Album Review: Kid Rock and the Twisted Brown Trucker Band - "Live Trucker" (2006)

Kid Rock, the redneck from the rust belt, has delivered what may be the best live album of the 2000's. Admittedly, that's not saying much, what with the music scene today dominated by acts like Ashlee Simpson and American Idol, but I digress.

Recorded in Detroit (including at Cobo Hall, where parts of the greatest live album in history was recorded 30 years ago), with lots of props to the hometown (from a shoutout to the Pistons to the Seger-esque lettering on the cover), Rock leaps out of the trailer to entertain with his potent blend of rap, Southern rock, classic riffage, soul and funk. He nods to Zeppelin and Skynyrd, gives the dearly departed Joe C. the spotlight on "Devil Without a Cause", and invites the trashy Gretchen Wilson to sing on "Picture". As an added bonus, the 70's-ish jam "Outstanding" as recorded at a sound check is included.

Only complaints are that "Jackson, Mississippi" and "Lonely Road of Faith" are not included. And I'm hopeful that a couple of albums down the road a DVD will make its way to store shelves.

I know from personal experience that there is absolutely nothing better than having a great beer buzz accentuated with a little blunt on a hot summer's night surrounded by friends old and new at a Kid Rock show. I've done this more than once and I certainly plan to do it again. If you want to know why, get this album and find out what you've been missing for yourself.

As Kid says himself in the liner notes, "if it looks good, you'll see it; if it sounds good, you'll hear it; if it's marketed right, you'll buy it; but ... if it's real, you'll feel it."

Feel it.

Overall rating: 9.5/10

I said pardon?

Picture the following:

21-year old Palestinian girl suffers burns to 45 percent of her body in a gas stove explosion in her home.

Girl receives ongoing treatment at an Israeli outpatient centre.

On her way to a treatment session, girl is arrested for hiding a 20-pound bomb.

Mother expresses disappointment that the girl wasn't able to kill the 30 to 50 Israelis she intended to, including the doctor who was treating her.

Unbelievable.

Part of the problem

The world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia, has issued a total of 30 patents in the last five years. Saudi Arabia has issued zero over the last six. It's clear that innovation, which drives a society's wealth upwards, is not happening in the Islamic world. This is a huge issue. As John McIntyre points out here, that's a reason why President Bush is encouraging the ports deal to go through ... in a very small way, it will help promote a culture of business in the Middle East and will give young Arab men something other to consider than the memorization of Koranic teachings as taught by radical imams.

(Side note: For a look at what the mainstreams of the two U.S. political parties have done over time to further economic growth, look here and here.)

Competing worldviews

Dennis Prager has written an excellent piece called "Why the Left doesn't blame Muslims for Muslim violence". Essentially what he says is that there is a view among some on the Left whereby everything and everyone under the sun except for perpetrators themselves should be blamed when bad things like terrorism take place.

Bringing it down a level, I think we can take Prager one further when looking closer to home. Homelessness, poverty, crime ... a lot of the time, the following questions need to be asked:

"Why are you in the situation you're in?"

"Did you do anything in particular over the course of your life which may have led to you being here today?"

Not only when it comes to Muslim violence will we see the Left blaming society, parenting, racism, evil corporations, TV, advertising ... everything except the person who should take responsibility for their own actions.

Therein lies the difference.

Conservatives believe that people have free will and one's lot in life is primarily - not always, but primarily - the result of choices that one makes. Liberals on the other hand think that one's lot in life is primarily determined by societal influences which they have no control over.

If that's the case, then why should we be held accountable or responsible for anything we do as individuals, whether that be burning down an embassy or something more mundane like quitting school early or getting pregnant outside of marriage?

I know which side makes more sense to me.

The ever-responsible liberal media strikes again

The latest CBS News poll of 1018 Americans shows that only 34% of respondents approve of the job President Bush is doing. What they don't tell you is that almost half of those who were surveyed are registered Democrats. See here.

Then, we have the ever-sanctimonious New York Times claiming press freedom over national security by suing the Defence Department so they can obtain of every piece of documentation relating to the eavesdropping program. "Forget about top secret clearances - we have a right to know, dammit, even if it means publishing the details and giving the terrorists a roadmap to beat the system!" Of course, the reason that the whole program came to light in the first place was because of an illegal leak, the same kind of illegal leak that led to Dick Cheney's chief of staff getting canned, but in this case, the leak is justified because it's for the cause of righteousness, according to the arbiter of legality known as the NYT.

New York Times sues Defence Department for eavesdropping records

NEW YORK (AP) _ The New York Times sued the U.S. Defence Department on Monday, saying the government has refused to turn over records related to its domestic warrantless surveillance program.

In its federal lawsuit, the Times asked the court to order the government to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request requiring it to release documents or provide a lawful reason why it cannot.

The Times said a Dec. 16 letter to the department requested all internal memos, e-mails and legal memoranda and opinions since Sept. 11, 2001, related to the National Security Agency spying program. The department is the parent agency of the NSA.

The spying program was revealed by the Times in a story in December.

Maj. Susan Idziak, a spokeswoman, said the department would work closely with the Justice Department on litigation regarding the matter.

The newspaper said it asked for meeting logs, calendar items and notes related to discussions of the program, including meetings held by Vice-President Dick Cheney and his staff with members of Congress and telecommunications executives.

It also requested all complaints of abuse or possible violations in the operations of the program or the legal rationale behind it.

And it sought the names and descriptions of people or groups identified through the use of the program and a description of relevant episodes used to identify the targets of the intercepts.

The lawsuit said the Defence Department acknowledged receipt of the request Dec. 30, 2005, but the response, required in 20 business days, never came.

It's also clear that the mainstream media is salivating at the possibility of a
civil war in Iraq. Too bad the Iraqi people won't co-operate.

Fukuyama's back

Francis Fukuyama, arguably the most important public intellectual of the 90s, is back.

In his latest piece, titled "Europe vs. Radical Islam", he says that the squishy and apologetic multiculturalism of the left, which too often denigrates into a fearful political correctness in the name of cultural affirmation, is not the way to deal with the threat of radical Islam because it incubates ghettoes from the broader society at large. However, for Fukuyama, the contemptuous tribalism of a Pat Buchanan is an equally erroneous path.

I wonder if this tension can engender a new sort of civic nationalism that can unify both observant Muslims and everyone else. Even if not, I think that Canada is well placed to bridge the gap between the two approaches. We haven't had an attack (yet), we are not overly religious, and we encourage tolerance of faiths. However, there is a well-observed desire to limit that tolerance, even if the CBC doesn't think so. The challenge for the new government here will be to lead the way and not let political considerations undermine the importance of striking that balance.

"The only thing rising faster than China is the hype about China"

Interesting article here about how the rise of China's economy isn't all it's cracked up to be. An excerpt:

China has already paid a heavy price for the flaws of its political system and the corruption it has spawned. Its new leaders, though aware of the depth of the decay, are taking only modest steps to correct it. For the moment, China’s strong economic fundamentals and the boundless energy of its people have concealed and offset its poor governance, but they will carry China only so far. Someday soon, we will know whether such a flawed system can pass a stress test: a severe economic shock, political upheaval, a public health crisis, or an ecological catastrophe. China may be rising, but no one really knows whether it can fly.

A weak rule of law, vast inequality, poor health services ... does that sound like another historical Communist competitor to Western economies that eventually imploded? I think that a lot of those who are hoping for Chinese ascendance are a) US-bashers who want to bring Washington down a notch and/or b) starry-eyed socalist ideologues who are still holding on to that dream.

At best, I think China is going to resemble an overgrown Bulgaria. They will never eclipse any of the G8 economies, least of all America's.

The missing ingredient

Both the Wall Street Journal and Michael Barone have suggested that reports of the Bush Doctrine's death are greatly exaggerated.

My own view is that the key variable in whether or not the foreign policy of the Administration will succeed over the long term is whether or not a middle class develops in democratizing countries. Without it, nativist and simplistic solutions that are promoted by parties like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood will flourish to the long-term detriment of the coalition project. Scapegoating Israel and promising grand socialistic plans provides a compelling narrative to those who are facing unemployment and other forms of economic despair. Democracy in the Middle East won't be healthy until people are able to provide for themselves. Sometimes I think that the theorists behind the Bush Doctrine don't realize this.

Ivy League looniness

The nutty behaviour continues in academic circles.

Last week, I blogged about how Harvard president Larry Summers was unceremoniously dumped from his post because he didn't tow the line of political correctness like the faculties of arts and social sciences wanted him to.

Now, Yale has pulled its own stunt and has admitted a former Taliban spokesperson as a student.

I'm all for having an open mind but not so open that your brain falls out.

For more on the worldview of your average social scientist or humanities prof, see David Horowitz's latest.

DVD Review: Motley Crue - "Carnival of Sins - Live" (2005)

The return of heavy metal bad boys Motley Crue is chronicled in this two-disc set filmed last April in Grand Rapids, MI, shortly after I caught them in Montreal. The Crue is firing on all four cylinders here and certainly does not disappoint. Truly, this tour, which is still going on as we speak (you gotta respect a band comprised of four guys well over 40 who play Red Deer, Alberta twice in one week, with three other gigs in between, each clocking in at well over two hours) is an event. Walking dead guitarist Mick Mars still holds it down and although Vince Neil doesn't have the lung capacity he does in the studio, it's all forgiven due to the sheer spectacle of the whole thing. Best tracks: "Looks That Kill", "Girls Girls Girls" and "Dr. Feelgood". You gotta see this thing to truly appreciate it.

And to be totally honest, I also gotta say that if you can't see the entertainment value in this show, with all of the breasts, pyro, aerialists, and of course, the raunch n' roll, I can't help but think a little less of you as a person.

Overall rating: 9.5/10

"Muslim Madonna" raises eyebrows with sexy dance video

How long till a fatwa is put on this young lady's head?

Book Review: "Night" by Elie Wiesel (originally published 1958; this edition translated 2006)

"Night" is a brief, 120-page account of human rights activist Elie Wiesel's experience as a Jewish adolescent during the Holocaust. Losing his mother and three sisters, he finds himself shuffled from concentration camp to concentration camp throughout occupied Europe with his father. In addition to describing the absolute horror of what he and his fellow Jews were subjected to, "Night" alludes to the struggle that the formerly devout Wiesel had with his faith after seeing what God had wrought for Wiesel's people. He also ashamedly finds himself increasingly wishing that he be rid of the burden of his father so as to make his own suffering more bearable. For Wiesel, these two very human reactions are cause for his own personal "night" above and beyond the physical torture and mental anguish he goes through at the hands of the SS.

Of note in this edition is the inclusion of Wiesel's speech upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his humanitarian work. Looked at in the light of more recent genocides like Rwanda and others going on as we speak in places like the Sudan, it's clear that the Holocaust was not an isolated incident of ethnic slaughter, and for shame. Wiesel says:

"And then I explain to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe."

The victims of the Holocaust would not have died in vain if Wiesel's words had guided the world's actions when dealing with ethnic genocide since.

Overall rating: N/A. You can't assign a rating to a man's memoir of losing his family to hatred.

Sunday morning dribs and drabs

It's a beautiful Sunday morning in the nation's capital. Before I head out to shovel the driveway and then go off to Chapters, here are a few nuggets:

- A couple of alarming pieces, here and here, chroncling the latest developments in the battle between radicalism and the West for Islamic minds.

- A couple of conservative titans take differing views on the state of play in Iraq. William F. Buckley urges the US to admit defeat, while Bill Kristol urges persistence. (Be sure to read the Fukuyama piece Kristol refers to. Check the archives on the right sidebar for a link.)

- Today, the world's population is expected to top 6.5 billion. Birthrates in India, among other places, are driving the explosion. It's estimated that close to 30 children are born every minute there, and there are also moves afoot to develop sterilization programs in some regions of the country. While we'll no doubt be subjected to the usual hue and cry about overpopulation and finite resources, the truth of the matter is that if the right economic forces are harness and encouraged (read: the expansion of capitalism) the negative effects of population increases can be more or less avoided. See here for a story on how India is changing.

We're from the country and we like it that way

Conservative philosophy and country music go together like a burger and fries.

Here's a list of the top 15 conservative country music songs of all time.

Bold and unapologetic statements from the Australian PM

John Howard has basically said "love it or leave it".

Now that's what I call leadership.

An excerpt (Mitchell is the interviewer):

MITCHELL:

Well what are Australian values? This is the point. What are the Australian values we expect people to embrace or get out?

PRIME MINISTER:

Well we expect them to embrace democracy, we expect them to recognise this is a society made up of both men and women and that each should be accorded proper respect and an equal place. That doesn’t mean that we should try and make them the same in their outlook and their attitude, but simply they should be treated fairly and equally. It’s a society that recognises and respects freedom of religion but it’s a society that does not have an established religion. Christianity, although it is the Judaeo-Christian ethic is the great moral shaping force, has been and continues to be in different ways, the great shaping moral force of Australia it is not entrenched in any way and the Christian church is not entrenched in any way as a state religion. We respect all religions and we respect people who don’t have religions and in that sense, we are very different from a country such as Iran, a country such as, in many respects, even a country such as Pakistan or Indonesia, where there is a far greater, how shall I put it, far greater central role for Islam as a religion.

MITCHELL:

Do you believe that multiculturalism does have, from the understanding of it, the broad support of Australians or are they suspicious of it?

PRIME MINISTER:

Look it depends how you define it. If multiculturalism simply means that we respect everybody, we want everybody to be an Australian first, second and third, but we also understand that people retain affections for their original cultures and countries, and that’s perfectly normal and I think we enjoy it. And we want those other cultures to be part of our mainstream culture and we welcome that. Now if it means that we’re all for it. If it means that we’re going to encourage people to maintain their differences and that basically we have an attitude that well all cultures are equal, all cultures are the same, then I don’t think people feel comfortable with that.

Another article here.

All hail

A few astute observations from Stewie Griffin:

Stewie (to one of the prostitutes at Cleveland's house): So, is there any tread left on the tires? Or at this point would it be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway?

Lois: Oh, I haven't been on a college campus in years. Everything seems so different.
Stewie: Really? Perhaps if you laid on your back with your ankles behind your ears that would ring a few bells.

Stewie: Hello, mother. I come bearing a gift. I'll give you a hint. It's in my diaper and it's not a toaster.

Meg: Everybody! Guess what I am?
Stewie: Hm, the end result of a drunken back-seat grope-fest and a broken prophylactic?

Stewie: By all means, turn me into a child star. Perhaps I can move to Californ-i-ay and wrangle me a three-way with the Olsen twins.

Stewie: What the hell is this?
Lois: Sweetie, that's tuna salad.
Stewie: Oh, is that what it is? Really? Because I could have sworn it was mayonnaise and cat food.

Stewie: You know, mother, this could almost have passed for a palatable banana pudding, but without Nilla wafers it's just another one of your wretched culinary abortions. Now clean it up!

Lois Griffin: Come on Stewie, don't be afraid. It's just water, it's not gonna bite.
Stewie Griffin: Shut up! I know it's not going to bite, stupid! What a stupid thing to say. You drown in it you moron! It doesn't have to bite you!

Stewie (reading the Bible)" My my, what a thumping good read, lions eating Christians, people nailing each other to two by fours. I'll say, you won't find that in Winnie the Pooh.

Meg: Can I be in the play, Mom?
Stewie: Oh yes, you can be the dumpy teenage girl who cries backstage because no one finds her attractive.

Heck yes

I know it's getting old, but Friday deserves a little Napoleon.

A port in a storm

A lot of hysteria in the United States this week over the proposed sale of six US ports including New York, Miami and New Orleans to Dubai Ports Worlds of the United Arab Emirates.

President Bush is in favour of the sale while basically the entire US Congress is saying that it should be blocked.

I personally don't see the big deal here, and here's why.

First of all, the Arabic owners and operators of these ports are going to know that they will be watched. Closely. It's in their interest to make sure that there isn't any funny stuff going on in their facilities.

Secondly, it's the responsibility of government to ensure security. Facilitating commerce these days means that government has to do its job. And that job involves protecting borders and transportation networks from those who would do us harm. Things like prescription drug benefits should come a distant second until the primary responsibilities of the state are taken care of.

Third, would a President who has staked his entire reputation and legacy on national security allow a deal to go ahead, in the face of HUGE opposition from his own party, if it were to allow for another 9/11?

I don't think so.

And fourth, what happened to the principle of innocent until proven guilty? Isn't that what the West is all about?

The sale should not be blocked by the US government.

The case against public funding of Catholic schools

Here's a blogger who basically says that if you don't like the fact that Catholic school systems are publicly funded, that's your problem.

Most people who know me know that I'm a pretty Catholic guy. In fact, I'd say I'm about as Catholic as it gets. What that means is that I am a walking, talking contradiction in terms. I believe in Jesus, I love God, and I happily go to church probably way more often than most others my age, however, I am also a raging capitalist with a rather healthy libertarian bent who thinks that booze, peeler bars, cigars, and heavy metal are all good fun.

I have also been known to be the master of my domain from time to time.

All of the challenges inherent in being a Catholic is really something you can truly understand if you are one, what with all of the confusion that goes along with it. That being said, I am very much against what the fellow linked to above says regarding the right of Catholic schools to be publicly funded by taxpayers.

First of all, just because it's in the Constitution doesn't mean it's a good thing. Unelected Senators are in the Constitution. Hiring quotas are in the Constitution. Enforced bilingualism is in the Constitution. None of those are good things.

Second, he basically says that even though it's not fair, it's his right so to hell with the rest of you. Real intellectual analysis there.

Third, he says that Catholics need their own school systems to teach Catholic values on the issues. I'd bet my entire life on the likelihood that abortion rates per capita among female Catholic teens eclipse those of public school girls by FAR. So much for that.

What I think is most fair would be to have a public school system for everybody with optional religious classes for those who want to take them ... for Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs ... why not? I totally value my Catholic education but let me tell you, for all the above posters' talk about values, when I return to the town of my youth and go to church with my folks, I don't see a single person from my grade there ... or the grade above or below me, for that matter.

It's time to treat all religions as equal and stop giving prefential treatment to one faith just because it's politically expedient to do so.

Cambridge chickens come home to roost

This week, Harvard president and former Clinton Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers effectively got booted from his job. He was pressured into resigning because he dared make the groundbreaking observation that perhaps there are innate differences between men and women which may explain why math and engineering faculties are mostly comprised of male professors (you mean it might be something other than sexism?!?). He also didn't acede to the insistence of some faculty members who said that the university should divest itself of all holdings in companies who do business in Israel. Finally, he suggested that black prof Cornel West wasn't working hard enough - obviously a no-no, too.

I see a lot of ironies here. Summers' former colleague and ex-VP Al Gore (D) recently went to Saudi Arabia and crapped all over the US for allegedly rounding up Arabs indiscriminately, claiming it was just one of many examples of racism and abuse targeted at Americans of Middle Eastern descent. The hard left wing of the Democratic party loves that type of talk, as ridiculous as it may be. They love it almost as much as they abhor any suggestion that men and women are indeed different and may have different orientations towards various kinds of careers. It's that type of nonsensical thinking that dominates among the feminist wing of Summers' party. It's also the type of thinking that promotes the fallacy that two parents of either gender will do as good a job raising a child as a mother and a father, which is the latest cause celebre among the more extremely liberal wing of the Democratic party these days. (Who needs fatherhood anyways?) In other words, the usual Israel-bashers, gender warriors, blame-America-firsters, discrimination-claiming whiners and identity politics players that comprise a significant part of the Democratic base has eaten one of their own.

I wonder what Hillary thinks. In fact, I think I probably know what she thinks, which is that Summers' firing is beyond foolish. Sad part is, I suspect she's too chicken shit to say it.

Here's one bleeding-heart liberal who is obviously not doing without

Ted Kennedy, picture of health.

Iranian president says US, Israel behind destruction of Shi'ite mosque in Iraq

While the rest of the world blames Sunni-dominated al-Qaeda for an attack which will deeply undermine progress in Iraq, Ahmadinejad says it's the usual suspects. Of course, who else could it possibly be?

Money quote: "They invade the shrine and bomb there because they oppose God and justice," Ahmadinejad said, referring to the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq.

Opposed to God? I thought Noam Chomsky said that the U.S. was the most religiously fundamentalist country in the world!

Someone's world view is clearly off here.

A serious look here.

Admit it

So the usual navel-gazing and excuse-making has begun.

Did the team have difficulty gelling and developing a sense of cohesion? Sure.

Did the coaching staff not do the best job they could have? Yes.

Should guys like Spezza, Staal and Kariya been named to the main roster? Perhaps.

Should guys like Boyle, Phaneuf, Crosby and maybe even others like Savard and Madden deserved some consideration? Could be.

Could they have used the leadership of an Yzerman or a Mario in the dressing room? Perhaps.

What impact did the injuries of Jovanovski and Neidermayer have? Probably a lot.

All of these things are valid points for discussion but the bottom line is this: The Canadian men's hockey team lost because they got outplayed, plain and simple. There is no reason this roster should have played as bad as they did. They didn't get the job done, and that's why they lost. There is no magic bullet. They just got beat. It's time to stop looking for some kind of elusive answer or eureka explanation.

Team Canada sucked.

Just admit it.

DVD Review: Whitesnake "Live ... In the Still of the Night" (2006)

This show, captured at London's Hammersmith Odeon in (I believe) late 2004, is headbanging heaven. David Coverdale has assembled a stellar, stellar group of musicians to comprise the latest edition of Whitesnake. On guitar, Doug Aldrich, last seen with Dio, takes most of the leads and Reb Beach, formerly of Winger (don't laugh) plays rhythym. Marco Mendoza, who I've seen with the Nuge a couple of times, holds it down on bass, and the ageless Tommy Aldridge who (I think) played with Ozzy in the past and also recorded with Coverdale in earlier versions of Whitesnake is just mind blowing on drums. Timothy Drury adds some swirling keyboards to make it all come together.

Coverdale himself looks and sounds great. His screams are right on the money - "Still of the Night", baby! - and the material sounds fresh, even though nothing from after 1989's "Slip of the Tongue" was played (including, unfortunately, nothing from 94's Coverdale/Page project). "Judgment Day" is epic and forms the centrepiece of the whole set.

Sonically, the fullness of the sound will impress you, and visually, it's clear that Coverdale spared no expense, hiring Hamish Hamilton who directed the amazing Robbie Williams Knebworth DVD. The epileptic pace of the editing takes a little getting used to, and the sometimes obvious vocal overdubs may not be forgiven by purists, but overall this package is bluesy metal at its best. It would have kicked even more ass if they included "Slide It In" and "Slow an' Easy", but even still, this is the good stuff.

Overall rating: An very solid 9/10

(Oh, and did I mention for your $20 you get a live CD, too? That's value. You gotta love an artist who knows how to give their fans what they want.)

A good news story

A group of eight co-workers at a meat packing plant in Lincoln, Nebraska won the record $365 million Powerball jackpot over the weekend. Three of the workers were immigrants, one from central Africa and two from Vietnam. When asked if they went back to work, one of the workers responded that about four of them did do just that even though they won the lottery and planned to retire shortly - reason being, they didn't want to just walk away and leave their managers short-staffed for the next few shifts.

I love middle America.

CD Review: Danko Jones - "Sleep is the Enemy" (2006)

Fresh off a cross-Canada tour opening for Nickelback and with new drummer (and my fellow St. David Catholic High School alumni) Dan Cornelius in tow, Danko Jones comes forth with more of juiced-up cock rock on this, their third release. Part of a burgeoning scene that includes Toronto artists like C'mon, Maximum R n' R and Shikasta, Jones combines the best riffage of AC/DC with the cockiness of Prince and the unapologetic in-your-face attitude of the Sex Pistols.

Great tunes like "Baby Hates Me" could certainly give Canadian rock radio a much-needed shot in the arm, but instead, we are subjected to Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" for the millionth time and so-called edgy material like 54-40, Big Sugar and Tal Bachman's "She's So High" 7 years later. Isn't there more to CANCON than this?

This album has handclap choruses, lyrics which mention giving people the finger, maddeningly hook-laden choruses like on the tune "First Date". However, despite moments of brilliance on "Sleep Is the Enemy", Jones' frenetic live show doesn't translate as well on to vinyl. The energy is there but it just comes off way more strongly and intensely when you're seeing it right there on stage. Even still, if there was any justice, Jones would be more a household name in Canada than he is. No doubt I'll be at his next sweaty, raunch-filled club show when he next comes to town. In the meantime, check out his Stockholm-based radio show here.

Overall rating: 7/10

Just another day in Trudeaupia

Rather large stink this morning after a sick unilingual English-speaking Ontario woman was told she was basically SOL when she went to a French-speaking community health clinic to get in touch with her doctor, who was filling in there.

Essentially, she was told that people who don't speak French can't get the health care services they need at the clinic in question. Both the clinic's administrator and the Ontario government have defended the French-only policy.

Click on the link above for details.

Now imagine, if you possibly could, that there was a similar clinic in the province of Quebec (as if), where only English-speakers were allowed to get treatment. If a sick unilingual franco went to try and speak to their doctor who was filling in there, and was told "Sorry, English only" (again, as if), the PQ would jump 10% in the polls overnight, and the CBC, Toronto Star and Globe and Mail would all be lecturing the country.

No doubt the federal Liberals and federal Conservatives are going to speak out against his egregious breach of the principle of portability as enshrined in the Canada Health Act.

As if.

Immigration judge takes bribes to tune of 2K for each year awarded

This guy should rot for making a mockery of Canada.

Professionalism and the lack thereof part III

It's going from bad to pathetic to laughable.

A 21-year old chief of staff to a Cabinet minister.

Great.

And he feels the need to write about it on Wikipedia.

Explaining Jews

American Jewish talk radio host Dennis Prager is writing a series on the background of the Jewish faith. Parts one, two and three provided for your reading pleasure.

Very interesting material which provides considerable insight to what is a flashpoint for Islamic rage. And speaking geopolitically, how about admitting Israel to NATO to avoid an Iranian attack?

Why Bryant Gumbel won't watch the Winter Olympics

From Newsmax:

While covering the games from Torino, Italy, Gumbel mused:

"Count me among those who don't care about [the Olympics] and won't watch them... So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the winter games look like a GOP convention."

I wonder if he thinks there should be quotas for the US Winter Olympic team.

Book Review: "The Rise of the Creative Class ... And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life" by Richard Florida (2004)

This book, originally written in 2002 but issued in paperback in 2004, makes the argument that successful and innovative economies are ones that harness the three T's: technology, tolerance and talent. Together, these three elements create what the author, Richard Florida, calls the "Creativity Index", and are a predictor of forward-looking dynamism.

Using his home of Pittsburgh as a comparison point, Florida argues that cities such as Austin, San Francisco and Seattle, all of which rate excellently on the Creativity Index, are going to draw the most talent in the new economy such as writers, musicians, scientists, architects and engineers - in short, everyone who earns a living by being creative. Those cities are ones which best harness and encourage the three Ts, while cities like Buffalo, Memphis and Grand Rapids do not, according to Florida.

How does one measure all of this? Through sub-indexes for each city, like the High-Tech Index (percentage of technological output as part of the overall economy), the Innovation Index (how many patents are issued per capita), the Gay Index (incidence of coupled gays), the Bohemian Index (the number of artists, performing and otherwise), the Talent Index (the number of university-educated residents), and the Melting Pot Index (the number of foreign-born residents). He takes all of these together and concludes that the cities which are best to live in from both an economic and social point of view are the ones which espouse the three Ts as shown by the Creativity Index.

I have a couple of problems with his research. First, he neglects to include a couple of other key Ts: taxes and transit. People will not live in places no matter how "cool" they are if the tax burden is too high. Nor will they stay there if it is difficult to get around. Secondly, I know a lot of uncreative gay people. Just because they are gay doesn't make them funky and hip. Similarly, there are a lot of underachieving artists out there. We all know various actors, musicians, painters and the like who are still trying to make it, man, but just can't seem to get it together. Finally, why should foreign-born residents be considered more valuable to the economy than non-foreign born? In Canada, we have a lot of foreign-born friends and neighbours who are having a hard time adapting their skill sets, no matter how much they may enhance the cultural landscape. This is not to mention the linguistic and cultural barriers which often take a generation or two to disappear.

Florida's book is interesting but is more tailored to the heady pre-9/11 days of the Nasdaq boom. He also demonstrates his sociologist bias by ignoring the pocketbook factor. All told, it's a good read if you can get it from the library and are looking for something thought-provoking yet not exactly earth shattering to exercise your mind a little bit.

Overall rating: 7/10

Corruption

It's about time someone starts telling it like it is about corruption in the Third World.

The Forbes article linked to above says the following about a recent Transparency International survey:

Africa is clearly the most seriously corrupt region, since nine of the 16 most seriously corrupt nations are on that continent, with Chad occupying the No. 1 spot. In 2002, the African Union estimated that the continent was losing $150 billion a year to corruption, and things haven't improved much since.

$150 billion annually?!?

Imagine how many vaccines, textbooks and meals that could buy year over year.

"Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support"

This article by Francis Fukuyama in the New York Times magazine is a must-read.

Brilliance. There is no other word for it.

This is the stuff of which intellectualism is made.

(Personally, I am still a supporter of the neo-con project, because what Iraq was at the very least was a demonstration of leadership, courage, and risk, which is all the best of what the West, and specifically America, is. However, Fukuyama's criticism is too rich not to admire.)

Welcome to another episode of Frivoulous Lawsuits starring the Centre for Science in the Public Interest

I can't believe this.

Remember the "McDonald's made me fat" lawsuit filed by two portly teens in 2003? Nine in 10 Americans surveyed at the time thought it should be tossed out of court. But guess what? The litigation is still alive.

Now the food police (led by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, based in Washington) are headed back to court. As early as this week, they plan to sue cereal-maker Kellogg and Viacom, owner of children's cable network Nickelodeon, for "deceptive, unscrupulous junk-food marketing" to children younger than 8.

The lawsuit, to be filed in Massachusetts, alleges that cereal company and TV executives are conspiring with Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants and their cartoon pals to make your kids fat. CSPI contends that the ads promote obesity, diabetes, heart disease and tooth decay.

I hope the judge throws this case out immediately.

Why Blender magazine sucks

Sorry, but any list of dead rock royalty that omits Duane Allman, John Bonham and Bon Scott while including Tupac Shakur, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez and DJ Screw (who dat?) isn't worth the paper it's written on.

See here.

Career-limiting moves 101

See here. Let this be a lesson to all you little punks out there that think your shit doesn't stink when you finish school.

Weekend update

- Seems a new conservative voice has emerged in France. I think it's a good thing that there will be an option between tired 1970s statism and the hatred preached by Le Pen. See here.

- Another look at jihad, here, and how the odds are stacked against Israel here when it comes to media coverage of the Middle Eastern situation. On that subject, just look at what we're dealing with in Gaza and the West Bank following the election of Hamas:

A Palestinian who sent her son on a suicide mission against Israel has been taking civics lessons to prep for her new assignment - becoming a legislator.

Signaling the start of the Hamas era, Mariam Farhat will be among 74 members of the Islamic militant group to take the oath of office and assume control of the Palestinian parliament Saturday.

Farhat and others in Hamas are confident they'll be able to govern, even alleviate poverty in the West Bank and Gaza, with help from God and cash from the Muslim world.

Farhat, the incoming Hamas lawmaker, also brushed aside money woes, saying Muslim countries would come to the rescue.

In recent days, she and others in the Hamas faction were taught by the group's leaders about parliamentary procedures and assigned responsibilities. Women will preside over welfare, health and education, and Farhat said she's eager to improve Gaza's hospitals and increase stipends for the poor.

Demure in a gray robe, the mother of 10 got into parliament as the unlikely symbol of holy war, or jihad, against Israel. Three of her six sons died violent deaths, and one of Hamas' top bomb makers, Emad Akel, was killed in a hail of Israeli fire in her front yard after hiding in her basement for a year.

In 2002, Farhat sent her 18-year-old son Mohammed on a suicide mission, a shooting rampage in the Jewish settlement of Atzmona that killed five Israeli teenagers. After Israel withdrew from Gaza last summer, the Farhat family returned to the settlement, took what they said was the piece of wire fence Mohammed had cut to get in, and mounted it on an outer wall of their home.

Farhat is unapologetic. She said she cries for her boys, but that "jihad comes ahead of everything, including my feelings as a mother."

- Andrew Sullivan sees a Rudy candidacy on the horizon. If so, this race is going to be a watershed moment for the Republican Party because it will demonstrate if the heart and soul of the party - church-going Protestants - will be able to stomach a candidate who is more libertarian than socially conservative. That's not to say I think Rudy winning is a litmus test, but he will need to finish absolutely no lower than a strong third.

Gig Review: Gogol Bordello, Barrymores, Ottawa, ON, February 17 2006

Checked out this gang of
gypsy punks last night after friends saw them blow Cake off the stage in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. Think Spirit of the West meets KISS with a little bit of Mick Jagger thrown in for good measure. Nine members, including an accordion player, fiddler, and two kabuki-cum-Cirque de Soleil washboard-playing gals who appear from time to time.

This show was incredibly intense and the capacity crowd loved every minute of it. Perhaps it was because it was a Friday night after a long week, or the ginormous feed of Chinese food I had before the show, but I couldn't get into it as much as other club shows I've seen recently like Electric Six and White Cowbell Oklahoma. However, full marks for originality considering the pathetic American Idol-ized state of the music industry today.

Support your local independent artists today and keep the spirit of rock n' roll alive.

Overall rating: 6/10

And did you notice that he's a white guy who doesn't live paycheque to paycheque, dammit?

Friend and fellow Angry White Male (TM) Fred takes issue with loonie left-wing Ottawa Citizen columnist Susan Riley's insinuation that Michael Wilson's appointment is just another routine move by the classist, sexist, racist Harper regime.

Thanks for that, Sue. We can always count on you to look out for the proletariat.

Verbal diarrhea epidemic claims another victim in Beverley Hills

In between pontificating about the "new rules of the electronic media", "oxygen" and "instantaneous knowledge leading to instantaneous reaction", well-respected democratic theorist Richard Dreyfuss is calling for the impeachment of the President.

I imagine that just like the rest of Hollywood, he hasn't noticed that there was an election held in the US just over 12 months ago.

Good news for metalheads everywhere

After the "St. Anger" debacle, which I admittedly didn't hate as much as everyone else did, and the resulting embassment that was the "Some Kind of Monster" flick (guys - you're Metallica - just quit pissin' and moanin', get in the studio and kick out the jams already), comes news that none other than Rick Rubin is going to produce the band's next disc.

This is a make or break record for Metallica and it's good to see that they are not screwing around. Hopefully he can bring the same urgency to the group that he did with Cash.

Clash of the Titans

It seems that two of the biggest egos in all of Calgatoba (affectionate term for everywhere west of Thunder Bay) have turned their guns on each other. Matthew Good and Ezra Lerant, both pictured above, are in a little pissing match over the cartoon controversy. No doubt we could not ask for a contemptuous, gratuitous and self-important pair. (Of note is Good's hot yet predictably vacuous blond wife. I would think that he would have nothing but disdain for the type of gal who tells the world via her own blog about her "Carrie Bradshaw moments", but alas.)

This little feud should provide hours and hours of entertainment for all of us.

The age-old debate: Toronto versus Ottawa

In an article published Sunday titled "Bright Lights, Declining City", Randall Denley of the Ottawa Citizen took a look at how Toronto is starting to, well, suck:

The city we love to hate is on a losing streak, but don't feel smug
Randall Denley, The Ottawa Citizen

What's gone wrong with Toronto? Our biggest metropolis is on a remarkable losing streak. Being shut out of the federal cabinet is just the latest blow for a city that's already struggling with a tourism slump, a $532-million shortfall in its municipal budget, gun violence and a general loss of direction. Not to mention the sorry state of the Leafs.

Big, brash, boastful Toronto has been reduced to begging for help while people in Ottawa have two major federal cabinet ministers and a city that's safe and functional, something like a balanced budget and a modestly rebounding technology industry. The Senators are crappy, but not compared to the Leafs.

Sitting in Ottawa, it's easy to feel smug about all of this, until one considers that Toronto is still Canada's most significant city and its failure is bad news, not just for Torontonians, but for the rest of us, too.

Not electing a single Conservative MP is merely a symptom of how out of step Toronto is with most of the rest of the country. Toronto is so anti-Conservative that Prime Minister Stephen Harper couldn't even dredge up a turncoat or a senator to represent it.

Not having a cabinet minister really only matters if you think of them as special pleaders looking for cash for their city. Unfortunately, that seems to be how Toronto views the world. Former prime minister Paul Martin was supposed to deliver big bucks through his new deal for cities, but it wasn't nearly enough. Now, Toronto is counting on the provincial government to make up most of the city budget shortfall, as it has in recent years. Toronto does need more money, but it will be a tough sell. When Toronto pleads for help, it's about as appealing as a street beggar in a three-piece suit.

A drop in American tourism is hurting Toronto and officials there are trying to blame it on Canada's outdated image of offering nothing but "moose, Mounties and mountains." And yet more Americans visited Toronto in 2000 than last year, and it surely wasn't for the moose or the mountains.

Maybe the word is out that Toronto is, in fact, dreadfully boring. Its major art gallery and museum are getting long overdue renovations, but the theatre scene is at a low ebb. The Blue Jays, Leafs and Raptors don't exactly constitute a tourist attraction.

Torontonians might like their city, but to an outsider it just seems like a big cold place with a lot of tall buildings and long traffic jams. What's even remotely exciting about Toronto?

Cities that you want to visit have some kind of image that you can define in a word or two. Paris has romance and culture. London has history and theatre. New York has a unique energy. New Orleans was a premier party town, before the flood. Toronto had an image of money and power. Maybe not a tourism draw and now not too accurate, either.

What is the central idea, what is Toronto about? The city that so recently seemed to define how a big city could work has degenerated into a soul-destroying urban sprawl that is chewing up most of southern Ontario. Toronto is a city that is not so much too big in population, but too big in area. People endure daily commutes that are madness by Ottawa standards. The city's transit system has always made its density work, but it, too, is now being overwhelmed. Ridership is increasing but the city can't afford the extra buses and subway trains to meet the demand.

The Liberal-NDP elite that runs Toronto is too politically correct to really dig into one of its most vexing problems. About 37 per cent of Canada's annual 250,000-person immigrant influx ends up in Toronto. That's an enormous burden to place on one city. At first, Toronto's immigrant influx changed a town that was perceived as white-bread and boring into one that was definitely more cosmopolitan and interesting. Now it has moved into a new zone with so-called visible minorities expected to become a visible majority by 2017. The nature of Toronto has changed profoundly in a very short time. The sheer volume of immigrants from vastly different cultures is more than Toronto can accommodate.

The city's woes seem to have taken the starch out of the cocky Torontonians we loved to hate. Even the hometown-cheerleading Toronto Star recently referred to "years of stagnation, inertia and neglect." The paper then argued unconvincingly that things might be getting a little bit better.

There may be no easy cure for the disease that afflicts Toronto, but it ought to be a concern to all of us. Despite the image of moose and so on, Canadian is an extremely urbanized country. If Toronto is the future, we're all in trouble.

Fellow columnist Andrew Cohen took issue:

The capital of condescension
Andrew Cohen, Citizen Special

TORONTO - This is a city under siege. Its treasury is empty. Its leadership is adrift. Its air is dirty, its streets are clogged and its subway trains are crowded.

What's worse, Canada's largest city has no representative in the new federal cabinet. The Conservatives may be ready to sell their soul to appoint ministers for Montreal and Vancouver, but for scarlet Toronto? Apparently not.

In a country that makes envy an emblem, Toronto is now the object of pity. As other cities prosper, Toronto struggles. Strange how this gives some such perverse pleasure.

"Big, brash, boastful Toronto has been reduced to begging for help while people in Ottawa have two major federal cabinet ministers and a city that's safe and functional," exclaims columnist Randall Denley in the Ottawa Citizen.

"Cocky" Toronto has a bad hockey team, he brays. Tourists aren't coming here anymore. The "politically correct" left of centre council is paralysed.

He has a point, up to a point, about this city. Toronto isn't pretty. It has relatively few parks. It ruined most of its fine mansions on Jarvis Street and cut off the lakeshore with an elevated expressway and a row of Stalinist apartment blocks. Much of its public architecture is soulless. Its suburbs extend forever in unrelenting ugliness.

For his part, Mr. Denley calls Toronto "dreadfully boring" without a "central idea" of itself. With its theatre scene "at low ebb," there is nothing "even remotely exciting" about this awful place.

Coming from an Ottawan you could read this as satire, but Mr. Denley seems to be serious. So here is a serious reply, which isn't written by the Toronto Chamber of Commerce:

By international standards, Toronto is a success. It is a model of the mixed metropolis of the 21st century, absorbing a staggering wave of immigrants (almost half of the city wasn't born in Canada) while maintaining social peace.

In finding the imperfect balance of diversity, prosperity and harmony, Toronto isn't just "world class," that much-mocked encomium of the 1980s. Actually, it may well be in a class by itself.

No central idea? Toronto is a social laboratory, an entrepot of ideas and an engine of aspiration. It is the post-modern society of race and language. Boring? Funky shops and daring boutiques line Queen Street West. New restaurants -- Japanese, Loatian, Jamaican -- sprout everywhere. Along the old industrial thoroughfares, warehouses and factories have become lofts and studios.

Theatre at low ebb? The other day, Soulpepper Theatre Company mounted Our Town in its new home in the Young Centre for the Performing Arts. Next month The Lord of the Rings will have its much-anticipated debut at the Princess of Wales Theatre. This fall, the Canadian Opera Company will present Wagner's The Ring Cycle at the new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.

Innovation? Look at the renewal of the 19th century Victorian red-brick Distillery District. Or the reconstituted National Ballet School of Canada. Or the arresting renovation of the Royal Ontario Museum.

No, Toronto's charms are not obvious. Find them in its network of local libraries. Find them in its wooded ravines, the leafy Lesley Street Spit or the breezy Toronto Islands. Find them in its neighbourhood skating rinks or the charming Riverdale Farm.

Smugness is a Canadian virtue, and the assault on an ailing Toronto ("the city we love to hate") is in character. But tell me, if Toronto is boring, what does that make Ottawa? You know, the Ottawa with no street life, ambience or buzz. The Ottawa with restaurants that close because public servants won't eat out if they cannot put it on their expense accounts, where a courageous local critic recently called a venerable, busy eatery "the worst restaurant" she'd ever reviewed.

Beyond the Great Canadian Theatre Company and the National Arts Centre, the arts are stagnant; unlike every other big city in Canada, Ottawa doesn't have a concert hall. Nor does it have a functional central library. Its museums, with the exception of the new Canadian War Museum, are lacklustre.

While other cities go green, rebuild their centres or open arts institutions, Ottawa's idea of an idea is to build a $5 million footbridge across the Rideau Canal 500 metres from another bridge. It put its hockey arena far from the city centre, and in sub-Arctic climate refuses to cover its successful outdoor farmer's market -- probably because that's what Toronto does. Meanwhile, its pedestrian mall is deteriorating.

They used to call feverish New York a town without foreplay; phlegmatic Ottawa, you might say, is a town without climax. Filled with the superannuated and the somnolent, it is a capital of contentment, living in fear of spontaneity.

At the end of the day, Toronto is a city with problems that talks to the world. Ottawa is a city without ambition that talks to itself.

Now, Denley has taken the gloves completely off and is calling the T-Dot out:

I hit a nerve calling Toronto boring
Randall Denley, The Ottawa Citizen

Man, what was I thinking? Show a flicker of pity for Torontonians and they turn on you faster than a rabid weasel.

In a column Sunday, I suggested we all needed to be concerned about the decline of Toronto because the city is so important to Canada. From the reaction of fellow Citizen columnist Andrew Cohen, one would have thought I'd suggested all Torontonians ought to take a one-way hike into Lake Ontario, which I would never propose because of the damage it would do to the water quality.

The former Globe and Mail writer concedes Toronto is leaderless and filthy, its public architecture "soulless" and its suburbs "extend forever in unrelenting ugliness." We agree on all of that, but when I suggested Toronto was boring, that hit a raw nerve.

To paraphrase, he said "Toronto boring? What about Ottawa, eh? Got you there."

One does have to feel sorry for Toronto refugees such as Cohen, now a Carleton University journalism professor. Driven to Ottawa's inhospitable shores for political or professional reasons, they must rub shoulders with the "superannuated and somnolent" who make up so much of the population. We apologize if we've gotten in the way as they go about their important business. We're moving as fast as we can.

Cohen creates quite a catalogue of Ottawa's deficiencies.

Ottawa, he charges, is not only desperately short of Laotian restaurants, it also lacks the "funky shops and daring boutiques" that make Toronto so exhilarating.

What is a daring boutique, exactly?

Ottawa is a cultural backwater, lacking even a proper downtown library or a concert hall. We don't have a concert hall, but it isn't because people aren't behind it.

Ottawa City Council has already put up its share of the money and the Ottawa Chamber Music Society is doing all the work. The problem is getting federal and provincial politicians to pony up a measly $6.5 million each. Maybe there's nothing left after the $232 million they have sent Toronto to refurbish its cultural institutions. And the city's asking for $96 million more.

Cohen defended Toronto's lively theatre scene by mentioning a new production of Our Town. Now there's a cutting edge piece. We can only hope the 1938 Thornton Wilder play eventually comes to Ottawa. Torontonians can look forward to the success of The Lord of the Rings, but only after a summer in which the city didn't offer a major musical for the first time since the 1980s.

Ottawa has no street life, Cohen says, and one must concede we don't have beggars sleeping on every heat grate or the excitement of dodging stray bullets on Yonge Street.

Cohen even complains that we haven't covered the Byward Market, probably because it would make us too much like Toronto. Actually, its' because we aren't afraid to go outdoors in winter, unlike Torontonians, who prefer to scuttle underground to their subway and subterranean shops.

Ottawa is "a town without climax," Cohen says. Trust a Torontonian to see everything in sexual terms. It's what you'd expect from a city whose defining symbol is the CN Tower, a perpetual concrete erection. Safe to say Toronto's climax is well past.

Cohen does admit "Toronto's charms are not obvious." Indeed. They can be found, though, by a thorough investigation of the city's ravines and its neighborhood skating rinks.

He argues Toronto is perhaps the world's finest example of the "mixed metropolis," absorbing huge numbers of immigrants while maintaining social peace. He's right, although some might consider the recent wave of gun deaths involving young black men a warning sign.

But what was the purpose of creating this mixed metropolis? Is it some kind of noble social experiment, or merely the outcome of years of aggressive Liberal party immigration policies?

I won't dispute the fact that Ottawa can often be a small thinking place without any real sense of its own possibilities. I've been saying the same thing for more than a decade. I expect I'll be saying it for another decade.

A statement that something is boring, of course, tells as much about the speaker as it does about the thing being described. If one requires a frenetic life that consists primarily of trips to the opera, visiting southeast Asian restaurants and funky boutiques, Toronto's your town. If you want a city where you don't spend a good portion of every day in a traffic jam and can quickly go camping, cottaging or kayaking, you might prefer Ottawa.

Perhaps Cohen would agree it's particularly Canadian to engage in a lively debate over which of your province's two major cities is actually the most boring.

Although I prefer Ottawa, I think they're both all right in their own ways. What does the panel think?

Saddam caught on tape talking about WMDs II

Seems like there may have been something to Clinton/Gore/Kerry's mid-to-late 90s insistence that Saddam possessed WMD after all. See here.

Professionalism and the lack thereof part II

Last week I blogged about how there is a basic difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives when it comes to playing the Ottawa game.

Here's the latest example.

Yesterday, interim Liberal leader Bill Graham hired the well-respected and well-liked Jane Stewart, former caucus chair, daughter of a former Ontario treasurer, and cleaner-upper of the HRDC mess after Pettigrew left it, to be his Chief of Staff. On the other hand, the Globe and Mail is reporting today that the Tories are handing over the staffing process for Cabinet Ministers to Pierre Poilievre's girlfriend.

I think that speaks for itself.

See below.

Stephen Harper's office has been forced to scramble to find more talent to staff the government after cabinet ministers expressed concerns about the choice of candidates presented to them.

Mr. Harper's chief of staff, Ian Brodie, has called in a Reform Party veteran to help resolve the problem after some ministers rejected recommendations made by transition chief Derek Burney, sources told The Globe and Mail.

The Prime Minister's Office has asked Jenni Byrne, a long-time party worker, to oversee future hirings, as ministers move to find chiefs of staff, policy experts and communications directors.

"They weren't very engaged in it and then all of a sudden they realized what was going on and they started helping and throwing names at us," a senior official said of the PMO's re-engagement.

Irritating Alexander Keith's guy brought up on kiddy porn charges

See here. If I were a betting man, I would have thought the chef in the Lillydale commercials would have been more likely to be downloading kiddy porn than this guy, but as long as we're rid of him, that's the main thing. Now if only we could find something to get the Ikea guy off the radio and the crotchety old bag who tells us to stop cooking with cheese if we want our kids to leave home off the TV, life would be perfect.

The future of freedom

So I guess Dirty Bird and Ron's Diner have become legitimate targets for radical Islamic anger against the Mohamed cartoons.



Even the young 'uns are in on it:




Now after all the mess of the past two weeks, a lone Aussie backbench MP named Danna Vale suggeseted that Islamic radicalism is going to have quite a built-in market for itself over the next few years given demographic patterns in Oz and the West more broadly. Specifically, she observed that with the introduction of the RU-486 abortion pill, native-born Aussies are potentially going to "abort themselves out of existence". Naturally, this led to much hue and cry (one can only imagine the reaction in Canada if Cheryl Gallant were to say the same thing).

While I am not in favour of criminalizing abortion, I think it's an unfortunate and ugly procedure, and if you read this piece, it's clear that over time, the side effects may not be limited to just increased incidence of depression and breast cancer.

Given the fact that today's Ottawa Citizen is reporting that our so-called Conservative government thinks the immigration system needs only minor tinkering, and also, that the local imam engages in the usual citations of far-left icons like Noam Chomsky and the required bashing of Israel while ostensibly commenting on the prospects for the co-existence of Islam and democracy (see below), it's obvious that the Aussie MP's argument is at least worth thinking about.

The Koran is full of tolerance for non-Muslims
Gamal Solaiman, The Ottawa Citizen

Re: What Hamas teaches about democracy and Islam, Feb. 11.

David Warren buttresses his answer to "Can Islam and democracy co-exist?" with references to the works of Efraim Karsh and Bernard Lewis, but he does not refer to Rogue State and Rogue States by William Blum and Noam Chomsky, respectively, who claim the world's superpower has diminished democracy and peace.

Mr. Warren quotes Prophet Muhammad: "I was ordered to fight all men until they say 'There is no god but God','' from one of the eight collections of Hadith (gospels) meant only for Mecca's tribes, which had repeatedly broken treaties with Muslims. The Koran (scriptures) is replete with tolerance towards non-Muslims, especially Jews and Christians. Koran 2:256 states: "There is no compulsion in religion ...", and 109:7 "Unto your religion, and unto me, my religion." Mr. Warren asserts that war spearheads religion, but Islam was accepted freely by Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia.

He contends U.S. President George Bush is committed to promoting democracy as an antidote to terrorism. Is the world safer today? Some 2,300 U.S. soldiers and more than 100,000 Iraqis are dead. Iraq has become a training camp for insurgents, exporting terror worldwide, and 60,000 Christians who had lived with Muslims for 14 centuries have fled to Syria. Democracy's dividends?

Mr. Warren is concerned about Hamas's victory in the Palestine elections. Even Jimmy Carter declared it fair. If the elections were nullified, as Algeria's were by the West in 1991 when the Islamic Salvation Front was winning, the ensuing civil war toll could be thousands of deaths, as in Algeria. Whither democracy?

I admire Judy Rebick, a Canadian Jew, who wrote in Maclean's (July 29, 2002) about Israelis' treatment of Palestinians: "I couldn't accept that my people, who suffered for so many centuries, could turn around and persecute another people. There is no justice in that... " I do not condone Hamas, but share her view: violence begets violence.

Mr. Warren muses that Muslim states may use their oil revenues to fuel Palestine's economy if the West curtails its largesse. No one tells Canada what to do with our revenues; however, Muslim countries' non-renewable resource does stoke our western economic engines.

Mr. Warren talks of civilization. In 1258 Hulagu Khan, Genghis Khan's grandson, sacked Baghdad's library. In 1403 another Mongol, Tamerlame, occupied Turkey and dragged King Bayazzid who was tied to a dog's leash. In 2003, these acts were repeated under U.S. occupation of Iraq, a 7,000-year-old civilization.

For civilization, credit Napoleon. When he invaded my native Egypt in 1798, he declared: 4,500 years of history is looking down upon his army. Mr. Warren says Egypt has had half an election. Half an election in bourgeois Egypt may be better than a full-fledged one in Palestine, isn't it, Mr. Warren?

Gamal Solaiman,

Ottawa,

Imam, Ottawa Mosque

Angry Left, indeed

Apparently, a new survey ahs found that conservative Republicans are much happer than are liberal Democrats.

I guess bitterness, jealousy and resentment will do that to a person.

Saddam caught on tape talking about WMDs

Evidence has been starting to trickle out over the last few weeks that WMD certainly existed in Iraq. Tonight, ABC's Nightline is going to air some tapes where Saddam was allegedly talking about how to attack the US with WMD.

(HT: SDA)

On culture

In Ottawa, the Chamber Music Festival is lamenting the fact that only the municpal government seems to be on board when it comes to contributing to the construction of a new 900-seat music hall. They're saying that if only the provincial and federal governments would pony up, this much-needed addition to the Ottawa arts scene would become a reality. The new downtown socialist NDP MP is pledging his support and no doubt the most recently declared candidate for Mayor, Alex Munter, is going to be supportive as well.

This annoys me for a few reasons. First, right across the street from where they are proposing to build the concert hall is a little place called the National Arts Centre, not to mention a perfectly good facility in Nepean called the Centrepointe Theatre. Secondly, why is the middle class of Ottawa being asked to subsidize this largely upper class pastime? Doesn't sound very progressive to me. And finally, isn't this the crowd that looked down their noses at the masses, back when NHL teams were complaining about a low Canadian dollar and a high tax burden, and said "you can pay for your own culture"?

I hope that whoever is elected Mayor of Ottawa this fall pulls the plug on this harebrained scheme and sticks to the elitists to make it an even three for three in terms of lack of government support. I don't need to be paying for some silly chamber music hall I'm never going to step foot in when I need to be saving my money for a NASCAR trip this summer, hanging out with the rest of the working stiffs and regular Joes that the Left always pretends to be so behind, but in reality, cannot stand.

One more thing I will never understand ...

... is snowmobilers who decide to travel on so-called "frozen" rivers and lakes in the winter time.

Harper slaps Lerant and fires the opening salvo in the Tory civil war

From the PMO website:

Statement from the Prime Minister on issue of free speech and controversial caricatures

February 14, 2006
Ottawa, Ontario

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today issued the following statement:

“Free speech is a right that all Canadians enjoy; Canadians also have the right to voice their opinion on the free speech of others. I regret the publication of this material in several media outlets. While we understand this issue is divisive, our government wishes that people be respectful of the beliefs of others. I commend the Canadian Muslim community for voicing its opinion peacefully, respectfully and democratically.”

Although I agree with Harper that Lerant is being unnecessarily provocative and taking great glee from rubbing Muslims' noses in it, issuing this release is going to open a major schism within the Conservative party. I also have to ask why Harper is patting Muslims on the back for simply doing what they should be expected to do as citizens of this country.

Priorities

Say what you want about Sen. Colin Kenny, but he sounds some alarm bells here that I think are worth listening to.

Keeping in mind we've been named twice as a target by al-Qaeda, most recently after last summer's 7/7 bombings in London, tell me again why government is pre-occupied with the business of how best to babysit kids when five years after 9/11, we can't even say for certain that our vital infrastructure is secure?

Forget beer and popcorn; we're talking tattoos and rub n' tugs

Click here for a partial list of what some Katrina victims spent their relief money on.

Exercising his right to be a pompous and arrogant prick

It's one thing to make a point.

It's another thing to be a total asshole.

See video here, top right. Also see the debate between Levant and Tarek Fatah, here. The guy's Ann Coulter act wears thin about 30 seconds in. See more here. The hate crimes accusation is pretty silly, but Lerant doesn't do himself any favours by acting like a jerk.

Senator Stuart Smalley

It looks like Al Franken is going to run for Senate in '08.

I will take great joy in his defeat.

Monday afternoon ramblings

- Thank God Al Gore lost in 2000.

- I think a lot of Fareed Zakaria. Here, he tells us why Europe is facing a major demographic and economic crisis which is only exacerbated by overly generous welfare states, while this article argues that EU countries are doing fine in comparison with the US by, well, not comparing them to the US. I know where I'd invest my money, and it isn't overseas.

- This guy's forthcoming book is going to be a must read.

- Niall Ferguson says the central-planning comeback in Latin America could spell trouble for the US.

- Interesting companion piece to what I wrote yesterday on respect for faith here from Cathy Young. I think the kind of thoughtful questioning and criticism that she writes about is what we need more of instead of gratuitous mockery of faith, like what constitutes a lot of "art" these days. Again, that's not to say that I think that riots are an acceptable way to respond - those who are "offended" should come up with a stronger, more intellectually robust defense of their practices and beliefs. The Muslim world needs to learn how to do this instead of just bashing Israel and the States every chance they get instead of tackling their own problems.

- My early pick for the '08 GOP ticket: McCain (AZ) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC).

"Jaws" author Peter Benchley passes away at 65

"Jaws" author Peter Benchley has passed away.

Benchley's novel was the impetus for what I believe is one of the greatest movies of all time. When I was 12 years old and in grade 6, I had an old battleaxe of a teacher named Mary Reid who had a habit of putting kids, and their desks, out in the hall. My transgression was telling her to "shut up" under my breath, so out I went for two weeks. I was place just adjacent to the doorway so that I could see the lesson being taught, but I was able to sneak my paperback copy of Jaws, picked up at a local garage sale, into my desk and read it as the teacher paid attention to the 35 other kids that were in the actual classroom. I couldn't believe how much swearing there was in this book and so for fun, I underlined every "shit", "fuck" and "cunt" in red pen just for kicks. My mom found it later, and couldn't keep a straight face when she asked me why I underlined those words. I told her I was bored, sitting out in the hallway.

Great book, better flick. Easily in my top 10. Easily. Who could forget it as a City TV Great Movie with Mark Dailey's voice cutting in after a commercial: "We now return to ... Jawwwws." And when you were yuonger, how many times did you ask your Dad on a trip to the Great Lakes if there were sharks in the water? Even though the saltwater/freshwater explanation didn't make a lot of sense to me, if my Dad said there weren't sharks in there, that was good enough for me.

Ah, to be a southwestern Ontario kid in the late '80s.

Coren on cartoons

Very interesting column here by Michael Coren where he basically says that those Muslims who are speaking out against the desecration of Mohamed deserve support from practicing Christians. It's not far to go from that point of view to the rioting we've seen around the world this week, but I think it's important to make the point that perhaps media needs to be a little more considerate when lampooning the divine.

I'm a (semi) practicing Catholic guy who believes in Jesus and sometimes feels like I need to apologize for it because the conventional wisdom in society is that an active belief in Him is either a) out of fashion, b) worthy of laughter or c) makes you some kind of Bible-thumping holy roller who wants to send women to the kitchen and homeschool all your kids. I'm sure there are a lot of Christians who feel the same way because it's been open season on God for a really long time. The Catholic faith has been the butt of jokes for even longer. Whether or not you think that's justified is not the point. To me, the point is showing a little respect for what people's beliefs are. To me, that means considered questioning and constructive criticism. It doesn't mean that you draw pictures of Jesus bathed in urine just to try and rub people's faces in it. Yes, the right to free discourse must be preserved - and I think that the cartoonist should have been able to draw whatever he wanted to - but if we are to advance dialogue, the value of respect must be part of that discourse. For that reason, I can see how some Muslims would think that the cartoons were a little over the top - not that that justifies the reaction, but I'm sure you take my point.

Click here for a look at the cartoons in question.

Coren:

One of the most troubling aspects of all this is the reaction of so many Christians. They seem to think that the battle between western values and Islamic sensitivities places observant Catholics and evangelicals on the side of the West.

Not so. The West is no longer Christendom but the heartland of secular humanism and fundamentalist atheism. This is the West that regularly insults Christ, mocks Christianity and increasingly takes away the rights of genuine Christians to practise their faith.

A publicly funded museum featuring a picture of Jesus soaked in urine. Another with the Virgin Mary covered in excrement. A Canadian cartoon last year depicting Pope Benedict, whose father almost lost his life to Hitler and his gang, making a Nazi salute to Mary, the Mother of Christ.

Jesus portrayed in a play as a homosexual who has a sexual relationship with one of his disciples. Cartoons showing the Pope smiling as women and babies are killed. Endless television shows spewing forth horrible caricatures of priests, ministers and devout Christians. On and on and on, and then the execrable Da Vinci Code.

We hear Muslims saying, "They wouldn't treat Jesus in this way." They're wrong, of course. Not because they are stupid but because they assume that a part of the world founded on the beauty of Christianity would not then be so disgustingly rude about Christ.

In other words, Muslims are as ignorant of the West and its intentions as are Christians who live here. Modern Western liberalism despises religion, and Islam and Christianity are equally in its sights.

In some ways it is shocking to see men, women and children outraged and taking to the streets to defend their religion against crude blasphemy. But in others ways it's refreshing and delightful. I say again that violence is wrong, but that muscular protest against hatred is not.

Sorry, I cannot and will not join the ranks of the smug God-haters who refuse to understand a person's love for their faith.

If you draw a cartoon that intends to offend, don't be surprised when it has the desired effect.

DVD Review: INXS - "Live Baby Live" (2003)

This concert DVD, released in 2003, is taken from a July 1991 Wembley show in front of 72,000 fans of the band. Their funked up pop-rock is in full display here through 21 tracks, focusing heavily on tunes from '87's "Kick" and 90's "X". All the big hits are here, from pretty much the whole first side of "Kick" (I'm dating myself) to "Mystify", the title track and "Never Tear Us Apart", and others like "Suicide Blonde", "Bitter Tears", "The Stairs" and "Disappear". And oh yeah, "What You Need" and "Original Sin" are there, too. It would have been nice to hear "Listen Like Thieves" or "Kiss the Dirt" but the lesser-known tunes like "Know the Difference" and "The Loved One" make up for it. The band is tight, crisp and very full-sounding, but I would advise watching this show from start to finish in its entirety before cutting between chapters because Michael Hutchence's between-song mumblings are incomprehensible. If you take it as a whole, it goes down a lot better. Interesting interviews taken from the other band members well after Hutchence's death shed light on the leadup to the day which are interesting considering what has transpired since. (I can't comment on JD Fortune because I haven't heard the album nor watched the show, Rock Star INXS.)

Good stuff all around.

Overall rating: 7.5/10

I hate Ann Coulter

She's got about as much class as Carla did on 'Cheers'. Ragheads? See here.

I like the first comment - this isn't so much a clash of cultures as it is a clash of prejudices.

(And in case you are thinking what I think you are thinking - and what I would certainly ask if it was ME commenting on YOUR blog - the answer is an emphatic "no".)

Conversions

One of the things I love to read about is how former dyed-in-the-wool lefties all of a sudden experience a pivotal moment in life that causes them to embrace small-government, anti-statist principles. For some, this comes as they purchase a home and start paying property taxes; for others, the birth of a child; and for others, a seminal world event like 9/11 or a powerful political force like Ronald Reagan emerging on the scene.

Here's a good little piece from a former Hollywood lefty who came across based on his realization that sound public policy arguments must be based on more than just condescension and snobbery.

Sound familiar?

Professionalism and the lack thereof

One of the things that I cautioned true believers prior to the vote was that they should water down their expectations of Harper. Based on what I've seen over the course of my political involvement and subsequent career - a lot less than some others have, but still considerable - one of the things that struck me was the fact that the Liberals just knew how to do "it" better than the Tories did.

Here's a small example. Earlier in the spring, there was a minor controversy over the closing of RCMP border detachments in Quebec and the restaffing of those officers to posts in Montreal and other Quebec urban centres. This raised a few eyebrows in Quebec. Along come the Tories, with their unilingual junior Public Safety critic from Alberta, who gets a chance to ask a question in the House maybe once a month, and they have him ask the former DPM a question in English about redeployments of RCMP officers in Quebec.

It's that kind of stuff that defines the Tory disease. And now, after week one, we have the following, courtesy of CTV:

Just how bad were Harper's first five days in office? Let us count the ways:

- Emerson's stunning defection to Harper's cabinet two weeks after he was elected as a Liberal outraged even many Tory stalwarts, who had supported legislation banning such party-switching. "I expected some of the superficial criticism I've seen," Harper responded to the Vancouver Sun, the rhetorical equivalent of waving a red flag in front of a bull. Since then, Emerson's work on the softwood lumber file has been questioned, he's contemplated quitting politics and his cabinet reward has formally been referred to Parliament's ethics commissioner by the NDP.
- Michael Fortier, the unelected Conservative campaign co-chairman who was elevated to cabinet and given a Senate appointment, told reporters he hadn't run for office because he didn't feel like it.
- Gordon O'Connor, the new defence minister, is being challenged because of his past work as a military procurement lobbyist. His new job will put him in charge of massive spending on military procurement.
- Ted Menzies, the affable Alberta MP, was made parliamentary secretary for the francophonie and official languages, although he speaks no French.
- Ontario MP Garth Turner, a former cabinet minister in the Brian Mulroney government, spoke openly about his disdain for Emerson's floor-crossing and was called on the carpet by Harper -- only to write about the dressing down on his web site. Turner now plans to introduce a private member's bill calling for floor-crossers to face voters in byelections.

There was also the matter of MPs slipping en masse out back doors to avoid reporters after their first national caucus meeting; a cabinet session at Meech Lake that left the national media huddled on a wind-swept highway seeking comment from ministers in limousines that didn't stop; and at least two significant phone calls -- one between Harper and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and another between Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and the U.S. secretary of state -- about which the government provided no information.

Not coincidentally, the party is reportedly having trouble finding experienced people to staff key positions.

This stuff reeks of amateur hour. This is why I'm not active in politics anymore. By definition, if you are a Tory, you have to drink the Kool-Aid of people who simply don't have their shit together and more importantly don't even realize it. And if you are a Liberal, you have to countenance arrogance, corruption and a complete lack of scruples and principles.

What a mess.

Friday evening dribs and drabs

- I'm really disappointed that Mark Steyn hasn't ripped Harper a new a-hole for the appointments this week. And does anyone care about whether or not Emerson's kids are getting teased at school? Sorry pal, but you make choices and you live with them. You don't just take your marbles and go home.

- Garth Turner rules.

- There's a lot of talk out there about the Danish cartoon controversy, but there's only a bit of it that I find to be really unique and insightful. Two examples here and here.

- Some good filth right here.