Monday digest

- At left, the winner of the 2006 "Not My Job" award.

- I can't say I blame John Bolton for packing it in. Even though there's an opportunity for positive reform with a new UN chief coming in at the end of this month, when one considers Condi's brutal performance as of late and the "realism" expected in this week's Iraq Study Commission report, combined with the Democratic Congressional win - who needs it?

Hopefully now Bolton will find time to get a haircut and a moustache trim.

- Hugo Chavez won in Venezuela, declaring "socialism is love" to Iranian applause. I'm surprised that there haven't been any reports of voting irregularities like there were last time Chavez was elected.

- In some ways, one of the biggest casualties of political debate is the English language. Terms like "progressive", "liberal", "tolerance", "divisive", "moderate", "civil society" and now "wedge issue" have been twisted and used for partisan ends by the Left. It's also been suggested that the Right has taken control of the phrase "supporting the troops" and completely perverted it, while the highly-charged debate over "civil war" defies characterization by political spectrum.

In any case, words matter - a lot.

- Speaking of civil war, Kofi Annan says the average Iraqi was better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now, presumably except for Kurds, Shi'ites and dissenters. More accurate would have been for Kofi to say that everyone (especially himself) were better off when his son Kojo, Maurice Strong, and other UN cronies were getting kickbacks under Oil-for-Food.

- It's long past time for some tough talk directed towards Pakistan.

- Are American libertarians really up for grabs?

- I don't know what I find more nauseating: when lazy, sloppy and unaccountable journalists engage in masturbatory self-congratulation, or when righteous politicos like Stephane Dion say things like the Liberals need to win the next election "for the sake of Canadians".
Someone get me a barfbag because I think I'm about to puke.

Note to politicians:

You don't make Canada great - we do.

Meanwhile, Lerant insinuates that Dion is a citizen of France (but I'm not believing it till I hear it from the man himself), and my first-ever boss in Ottawa, Jay Hill, is (rightly) keeping the PM honest on the Quebec resolution:

"The sense that I get is that people are concerned only in the sense that they don't want to see any province get any special privileges, rights or benefits that don't go to all provinces. That's what they'll be watchful of. If anything like that was to flow from the Parliamentary recognition of the Quebecois as a nation within a united Canada, then there would be concern, I'm sure, expressed loudly and clearly from my constituents".

Hear, hear.