CIVITATENSIS

“I think she’s a bitch. It’s as simple as that,” Mr. [Norman] Spector said. “And I think that 90 per cent of men would probably say she’s a bitch for the way she’s broken up Tie Domi’s home and the way she dumped Peter MacKay. She is a bitch.”

Mr. Spector did not back down from the remarks in a telephone interview late yesterday.

“I think it’s the perfect choice of word that the Oxford English Dictionary describes as ‘malicious or treacherous,’ ” he said. “So I think as an analyst of politics, I chose the right word.”

The member for Newmarket Aurora is really undeserving of all this attention but she is a Member of Parliament and a mother entitled to respect for her office and for her human dignity. The former ambassador has crossed the line.

Spector is correct about the Oxford English Dictionary’s use:

2. a. Applied opprobriously to a woman; strictly, a lewd or sensual woman. Not now in decent use; but formerly common in literature. In mod. use, esp. a malicious or treacherous woman; of things: something outstandingly difficult or unpleasant.

But the same entry to which Spector refers also says that the expression is “Not now in decent use.” By the same standard that he has adopted, Spector has not done a decent thing.

William Thorsell does not see much of a threat to Stephen Harper among any of the front-end candidates in the Liberal leadership race. Of the very front-runner, Thorsell has this (subscribers only) to say:

Michael Ignatieff seems close to Mr. Harper in many ways. He believes in the projection of Canadian power abroad in the context of a global struggle for liberty. This is a core issue in Canada today, and Mr. Harper has the initiative on it by the fact of his actions and words. How can Mr. Ignatieff mount an effective challenge to the Prime Minister on this file without sounding like a nag and an also-ran?

“I support the Prime Minister’s most controversial policy, but beg to differ on the details!” Not a great rallying cry to the doubtful or disaffected.

Mr. Ignatieff has also joined the Prime Minister in courting Quebec. Mr. Harper uses the classic currency of, well, currency by addressing the fiscal balance — while Mr. Ignatieff employs the more dangerous (and classically Tory) means of constitutional change (Quebec as a “nation within a country,” or perhaps a “distinct society” in a “community of communities”).

In the heat of a national election campaign, Mr. Harper’s cookie jar would prevail over Mr. Ignatieff’s can of worms.

The analysis is useful considering that many once claimed that Harper was most vulnerable on foreign policy because he had not travelled as much, whereas Ignatieff is said to be strongest in that area because he has “international experience.” One might be tempted to imagine that if Harper has overcome his lack of international experience, Ignatieff can similarly overcome his lack of domestic experience.

As Thorsell relates it, present performance seems to contradict that supposition. Whereas Harper seems to have cleared the international neophyte hurdle rather well, Ignatieff has failed to ignite his own party and the country with his supposed international acumen, and he is also failing badly to clear the domestic neophyte hurdle before him.

Most Canadians, who, like Stephen Harper, have lived in Canada all their lives, don’t really have much stomach for yet another round of mega-constitutional acrimony. Michael Ignatieff, as of yet, seems oblivious of that fact.

Scribblegate and all, and perhaps because of it, Lyle Oberg appears to be raking in the sympathy and vote of many thousands of unionised Albertans.

The post is from a “progressive blogger.” Treat it as such.

It’s a good thing that Noah was not confronted with the animal version of this peculiar story because he would not have had enough room.

In a 20-page parental contract signed by all four of them, Mr. Hatch and Mr. Henderson each agreed to be the biological father of one of the Vandenbergs' children, to give up his parental rights so the biological mother's partner could adopt the child, and to share in parenting responsibilities.

In other words, a contractually constructed partnership of four adults to raise the children.

New “contractual” arrangements could be constructed for any number of adults. If four is okay, why not more? At least part of the experiment seems to be supplying a demand that is more than biological:

They say some straight couples they know envy the arrangement. "It's great having more adults around," Lucy Vandenberg said.

It is conceivable (pardon the pun) that, as the presence of more and more adults to change diapers becomes a permanently-desirable convenience to some, a contract could easily be drawn to accommodate however many more adults one wishes.

I’ll leave speculating about the legal ramifications and the sociological implications for a future generation to another day. But, to close with another transportation remark, I’ll just point out that a parental stringed-quartet is not quite what automakers had in mind when they created minivans.

h/t: Tom

How many Liberals and NDs in the House does it take to make any one believe that Peter MacKay called Belinda Stronach a “dog”? A majority. But they haven’t got one –a majority, that is.

The speaker of the House, Peter Miliken, has ruled. Stop the barking and get on with  business.

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay will not be forced to apologize for allegedly calling his ex-girlfriend and fellow MP Belinda Stronach a dog, Speaker Peter Milliken ruled Monday.

Duh!

It is safe to say that the regime in North Korea will not last for good. Like the dinosaurs of its kind, it will fall one day, but the effects of its bellicose presence are accelerating the reshaping of power in the far East.

Japan is re-arming, and there will be no going back. Japan has been re-arming for a while, to be sure, but the greater perception of a North Korean threat is forcing Japan to do it quicker. Ironically, North Korea’s benefactor, China, is the state least interested in Japan’s re-armament, distantly followed by Russia –North Korea’s other continental neighbor.

As a good Ted Morton partisan, it is easy for me to see that Lyle Oberg’s pitiful self-destructive display this week (Scribblegate) evidently calls boundless public non-attention to Ted Morton. That non-attention underscores plenty of good about Ted.

Oberg’s overreacting drama leaves his lack of good judgement exposed and the same farse also exposes the proximity between Jim Dinning and the often ethically-challenged Ralphites still in government. Dinning equals status quo.

Calgary Herald’s Tom Olsen, who has in the past been no friend of Ted’s, agrees that last week’s events hurt both Dinning and Oberg. The damage to Oberg may be obvious but the damage to Dinning is no less apparent:

The odour is settling over Dinning as well.

[...] The two executive assistants in question certainly aren’t big players in JD’s campaign, but there’s no question they’re involved.

Taken on its own, this is a relatively minor incident. Not smart, but not evidence of deep rot.

Except there is already a section of the citizenry who are virulently anti-Dinning, who already figure he has people on his team who aren’t adverse to strong-arm behaviour that crowds the ethics line.

Jim’s been out of government a long time, but he’s still the candidate most closely associated with the status quo.

For those Progressive Conservative party members who want a shakeup, he’s not it. (my emphasis)

Two ministerial executive assistants mocking Oberg’s ideas in print is more proof of an entrenched mindset of go-to-hell, we-do-what-we-want.

In the final analysis, neither Dinning nor Oberg wins.

Dinning and Oberg lose, but Olsen needs a little help to spell out who the winner is. He cannot bring himself to say the name of the one Tory front-runner who has no part in Scribblegate, the one who is not tied to the previous government, the one who is not tied to the wealthy Calgary click that runs the province, and the one who is not tied to the no-plan political status quo. The unnamed man is also the one most likely to shake things up.

That Man is Ted Morton, and Tom Olsen knows it –even if he can’t bring himself to say it.

Fidel Castro shows up on Cuban government television doing his best impersonation of Mark Twain:

“Now, when our enemies have prematurely declared me moribund or dead, I’m happy to send to our compatriots and friends around the world this short film footage,” said Castro, 80.

Happy Halloween cubanitos!

Three people are dead and another is seriously injured after a nightclub shooting in Edmonton early Sunday morning.

Quick in their reactions, Canada’s most prominent leaders, Bob Rae, Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe and Stephane Dion, are calling for all Canadian soldiers to pull out of Edmonton immediately. Whatever other countries should be able to pick up the slack, they say.

I wonder if friends of this Alberta blogger are looking for excuses to get into conflict with him just to take advantage of his convictions:

Homosexuality is quite common in the animal kingdom, especially among herding animals. Many animals solve conflicts by practicing same gender sex.

The exotic idea would make for interesting biopolitics. How would their foreign policy work, exactly? Is that why some of these folks are so abrassive?

According to Jack Layton, “It’s time for Canada to take a new path.” The new path would have Canadian soldiers removed from the battered country, leaving it in the hands of the Taliban once more.

Jack is essentially placing himself in favour of denying little girls the right to go to school. Would he deny his daughter Sarah the same priviledge?

From the frying pan into the fire.

Kadis withdrew her support from Ignatieff earlier this month after [Ignatieff] accused Israel of committing a war crime during the Lebanese conflict last summer.

Kadis has now joined the Bob Rae campaign.

Lyle Oberg, the man who cried “skeleton,” as Bell tells is, could not find the fortitude to endure criticism from a couple of political staffers. That being the case, Oberg may not be able to take the mocking writings of Bell himself. Here are a couple of examples:

Has Oberg lost it? Here is a guy who wants to be premier questioning the conduct of a candidate looking to replace Ralph, repeating vague allegations, offering the unnamed accused no chance to defend themselves and the public no opportunity to examine the extent of the alleged outrage.

And, to add a twist to the tawdry tale, Oberg not only avoids going public after saying he would. That would be bad enough. But, away from the microphones, he tells the other leadership campaigns, except Dinning’s team, what the supposedly sinister secret is all about.

Apparently, those whisperings won’t harm his Deep Throat.

Yes, The Boy Who Cried Skeleton 2 is far more cloak and dagger than the original. The stakes are higher.

And today, Bell writes:

Yes, this episode of Desperate Candidates is a wild ride and it’s all downhill now, with Lyle Oberg as the star of his very own political meltdown.

Oberg’s so-called big announcement offers no smoking gun, not even a loaded slingshot. The only skeleton seen will be if Oberg dresses the part for Halloween.

Update: Dead leadership candidate walking, Lyle Oberg is toast.

What Lyle Oberg’s campaign promised to be a “blood-letting” turned out to be evidence of a couple of MLA staffers criticising Oberg’s policies. Just as much as the two government employees, Mr. Oberg too should account for his actions in light of a near-hysterical reaction to such trivial a matter.

Documents obtained by the Oberg camp include correspondence between the executive assistants for two senior cabinet ministers. It shows them critiquing and mocking key aspects of the Oberg campaign platform, something the MLA argues was done on the taxpayers' dime.

Oberg conceded that he doubts Dinning knew of the correspondence between the executive assistants for Energy Minister Greg Melchin and Intergovernmental Relations Minister Gary Mar - MLAs both supporting Dinning.

The affair calls into question Oberg’s temperament and judgement. If a potentially minor ethical breach triggers the kind of reaction we witnessed this week from Oberg, one has to wonder how Oberg would react to serious transgressions.

The eldest son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau is belittling nationalism as an “old idea from the 19th century” that is not relevant to today’s Quebec.”Nationalism is based on a smallness of thought,” Justin Trudeau said in an interview broadcast on CTV’s Canada AM on Thursday.

“(It) builds up barriers between peoples, that has nothing to do with the Canada we should be building.”

[...] he digressed into the debate on Quebec’s place in Canada that erupted last weekend when Liberal leadership frontrunner Michael Ignatieff supported the idea of recognizing Quebec as a nation.

There would have been a time when Ignatieff might have agreed with either Trudeau on Quebec –and one certainly gets that impression from Ignatieff’s Blood and Belonging. But that was before Iggy decided to chase votes.

Police now say Valgardson was the victim of a planned beating, stemming from drug deals gone bad. Police say the motive for the assault has been determined to be a revenge act by the suspects on the victim, who are known to each other.

Dry water, a lush desert, a tropical iceberg. These are things that don’t go together. Just like the expression “economic prosperity” and the name Bob Rae.

Rae used the speech to present a three-pronged approach to economic prosperity through learning, tax changes and climate change.

That should inspire confidence in every Ontarian.

There is something amiss, but I can’t tell you what it is, Lyle Oberg has announced, again. Is this any different than his earlier allegations about the whereabouts of “the bodies” in Klein’s government? His desire to keep silence on principle should be of concern to all Albertans. If silence is the principled thing, why bother mentioning anything at all?

Candidate Lyle Oberg dropped a fuseless bomb on the PC leadership race this morning, accusing another candidate's campaign of dirty deeds but refusing to say what they are.

[...]

"This was a very difficult, difficult decision for me today," he explained." I chose principle, I chose protection of the individual over potentially what could happen to my campaign because of this."

One has to question Oberg’s motivations for making these type of statements. Either way, they are not very judicious and they demonstrate a significant lack of resolve. If the information that he claims to possess can cause more harm than good (and I am prepared to acknowledge that there are situations in which that might be the case) why did he not just keep it to himself until the time that it could be revealed? But the notion of announcing misdeeds only to remain silent afterwards does not show much decisiveness. Dithering is not a quality that Albertans value in a man who aspires to lead them.
The I-have-knowledge-of-wrong-doing-but-I-cant-tell-you-what-it-is attitude displayed by Oberg is getting tiring. It is fundamentally condescending. Why would Alberta Tories, and Albertans in general, want to be led by a man who is making of wavering a virtue?

We recently had a national leader with that same quality Oberg displays. Albertans rejected him overwhelmingly.

Michael Ignatieff sounds rather Augustinian in his desire to see a woman running the country: Lord, give us another female leader, but not yet.

Belinda Stronach and Anne MacLellan never entered. The other Liberal women that did enter the race for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada have either dropped out or don’t even register in the realm of possibilities for a victory. That sounds like the right time to pontificate:

Ignatieff said he looks forward to the day when Canada has another woman prime minister.

Ignatieff’s dream could come true much sooner, if he were serious about a female Grit leader instead of blowing hot air about it, by backing Martha Hall-Findlay. Why doesn’t he? Why wait?

It seems clear that Jim Dinning plans to buy his way into the leadership of the Alberta Tories. Block-selling memberships among the artsy community, do you say?

The arts will get a double helping under a Jim Dinning government, the leadership candidate promised today.

Why don’t we just double all government spending across the board?

Ontario Superior Court Justice Douglas Rutherford ruled today that a clause that deals with religious, political or ideological motivation - a chief part of the Act's definition of terrorism - violates Section 2 of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, guaranteeing freedoms of religion, thought and belief.

Committing crimes motivated by hatred of another can be punished with extra zeal in this country. The courts have upheld that principle. The Calgary Roman Catholic Bishop has been accused of hate crimes for voicing his opposition to gay marriage. Apparently, none of that conflicts with section 2 of the Charter.

But wanting to prosecute people who’d love to blow scores of innocent people up on account of some perverted interpretation of a religion is not cool, an Ontario court has ruled.  The Supremes will likely agree with the lower court (lest they be targeted by terrorists), but the Crown should appeal the decision anyway.

Five males swarmed [61 year-old] Kenny Valgardson in a parking lot early Saturday morning, kicking and stomping on his head and leaving him barely alive in a puddle of blood.

I hope the authorities catch the thugs soon. Not one, not two, but five of them assaulted the poor man. The report is correct in calling them males, for no man in the properly- understood sense would participate in such a cowardly act, and leave a human being in that condition to die in a parking lot. I heard in the news this morning that the victim has swollen knuckles, indicating that he fought back.

Doctors are worried that the victim may not make it. In the meantime, police are following up on many clues, including a video of the beating. Let’s pray for Mr. Valgarson’s health, and for his family.

If Mark Steyn had his way, sortta, Michael Ignatieff would be better off crossing the floor to become our foreign minister. My guess is that it would also make Belinda Stronach happy.

Could he make much of a home anywhere in our country, or elsewhere. As Steyn points out, Iggy has trouble plainly being among Canadians and among all other sorts of lesser mortals.

Far weirder are his [Ignatieff's] tortured protestations of Canadianness, like his sort of pledge of a kind of allegiance in The Rights Revolution — the book that “deepened my attachment to the place on earth that, if I needed one, I would call home.”

[...]

It has the careless condescension of Bond telling Moneypenny that, if he ever gets tired of shagging hot panting double agents from every intelligence service on earth, he’ll be sure to settle down with her.

With that boundless affection for our country, and maybe because of it, he now wants to lead it. How come the Globe has not asked whether Ignatieff loves our country?

If things keep going the way the Liberals want them to go, the SPCA may have to become involved in the controversial parliamentary discussion involving Ontario MP Belinda Stronach and the question of canines. The NP’s editorial yesterday has a point after all:

If anyone deserves an apology, it is the dogs

Update: See also thePolitic for a similar line. Follow this link simply for more yapping.

[Ignatieff,] The front-runner in the Liberal leadership race was hunched over lunch at an Ottawa restaurant, focused, eyes like a hawk. He wants the prize so badly.

Flip-flopping and the constant “repositioning” of himself –to say nothing of the old tradition of saying one thing in Quebec and another in the rest of the country– are part of the burning desire to win power, almost at any cost. Those who see in Ignatieff the second coming of the philosopher king would be well advised to remember Socrates’ words:

“Good sir, you are an Athenian, a citizen of the greatest city with the greatest reputation for both wisdom and power; are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?” (Plato, Apology).

To quote Bob Dylan, “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Politics is about common sense and good judgement.

Garth Turner really is a man out of his time. When the populist wave of the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois swept through two distant parts of the country and sent a significant number of new people to the House, he was tossed out of power. He was once an illustrious member of the Kim Campbell cabinet –where he apparently did mostly what he was told.

A decade and a half later, he comes back to the House as a populist incarnation, seemingly unclear that the populist wave had crested and crashed with the departure of Lucy Bouchard and Preston Manning.  What’s more, populism has never really taken off in Ontario.

“I have said here many times, and consistently since I was elected this last time, that I work for the voters - the people, the taxpayers. After that I heed my party and the political establishment. All are important, of course, but the people come first.”

Garth is in the wrong time at the wrong place. With one exception: since Garth comes first to Garth, the public eye does seem to be the right environment for him.

For readers in the Calgary area and surroundings, this looks like an excellent opportunity to commemorate our fallen heroes, enjoy the company of like-minded folks, and listen to a good talk.

Professor Michael Ignatieff is looking forward to taking a trip out of the country to avoid being characterised as anti-Israeli. For that, he plans to go to Israel. If memory serves well, the last Grit to be in the area in connection to the recent war ended up endorsing Hizbollah. Look out. Gritzbollah blues might require some Burqa Blue.

Ignatieff foolishly accused Israel of committing war crimes during last summer’s war in Lebanon. Specifically, he speaks of the Qana bombings. War crimes typically fall under the purview of international law, and normally academics and prudent politicians wait for charges and convictions to be handed out before making such categorical assertions. But Ignatieff ceased to be an academic some time ago; and while he is certainly a politician, he’s just not a very prudent one.

This is, of course, the same man who callously stated that he was not going to lose any sleep over the Qana deaths. But he now finds that Israel committed war crimes. The professor is trying very hard to paint himself as a man of conviction, but he is not succeeding. Instead, all he has managed is to appear to be a flip-flopper:

“I’m somebody who says what I think,” he told the National Post. “I’ve taken clear positions on difficult issues because I think this is a time when the country doesn’t want to be administered. It doesn’t want to be managed. It wants to be led, led by a democratic politician who’s willing to lead from the front and take the risks that go with it.”

Beside the fact that Ignatieff’s words sound like an endorsement for Prime Minister Harper, Ignatieff’s reinterpretation of Qana runs afoul of his own words. If his position was clear back then, there would be no need to revisit it, change it, and try to spin it in a different direction for the sake of courting the left-wing of his party today. He is neither principled nor committed to anything else other than getting more votes in the close leadership race. That’s not leadership, but its opposite.

Even some prominent Liberals have spotted the naked opportunism. Ariela Cotler, wife of former Justice Minister Irvin Cotler and a prominent leader in the Montreal Jewish community, has renounced her party membership in reply to Ignatieff’s blunt about face.

“I feel it was not political savvy and wisdom that Mr. Ignatieff lacked in his address in Quebec. Rather, it was a lack of moral integrity, sacrificing the truth for personal political gains in the upcoming leadership election for the party,” she wrote.

Ignatieff claims to have profound respect for Mrs. Cotler’s criticism that he is a crass political opportunist. Yet, Ignatieff has not been able to reconcile his attacking words against the prime minister, who effectively said the same things Mrs. Cotler did. There are principles and then there are principles, but the professor would have us all believe that he is not a typical politician.

Which brings us to Trudeau in Ignatieff’s verbal dance and in his portrayal of the politician who is not a politician. Trudeau was a master at programming and rehearsing spontaneity, a lesson that Ignatieff does not seem to absorb. The same rehearsed “spontaneous act” cannot be continuously repeated and still be presented as spontaneous day in and day out. Yet, every time that Ignatieff opens his mouth in public, he suggests that he is the second coming of Pierre Trudeau, even though he always manages simultaneously and deliberately to say the opposite.

Ignatieff is not the first Liberal politician to have such childish ambition, of course. Long after being washed out to his marooned destination in the academy, Lloyd Axworthy still thinks he is Pierre’s incarnation.

How long will it be before Michael Ignatieff begins to talk about “lame power”?

I’m not in the habit of drinking Budweiser, but I’m prepared to make an exception today after seeing this clip.

An aircraft hit a building in New York City today (10/11). There is no word on whether terrorists are responsible, but it does not appear to be the case at first blush. Either way, it must be bring back painful 9/11 memories to NYC.