The Tiger at Home

For my contribution to my friends’ open bar: all English-speaking.

Steinlager from New Zealand, Wild Turkey from Kentucky.

Happy New Year, all.

… and I actually agree with something Matthew Good wrote. (more…)

Ones I’m about to take.

So, Patti Davis is angry about how her father’s name is used in American politics.

I actually think that’s a fair point.  Our 40th president (how fitting is it, that he got a round number like that) seemed simple, but he actually was a very complex man, and a complex leader.  His haigiographic image is ahistoric — Peggy Noonan was not wrong when she wondered if Ronald Reagan would have been welcome in what is supposed to be Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party. (more…)

Flaherty was so good, I’d forgotten about the issue by the end of the year.

In my quest to watch as much high-definition television for the sake of my family, I just came across one of the college bowl games.

But it’s not like those of my youth — no Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, or Cotton Bowl– no, this is the “Car Care Bowl” from “Bank of America Stadium” in Charlotte, NC.  Oh, sorry, it’s the Meineke Car Care Bowl.

Which bowl got desecrated in such fashion?

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Actually, as it turns out, none.  It’s a new one, founded in 2002.

But the Tangerine Bowl is now the Capital One Bowl.  The Peach Bowl is the Chick-Fil-A Bowl.

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I’m as capitalist as anyone, but can’t our regions have a little more taste?  Our sponsors a little more discretion?

I’m sorry, if I were a major fan or competitor, I wouldn’t be, like, “Yeah!!  My guys just won the Chick-Fil-A Bowl!!”  I mean, what the f*** is that?!

Visit the Nepalese Consulate in Toronto if you can’t bear to get your visa at the border.

If not, if you have any friends or colleagues asking about it, please post the link around.

There are approximately fifty different wrong addresses out there (well, five), so please help get the right one out spread around. (i.e. with a higher rank in Google for “nepal consulate Toronto” — Googlebomb to prevent confused travellers…)

[A close associate has been honorary consul since 1993.]

1. This story reminded me why I think Barack Obama has the touch needed to be the first likable Democratic nominee since Bill Clinton. (But could he be another Royal?)

2. Bill Kristol? Try Mark Steyn, says Paul Wells. I agree. (Though I’ve got a soft spot for Kristol. [Reminded by this. Funny thing, three of the top four Post editorials were Republican-leaning, then five of the next six were Democrat-leaning. Power of the right blogosphere, or livid liberals unable to believe their eyes?])

3. Has the race to replace Dion already begun? Yes, says Adam Daifallah. (Cruel, I say. And possibly unwise. The man still could be our next PM - he’s no further behind than Stephen Harper was, before the last campaign.)

4. Am being forced to watch lots and lots of stretched television, as I am helping the ‘rents break in a new plasma screen before I head back south. (Tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.)

This:

HarperCollins is rushing its planned book by former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated today at a rally in Pakistan. The world leader, known as “the first daughter of Pakistan,” just finished the book. According to agent Andrew Wylie, who brokered the deal, the manuscript was “completed only a week ago.”

Ironically, and perhaps ominously, titled Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West, the book was originally set for Spring but will now be published “as soon as possible,” said editor Tim Duggan.

Strategic Vision: Obama 30, Clinton 29, Edwards 28. Taken 26-7 Dec. from 600 likely Democratic caucus-goers.
Lee Enterprise: Edwards 29, Obama 29, Clinton 28. Taken 26-7 Dec. from 500 likely Democratic caucus-goers.

Glue yourselves to your televisions on January 3rd.

… from UCLA [via HorseRaceBlog] (more…)

This is actually very neat.

If it’s true — and it does sound right — I’m not too worried about Russia. But we’ll see. (more…)

The West’s policy:

Washington and London wanted Miss Bhutto back and they wanted her to become prime minister once again. This was not because they viewed her record in government as a shining example: in truth, Miss Bhutto achieved virtually nothing during her two premierships. (more…)

Our intellectuals used to be fighting intellectuals.

One man’s experience as a premature anti-Fascist.

This column is a welcome dash of cold water.

(The comparisons to Mahatma Gandhi, MLK, and others by one female journalist on MSNBC annoyed me, too… Though I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Pakistan is better off without her — she was going to have a key role in the next government. American policy is f**ked, for the time being. Rice had maneuvered things well to get a prospective PM who was going to take a crack at settling the NWF Province’s hash and stand up to radical Islamists.)

We need have no sympathy with her Islamist assassin and the extremists behind him to recognize that Bhutto was corrupt, divisive, dishonest and utterly devoid of genuine concern for her country. … (more…)

… among the stories yesterday was this little detail:

The next to last assassination attempt on Benazir Bhutto came on Dec. 13, when a man in the crowd got the former prime minister’s attention. He was holding a one-year-old baby — Bhutto said later she thought it was a girl — and tried to hand the child across the sea of bodies. Bhutto said, “He kept trying to hand it to people to hand to me. I’m a mother. I love babies. But the [streetlights] had already gone out and I was worried about the baby getting dropped or hurt.” So she turned away and ducked into her armored vehicle. Just then, the baby’s body, rigged with explosives, detonated.

Reality is worse than fiction, sometimes — could anyone, even in his wildest dreams, think up anything so horrifying? (Well, obviously someone did — the person who did it, or Bhutto, if she were stretching the truth.)

If only she had ducked down again, yesterday… but perhaps it was only a matter of time. (Mind you, if she’d made it to election day, she probably would have ended up with better security…)

Update, immediate:

A thought — in light of that, perhaps this is the right theme song for the week:

(With apologies to the Spanish Civil War.)

So Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated — the third time was apparently the charm for her would-be assassins.

She wasn’t a particularly good PM in her time — either she was corrupt, or she was unable to stem the corruption of those around her — and she was a bit of an egomaniac, but I think that the only possible reaction is to see this as incredibly sad.

Like her father, Bhutto is a martyr. (In the true, non-insane application of the word.) She is a martyr for democracy. (more…)

This quote jumped out at me.

Fergus says the fact his appointment was endorsed unanimously by the national executive, which has “people from all sorts of camps” gives him hope he will be able to reunite the party.

“We’re just making sure that people come to the table as an unhyphenated Liberal. Just a Liberal.”

I like his spirit — it’s a step in the right direction.  First, there’ll be “unhyphenated Liberals”.  Then — once people screw up their courage, and think really, really hard about it — there could possibly be a thought about “unhyphenated Canadians”.

In the United States, it is said, the right looks for converts and the left for heretics. (And both find what they want.)

That’s been true, in my experience — the people on the right are much more willing to try to talk out differences — or try to find points of commonality. It makes the right side of the spectrum much more attractive, I must say.

I wonder. Is the same true in Canada?

I have my doubts…

Update: Aha!

Well, as Charles Krauthammer once opined,

“To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”

I’d probably replace “stupid” with “hopelessly naive” or “let their emotions cloud their judgement,” but I think Krauthammer is basically on target. On many issues, most liberals don’t look at deviations from the holy scripture of liberalism as differences of opinion, they view them as moral failings. You aren’t just wrong, you are as Ann’s reader puts it: a “heretic.”

There are a few conservatives who look at things the same way, but for the most part, if conservatives disagree with you, they tend to think you’re a bonehead on that issue. If you’re a “bonehead” on too many issues, they may write you off, but if you’re not Atrios or Paul Krugman, hey, they’re happy to work with you where they can. After all, you’re not evil, you’re just wrong (in their view) — and who’s not wrong sometimes?

Stupid vs. evil.

I don’t think that distinction holds in Canadian politics.

Update again: Now that I think of it, I think I know why. Political maturity: that is, the right-side coalition in the United States is old enough and strong enough that a majority — not all, but still a majority — of its original adherents (especially among the political intelligentsia) are aware of its terms, and confident enough to argue that people who are strong on one of them should consider voting for their favoured candidate.

The political right in Canada has not reached that level of maturity (time-wise).

It will probably take another decade or two — and it might be a different coalition.

Of course, one may then ask, when does political maturity become stagnation — when is one ripe for being overtaken by newer groupings? For coalitions will always shift.

Update the third:  Possible flies in my ointment (from different sides).

1.  Has it not ever been thus, on the American political right?  I submit you this somewhat creepy slogan from the AuH2O campaign: “In your heart, you know he’s right.“  (Point being, you’re with us, really, but you just don’t know it yet.  Looking for converts.)

2.  Isn’t the American political left trending this way?  The breadth of the anti-Bush coalition brings together many strange bedfellows.  And if they pick someone with the demeanour of, say, Barack Obama…

Should the story of the year perhaps be the political resurrection of George Bush?
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To you all, dear readers, and your loved ones.

2007 has been a very good year in North American and global politics, and I hope that it has treated you equally well in your private lives.

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Update, random: Oh, here’s something funny. I’m apparently not conservative enough for some anonymous blog commenter who has a longer memory than I do. (Not Chucker, who keeps his good humour throughout, as any good writer should. (I was, I thought, making a joke about the Minister of the Environment’s somewhat abrasive style. Oh well.))

I was a Russianist, dear readers. You’ll never get me to toe a party line — not even the ones I’m a member of.

I’ll never be a true believer — only ever a fellow traveller.

Update again:  Anyway, I’m more of a classical liberal sympathizing sort.