Citizen Times

We break another promise

2006-07-19T12:44:00.000-07:00

We said we wouldn't. Does it do us any good at all, we asked ourselves, to reflect again upon the thing that is George W. Bush? Is it not sufficient that we shriek and hit the remote when his image ghosts up on our TV screen? That merely trying to rationally discuss him/his administration/his policies/his pure unmitigated evil and lack of cortical development renders us sputtering, fist pounding, inarticulate weeping nutballs.

But, really!

Certainly gross enough eating a buttered bun with lip-smacking open-mouthed slouching off-handedness while talking about a global crisis. Offensive enough in addressing his principal ally and leader of a major world power as "Yo, Blair!" Ignorant enough to suggest that the UN just needs to drop a dime, phone Hezbollah and tell 'em to "knock off this shit". But dense enough to amble over and give the Chancellor of Germany (his other significant ally) an univited (and unanticipated by security) noogie...?!

Well, you know she was just asking for it!

In another era - or perhaps alternative universe - we could have saved ourselves some serious trouble. "Yo, Churchill, you sumbitch. You need to give Nazi-Boy a wedgie..."

We're just waiting for Bush to sneak up behind Steve and rub his teddy-bear tummy.

War, we tell you! War!

The TRULY Ugly American

Ignore this at your peril

2006-07-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

Don't laugh. Belinda Stronach - despite the obvious, envy-inspiring advantages and unique profile in the zeitgeist - is as 'grassroots' as they come.

"You asked about the three things the Liberals need to do to renew the party. Obviously, the grassroots growth of the party is, in my view, the most important. I'm proposing that we build a million-member party that will be much more democratic and that will engage the grassroots in policy development and fundraising. These two issues — policy development and fundraising — are the two other issues that I believe we need to focus on in order to renew the party. But both policy development and fundraising can be strengthened by focusing on the first issue — namely, strengthening our party's grassroots and building a much more robust and democratic party."

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It's cheap'n'easy to make fun. But party insiders better understand that there are those among us who'd support a high-stepping nouvelle liberal like Stronach (with her FU money) over a phony populist like Joe Volpe. Or anyone who ties themselves to fixers and back-room operators. If "more democracy" scares you, you know what side you're on. And so do we.

On balance, it's balance

2006-07-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

Hoping this doesn't take us too far 'inside baseball', but we'd like to quote an online discussion point made in this morning's Salon.com in reference to US Senator Joe Lieberman. It's part of a debate which suggests that Al Gore's former vice-presidential nominee is now, officially - and to the detriment of honest representation - a DINO (Democrat-In-Name-Only).

Why does it matter to us? Maybe only in that Canadians are increasingly imitating the polarizing, phony, left-right dichotomy which has so gripped Bush's America. What next? White guys from Calgary doing gangsta rap? Ooh, wait...

"I use a line I lifted from Salon's own Andrew Leonard as the best one sentence definition of the political doctrine of centrism:
"A government's proper role is to mediate between conflicting interests, not to represent one particular interest against all others."
In other words, it's the belief that the proper role of governance is to balance competing interests in such a way that the greatest good flows to the majority of the people - Good old Jeremy Bentham's Utilitarianism comes to mind. It's the principle of checks and balances writ large: that no narrowly defined vested interests should be allowed to dominate.

I'd like to direct readers to http://www.politicalcompass.org/ which gets beyond the almost useless left/right dichotomy and uses an axis to place one's beliefs within the political continuum."

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Lather, rinse and repeat: "...so that the greatest good flows to the majority of the people..."

As the last available source of free solar power sets on the left coast

2006-07-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

Let no one think that, because we bitch, we don't care. In fact, we're deeply sentimental about this little chunk of the planet we call home (we're humming Mon Pays and The Canadian Railroad Trilogy even as we type) and really proud to be part of a world-class experiment.

Happy Canada Day! Now, get back to work.

Harping on the Obvious

2006-06-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

At least Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan showed up to promote his 'Cities Agenda'.

And a woman from a village community bank in Nicaragua learned the universal verb, "to network".

But maybe they had their reasons. Maybe the opportunity provided by 8,000 international delegates, world press, UN commissioners, diplomats, hundreds of agencies representing global sustainable development, and grassroots activists from every place CIDA hangs its hat - talking for a week in Canada - just wasn't relevant enough for the future leaders of the Liberal Party.

Oh, sure. They wax eloquent about stuff like "vision" or "a 4-point plan for world domination" or even "beating Harper", but they can't be bothered to drop in on the World Urban Forum for a little Granville Island lager and a schmooze with the Secretary-General of UN-HABITAT.

Saying you're going to create "an international country" is one thing. Demonstrating that you have the cojones - and we mean that in the nicest, non-gender-specific way - by walking in and starting a conversation with the rest of the world is, apparently, a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

Think of the travel-snaps you missed, Prime Minister Wannabe. Mountains, ocean, uncharacteristically near-tropical sunshine. Quaint foreigners, like mayors and ministers of economic development from unpronounceable places like 'China' and 'India', 'Somalia', 'Rwanda', 'Chile' and 'The Philippines'. Local yokels from nowhere but every Canadian hamlet, town and city from St John's to Yellowknife. All enjoying a $30 million event planned and paid for by a recently-deposed Liberal government - over which the Dark Lord Stephen presided for, like, 20 minutes, before bolting past the world press for a photo-op elsewhere.

When are the 11 of you - 12, if you count David Orchard - going to stop rehearsing your campaign sound-bites at the local ABC Restaurant for a bunch of party-hearties, and get real?

Harper used the venue to make a clunker of a Conservative law-and-order stump speech. You - any of you - could have used it to make a difference. And a point. You could have even made it look like you're ready for more than a Rotary Club luncheon. Or a barbecue in a parking lot in Nanaimo.

Wha-a-t? Your engraved invitation got lost in the mail?

Next time there's an international event with a home soil advantage, stop by. We'll leave the light on for ya.

Harper's Pressing Issues

2006-06-21T10:20:00.000-07:00

On Monday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper deigned to visit the World Urban Forum being held in Vancouver and address the thousands of delegates to this UN event.

The closest he got to a media "scrum" was a cameraman in a roped-off area in the audience.

And the only thing he could think to discuss - keep in mind, this is the most prestigious group of international officials, luminaries and grassroots activists gathered on the planet at this moment to discuss issues of substainable development in the world's cities - the welcome-to-Canada message was about mandatory sentencing, street racing and the Conservative Party platform.

Let's just say, the stump speech made him look like the world's most boorish host.

Tin ear? How 'bout lead heart?

This is the same guy who, two weeks ago, told Canada's municipalities to go screw themselves.

Daddy wants the keys back

2006-06-09T21:28:00.000-07:00

Young George W. has always struck most of us as a petulant, adolescent bully with "entitlement issues". Apparently, George pere is now regretting his part in the promotion of this legacy to leadership.

He lent his kid the car and now junior's speeding down the freeway, drunk with power, firing a gun out the window and saying the rules of the road don't apply to him. Playing a game of chicken with an oncoming Mack truck.

Dad, you're just a speck in the rear-view mirror...

"Former President George H.W. Bush waged a secret campaign over several months early this year to remove Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld."

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It would take an abject apology and a particularly humble resignation to do anything for the rest of humanity outside of the Kennebunkport compound.

Vox politician

2006-06-05T14:39:00.000-07:00

If they're all running against Harper, what are our 11 leadership candidates saying now about their policies for 'terrorists in our midst'? It's time for each of them to address substantive issues of immigration and charter rights potentially gob-smacked by images of bombs-in-the-making. To speak out to a peaceful nation that - like any other - can be turned on a dime by the tactics of fear.

Enough pussy-footing. I'm fully prepared to slam as 'politically correct' anyone who espouses the primacy of special interest groups - including fundamentalist religious factions - over the full-throated defense of Canadian secular values.

Whose idea was it that Sharia law might ever trump a Canadian civil court?

And getting photogenic representatives of 'ethnic' communities on your campaign committee has to say something beyond cynical money-raising and vote-getting.

Turns out 9/11 is going to be our fault

2006-06-04T17:05:00.000-07:00

With the discovery of a terrorist cell in Scarborough, the US media has determined that the "world's longest undefended border" is the real problem. The day is filled with TV reporters testing the defenses at some garden shed on the North Dakota line. Not the heartbreakingly-bungled occupation of Iraq. Not Afghanistan. Not pre-emptive war, undermined international institutions and abrogated treaties, faulty intelligence or a 'unitary executive'.

Interesting, too, that the only comparison they can make is to the amount of the explosive materiel in the Oklahoma City destruction of the Murrah Building (one ton of ammonium nitrate versus three tons up here). Forgetting that McVeigh was a 'home-grown terrorist' in a "pre-911" world" or that these Canukistan morons - stopping in to roll up the rim at a Tim Horton's on their way home from bomb-making training camp - were incited by a war a world away. Remind us how they "hate us for our freedoms" - the ones they grew up with.

What happened to the idea of "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here"? Remind us how the great crusade for western values is making us all safer.

No such thing as 'delete'

2006-06-01T14:49:00.000-07:00

Say it ain't so, Joe. Hilarious.

Check out "Youth for Volpe" at Policy Watch

Speaking truth to power

2006-06-01T12:09:00.000-07:00

Rae's explanation for leaving the NDP? "They're a party of protest. Not power. Their only concern is how we spend money - not how we make it."

He's finally seen the light and the applause from the well-dressed, cheque-writing business crowd in attendance confirmed that Bob's 30-year long quest for a political home is at an end.

Welcome, Frodo.

Passing the smell test

2006-06-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

A scorpion asks a turtle for help crossing the river...well, you know the rest of the fable. Suffice to say, it ends badly for both.

And like that scorpion, Joe Volpe - as an old-line Liberal emotionally and genetically tied to corporate money - can claim it's just his nature.

But the party mandarins obviously don't get it. Rules, schmools. You hold the cheque up to your nose - if you catch a whiff of Crayola, you give it back.

F is for failure even to make an honest effort.

Liberals refuse to investigate Volpe donations

If Volpe doesn't get it

2006-05-31T23:11:00.000-07:00

I figure when you get a cheque for $5400 from an 11 year-old kid, you have to ask yourself if his allowance isn't just a little too generous. I know today's parents are considered overly-indulgent but it doesn't take the Auditor-General (or Elections Canada) to call this one into question. C'mon, Joe. When you have to roll the rules around like a pair of loaded dice, you know it's wrong.

Does the meme "AdScam" mean nothing to you? Clear the decks and let the renewal begin.

Twins, 11, donated $10,800 to Volpe's campaign

2006-05-31T13:31:00.000-07:00

So far, our would-be Liberal leaders are jockeying politely for position. Politely. Befitting the national stereotype promoted everywhere but inside a hockey rink. No cussing, no elbows thrown. A behind-the-scenes pact guarantees that no one's going to pee into the big Liberal tent and any real "accountibility moment" provided by the last election is now a dulcet-toned admonition: it's an unfortunate, but necessary, time-out.

So the Grits gather again with gentle murmurs about renewal. That's not blood, that's thin gruel served in a Bunnykins bowl. With a report to follow.

Axworthy (the tough-talking Tom, not the other diplomatic one) said it best. The Liberal Party's implementation of their policies has been "abysmal." The Liberal day-care program was a "deathbed repentance." The gun registry an "administrative disaster" and the government's response to AdScam "bizarre."

The feel-good Canadian commitment to the Kyoto protocol, dreamed up by the Chretien and Martin regimes, was both difficult to understand and even worse, "wasn't real anyway."

Key Liberal slams Martin government strategies

When Harper can get to a 40% approval rate by being merely competent, real party renewal isn't like slapping more cheap stucco on a leaky Vancouver condo. It's not even about policy - it's about the need for a putsch in the backroom.