Back and forth

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 12:22 PM - 12 Comments

While the Conservatives aim an attack ad at an attack ad that is no longer running, the Liberals release a new spot based on their online poll.

John Geddes on Liberal scare tactics: will they work?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 12:02 PM - 3 Comments

And the cow jumped over the . . .

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Kerstin Joensson/AP

Having a pony is one of those little girl dreams that are usually dashed by a resounding parental “nay.” Most kids simply scale back their request to a puppu or another similarly manageble pet, but not Regina Mayer. Instead, she taught a cow to be her horse.

The 15-year-old in Laufen, Germany, is making headlines for jumping over logs and makeshift obstacles on the back of Luna, one of the cows on her family’s farm. Getting the bovine to wear a saddle, and perform horse-lie acrobatics, took a lot of treats and cajoling, but Luna now responds to commands such as “go,” “stand,” and “gallop.” Mayer also used some tips from a cow-training school in Switzerland that teaches the animals such tricks as rolling out carpets with their nose. Still, Luna can be stubborn. “When she wants to do something she does it; when she doesn’t, she doesn’t,” says Mayer. But, she added, her cow is so fond of her new identity, she has come to shun the company of her own species. Instead, say Mayer, Luna is “constantly following the horses around.”

Shootout in a vacation paradise

By Jane Switzer - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 1 Comment

Bernandino Hernandez/AP

The latest wave of violence in the resort town of Acapulco left three people dead and ended in a fire that destroyed a supermarket, movie complex and stores in a shopping centre. Two gunmen and one soldier were killed in a shootout that started after police chanced upon a gang trying to set fire to the shopping centre. The incident is believed to have been drug related; the popular holiday destination has seen a marked increase in drug violence this year, despite claims from the city’s mayor that things aren’t as bad as they appear.

Indeed, Acapulco authorities claimed to have ended a gang war when they apprehended a cartel member suspected of being behind the murders of 22 people in January. Still, killings have steadily continued as rival drug cartels fight for control of the port city. Last month, 10 people were killed when gunmen opened fire in a nightclub. That same week, two young boys were shot dead as attackers chased a man through their house. Overall in Mexico, an estimated 35,000 people have been murdered in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón declared war on the country’s cartels shortly after taking office in December 2006.

No greasing these wheels

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 3 Comments

Nati Harnik/AP

Asked his views about “tar sands” at a town hall in Pennsylvania last week, U.S. President Barack Obama said that importing from Canada is a “good thing,” but added there are “some environmental questions about how destructive” the oil sands are. That comment, along with the prolonged permit process for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico, has raised hackles in Canada and on Capitol Hill, where Republicans held a hearing on March 31 to proclaim the “Urgent Case for Canadian Oil.”

The $7-billion pipeline, which would increase by 50 per cent the exports of oil sands crude to the U.S., was raised by Prime Minister Stephen Harper during his meeting with Obama in January. The Obama administration has been studying the project since December 2008. Alberta’s energy minister, Ron Liepert, let it be known he’s fed up with the delays. “I just wish he’d sign the bloody order and get on with it,” Liepert told the Calgary Herald last week. Yet that’s the last thing Alberta should want Obama to do.

It was the U.S. Congress that passed a law requiring a multi-step review process by the State Department before the permit can be issued. Under the Environmental Protection Act, the State Department, which is in charge of international pipelines, must issue an “environmental impact statement” and then a “national interest determination” of all pipelines crossing the U.S. border. Last July, the Environmental Protection Agency said State’s draft environmental impact statement on Keystone XL was inadequate, and asked State to study potential impacts on everything from greenhouse gas emissions, spill response and impacts on wetlands and birds. If State had refused, “they would open themselves to litigation,” says Danielle Droitsch, director of U.S. policy for the Pembina Institute, an Alberta environmental think tank. Such lawsuits, she adds, happen “a lot.”

Continue…

What if Diana had survived the crash?

By Anne Kingston - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 6 Comments

STS/Wenn.com/Keystone Press; Tim Graham/Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Once it was impossible to fathom a more hideous fate for the former Princess of Wales than dying at age 36 in a dark Parisian tunnel amid the staccato pop of flashbulbs. But now there is one: being resurrected as the drab protagonist of Monica Ali’s dreadful new novel, Untold Story.

In the acclaimed British writer’s historical reimagining, Diana survives the 1997 car crash, only to stage her own presumed death by drowning a month later. Abetted by her loyal former private secretary, Diana washes up in Brazil—convenient, given her need for appearance-altering cosmetic surgery—then settles seamlessly in the North Carolina town of Kensington, which is nothing like her previous home (the palace), to escape media glare. Under the name Lydia Snaresbrook, she works at a dog rescue, has a nice but dull insurance-claims-adjuster boyfriend, and spends nights gossiping with the girls over pinot grigio.

The character is referred to as a “fictional princess” on the dust jacket, which is rot: Lydia/Diana combs through celebrity mags for glimpses of her beloved boys, for whom she selflessly plotted her disappearance, believing the palace was out to kill her and that she’d have constricted their lives. Then, in a coincidence that would make Dickens blanch, the past shows up in the form of a British paparazzo who espies Lydia’s “mesmerizing” aquamarine eyes (she carelessly ditched her brown contacts) and realizes he’s onto the scoop of a lifetime. Their final, clever cat-and-mouse standoff provides the novel’s scant dramatic tension.

Continue…

Between rock and a hard place

By Adnan R. Khan - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 3 Comments

Photograph by Adnan R. Khan

Something unexpected is about to happen in the underground grotto of the Base Rock Cafe. It’s open mike night at one of Karachi’s only venues for live rock music, and the steady stream of would-be rock stars has been a bit of a disappointment so far. But that’s to be expected. “We don’t judge the bands that sign up for the open mike,” Sameea Zafar, the café’s 29-year-old owner, says apologetically. “We really want an open atmosphere for Pakistani musicians, so anyone can come and give performance a try.”

The lineup on this night has been typical for an open mike: teenagers belting out cover tunes in often tuneless cacophonies, with only sporadic forays into potential musicianship. But when Junaid Akmal, an aspiring comedian and MC for the night, announces the youngest act on the playlist, what they get is something else altogether.

Twelve-year-old Sufyan Ansari approaches the microphone with an acoustic guitar and the swagger of a seasoned performer. No one would guess that this is his first time on stage, his first time, in fact, playing for any audience of any kind. But when he starts strumming, the murmur in the audience gives way to an awed silence. His acoustic renditions of Nirvana songs are dizzyingly emotive, his adolescent voice ringing out clear, near-perfect melodies. At the end of his three-song set, Sufyan leans into the mike and asks tentatively: “Do you want to hear another one?” The crowd explodes with applause.

Continue…

What say the Governor General?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 11:19 AM - 28 Comments

Nicholas A. MacDonald and James W.J. Bowden argue that the Governor General should not refuse a request to prorogue Parliament.

This paper does not intend to ignore or gloss over the way that the prorogations of 1873 and 2008 unfolded in reality; clearly the majority of the political actors – certainly Lord Dufferin and Michaelle Jean themselves – believed that the Office of the Governor General possessed the reserve power to accept or reject the prime minister’s request. But based on the available evidence, we can only conclude that the governor general’s reserve power ought not to apply to prorogation.

Two questions for Stephen Harper (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 50 Comments

After interviewing Mr. Layton and Mr. Ignatieff, Peter Mansbridge will sit down with Mr. Harper on Thursday. Assuming that the parameters of our democracy might be a topic raised, here, again, are two questions for Mr. Harper.

1. Earlier in this campaign, you explained that when you referred to “options” in the your letter to the Governor General in September 2004, you hoped only that she would give you the opportunity to assure her that you were not intending to defeat the Liberal government. University of New Brunswick professor Don Desserud has quibbled with this understanding of convention, suggesting the only options for the Governor General would have been to call an election or ask the leader of the opposition, in this case you, if he had the opportunity to form a government. Do you believe the Governor General can compel the Prime Minister to work with the opposition parties or do you believe you were given poor advice in 2004?

2. In an essay penned with Tom Flanagan some years ago you spoke favourably of an “alliance” between regional parties and lamented for the “winner-take-all style of politics” in Canada. In 1997, during an interview with TVO, you said if the Liberal majority government of the day was ever reduced to a minority government, there would be an opportunity for one of the other parties “to form a coalition or working alliance with the others.” In 2004, during your news conference with Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Layton, you were asked if you were prepared to form government and said such a scenario was “extremely hypothetical.” You and your party now argue that only the party that wins the most seats can form government. Why and when did your views change on the functioning of our parliamentary system?

Glee = South Park

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 5 Comments

Glee has been compared to so many shows – American Idol, Community, Fame, some Sid & Marty Krofft thing (well, I haven’t heard the comparison yet, but I should; it’s a show with a lot of singing that doesn’t make much sense). After watching last night, trying to figure out why I like this show in spite of its almost total lack of regard for story and character logic, I thought of the craziest comparison yet: Glee is the South Park of hour-long live-action television.

The point of comparison was that both shows share a complete lack of interest in anything resembling subtlety. Most TV is not subtle, but writers usually try and disguise their themes, or find some oblique way to present them; they’re not subtle, but they don’t want to be thought of as unsubtle. Trey Parker and Matt Stone don’t care. Anything that is on their mind, they will tell us directly. Characters don’t reveal their feelings through subtext, but tell us what’s on their mind at all times, like old comic book characters. Glee has a similar contempt for subtext. Gwyneth Paltrow’s character spent most of last night making everything into text: the authors’ message of the week (both about cyber-bullying and the problem of people saying mean things about their show), and, at the end, simply explaining every single plot point so they can wrap her whole storyline up in two minutes.

Glee also resembles a cartoon like South Park in the way it changes character motivations and relationships from week to week, while still maintaining that it has some sort of history and continuity. (Which makes it different from a show where the characters have no past and nothing that happened will be referred to again.) Sue Sylvester or Eric Cartman can be villains one week, sort of good guys the next week. Characters can take on completely new personalities for about 20 minutes and then snap back with little explanation. Whatever a character needs to be for the purpose of the story, he or she is; yet the writers can still refer to character history on Glee in order to propel a story, just like South Park can randomly bring back previous plot points when it feels like it.

I don’t want to go too far with the comparison; I just make it because I think it helps illustrate what Glee is doing. It’s a ramshackle show that almost seems to proceed from its three writers’ stream of consciousness; I called it “scattershot drama” in an earlier post, and I think the term still fits. All normal rules of good storytelling or consistent characterization are thrown out the window if the writers need to deliver a message or throw in something fun.

I like it still, because I think a lot of the fun stuff actually is fun, and because some of the things it doesn’t do are not that important to me personally. Because nobody behaves consistently, Glee makes it very difficult to guess what’s going to happen next week, or discuss whether this event is foreshadowing another event down the road. That’s true of other shows, but they want to look like they have a plan; Glee rubs our noses in the fact that much of what happens in a TV show is dictated by the random whims of the writers. That makes it not a whole lot like a serious drama, but quite a bit like a low-budget cartoon where the same people write every episode.

Ground level

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 9:06 AM - 22 Comments

Liberal candidates are reporting prank call campaigns.

On Tuesday, the Liberals issued a warning to Ontario residents about “harassing” phone calls they say are part of an “aggressive, unethical scheme organized and coordinated” by their political opponents. Furious constituents in at least 10 ridings have complained about receiving rude phone calls from people claiming to be working for the local Liberal candidate. The calls, which contain a North Dakota “701” area code, often come repeatedly late at night or early in the morning.

Elections Canada is apparently investigating.

Ignatieff talks minority scenarios

By John Geddes - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 6:54 PM - 442 Comments

I suppose it was a tactical error for Michael Ignatieff to describe the way the parliamentary system works in his interview today with CBC’s Peter Mansbridge.

You might imagine it wouldn’t be all that risky to display a rudimentary understanding of the conventions of the House of Commons, as inherited by Canada from Britain. But there you’d be wrong. This will be treated as big campaign news, and the Conservatives are naturally all over it.

Continue…

Tory base rallying around Harper: poll

By Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 6:24 PM - 49 Comments

You don’t need a majority of votes to win a majority in Parliament.

Stephen Harper has a lot riding on this truism as he enters the final leg of the federal election campaign: the Conservative dream of an uninterrupted mandate hangs on the belief that a 39-percent base of rock-solid support can translate into a Commons majority, if augmented by wins in a dozen or so swing ridings.

But the latest results of a survey done for Maclean’s and 680 News underline the problems with this theory, as harder-edged policies aimed to please the Tory base appear to be stoking opposition toward the Prime Minister and his party across the country. So too are damaging stories about G8 and G20 spending, leaving the Conservatives mired in minority territory once again, with just 12 days of campaigning to go.

Continue…

Does Stephen Harper approve of this message?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 6:23 PM - 24 Comments

The Liberals have edited and rereleased their disputed ad.

Andrew Coyne on the likelihood of a coalition

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 5:53 PM - 3 Comments

How all dogs get to heaven

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 5:41 PM - 0 Comments

A new study may provide better understanding of the health and wellness needs of different breeds of dog. Researchers at the University of Georgia took an exhaustive look at the causes death in some 75,000 dogs between 1984 and 2004, which involved 82 different breeds. They classified the deaths by organ system, disease process, breed, age and body mass. Some of the findings were surprising. For example, researchers found that Fox Terriers have high rates of cardiovascular disease, which is also true of many Toy breeds, like Chihuahuas and Maltese. “If we can anticipate better how things can go wrong for dogs, we can manage their wellness to keep them as healthy as possible,” said study co-author Dr. Kate Creevy, an assistant professor in the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine.

Eureka Alert

Statement of the obvious

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 5:07 PM - 126 Comments

Michael Ignatieff reminds everyone how our democracy works.

If the governor general wants to call on other parties, or myself, for example, to try and form a government, then we try to form a government,” Ignatieff told CBC’s Peter Mansbridge in an exclusive interview Tuesday afternoon.

“That’s exactly how the rules work and what I’m trying to say to Canadians is, I understand the rules, I respect the rules, I will follow them to the letter and I’m not going to form a coalition. What I’m prepared to do is talk to Mr. Layton or Mr. Duceppe or even Mr. Harper and say, ‘We have an issue, and here’s the plan that I want to put before Parliament, this is the budget I would bring in,’ and then we take it from there.”

Here's where the whole campaign vanishes down a rabbit hole

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 4:56 PM - 202 Comments

This just in from the Conservative war room (here‘s the Globe account of the CBC interview that sparked it all):

April 19, 2011
For Immediate Release

Ignatieff Admits plan to become PM if he loses the election

After denying it for weeks, Michael Ignatieff today finally admitted he is open to trying to become Prime Minister with the support of the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, even if Stephen Harper’s Conservatives win the election on May 2.

During an interview with CBC’s Peter Mansbridge, Michael Ignatieff said:

“If Mr. Harper wins most seats and forms a government but does not have the confidence of the House and I’m assuming that Parliament comes back, then it goes to the Governor-General.” Continue…

Reasonable elections accomodations

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 4:53 PM - 0 Comments

In response to a request by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, Elections Canada says it will allow its 200,000 workers to attend religious services during Easter weekend. The Catholic Bishops claims to have received “many phone calls from Catholics across the country” who were disgruntled by Elections Canada’s decision to hold advance polls over Easter weekend. But as Elections Canada points out, the advance polling dates aren’t up to agency: federal law states advance polls should open on the tenth, ninth, and seventh days before an election. Still, Elections Canada says anyone who wants to attend a religious service just has to ask.

Rue Frontenac

Harper's been pondering coalitions for longer than I thought

By John Geddes - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 4:38 PM - 43 Comments

How far back can we trace Stephen Harper’s intense interest in the possibility of coalition government?

Most likely you would answer that Harper’s been preoccupied with the idea since the fall 2008 bid by the Liberals and the NDP to form a coalition, backed by the Bloc Québécois, to supplant his minority.

Or perhaps you would speculate that he must have been pondering the coalition permutations and combinations back in late 2004. That’s when he signed that much-debated letter to the governor-general with Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe, suggesting that one or more of their three parties might somehow govern—without an intervening election—if the Liberal minority of the day fell.

Even though Harper, Layton and Duceppe evidently had in mind some looser form of Parliamentary cooperation (Harper denies even that much), their discussions must have at least touched on the notion of a full coalition—if only for long enough to reject it.

But I’ve come across an old campaign-trail quote that suggests both those answers for the advent of Harper’s concern about coalitions are wrong. Continue…

It's true: 'what I want back is what I was'

By Barbara Amiel - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 4:20 PM - 1 Comment

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

There is nothing wrong with aging except what it does to you physically and mentally. The only solution, as far as I can tell, is alcohol, dope or oblivion. I usually put the issue out of mind until backed into a corner. Which happened last week when we had a helicopter overhead and an armada of police cars outside our house in Palm Beach.

The dogs were crazy with delight. Overhead searchlights are so much more fun than the usual bore of eating night beetles. The currents of the Atlantic merge together in a pattern that makes our location the Alexandrian lighthouse for travellers from Cuba and Haiti who come to America by less orthodox means than an Expedia.com ticket. Rather ironic, all these people aching to get into the United States and landing on our doorstep while my husband is aching to get out of this country and can’t.

I went inside and switched on Malt Shop Oldies to counteract the noise and my unhappiness at people risking their lives on makeshift boats only to be greeted by police dogs. The Malt Shop channel on satellite TV is my latest preoccupation, and it is using up a disastrous amount of time evoking bushels of nostalgia. It’s not just the Platters, though whenever they sing Twilight Time or Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, I am plunged into the desperate despair that accompanied dancing with my first real love in Grade 12. The first cut is the deepest, but, at the time, I found it slightly morbid, some 43 years before HBO made it positively glamorous with Six Feet Under, that his father was the proprietor of the local funeral home.

I had a very early horror of growing old. Around 12 years of age, I began worrying about turning 16, which in my mind meant the dreaded 21 was not far off. Adulthood looked like a lot of weeping and worrying about bills. You can probably have a happy childhood or else be a bit ahead in discovering what most people do in retrospect, that getting old and then dying is definitely the wrong direction. But just in case you missed that point, the hills are alive with people reminding us of time’s gallop.

Few things infuriate more than the battalions of perky people discussing the “greying” of our population. They themselves aren’t a bit grey, in fact they tend to be blonds or healthy black males banging on about unfunded liabilities, leisure time and Pilates. (I exempt Canadian actor Donald Harron, who shilled marvellously on TV for funeral insurance when in his seventies.) Almost every week there is another article on Canada’s “demographic time bomb.” The only decent conclusion is that we elderly should all swallow hemlock for the sake of the generations behind us burdened with our care. In the absence of such altruism we must work till we drop while refraining from everything we like, especially gluttony. Apparently as we age we make less stomach acids, uptake less vitamin B, lose muscle mass (plus teeth), and go for raves of carbohydrates. Personally, I think one of the few pleasures of aging is that none of your dear ones are left to tell you no more macaroni and cheese.

The horrors of aging provide excellent material for writers and artists who thrive on lamentation; without it, at least half of mankind’s greatest literature and art would be gone. Fortunately there is also war, sickness and poverty. And let’s be candid, which means let me tell you why you fall short in every conceivable way, the whole aging thing is more difficult for intelligent people who tend to brood on existential questions. We may not be able to experience uninhibited joy but we can explore the wretchedness of the human condition with incredible zest.

The curse of aging, besides losing your looks and the ability to do up a back zipper, is nostalgia. Lots of people write about what nostalgia is, but as far as I can see, nostalgia is remembering something you like. I haven’t ever heard someone remark that they are nostalgic for the time they were hit by a bus. Nostalgia can be evoked by smell, as with Marcel Proust’s fresh baked madeleines (popularized when The Sopranos’ Dr. Melfi mentioned them to an uncomprehending Tony Soprano), or on a more banal level by the Platters.

Nostalgia focuses on youthful times when everything was possible. The imagination had no limits—a particularly joyous feeling for an artist. In later life, short-term memory fades first, leaving us plonked more and more in the past—bad news if English was not your native language. Robert Louis Stevenson is childhood schmaltz’s pin-up: in To Any Reader, which is the last poem in his mesmerizing A Child’s Garden of Verses, an adult sees himself through a window playing as a child:

“But do not think you can at all / By knocking on the window, call / that child to hear…he does not hear; he will not look…/ for, long ago, the truth to say / he has grown up and gone away / and it is but a child of air / that lingers in the garden there.” Proust took six volumes and 4,300 pages to come to the same conclusion in his back-breaking masterpiece In Search of Lost Time.

Premature death solves aging, as with JFK, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and lesser luminaries. Sylvia Plath said it all when she wrote “What I want back is what I was,” and put her head in a gas oven at age 30. This solution seems something of an overreaction. Though perhaps not. One wonders, on hearing yet one more doomsday scenario about the rising costs of health care and the difficult “choices” to be faced, if the greying society may yet be corrected by a kinder form of PlathCare: free hemlock on prescription, courtesy of the caring state.

$225 million towards Canadian Freshwater Strategy

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 2:49 PM - 0 Comments

While campaigning in Winnipeg, MB, on April 19, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff promised the Liberals would invest $225 million over two years into a new Canadian Freshwater Strategy, which would focus on risk prevention and mitigation of the effects of floods and droughts.

Strategic voting

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 1:54 PM - 110 Comments

The CAW has picked 50 ridings. The Conservative are focused on 30.

So focused are the Conservatives on this frequently updated list of 30 races across the country that, according to Tory Senator Marjory Lebreton, these are the only ridings in which the party is conducting opinion polling to gauge voter intentions. National polls such as those published in the media are handy for the public, she said, but the real races are being fought street by street, largely in the suburban enclaves of the country.

Harper 'won't bite' on question about his political future

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 1:18 PM - 46 Comments

Prime Minister Stephen Harper wouldn’t speculate about his political future on Tuesday should he fail to win the majority government he’s been pleading for since the start of the campaign. The latest poll data shows the Conservatives still need a boost in popularity to reach a majority, meaning Canadian voters will likely elect a federal government that looks a lot like the one that was defeated just weeks ago. Asked whether another minority would signal the end of his political career, Harper refused to answer, saying “I’m not going to take the bite on that one.” In an interview with the CBC on Monday, NDP leader Jack Layton pledged to not topple the government in a coup. “[Harper] gets the first shot to form government,” Layton said. “The question will be: is he willing to work with the other parties.”

Toronto Star