

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 3:43 PM - 4 Comments

Last night, Paul Hinman, the interim leader of Alberta’s Wildrose Alliance Party, surprised many by trouncing Tory Diane Colley-Urquhart, a well-known alderman, in a Calgary by-election. Hinman took 37 per cent of the vote to Liberal Avalon Roberts’s 34 per cent. Colley-Urquhart eked out a mere 26 per cent of the vote.

The Progressive Conservatives had held Calgary-Glenmore, an affluent riding that’s home to many well-heeled oil and gas types, since 1969. The by-election has been widely billed as a referendum on the policies of Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, whose government has wracked up a sizable deficit since projecting, only last August, an enormous surplus, and antagonized Calgary’s business community with unpopular changes to the province’s royalty regime.

Hastily put together just prior to Alberta’s 2008 election, the Wildrose Alliance remains an unknown quantity (Hinman sat in the legislature for four years as leader of the Alberta Alliance Party, but lost the seat last year), though it is decidedly right of the Alberta Tories, their weakest flank. Hinman’s victory last night could signal Alberta politics is changing and adds to the momentum of a party already energized by an ongoing leadership race.

Maclean’s spoke to Hinman the morning after his win. Continue…

Did Caster Semenya really have an edge?

By Nancy Macdonald - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 2:13 PM - 5 Comments

South African sprinter Caster Semenya entered last month’s International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Championships a relative unknown. By the end of the eight-day event, she was the talk of the sporting world.

In the women’s 800m final, Semenya left the rest of the field eating her dust, winning the race in 1.55.45. It was the best time in that discipline this year.

Then came the controversy: Semenya’s deep voice, and masculine build and muscle structure led the IAAF to call her gender into question. Test results, leaked by two newspapers, the Times of London and Sydney Daily Telegraph, last Thursday, revealed that the 18-year-old sprinter is intersex, a condition that affects fewer than 1 in 2,000 births, according to the Intersex Society of North America. Continue…

Afghanistan recounts the vote

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 1:11 PM - 0 Comments

The UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission has announced that due to possible irregularities, 2,500 of 26,300 Afghan polling stations must undergo recounts. This comes after other recounts were ordered last week for all stations with 100 per cent turnout or where one candidate got more than 95 per cent of votes. President Hamid Karzai’s office is demanding clarification for the reason behind the recounts, while rival candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s spokesman is calling for the voiding of 25 per cent of polling stations. Evidence of fraud has already led to the voiding of results from dozens of stations in provinces with the highest concentration of Karzai’s supporters.

CBC News

Jane Fonda apologizes

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 1:01 PM - 3 Comments

Fonda apologized for signing a letter decrying the Toronto International Film Festival’s showcase of movies from Tel Aviv in an article written for the Huffington Post blog. She said she signed the letter, which has been openly criticized by Jerry Seinfeld, Natalie Portman and Sacha Baron Cohen, out of anger toward the Israeli foreign ministry’s supposed attempt to use TIFF to re-brand Israel’s image. Fonda said she was sorry for signing “without reading it carefully enough, without asking myself if some of the wording wouldn’t exacerbate the situation rather than bring about constructive dialogue.”

The Guardian

France’s hot summer of labour unrest

By Julien Russell Brunet - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 1 Comment

More than one century ago, Alexis de Tocqueville described his mother country of France as “the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation in Europe and the best qualified in turn to become an object of admiration, hatred, pity or terror but never indifference.” Indeed, as other Western democracies have moved along quietly this summer, slowly recovering from the economic crisis, in quick succession France has shocked, exasperated and bemused. Over the past few months, there has been an increase in labour militancy, marking a significant deterioration in the already poor relations between the country’s trade unions and the French government.

In the spring, employees from at least eight companies kidnapped executives, demanding concessions such as better jobs, higher pay and fewer layoffs. In July, workers at New Fabris, a bankrupt car-parts plant, and at Nortel Networks, the insolvent telecommunications company, threatened to explode bottles of gas at their factories if employers did not meet demands for a better severance package. And most recently, angry truck drivers, also concerned about redundancy money, vowed to pour more than 8,000 litres of toxic products into the Seine River.

While all those threats have since been lifted, deep and unresolved problems remain. Says Jonah Levy, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley: “There isn’t a tradition of regularized corporatist bargaining, but there is a tradition of citizens having a lot of expectations that the state will take care of them.” But at a time of global recession, the hands of the state—not to mention those of financially besieged corporations—are tied. And that may mean that growing extremism may continue to be an ever more troublesome part of France’s labour relations landscape. As one union representative said to Britain’s the Guardian, “People are desperate. Movements are going to only get more virulent, more violent.”

UPDATED: Jack Layton: Making Parliament Work … Like A Fox?

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 12:49 PM - 112 Comments

Although you can’t quite tell from the story exactly who tipped the Globe off to Guy Giorno’s lack of proper email etiquette apparent lack of interest in working with the Fourth Party on, well, anything, the fact that an NDP spokesman is quoted — by name, and on the record, even — yet PMO “has yet to respond to questions” suggests that it was probably the former.

Which raises an even more interesting possible scenario: Could it be that Team Jack is now somewhat frantically rethinking that initial pledge to seriously consider supporting the government’s proposal to extend employment insurance benefits for long-term workers — and, as a result, the government itself during the upcoming confidence vote?

It strikes ITQ that sending a follow-up email  to inquire whether, perhaps, McGrath’s initial correspondence had inadvertently been caught by the PMO spam filter would be a distinctly less confrontational way to find out if it was a deliberate snub than leaking it to the press. But by doing it this way, he can still throw up his hands in despair at the intransigence of the prime ministe, vote against the ways and means motion, thus preserving his party’s perfect record of voting non-confidence in the Conservatives — and blame the other parties for not wanting to Make Parliament Work.

Of course, that would also bring on an election. But at this point, even getting pummeled at the polls that may prove to be the least demoralizing outcome for the NDP if the prime minister’s utter indifference over yesterday’s show of tentative, yet earnest support is any indication of how Stephen Harper will respond when Jack shows up on the doorstep of 24 Sussex with his ideas on pension and credit card reform, infrastructure funding, climate change and whatever else is on his wish list.

UPDATE: The NDP spokesperson quoted in the Globe article, Karl Belanger, dropped a note to ITQ to let us know that he was not the source of the story.

Beware the socialist e-mail virus

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 12:46 PM - 20 Comments

It is now down to this.

The fate of the 40th Parliament hangs on whether this week’s Conservative government announcement on employment insurance reform is enough to win the support of at least one opposition party.

Yet the NDP says an email sent last week to Mr. Giorno by NDP Leader Jack Layton’s chief of staff, Anne McGrath, has so far been ignored. “It is telling. It is their modus operandi,” NDP spokesman Karl Belanger said. “They don’t want to work with other parties and they’re trying to minimize the contact with other parties. That’s been the case with the Prime Minister and his team since they got into power.”

When Mr. Harper and Mr. Layton met face to face in the Prime Minister’s office on Aug. 25, both Ms. McGrath and Mr. Giorno were in the room.

The Prime Minister’s Office has yet to respond to questions about the email today, however Mr. Belanger says Ms. McGrath’s email was an attempt to follow up on issues raised during that Aug. 25 meeting. “During the meeting, they, the Tories were asking questions about some of our proposals,” Mr. Belanger said. “And we said we would follow up. And McGrath did try to follow up last week by sending a note – it was an email – and never heard back.”

For teens, low-dose pill may not be best

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 12:22 PM - 2 Comments

When it comes to birth control, it’s widely believed that the lower the hormone dose, the better. But according to a new study, pills with lower levels of estrogen may interfere with the bone development of teenagers. Dr. Jan Stepan of Charles University in Prague found that teens who took low-dose pills experienced lower levels of bone growth and bone density compared with those who took higher-dose pills. The reason, says Stepan, is that lower levels of estrogen suppress the body’s release of the hormone but does not fully replace it.

ABC News

Obama calls Kanye a 'jackass'

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 12:21 PM - 7 Comments

Whether or not it was “off the record” is really beside the point because when President Obama reportedly called Kanye West a “jackass” during an interview with CNBC on Monday, the sentiment summed up what everyone who watched the hip-hip artist’s performance at this weekend’s MTV Video Music Awards was thinking. The remark, which was overheard by an ABC reporter and promptly Twittered to a million people, was allegedly made in reference to West’s hijacking of country singer Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for best female video. West stole the microphone and said that fellow nominee Beyonce Knowles had “one the best videos of all time.” ABC and West have both issued apologies.

Los Angeles Times

Anti-terror raid in New York

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 12:19 PM - 1 Comment

Anti-terror cops raided two apartments in Queens, N.Y., on Monday in search of a suspect with alleged links to al-Qaeda. Details are sparse—and officials insist the threat was not imminent—but reports suggest the FBI was looking for a Denver man who recently traveled to Pakistan and then suddenly showed up in New York with bomb-making documents. Known to friends as Najibullah, the suspect was freed today and allowed to fly back to Colorado, but he remains under tight surveillance. “He was being watched and concern grew as he met with a group of individuals in Queens over the weekend,” said Congressman Pete King, who was briefed on the raids. “[Investigators] would not have moved as quickly as they did if they did not believe there was real potential.”

ABC News