Über die Freiheit / de libertate

As a dual citizen of Canada and the United States (and nearly a citizen of Romania, dammit dad!) I know the advantage of holding multiple passports. Not only is it just cool, it also massively extends the area in which one can live and work. 

Here in Canada a new law is soon to come into effect which returns the citizenship to many Canadians who unjustly lost their citizenship after becoming citizens of another country between 1947 and 1977. On April 17 these “Lost Canadians” will regain their citizenship. This is an example of one of the few good laws spurting out of Ottawa these days.

The really good news is that Will Wilkinson will become a Canadian on that day. Tis a day to celebrate.

Now someone just needs to convince Germany to review its regressive citizenship laws.

is Alberta’s economy collapsing.

U.S. stocks fell for the first time in three days, pushed down by concern General Motors Corp. may file for bankruptcy and a plunge in energy shares following Merrill Lynch & Co.’s prediction that oil will hit $25 a barrel. [Bloomberg]

Nor, apparently, does he read the articles he links to.

For the record, the Queen didn’t take any action whatsoever.

I might be the only person in Canada, but I really, really, really want them to call an election. It would be the funniest political event of my, or even Canada’s, lifetime.

So, GG Jean, do it!

Passchendaele is Canada’s attempt at a movie. It failed.

The movie centers on the story of Michael Dunne (Paul Gross), a member of the 10th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. We are introduced to him as he murders a German soldier by sticking his bayonet through his skull and is then injured in Europe and transported back to a Canadian hospital. Here he is subsequently diagnosed with shell-shock and falls in love with his heavenly nurse, Sarah Mann, played by Caroline Dhavernas.

As luck would have it, Dunn also meets David Mann, Sarah’s brother. David is a weak, asthmatic boy, desperate to join the Army so that he can a) continue to fuck his girlfriend [yes there are nipples!] and b) avenge his father, who, inconveniently, joined the war on the wrong side! Dunne attempts to persuade the boy not to join the army while attempting to get in Sarah’s pants.

Through his attempt to sleep with Sarah, Dunne helps her detox from her random morphine addiction. Once cleared of the drug, there is a poignant scene were Sarah sits in the window seat of Dunne’s hotel room, basked in the sunlight. This makes her into angel that Dunne first sees waking up in the hospital.

To set up the final act, David uses his girlfriend’s father to allow him to join the Army. Upon hearing this Sarah flies into a rage, because she believes that Dunne allowed him to join up the army, even though he had not. In a ridiculous scene, Sarah bursts into David’s girlfriend’s house, accusing Dunne of signing her brother up. Instead of saying “I didn’t do that” he reenlists in the army so that he can protect David in battle.

So both David and Dunne are now in Belgium, near Ypres, awaiting battle. To make the plot even more ludicrous, while they wait Sarah shows up in France as a nurse. In a beautiful scene, Dunne and Sarah fuck in the open with bombs exploding in the background. Truly heartwarming.

In the concluding moments of the film, the most ludicrous scene in film history is shown. During the assault on the German lines, David becomes enraged and charges the enemy. He manages to reach the lines and falls into the trench and a kind German officer spares his life, but then a shell explodes tossing David’s body into the air. For some reason the body happens to end up on a cross like section of wood. (Through the movie there are constant references to the German’s having crucified a Canadian solider)

Noticing this, Dunne immediately runs towards David getting shot a couple of times. Seeing that he was unarmed, the kindly German officer instructs his men to ceasefire. Dunne then goes up to the cross and pulls it out of the ground. He then-wait for it-puts the cross on his back and carries the body back towards the Canadian lines. So yes, Gross wrote himself into the movie as Jesus.

Ultimately, David is saved and Dunne dies of his wounds in Sarah’s arms. This is where I was the only person in the theatre cheering.

In looking at the themes of this movie, it’s basically anti-war. There is no real glorification of the war. Yet the movie was still terrible. The symbolism was overwrought and transparent. At one point when there is an ominous scene, the camera quickly moves to show a flock of evil birds. In a happier moment (as described above) Sarah is made to be an angel.

From the first shots of the movie, the tone is just off. You can immediately tell that the production values are limited. It just feels amateurish the shots are clunky and unrefined. At one point there is a shot where David is using a telescope, but the focus of the shot leaves it blurry and filling the entire screen. The acting of Paul Gross is laughable, and the even worse by the actor who played David. Dhavernas is better, but by no means convincing.

At the beginning I thought the movie could be a plausible, low-budget Canadian war film. By the end it was clear it was a low-budget, pandering, plodding love story, written by an inexperienced writer, directed by a man with no sense of the physical space and acted by an actor who doesn’t understand drama. F-

Addendum:

I forgot to mention that Passchendaele uses much from the Saving Private Ryan playbook. From the shot of the soliders walking past water to the injured soldier yelling “momma” it’s all there. It’s just done really poorly.

In today’s Leader-Post,

I would like to contest the inane protests by the writers of the letters “Feist review makes her feisty” (Leader-Post, Oct. 28) and “Criticism not OK,” Leader-Post, Oct. 30) in regards to the Leader-Post’s criticism.

Both seem to completely misunderstand the purpose and meaning of criticism. “Criticism”, by definition, is a critical evaluation of a work or event.

Contrastingly, the writers appear to be under the misconception the Leader-Post’s criticism should ignore any evaluation and instead consist of merely of kind words and cheerleading.

The fact Leslie Feist was a “onetime resident of Regina” is inconsequential to the substance of the review. Geography does not dictate quality.

More concerning is the assertion that “local artists and Canadian talent” including films like Passchendaele, should get a free ride and not be critiqued simply because the creators were born in a certain geographical area.

These types of ideas are the exemplars of an uncritical nationalism that pervades a large subsection of the Canadian population.

Perhaps the reason why Canadian talent is perceived to be poorly reviewed is because it is coddled and prevented from competing on an even playing field with the international community.

Robert S. Porter
Regina

 A student group at the University of Alberta is fighting to make the school’s convocation ceremony a God-free event.

Specifically, the university’s Atheists and Agnostics society objects to one line in the service, when the chancellor charges graduates to use their degrees for “the glory of God and the honour of your country.”

The group is petitioning the university to either remove the line or change the wording to respect their “God-optional” views. [Leader-Post]

As an atheist and a student at a Canadian university I say to the Atheist and Agnostics of the UofA: Shut the fuck up.

What a waste of a battle. Instead of spending their effort showing people the light, so to speak, they decide to be pissants.

Will Wilkinson, writing in the Ottawa Citizen, makes the case for not voting, or at least the case for why democratic participation is overrated and misunderstood.

Importantly he makes the point I’ve been trying to say for a long time: there are many good–indeed bettter–ways to perform civic virtue.

Everybody has an incontestable and absolute right to his or her vote, but that doesn’t mean it’s always right to vote. Abstaining can be a way of looking after the public good, too. Not all of us have the energy, inclination, or opportunity to learn what we need to know in order to vote well. And that’s OK. There’s more to public-spiritedness than showing up at the polls. You can run a small business or coach a kids’ hockey team with the common good in mind. That’s an expression of civic virtue, too.

CTV: We sat down that afternoon with Stephane Dion. I began by asking Mr. Dion about his comments that the Prime Minister has done nothing to put Canadians minds at ease about the current economic problems. I asked him, quote “If you were prime minister now, what would you have done that Mr. Harper has not done?” After beginning to answer the question, Mr. Dion asked to start the interview again because he did not understand the question. After a second false start, a member of Mr. Dion’s staff explained the question to Mr. Dion and there was also a third false start. Perhaps we shouldn’t have agreed to restart with the questioning and the Liberal campaign was anxious that his exchange not be broadcast and initially we indicated that it would not be, however, on reflection, CTV News believes we owe it to you to show you everything that happened.CTV: Thank you. Mr. Dion, thank you, good of you to come again.
Dion: Thank you Steve.
CTV: Mr. Dion the economy is now the issue in the campaign, and on that issue you’ve said that Mr. Harper’s offered nothing to put Canadian’s minds at ease and offers no vision for the country. We have to act now you say, doing nothing is not an option. If you were Prime Minister now what would you have done about the economy and this crisis, that Mr. Harper has not done?
Dion: If we had been the Prime Minister two and a half years ago?
CTV: If you were the Prime Minister right now and had been for the past years…
Dion: Right now, ok. If I’m elected next Tuesday, this Tuesday, is what you’re suggesting
CTV: No I, I’m saying if you hypothetically were Prime Minister today…
Dion: Today!
CTV: What would you have done that Mr. Harper [fading] hasn’t done.
Dion: I would have started the 30-50 plan that we want to start the moment that we’ll have a Liberal government. And the 30-50 plan, the 30…in fact the plan for the first 80 days, I should say, the plan for the first 80 days, once you have a liberal government… Can we start again?
CTV: Do you want to?
Camera Man: Sure.
Dion: Yeah.
CTV: Yeah, I’m OK to start again.
Dion: Yeah. Because I’ve been slow to understand your question. I don’t think…[Unintelligible]
Camera Man: I’m recording.
CTV: Mr. Dion good of you to come again.
Dion: Thank you Steve.
CTV: Mr. Dion, you have said today the Mr. Harper has offered nothing to put Canadian’s minds at ease during this financial crisis, you go on to say that he has no vision for the country, you say we have to act now, doing nothing is not an option. So I’d like to begin by asking you, if you were Prime Minister now, what would you have already done in this crisis that Mr. Harper hasn’t done.
Dion: I can’t…I don’t understand the question. Because are you asking me to…respond/answer at what moment? Today? Or since a week? Or 60 weeks? Or…
CTV: No, if you were, if you were the Prime Minister during this time, already…
Dion: We need to start again. If I was the Prime Minister starting when? Today?
Staffer: If you were the Prime Minister, when, since Harper’s been Prime Minister.
Dion: Back then, two years and a half ago.
Staffer: At any given time. We week or 5 years ago.
Dion: Two years, two years and a half ago.
Staffer: What would you have done differently between…between the time that Harper’s been there, to change things.
Dion: Yeah, but if I had been Prime Minister two years and a half ago we would have had an agenda… Let’s start again.
CTV: OK.
Camera Man: Still recording
CTV: Mr. Dion, thank you for coming.
Dion: Thank you Steve. Let’s start again [Laughs]
CTV: It’s a good job tape is cheap.
Dion: But give me a first date where I am Prime Minister, where I can figure out what you question is about.

They then played the interview in its entirety.

CTV: Mr. Dion thank you for coming.
Dion: Thank you Steve.
CTV: The economy is now the major issue we’re confronting in this campaign and on that issue you’ve said that Mr. Harper has offered nothing to put Canadian’s minds at ease and offers no vision for the country. You say we have to act now and doing nothing is not an option. I’d like to ask you Mr. Dion: If you were Prime Minister of Canada, today, what would you have done by now that Steven Harper has not done about this economic crisis.
Dion: I assume that I have been elected today Prime Minister, my first thing I would do is to consult with the Privy Council office, Minister of Finance to know exactly in which situation we are according to data. I would speed up the…my ability to appoint rapidly a government with the Minister of Finance, to be able to be Prime Minister right away, as soon as possible. And once we are the government we have 30 days of an action plan that we announce. So we will need to work with the regulatory agencies to have their best recommendation to protect our savings, to protect our mortgages, our pensions, and our jobs. I will speed up the investment in infrastructure and in the manufacturing sector to create economic activity and jobs now. Good jobs, well paid jobs. I will call a first ministers meeting to be sure that our great federation, everybody will work in coordination: provinces, territories and the federal government. I will consult the best economists of the private sector to ask them why are we ready [reeling?], us Canada and the world; what is their forecast for the situation in which we are. There are a lot of things that I would do. I would not be passive like Mr. Harper.
CTV: But looking back over the past two weeks, what specifically should Mr. Harper have done about this economic crisis that he has not done.
Dion: He did nothing. And what I will need to do is to be sure that the regulatory agencies will come with their best recommendations. There are things to examine. For instance, can we improve the insurance on the deposits of Canadians, as other countries have done. Can we put our seniors in a situation where they are not obligation to sell savings when the stock market is so shaky. There are a lot of things other countries are doing. Here in Canada Mr. Harper is doing nothing.

This entire exchange is a farce and Mr. Steve Murphy is an asshole. Dion clearly had an answer for both versions of the question but Murphy refused to rephrase his question in a clear way.
The question, as I take, was if Dion has been elected Prime Minister instead of Harper in 2004, what would have he done differently. Instead of asking “What would you have done differently in the past two years?”, Murphy chose to word the question like a moron.

The primary failure in the question is Murphy’s continue use of the term “now”. Now denotes immediacy, not reflection upon two years ago. Thus Dion was confused between alternating tenses. On one had Murphy wants to know about “now” while at the same time asking “what would you have done”. These two things are in contradiction with each other. For someone whose English is secondary, it is patently unfair to phrase something this awkwardly then not feel the need to change the wording as to make it more clear.

If you look at the beginning of the exchange, after the initial confusion, Murphy does correct Dion stating “If you were the Prime Minister right now and had been for the past years” and Dion responded to the “right now” comment, missing the “past years”. As such, he begins to answer the question as if he has just then been elected prime minister, but Murphy interrupts and says no, “if you hypothetically were Prime Minister today”. Of course that only makes the question even more confusing, rather than less. What Murphy should have said was “if you had been hypothetically elected in 2006″. But instead of this he continues to lure Dion into this linguistic trap.

At the second start Murphy continues to make the question even more confusing. He states “if you were Prime Minister now, what would you have already done”. This is a ridiculous sentence. He asks part of the question in the present and the second half in the past. That is, if you were there now, what would you have done in the past? It would have been very easy to explain that he meant two years ago instead of adding the more perplexing “already” contrasting the present tense “now”.

Following this exchange there is some discussion between Dion, a staffer and CTV. Yet this again shows the failure of CTV. The staffer is essentially on the right track explaining that Murphy meant that if he were Prime Minister in the past two which Dion responds that he understand that he means two and a half years ago. Indeed he even begins to explain what he would have done saying “I had been Prime Minister two years and a half ago we would have had an agenda…” He then ask to start over on the condition that they “give me a first date where I am Prime Minister, where I can figure out what you question is about.” However, as the question starts again Murphy asks the question in the same backwards manner. Despite Dion asking for a specific date Murphy repeats “today” or ‘now’ instead of specifying the past. As such Dion continues to answer the question on the basis of being elected today.

As such this interview is abhorrent, not for Dion’s misunderstanding, but for CTV’s ridiculous question and their lying about broadcasting it. Dion’s first language is not English and to compound upon that he has a hearing problem. Thus this interview is an example of the stupidity and insensitivity to people whose English is not perfect.

Harper and the Conservative’s response to this interview is also reprehensible. Harper claimed, “I don’t think this is a question of language at all. The question was very clear. It was asked repeatedly.” There is no way that this question was clear, especially to someone in Dion’s situation.

I think everyone should email CTV News and tell them that they are pathetic: atlanticnews@ctv.ca, news@ctv.ca.

And this is coming from a non-Liberal.

My prediction is as such:

Conservative: 130
Liberal: 89
NDP: 36
Bloc: 51
Green: 0
Independent: 2

I base this upon the average of these 5 predictions: DemocraticSPACE, UBC Sauder School of Business Election Stock Market, Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy, Ekos Election, & Election Prediction Project.

And I’m still not voting! I am, however, hoping for a Harper minority government. Socially speaking, I’m not a fan of Harper, but on the economy, he’s most certainly the best choice. (This reminds me a of post by David Boaz, A Libertarian Dilemma. Though I solved the issue by not voting.) I anticipate strong reaction from my Canadian history seminar when they hear I did not partake in the sacred democratic process.

Here is Bourque’s round up of polls:

cp: Con 34% Libs 25% Ndp 19% Bloc 11% Grn 9%
cpac: Con 34% Libs 27% Ndp 21% Bloc 10% Grn 8%
Ctv/g&m: Con 33% Libs 28% NDP 18% Grn 11% Bloc 10%
Ang/Reid: Con 38% Libs 28% NDP 19% Bloc 9%, Grn 6%

Here is a round up of a few historians’ comments on the election:

Robert Bothwell, University of Toronto 

“The Conservative ads continue to be really negative on Dion and they have more or less made his mannerisms and his speech and his appearance the election issue,” said Robert Bothwell, director of the international relations program at the University of Toronto.

[…]

“Coming into an election with a promise to enact something called a tax, no matter if it’s one cent on bubble gum is not a sensible tactic,” Bothwell said.

Stephen Clarkson, a political economy scientist at the University of Toronto, said Canadians may fear a Conservative majority led by Harper.

“He comes from the neoconservative school of thinking represented in the Bush administration,” Clarkson said.

Bothwell said he is an ideologue.

“He’s backtracked to keep himself in power until the right moment has arrived,” Bothwell said. “I don’t see any evidence of moderation. I do see evidence of political calculation.” [Associated Press]

Norman Hillmer, Carleton University 

Norman Hillmer, one of Canada’s foremost political historians, also recites “Hillmer’s law of Canadian politics: Once you are in power for a year, you’re in power for a long time. We have a very stable political culture (and) sitting leaders have a huge advantage.”

[…]

Stéphane Dion, whose entire political career has been defined by low expectations, almost certainly benefited from his surprisingly competent performance against Harper in the televised debates.

“Momentum has a lot to do with expectations,” Hillmer says.

“The media set Harper up as a great strategist. He was ‘the man’ and Dion was just this pathetic little figure. But Dion turned out to be a better campaigner than many expected. He grew stronger as the campaign progressed. He performed well in the debates. It gave him, if not a momentum shift, at least the power to stop the bleeding.” [Winnipeg Free Press]

Political historian Norman Hillmer of Ottawa said the wave of economic anxiety that swept Canada after the U.S. meltdown challenged Harper’s strategy of running on a platform of “more of the same” and forced the prime minister’s team to retool the message. He also threw $25 billion into the pot as late as Friday, money designed to make it easier for Canadian individuals and business to borrow money.

Duncan McDowell, Carleton University

Duncan McDowell, a history professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, said that as long as the Bloc is alive and kicking, it’s almost impossible to imagine a majority federal government being formed.

“You subtract 45 to 50 seats out of 308 and it takes a Nobel laureate in mathematics to try to find a majority in that,” McDowall said in an interview. “That is the new norm.” [The Windsor Star, editors note: there is no Nobel prize for mathematics.]

David Mitchell, Queen’s University

“I really, honestly believe that having the long weekend - the Thanksgiving family oriented holiday across the country before the vote - may be the most decisive part of the campaign,” said David Mitchell, a political historian who is a vice-principal at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. [The Windsor Star]

Michael Bliss, University of Toronto, Retired.

Historian Michael Bliss says there has been no other time in Canadian history that political leaders have seen such a serious economic crisis break in the midst of a federal election campaign, but he believes Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “less activist approach” is the winning leadership message in these economically uncertain times.

There are economic precedents that had clear political consequences and carry lessons for today’s leaders, said Prof. Bliss author of Right Honourable Men: The Descent of Canadian Politics from Macdonald to Mulroney.

The closest comparison may be the Great Depression election of 1930, Prof. Bliss said in an interview with The Hill Times. The 1930 election was similar to today, when the seriousness of an economic downturn, sparked in 1929, remained disputed. Sitting prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King went into the campaign denying that the country was headed into difficult economic times, but the strategy didn’t pay off. The Conservative candidate, R.B. Bennett, campaigned on taking a more activist government approach, to tackle economic troubles and fix unemployment. As a result, he won a majority government from Mackenzie King. [The Hill, cached]

Jack Granatstein, York University, Emeritus

But as Canadian historian Jack Granatstein pointed out, Mackenzie King’s loss in 1930 meant his victory in 1935, because Mr. Bennett had to govern over the most difficult period of the Great Depression.

“By losing in 1930 he was lucky because it meant he missed the worst of the Depression. When he came back in 1935, things weren’t all that much better, but he got a huge majority just because he wasn’t Bennett,” Mr. Granatstein said. “If we’re in for a long recession, and Harper gets elected this time, the odds are pretty good that he won’t the next time.”

Just how well the next prime minister fares politically during an economic slowdown will depend largely on their leadership, and they may have something to learn from U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who governed during the Depression. Mr. Granatstein said Mr. Roosevelt was the most successful leader during poor economic times, although it was largely his charisma, inspiration and promises that succeeded. He also utilized the radio-what was then a new form of media. [The Hill, cached]

Canada has the world’s soundest banking system, closely followed by Sweden, Luxembourg and Australia, a survey by the World Economic Forum has found as financial crisis and bank failures shake world markets. [Reuters]

Facts.

In reading for my honours thesis I have to slog through many ideologically driven works bemoaning the supposed rise of free-market ideology in the 1970s and into the 1990s. A prime example of this is and edited work by Robert C. Allen and Gideon Rosenbluth called False Promises: The Failure of Conservative Economics. It’s hard to be a historian and read works with blatant falsities and partisan nonsense.

On page 8 in the introduction Allen argues that Milton Friedman and David Meiselman’s 1963 “The Relative Stability of Monetary Velocity and the Investment Multiplier in the United States, 1897-1958″ had “since been discredited”. This is misleading at best and a lie at worse. This paper stood, with Friedman and Schwartz’s A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, as the foundation of the monetarist school in economic thought. Throughout the 1960s and beyond there was much debate over the paper, but to say it was “discredited” without qualification or comment demonstrates the ideological blinders employed by the authors.

Factually speaking, Tim Hazledine contribution in chapter 6, “A New Direction for Macroeconomic Policy”, features some lazy errors. On page 79 he claims that “John Maynard Keynes had no formal training in economics; no PhD; was never a professor, and did not even hold an official university (as opposed to college) teaching position.” It is true that Keynes did not hold a PhD. In today’s intellectual climate this would be a significant issue, but at the turn of the century the PhD had not yet become the requisite for university teaching. (For example, teaching history at the University of Toronto in the first half of the twentieth century required merely an Oxford BA. See: Wright, The Professionalization of History in English Canada.) Many economists of the era did not have PhDs: John Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, and A. C. Pigou.

As for Keynes training, Keynes spent much time around Cambridge at Marshall’s lectures, though not as a student. He completed a BA and MA and much of his effort was spent on economics, though formally his education was focused on mathematics, classics and philosophy. I don’t think it would be unfair to call him autodidactic in economics. Nevertheless, Hazledine glosses over the intellectual climate in which Keynes learned economics, including his father, an economist himself. I would compare this to David Friedman, son of Milton. David never formally studied economics, but he’s an economist.

Hazledine also attempts to make a point out of the fact that he Keynes never held an official university position, though he did hold a college position. For the remainder of his life Keynes was affiliated with King’s College, Cambridge. Though he spent much time as an advisor to the government and a public intellectual, he was also a lecturer. Thus to say he held no “official university teaching position” is wrong. This represents a misunderstanding of the constituent college system at Cambridge. Students and many professors are affiliated through the colleges but this doesn’t somehow negate their position with the university. Just because a scholar is at All Souls College, Oxford or Trinity Hall, Cambridge doesn’t, in any meaningful way, mean they aren’t part of the “official” university system.

Hazledine also exclaims that “Somehow, this did not prevent him from becoming one of the four or five truly great economists, and certainly the only one of this century.” It’s one thing to disagree with Milton Friedman, but it’s another thing to exclude him due to partisan bickering. There is no question that Keynes and Friedman together make up the two giants of twentieth century economics. Aside from calling Milton Friedman “conservative” throughout he also says that Friedman was “never really…happy with the activist, interventionist government polices of the ‘new economics’”. Unless Hazledine is trying to split hairs over the word “really” then he is ignoring the fact that Friedman Freidman was, at first, a through Keynesian. It was only in the 1950s that he began to change his mind.

If I have to read much more like this I don’t think I’ll ever finish my thesis.

Many Canadians lament, ad nauseum, the influence that the United States cultural machine has on Canada. Personally I find this loathsome and ignorant. I don’t deny the American influence, I merely reject the notion that it is having a detritus effect on Canada.

On Saturday, however, I found an amusing (at least to me) example. While at work I called an elderly lady for the political polling I was doing, she informed me she was unable to complete to poll because she was “watching Notre Dame football.” Even in Canada politics is subservient to NCAA football.

Over at the Foreign Policy blog, Joshua Keating has a post about the scramble for the arctic. He notes that Russia has been making claims about arctic rights and concludes:

The folks in Canada, which has a massive Arctic claim as well, aren’t taking this very well. Canada was already looking north uneasily after the invasion of Georgia and has been conducting military excercises in the region. Some commentators are now calling for Canada to increase its activity in the Arctic in order to bolster its territorial claim. There is apparently no ban on weapons in the area so it’s not hard to imagine things getting out of hand.

I for one don’t see things getting out of hand. Canada is not going to get into a military fight with Russia. A) Canada would lose. B) The United States would be pissed. C) There’s an election.

More patriotism.

As readers of my blog should know, I am a great foe of nationalism and its retarded cousin patriotism. That said, I do believe I have found some patriotism I can get behind…

These and the other linked photos got the Winnipeg Blue Bombers‘ cheerleading coach effectively fired, but I’m not sure why.

I think Globe and Mail commenter “Jim Ray from GTA” has the best comment:

I think the cheerleaders involved should be arrested. We need to set a strong example that this type of behaviour will not be tolerated in the world of professional sports. I mean, what’s next? Professional athletes having intercourse out of wedlock? Experimenting with cannibas? This is a slippery slope people.

“Another Opinion” is pretty good too:

Nobody told me that dropping my drawers in public would ruin my boss’s career! I wish I had known this years ago!

For those confused, the building in the background is this.

See here.