What to do about a killer killer whale

By the editors - Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 7:15 AM - 14 Comments

FAME Pictures/KEYSTONE Press

Real life is a good deal more complicated than it appears in the movies. Consider the 1993 blockbuster Free Willy, which tells the story of a young boy who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a six-ton killer whale and helps him escape from an unscrupulous amusement park owner. The tale not only inspired several sequels, but an outpouring of affection for the lead actor—Keiko the killer whale.

With fact following hard on the heels of fiction, children and adults around the world raised millions of dollars to free Keiko from a Mexican amusement park. He was moved to a special tank in Oregon and was given remedial training in how to behave like a real killer whale. After several years of instruction he was released off Iceland and made his way to Norway. Unfortunately, he remained entirely dependent on humans. He lived on herring fed to him by handlers and spent his days swimming with local children as a tourist attraction. When he died of pneumonia in 2003, $20 million had been wasted trying to turn him back into an authentic killer whale. There was no Hollywood ending for Keiko.

Keiko’s fate is worth remembering with another killer whale now in the news.

Last week, Tilikum, a 31-year-old killer whale at SeaWorld in Orlando, Fla., made headlines when he performed for the first time since causing the death of his trainer, Dawn Brancheau, last February. Brancheau’s ponytail got caught in Tilikum’s mouth and he dragged her into the pool and eventually drowned her.

This was not the first time Tilikum was responsible for a human death. In 1991, 20-year-old trainer Keltie Byrne died when she fell into a pool with Tilikum and two other killer whales at Sealand of the Pacific in Victoria. They tossed her about until she drowned. And in 1999, a homeless man was found dead, draped over Tilikum’s back, after breaking in to his pool after hours.

Of four human deaths caused by captive killer whales since 1961, Tilikum is responsible for three of them. Should such an animal be performing for tourists at SeaWorld?

To begin, it seems reasonable to argue that large, intelligent, highly social mammals such as killer whales should not be removed from the wild in the first place. Both Canada and the U.S. have bans on the capture of killer whales dating back several decades. That said, 41 killer whales currently live at amusement parks around the world (two are in Canada). Most of them were bred in captivity.

In the wild, killer whales do not attack humans. In captivity, most attacks tend to be triggered by accidents such as Brancheau’s unfortunate ponytail and may in fact be attempts at play. Nonetheless, Tilikum is clearly predisposed to aggressive behaviour. In a statement following his first performance last week, SeaWorld claimed that performing is “an important component of [Tilikum's] physical, social and mental enrichment.” But it requires wilful blindness to ignore his fatal track record. If Tilikum were a pit bull or circus lion he would have been euthanized by now.

We are not suggesting that Tilikum should be put down. (In fact, no one has.) And the popularity of killer whale shows at SeaWorld and elsewhere suggest they are not about to disappear any time soon. But Tilikum should no longer be part of any tourist show. He is a dangerous and damaged animal unsuited to public performance. Putting a multiple killer on display in this way seems gruesome and deranged. So where should he go?

There has only been one successful Free Willy-style transfer of a killer whale from captivity back to the ocean. Springer was an immature and sickly killer whale who lost her pod in 2002 and began to associate with humans in Puget Sound near Vancouver. In a joint U.S.-Canada operation, she was captured, nursed back to health and returned to the wild quickly and with a bare minimum of human contact.

Having spent decades in close proximity to people, Tilikum is clearly not a candidate for a happy return to free-range ocean life. And given the social nature of killer whales, it seems equally cruel to keep him in the isolation of a breeding pen for the rest of his days. With performing out of the question, perhaps the best that can be offered is that he be retired to an open sea pen to live out his days under the care of humans. This is how Keiko lived before his disastrous trip to Norway.

No longer a wild killer whale, but too dangerous to be allowed in public, it may be the best ending we can offer Tilikum.

Royal wedding? Get out of town!

By Leah Mclaren - Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 7:09 AM - 2 Comments

Rosie Hallam/Zuma/Keystone Press

Monica Wright, 32, is a proud Londoner, but she is not sticking around later this month to wave the Union Jack for Prince William and Kate Middleton. Instead, like a growing number of Britons, Wright has booked passage out of the country—to her in-laws’ house in Majorca, Spain, where she plans to spend the big day sipping red wine by the swimming pool. “I hear a whole bunch of Barbour-wearing royalists are invading my city for the weekend,” she laughs. “If they want to put up bunting and drink tea from themed mugs, they’re entitled to do it—but personally, I’d rather have a holiday.”

She’s in good company. One survey earlier this year found that almost one-third of Britons were planning a trip away for the week of the royal wedding. While this estimate seems a bit high, Bob Atkinson, a travel expert at travelsupermarket.com, recently put the number at closer to two million holidaymakers for the royal wedding weekend alone. “That week is hugely busy,” said one sales representative at TrailFinders travel agency on High Street Kensington in west London. “People who are looking for flights are having a hard time finding anything. It’s been booked up for months.”

Continue…

Belarusians get a little help from their Polish friends

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 7:08 AM - 0 Comments

Ariana Cubillos/AP

Opposition groups in Belarus hold their meetings in bugged offices amongst colleagues and friends who risk harassment, fines and unemployment simply for showing up. Often, the walls of the offices and apartments where these meetings take place are adorned with posters displaying the Polish Solidarity slogan, etched in its iconic blood-red script. The democratic revolution that toppled authoritarian Communist regimes across Eastern and Central Europe two decades ago began in Poland. Today, Belarusian democrats hoping to unseat their country’s long-entrenched dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, look to Poland and the example it set for inspiration.

Lately, they have also received concrete help. Polish aid to Belarus has almost tripled since 2006, to about $14 million a year. None of this money goes to the Belarusian government. It is spent supporting the democratic opposition through projects that pay the legal fees of detained activists, allow Belarusian students who have been kicked out of university to study in Poland, and fund Belarusian radio and television stations that are based in Poland and broadcast into Belarus. Poland has also waived visa fees for most Belarusians, while banning many regime officials from entering Poland. (Canada recently pledged $400,000 for democratic initiatives in Belarus, including $100,000 for Belsat, a Belarusian television station headquartered in Warsaw—though as of late March the station had not received the money. Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs refused to say when the promised funds would be dispersed.)

Continue…

The Commons: Let us build a bridge

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 11:31 PM - 27 Comments

Be it so decreed that something must be done about the Champlain Bridge. On this we are all agreed. On this we are united. Upon this we must drive together toward the future. Or at least Verdun.

Or so we might, if we were not so divided on pretty much every other matter raised this evening. There are apparently some gaps not even the Champlain Bridge can transcend.

For instance, hockey metaphors. Or, more specifically, the proper hockey metaphor to describe the usefulness of Bloc Québécois and New Democrat MPs in the House of Commons. Continue…

French language debate: Tie goes to Layton

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 10:11 PM - 34 Comments

Language aside, there were several carry-overs from the English debate last night: the perpetual look of owlish incredulity on the part of Michael Ignatieff, who unfortunately kept getting cut off; the one-off zingers of Gilles Duceppe (‘Yes, Quebec stands up at the UN. It doesn’t have a seat!’) that demonstrate how much less this man has to lose than anyone else; the unblinking stare of Stephen Harper, sticking to his talking points and nakedly appealing to ‘les régions’, spitting out ‘Toronto and Montreal’ like they were curse words (good luck with that Montreal seat, Larry Smith).

If there was one free radical, it was Jack Layton. Giving his creeping advantage in the polls, Layton’s battle was with Duceppe, from whom the NDP leader would like to take a chunk of the soft nationalist vote. He shut Duceppe’s narrative of an Ottawa-centric NDP government down, he withstood the sticky questions about Bill 101 by reminding Duceppe that language policy is a provincial jurisdiction, and was the only one of the three federalist leaders to have the courage (or folly, depending on who you ask) to say his government would move to have Quebec sign the constitution. His French was about 10 times better than in 2008, and he had the last word. It was a slog, and he didn’t win by much. But he won.

Soirée du débat

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 6:00 PM - 2 Comments

Tonight’s debate will follow the same format as last night’s debate, save for the language being spoken. The one-on-one pairings will be as follows.

1. Ignatieff-Duceppe
2. Harper-Layton
3. Ignatieff-Harper
4. Duceppe-Layton
5. Harper-Duceppe
6. Layton-Ignatieff

Closing statements will go Harper, Ignatieff, Duceppe, Layton.

Paul Wells will be here around 8pm to guide you through the proceedings. I’ll be by some time later after taking the necessary time to ruminate.

Liveblog: French-language leaders' debate

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 5:36 PM - 74 Comments

Join Paul Wells for up-to-the-minute commentary on the French-language leaders’ debate, starting at 7:45 p.m. EDT

Central casting

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 5:07 PM - 13 Comments

The Conservative campaign goes looking for extras.

“We … are trying to create a photo-op about all the multicultural groups that support Ted Opitz our local Conservative candidate and the Prime Minister,” reads the email sent Tuesday night by Zeljko “Zed” Zidaric with the subject line: “Opportunity – Thursday night with the Prime Minister.”

“The opportunity is to have up to 20 people in national folklore costumes which represent their ethnic backgrounds. These people will sit in front row behind the PM – great TV photo op (sic).” The email continues: “We are seeking representation from the Arab community. Do you have any cultural groups that would like to participate by having someone at the event in an ethnic costume? We are seeking one or two people from your community.”

Paul Wells: will Ignatieff look prime ministerial this time around?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 5:00 PM - 0 Comments

IMF warns European banks of low capital

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 5:00 PM - 0 Comments

The International Monetary Fund has released its Global Financial Stability Report, which finds that many European banks do not have enough capital to protect against further global financial instability. “Remaining structural weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the euro area still pose significant downside risks if not addressed comprehensively,” it said. According to the report, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish banks are particularly at risk of being “caught in a maelstrom of interlinked pressures”. While U.S. banks built up capital as a result of regulatory stress tests, European banks still need to increase their capital cushions in order to regain access to funding markets. Globally, said the IMF, banks face a $3.6-trillion “wall of debt” in the next two years.

BBC News

Ontario court strikes down pot laws

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 4:55 PM - 25 Comments

The Ontario Superior court struck down two parts of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act on Monday that deal with the production and possession of marijuana. The court ruled that sections 4 and 7 of the act were “constitutionally invalid and of no force and effect.” If the Ontario government does not respond within 90 days with a delay or re-regulation of marijuana, it will effectively be legalized in the province. Justice Donald Taliano’s ruling stemmed from the constitutional challenge of Matthew Mernagh, a marijuana advocate who suffers from fibromyalgia, scoliosis, seizures and depression, and had been unable to get a doctor to sign off on a medical marijuana license. Mernagh had been charged for possession and production of marijuana on several occasions, but Justice Taliano stayed the charges in his decision. If left unchallenged by the Ontario government, the ruling could affect drug laws in the rest of Canada.

National Post

'Contact group' calls for Gadhafi to stand down

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 4:51 PM - 2 Comments

Qatar’s prime minister has called for Colonel Muammar Gadhafi to stand down, following a meeting of the newly formed international ‘contact group’ on Libya. In a statement, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr Al Thani said that the group agreed that Gadhafi’s regime is ‘weak’. Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon was in attendance at the meeting, which was co-chaired by Britain and Qatar. Representatives from 39 countries including the UN, NATO, and the Arab league were also present.

BBC News

How many people does it take to release a report?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 4:12 PM - 23 Comments

The Speaker seemed yesterday to say it was up to the four party leaders and the Auditor General to discuss the release of a report into G8-related spending. On that note, Jack Layton wrote last night to the other party leaders and the Auditor General to request a meeting.

The official Liberal response today—with an additional comment on a vote at committee by the NDP’s David Christopherson—is as follows. Continue…

Obama proposes to cut deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 4:08 PM - 4 Comments

In a speech today, Obama proposed a “more balanced approach” to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 12 years. He’s also called for the creation of a new congressional commission that will be charged with developing the plan to achieve that goal. The goal falls short of targets set by his deficit commission and House Republicans, reports the Washington Post. “We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investments in our people and our country. To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms,” Obama said. “We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I’m president, we won’t.”

Washington Post

Los Angeles Times

The Bull Meter: Jack Layton on the Conservatives' immigration record

By Julia Belluz - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 4:02 PM - 37 Comments

"One of the most disturbing aspects of what the Harper government is doing is that they’re encouraging more and more people to come here as temporary foreign workers… What we’re seeing is more and more of this focus on the immigrant as some kind of an economic unit."

- Jack Layton
April 12, 2011

Layton is right here. The face of Canadian immigration is changing, and it’s tilting toward economic considerations. According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) if you look at permanent residents by category between 2006 and 2010, the only class that grew was the economic migrant class, from 138,251 in 2006 to 186,881 in 2010. Compare that to the number of refugees admitted: there’s been a decline since 2006, from 32,499 back then to 24,693 last year. Family reunification migrants have also been falling away, from 70,517 in 2006 to 60,207 in 2010.

Layton is also speaking no bull about the fact that temporary foreign workers have been a growing presence in Canada. According to CIC, in 2000, there were 116,540. In 2005, pre-Harper, there were 122,694, and then in 2009, there were 178,478. Last year, Statistics Canada reported that the number of temporary foreign workers admitted to Canada has been rising faster than the number of people admitted temporarily for other reasons with “three consecutive years of double-digit growth.” Whether or not this is “disturbing,” as Layton says it is, is a matter of interpretation. But the man’s got his facts straight.

Heard something that doesn’t sound quite right? Send quotes from the campaign trail to macbullmeter@gmail.com and we’ll tell you just how much bull they contain.

Sources:

Citizenship and immigration Canada Facts and Figures

Citizenship and Immigration Canada Permanent and temporary residents, 2010

Statistics Canada, temporary foreign workers

Statistics Canada, foreign nationals working temporarily in Canada

PBO chief quoted out of context in G8/G20 report

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 3:29 PM - 12 Comments

The Conservative committee report on G8/G20 spending that had wrongly attributed a statement by Auditor General Shelia Fraser has also misquoted Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page. According to the report, Page made the following statement: “the PMO’s research of publicly available information indicates that no other host country has provided ‘total’ security costs to this level of detail.” Page’s statement was made on June 23, 2010, but the report was based on hearings conducted by the committee in October and December. The same report had quoted the Auditor General saying, “we found that the processes and controls around [the summit spending] were very good, and that the monies were spent as they were intended to be sent.” The quote was actually from a 2005 report on Liberal security spending after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. A spokesman for Conservative MP Chris Warkentin, who was the vice-chair of the committee, issued an apology for the controversy, and said, “we assure you that it was most definitely not our intention to quote you erroneously or out of context.”

The Hill Times

About that $11-billion

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 2:39 PM - 55 Comments

The latest spot from the Liberal side.

Who won? Who cares?

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 2:26 PM - 225 Comments

1. I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, but that set was the most hideous thing I have ever seen. And I’ve been in Communist-era East European hotel lobbies. Orange, yellow and brown? With the corrugated carboard thing? And the… and the… Wha? Who designed this? Union Carbide?

2. On the other hand, I quite liked the format. There were some good exchanges, where you really saw them arguing with something resembling conviction. I thought the Ignatieff-Layton exchange on Afghanistan, for example, was riveting. Another standout moment: Layton on the plight of aboriginal youth. Not even Jack can fake that level of sincerity.

3. Let’s say it: these are four outstandingly talented individuals, who had obviously worked hard and prepared themselves deeply: none of us in the commentariat would last five minutes with these guys. It wasn’t Shakespeare, but I was proud of my democracy last night.

4. Who won? Who cares? That is, if by winning you mean who was the best debater. On points, I’d say it was Ignatieff, but so what? We’re not picking the best debater. We’re picking a prime minister. (Actually, we’re electing a Parliament, who then chooses a PM, but you know what I mean.)

The “winner,” then, is not who had the best lines or scored the most points in the arguments between the candidates, but who most advanced his case with the voters. Or rather, with some of the voters: the undecided, the switchers, the voters not already fer him or agin’ him.

An example. I thought Ignatieff was outstanding on the attack, or rather in defense of Parliament against the abuses it has suffered under this prime minister. He cut to the point, he counterpunched well (“It’s not bickering, Mr. Harper, it’s democracy”), he spoke passionately and persuasively. I’m just not sure he made the case that he should be prime minister, to the voters who most needed to hear that case.

The voters who are most likely to be upset about this issue probably already are: it’s not as if it has not been in the news for months on end. Of those voters, some are either already in the opposition camp, or if they are still with the Tories, have some other reason that trumps their concern about Harper’s autocratic tendencies— or in other words, need some other reason to switch. Which Ignatieff signally failed to give them, as he has throughout this campaign.

Pollsters consistently report majorities in support of two propositions: one, that the country is on the right track, and two, that the government is on the wrong track. Depending on how they answered those two questions, voters can be divided into four different combinations. Those who believe both country and government are on the right track are presumably with the Tories. Those who believe both the country and the government are on the wrong track are presumably in the opposition camp, but split between the Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens. (Those who think the country’s on the wrong track but the government’s on the right track I’m guessing are just confused.)

But the largest group, and the ones most available to the Liberals, are those who side with the majority on both counts: they’re comfortable with the direction of the country, especially in economic terms, but they’re not at all keen on how the Harper government has been conducting itself. They don’t want a change of course, but they do want a change of captains. If that group could be persuaded they could have a different government while keeping the country essentially on the same track — that is, with broadly the same economic policies as the Tories, but less of the autocratic tendencies and general obnoxiousness — they might well switch. Moreover, the Liberals would not have to share that group with the other opposition parties. A voter who likes the general direction of policy under the Tories is unlikely to be found among the ranks of the NDP, Bloc or Greens.

So the failure of the Liberals to reach out to this group is a puzzle. Sure, there are some soft-NDP voters to be had: the Family Pack would be appealing to them. But there are many more, what shall we call them, disconcerted Tories, who would like to live in a country that is both prosperous and democratic. And for them the Liberals have had nothing: lots of talk about redistributing wealth, not a lot about how to create it. And, frankly, not a lot about how they’d fix our democracy, either.

The whole Liberal campaign has been odd, strategically. It is as if they knew they could not win, and decided to play for a close second: to hold Harper to a minority, that is, rather than try to win outright. If after all, you entered a campaign 14 points down, would you not be inclined to take a few chances? Swing for the fences? And yet the campaign has seemed strangely cautious, aimed more at locking down the base than expanding it, reaching out to the left but not the right —which is to say the centre.

But if that’s his game — hold the Tories to a minority, then defeat them in Parliament and take over the government then — he’s got a problem. It may be perfectly constitutional, legal and legitimate, but it doesn’t sit right with a lot of voters. I don’t have a poll to show that, and I don’t need one: I only have to look at what the Liberals have been saying, or not saying, about it. They went for months avoiding the coalition question, even attempt to skate through the campaign without answering it. And when, two disastrous days later, it became apparent that they could not, they gave a carefully worded answer that talked a lot about what would happen, under a minority Parliament, if the Liberals got the most seats, but said nothing at all about what would happen if the Tories did. Even when they clarified that they would not form a coalition in either event, Ignatieff has never ruled out “governing from second-place” in some other way.

Nor should he: it’s perfectly legitimate. It just happens to be unpopular. That’s the conundrum he faces: to be in a position to form a minority government, he has to avoid talking about it. That’s doable, as long as nobody else talks about it. But it’s hard to do, in a debate.

Which brings me, at long last, to that moment in last night’s debate: when he was asked whether the leader of the party that won the most seats had the right to form a government — the exclusive right, as Stephen Harper insists, dishonestly, brazenly, and, as we know from his own intriguing about as opposition leader in 2004, hypocritically.

I’m sure we’ll see this clip again. Because you can see Ignatieff start to say it, then catch himself, mid-sentence, realizing the danger, but too late to stop. If you get more seats, “you get to try …first … to gain the confidence of the House.” His voice seemed to trail off. But by then the Tory war room was already cranking out the press releases.

I feel uncomfortable discussing it in these terms, as if it were some sort of a gaffe. Let me say it a third time: it is perfectly legitimate, on the defeat of a government in the House, for the Governor General to call upon another party to govern. The Prime Minister is whoever commands the confidence of the House, period.

And indeed, to a great many Canadians, the idea of the Liberals taking power, despite having been defeated in the election, with the explicit support of the NDP and the tacit support of the Bloc, is an entirely untroubling, even welcome prospect. But not all Canadians. Indeed, I’m guessing not even all Liberals.

Some will blanch at how far left such a government would be pulled. Others will be concerned that it would be unstable. And for others, it just looks sneaky, whatever the constitutional experts may say — especially because he won’t talk about it.

He’s caught, in other words, in a strategic box. He wants to appeal to NDP-leaning voters, without being seen to “get into bed with” the NDP. But he can’t form a government without getting into bed with them. And so far as centrist voters become aware of this, he may never get the chance to get into bed with them. So he has to try to keep centrist voters from thinking of this. But the Tories keep reminding them of it at every opportunity.

The Tories have a couple of things working for them. One, a good number of voters are weary of minority government, and yearn for the stability of a majority. Two, the Liberals, it would seem, cannot deliver that majority: they are too far back in the polls. All they can offer is — more of the same? No, something worse, the Tories can argue. Needing the the support of only one of the three opposition parties to govern, the Tories have not been beholden to any of them. But the Liberals, with fewer seats, would very likely need the support of both the NDP and the Bloc. Either this would be unstable, or it would lean rather too far to the left, at least for centrist voters’ liking.

There is a way, of course, for Ignatieff to break out of this box: to gather enough support as to seem likely to win the most seats, at a minimum, ideally to be in a position govern as the Tories have, with the support of different parties at different times (a Liberal majority being quite out of reach). But to do that he has to reach out to that big block voters to his right, rather than the smaller block to his left. That he has not is the key strategic failing of the Liberal campaign.

Students perform at the inaugural Poetry in Voice competition in Toronto

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 1:54 PM - 1 Comment

Shot by Kerrin McNamara and Tom Henheffer, edited by Tom Henheffer
Produced by Claire Ward

The Facebook vote

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 1:52 PM - 12 Comments

The current tally, with improvements since the previous tally in parentheses.

Michael Ignatieff 56,089 (7,882)
Stephen Harper 49,054 (3,260)
Jack Layton 41,355 (4,757)
Elizabeth May 9,577 (865)
Gilles Duceppe 6,965 (669)

Mubarak and sons detained

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 1:51 PM - 0 Comments

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, have been detained on the orders of Egypt’s prosecutor general. The detention order comes just after Mubarak is reported to be in “unstable condition” after suffering from heart problems. The former president had been living quietly in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. His sons were transferred to the Tora prison complex in Cairo on Wednesday morning, after the police van transporting them had been pelted with stones and shoes by protestors demanding that they stand trial for crimes of corruption and state-sponsored violence.

BBC News

Pay later

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 12:58 PM - 36 Comments

Mike Moffatt questions post-dated promises.

On the surface, waiting for a surplus to implement a costly new program may seem like a prudent way to control government spending. However, since these programs are not one-time costs, but rather ongoing spending, it is in fact a recipe for fiscal disaster.

The Governator lives on

By Jane Switzer - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 12:22 PM - 0 Comments

Getty

When Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped down as governor of California in January after nearly eight years in office, he made Hollywood a promise: he’ll be back. Now, the actor-turned-politician is teaming up with Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee to create The Governator, a children’s comic book and television series featuring Schwarzenegger’s crime-fighting alter ego. The Governator will battle the evil G.I.R.L.I.E. Men (Gangsters, Imposters, Racketeers, Liars and Irredeemable Ex-cons) with the help of a uniquely talented teenage quartet, including Zeke Muckerberg, a 13-year-old computer genius inspired by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Political pundits first nicknamed Schwarzenegger “the Governator”—a play on his popular Terminator movies—when he ran for office in 2003. Though sometimes used negatively by critics, Schwarzenegger told Entertainment Weekly he’s fond of the moniker: “When I ran for governor back in 2003 and I started hearing people talking about ‘the Governator,’ I thought the word was so cool,” he says. “The word ‘Governator’ combined two worlds: the world of politics and the movie world. And [the comic] brings everything together.”

Since leaving the governor’s Sacramento mansion, Schwarzenegger has maintained a presence on the international political scene. While en route to Cannes last week, the long-time Republican met with British Prime Minister David Cameron and addressed Conservative MPs before attending former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s star-studded 80th birthday party at Royal Albert Hall.
Continue…

John Geddes on style vs. substance in the leaders' debate

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 11:52 AM - 7 Comments