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January 31, 2004

Classic Steyn

If any of you don't check Mark Steyn's website on a regular basis (I recommend daily), then you really should. He is, in my humble opinion, the world's best columnist. As well as posting his latest work, he also takes requests to re-post old columns. This week's choice is a true classis, summing up all that is wrong with so-called "soft power." Plus, who else could find a way, in a serious, sober column, to use a line like:

Whether or not Mr. Mugabe has no penis, M. Chretien certainly has no balls.

Confused? As they say, read it all.

Posted by David Mader at 10:48 PM | (0) | Back to Main

On the Payroll - ?

Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter had quite a bit of blogosphere attention about a year ago when he very prominently changed his tune on Iraq, arguing not only that the WMD capacity was being overstated, but that the Saddamite regime was being overly demonized.

Now Winds of Change blogger Armed Liberal has found a connection between Ritter and the recently released list of individuals on Saddam's pay.

Posted by David Mader at 10:28 PM | (0) | Back to Main

January 30, 2004

Can There Be Peace?

Reading the details, one is tempted to call the latest terrorist attack in Jerusalem an act of barbarism. And yet to use the term is to suggest that little more should be expected from the perpetrators of these attacks and those who support them. It is only right to assert that the Palestinian terrorist organizations are made up of and supported by people who are not barbarians, and who must therefore be expected to demonstrate some humanity. Unfortunately, too many in the west are contented to view these people as oriental automatons. If we both deny humanity and condone inhumanity, what incentive is there to assert that one is human after all?

But in the wake of these seemingly mindless attacks, it's easy to wonder whether a negotiated peace is even possible. To the Palestinian perpetrators of these attacks, of course, they are anything but mindless; this latest was in response to an altercation in Gaza that left a number of Palestinians dead. The argument put forward is that if only Israel would withdraw from the occupied territories, the cycle of violence could be ended. It's a tempting proposition; and yet it ignores the recent history of the region. Until Operation Defensive Shield, and the start of the 'al Aqsa Intifada' more generally, the majority of Palestinian territories were in fact unoccupied; Barak's peace proposal at Camp David would have resulted in the substantial withdrawal of Israeli forces from the vast majority of Palestinian lands. That intifada began, then, not under a situation of Israeli occupation, but under a substantially-Palestinian controlling authority in the West Bank and much of the Gaza Strip. Perhaps in the coming years an Israeli leader will again bite the bullet and substantially withdraw; for now, though, there's every reason to believe that a withdrawal would lead not to less violence but to more.

In fact, I can't help but wonder if the more likely coming Israeli reaction is not capitulation but assertion of the type Israel is now so often said to exhibit. I was recently told by a friend that moral equivalence was justified, even necessary, because while Palestinian terrorists targetted Israeli civilians on buses, Israel had 'Jenin'. God help us all if Israel were to actually act as they're so often accused of acting. What would happen if an Israeli Sherman arose, a man who believed or recognized that war demands destruction, and that peace can only be achieved by destroying the capacity to continue making war? What would happen if, rather than risking Israeli lives by conducting house to house searches in UN-operated 'refugee camps', Israel simply began unrestricted bombing runs to reduce centres of terrorist activity? What would happen if Israel decided to brace itself and liquidate terrorist leaders regardless of the consequence? What, in short, if the Israelis began to treat this conflict as an all-or-nothing war, the way Palestinian terrorists and their apologists do?

It would be the end of Israel, I expect, both because of the unrestrained battle which would erupt throughout the country, and because international animosity towards Israel would likely result in an intervention force.

But read that piece on reaction to yesterday's bombing one more time. For now, Israel - her leaders and her people - recognize the precariousness of their situation, the necessity for a softly, softly response, the impossibility of unrestrained anger. For now there is sorrow and hope beyond hope, hope even in the face of destruction.

How long will hope last before it turns into impatience and despair? What happens when Israelis decide that life under constant siege is no life, that a state without security is no state?

FOR THE RECORD (11:48 EST): I continue to believe that the best policy for Israel would be the completion of a proper border barrier (along a line drawn to minimize both the displacement of Palestinians and the compromise of Israeli security), the withdrawal of forces behind that barrier and the declaration of a Palestinian state. The Jordan River valley presents a problem as it is central to Israeli security concerns, but American-backed Jordanian guarantess might help to alleviate those particular concerns (though probably not). This might not bring peace, but it could well 'regularize' the situation, to the degree that inter-state conflict continues to be regarded as 'regular'.

Posted by David Mader at 11:34 AM | (1) | Back to Main

Keeping Us Safe

The Washington Times:

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts said during last night's Democratic presidential debate that the threat of terrorism has been exaggerated.

"I think there has been an exaggeration," Mr. Kerry said when asked whether President Bush has overstated the threat of terrorism. "They are misleading all Americans in a profound way."

The front-runner for the Democratic nomination said he would engage other nations in a more cooperative fashion to quell terrorism.

"This administration's arrogant and ideological policy is taking America down a more dangerous path," Mr. Kerry said. "I will make America safer than they are."

Interesting. Presumably Mr Kerry would agree that the terrorist threat was very real and immediate back on, say, oh heck I dunno, September 10, 2001. Perhaps he would even agree that the terrorist threat remained relatively high for some months afterwards. If he's right that the terrorist threat is now 'exaggerated', it follows that it has been lessened in the months since September 11. Kerry's argument must logically be, then, that George Bush has successfully lessened the terrorist threat since September 11 through his policies, but that a Kerry presidency would lessen that threat even more by being more 'cooperative' and therefore less assertive in the international arena.

'George Bush did the right thing, but in the wrong way, and I'll do it the right way, but it's not as much of a problem anymore' - is that a winning position on national security?

Well, does it make you feel safe?

Posted by David Mader at 10:44 AM | (0) | Back to Main

January 29, 2004

Rest in Peace

Eddie Clontz, editor of the Weekly World News, has died. If, like me, you absolutely love the WWN (thanks in my case go to DJS for introducing me to the wonderful tabloid), you'll want to check the story out.

[Via Dave Barry]

Posted by David Mader at 11:42 PM | (0) | Back to Main

The Mother of All Parliaments

Andrew Coyne has thoughts on Westminster which compliment something I said a couple of days ago.

Posted by David Mader at 09:58 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Useless but fun fact of the day

Who did the Union Leader (New Hampshire major newspaper) endorse in the 1984 New Hampshire Democratic primary?

Ronald Reagan, as a write in.

Call me a political geek if you will, but I find that pretty amusing.

(Thanks to Jacob Levy for this fine piece of trivia)

Posted by David Mader at 07:01 PM | (2) | Back to Main

Lileks Radio

James Lileks is guest-hosting the Hugh Hewitt show today, 6-9 PM Eastern. Listen here.

Posted by David Mader at 06:09 PM | (0) | Back to Main

A place to live, a place to grow...

(Thanks to Ryan's Rantin' for the link)

Ahhh, Ontario.

Posted by David Mader at 02:28 PM | (0) | Back to Main

What He Said

Iain Murray:

Making common cause with the far left is not the way to engender a tory revival.

Yup.

Posted by David Mader at 01:19 PM | (0) | Back to Main

January 28, 2004

In Memorium

Today is the 18th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. The most striking thing about reading Reagan's great speech from that terrible day is the reference to the Apollo 1 fire. Between Apollo 1 and Challenger 19 years had past, in which time we had reached the moon, given up on the moon, created the space shuttle program, and grown bored of it. In the 18 years since Challenger, we've achieved what in space? Not nearly enough.

Still, you can't pass this anniversary without reading the speech again.

"Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But, we've never lost an astronaut in flight; we've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle; but they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together. "

"For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy.' They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.

We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them...

There's a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, 'He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.' Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honoured us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'"

-Ronald Reagan, Oval Office of the White House, January 28, 1986

Posted by David Mader at 09:41 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Big Mistake

Jonah Goldberg says something I've been saying for ages:

The emphasis on WMDs was largely the result of lawyers at the State Dept. thinking that was the only "legal" reason we could go to war... to the extent the post-Iraq failure to find WMDs is a disaster for the United States in terms of its credibility, its relationships with allies etc. one could argue that the fault lies in the fact that George W. Bush listened too much to Colin Powell and the State Department instead of the hawks, since it was the Wolfowitz crowd which wanted to emphasize freedom, democracy, stability and the war on terror. Now that no WMDs have been found that rhetoric seems self-serving when in fact those were co-equal priorities all along. If George Bush had talked before the war about bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq as eloquently as he did afterwards, he would be in a lot better shape politically and in the history books.

Yup. Of course many folks would argue that the failure to find WMD should make Bush and his successors even more beholden to the UN in the future; if Goldberg is right, though, the real lesson may be that in future, Bush should stand on principle, and the UN be damned.

Bad politics for Bush either way, I think.

[Via Instapundit]

Posted by David Mader at 06:23 PM | (3) | Back to Main

Yes, No, and Huh?

Paul Tuns of Sobering Thoughts takes issue with my pre-Hampshire analysis of Joe Lieberman's chances. He writes:

The problem with this conventional wisdom view is that the primaries in the red states are for the blue party. Regardless of how the state leans, Democrats are Democrats and Democratic voters lean left regardless of where they live. As I noted yesterday, Democrats in Arizona and Oklahoma generally give poor favourable and relatively high unfavourable ratings to Lieberman. And, by the way, wasn't New Hampshire a red state in 2000.

Tuns is right in this respect: the red state/blue state thing is just sloppy punditry, and slopping thinking as well. Because presidential electoral politics combines first-past-the-post and winner-takes-all mechanisms, there's a tendency to presume that a state's character is what the electoral map suggests it is. That's just not true; an awful lot of California is rather conservative, both socially and politically, but the cities aren't - which is why it's a 'blue' state. The same could be said of any traditional 'red' state, where the rural and suburban generally conservative vote tends to outweigh the urban generally liberal vote. The rural-suburban/urban vote division is probably as sloppy as the red/blue division, but the point is that painting a state one color ignores the significant presence of the other color.

But I'm not sure I fully agree with Tuns' assertion that "Democrats are Democrats and Democratic voters lean left regardless of where they live." This is probably true on a relative scale - Democratic voters in any one locale tend to lean to the left of Republican (and possibly, though not necessarily, independent) voters in that same locale. But I don't think it's true on an absolute scale. I'm not sure how comfortable a Washington State-born Deaniac would feel at a meeting of, say, the Tom Green County (Texas) Democratic Party. (And no, I'm not making that up: there really is a Tom Green County. Although I can't vouch for the precise leaning of its Democracy. Just an example.)

Certainly this has been true in the past; for all the talk about the desertion of Dixiecrats to the GOP in the 1960s, the fact is that Southern Democracy remains a very real, and substantially conservative, political force. Moreover, I think it's a mistake to presume that all Democratic voters across states tilt left to the same degree on the same issues. I imagine, again for the sake of example, that the Texas Democracy puts a different priority on, and has a different attitude about, the President's amnesty program than, say, the Massachusetts Democracy. Maybe all Democrats lean the same way on wedge issues - affirmative action, abortion and so on - but I'm not so sure. In any case, I think there are new issues arising - such as outsourcing - which could displace the traditional wedges as the pre-eminent electoral concerns for either party.

So, yes it's a mistake to suggest that Lieberman will necessarily have greater successes in 'red states', since Democratic voters in those states are themselves blue. At the same time, no it's not the case that a Democrat is a Democrat, and it's not inconcievable that states with, say, more military presence will be home to Democrats who lean further to the right on certain issues than Democrats in other states.

And here's the 'huh?' Tuns starts his post like this: "David Merder (whose Maderblog, with his brother Dan, is one of only two Canadian blogs I check daily)..." Now, I'm flattered - quite a lot, actually - and I've long been told not to look a gift horse in the mouth. But I've been trying to figure out the 'David Merder' bit. Is it a sort of compliment, a cool nom-de-plume with its phonetic evocation of romanticized criminality? Is it a Canadian put-down, with its Franco-scatalogical reference? I guess the basic question is this: if my name was Merder, why would I call my site Maderblog?

I'm just kidding around: Tuns makes a very good point in response to something I wrote, and for that I'm willing to be called more or less anything.

[Thanks to Adam for the pointer.]

Posted by David Mader at 02:44 PM | (2) | Back to Main

Vindicated

Those trying to spin the Hutton Report as fundamentally bad news for Tony Blair have an up-hill battle before them. It's particularly disappointing to see Tory leader Michael Howard suggest that a further inquiry is needed into the causes of the Iraq war. Certainly there needs to be an investigation of the pre-war intelligence; that's an imperative not just in Britain and the United States but among every western nation, all of whose services concurred with the popular assessment of Iraqi WMD capabilities. But to suggest - as Howardseems to do - that Britain was led unwillingly into a war that ought not have been fought smacks of nothing more than crass political opportunism. No doubt it represents a sort of political triangulation: Howard knows that there's a substantial anti-war constituency fed up with Blair who would otherwise swing to Kennedy's LibDems. If that constituency is so strongly anti-war, though, are they really desirable Tory voters? It raises a further question: is the Conservative Party's current poll-lead simply a result of tacking to the left of the Blair Labourites on national security? If so, and if that support is translated into electoral success, Howard will have to decide whether to remain a popular government leader - or a principled Tory.

But what do I know; I'm thousands of miles away. For a great look at both Westminster politics and the Hutton Report, you could do worse than to watch Blair's statement to the House. I mentioned the other day that, unlike Ottawa, Westminster still enjoyed a real Parliamentary democracy. I've ever had mixed feelings about Blair, but there can be no doubt that he's a real Parliamentarian.

Posted by David Mader at 02:17 PM | (0) | Back to Main

January 27, 2004

My Involvement in the Federal Campaign

As I was writing the previous post, I realized that I haven't yet talked about my involvement in the Conservative party leadership race. I've been waiting to do so, because it hasn't been formally announced, but I think its important for anyone reading my posts to know.

I'm supporting Tony for the leadership. I think he has the experience and ability to debate Paul Martin in both official languages and to take the message of conservatism to all parts of Canada.

I'm organizing youth nationally for Tony's campaign.

So if you're interested in helping Tony, drop me a line.

Posted by David Mader at 10:03 PM | (4) | Back to Main

More on the Policy Conference

Of course, all that most people wanted to talk about last weekend was the federal Conservative party leadership.

Belinda and Harper arrived on Friday night. Belinda arrived in two identical SUVs and paraded around with a large entourage including a couple of rather obnoxious security guards. She threw a great suite, but was described as rather distant and aloof by those who talked to her. She hung around for a while on Saturday and seemed to be much better, walking around the conference centre seemingly alone, and talking to delegates. She also met with youth on Saturday morning, to generally negative reviews. She looked uninformed when asked about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Harper had a small but packed suite on Friday night. I spoke to him briefly and can say that he gets better every time I see him. He's actually starting to get good at being a politician. Still, he didn't have a lot of supporters there this weekend.

Clement arrived on Saturday morning. He got a standing ovation from about 2/3 of the room when he arrived for lunch. This was clearly Tony's crowd. His stickers were the most visible of any campaign's symbols. The Clement suite was large and well received.

The reaction from many people I spoke to was that the more people see Belinda, the less they liker her. The more people see Clement and Harper, the more they like them. Interesting.

Posted by David Mader at 09:58 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Ontario PC Policy Conference

I spent last weekend at the Ontario PC Policy Conference in Niagara Falls. It was a great weekend, with tons going on - both provincially and federally.

First, of course, this was the Ontario PC Party's first conference after losing office last fall. People were very worried at first that attendance would be very poor, with some predicting only 200 attendees. There ended up being 600 people there, which was very impressive. The one nice thing about being at a convention of a party that is out of power is that only the real activists bother to show up, rather than those who are just attracted to power. This weekend showed that the party still has a strong core of activists.

Still, the main focus of the weekend was leadership, with both provincial and federal leadership campaigns hard at work.

Provincially, both Jim Flaherty and Frank Klees had suites. Both men were very visible, working on shoring up support. I'd say that Klees had a terrible weekend. He rather lamely called for Jim Flaherty's co-chairs to be forced to resign from their caucus posts. He also made an extremely embarrasing speech to the party's youth wing on Friday night. Apparently, Klees felt the need to address a rumour that he was homophobic. Unfortunately, he decided to do so in the middle of a roast of the outgoing youth president. It left all attendees questioning his judgement.

Flaherty, on the other hand, made it through the weekend in good shape. He has, rather amazingly, managed to appropriate the Ontario flag as his symbol. His supporters were wearing Ontario flag pins, very subtely signaling their support for him. A lot of people were wearing them this past weekend.

John Tory was also there this past weekend. He didn't have a suite, but was very visible, working the room and talking to delegates. It sure looks like he's running. This will squeeze out Klees and set up an all-out red-blue fight between him and Flaherty. It should be quite the race.

Posted by David Mader at 09:51 PM | (2) | Back to Main

Throne Speech Speculation

Paul Martin's first throne speech is on Monday, so its time to start the serious speculation.

Paul Wells weighs in with an extremely interesting little post. He thinks that if Martin wants to show that he can actually make a decision he might move to cut corporate welfare.

This would free up $4 billion a year which he could throw into healthcare, not too shabby going into an election. It would also have the nice effect of taking the wind out of the sails of both major opposition parties. The NDP would have a much harder time arguing that Maritn only cares about his corporate buddies. The Tories have been calling for an end to corporate welfare for so long that they'd have a lot more trouble positioning themselves to the right of Martin without going off the scale.

So, as a Conservative activist, am I worried? No, because I can't imagin Martin (who I think is an unreconstructed statist) doing anything so rational.

I guess we'll see on Monday, though.

Posted by David Mader at 09:30 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Early Returns

CNN is projecting a Kerry win in New Hampshire, which is no big surprise. As of 20:36 EST they have Kerry 39% Dean 25% Edwards 13% Clark 12%.

I don't know how much I'll be able to blog the results tonight, but some basic thoughts:

If Lieberman can break double digits (he's at 9% at present), he'll stay in the race. His strength is in the south and the red states, and Democratic voters there and are going to want a right-tilting candidate to vote for. Clark has squandered that role with his lame pandering to the crazy-left.

Speaking of Clark, if he loses to Edwards, it's lights out. Think Edwards got a press boost after Iowa? He's from the Carolinas. As Super Tuesday approaches, he's going to become a very prominent side story, getting press time close, if not equal, to Kerry and Dean. Clark has nothing left to offer. But he'll stay in, because he has big money and a bigger ego.

Dean will portray any second-place finish as a 'comeback', given his poor showing in Iowa.

Looking ahead, I think both Kerry and Dean have put themselves at a disadvantage moving south and west. Dean's elitism and condescension in the fall won't be forgotten (just as his mania won't be easily overlooked), and Kerry's most recent gaffe will be fresh. Edwards will be the man to watch.

Alright, that's all I've got for now. The numbers may move around considerably, but I'm working on 32% reporting.

UPDATE (20:53 EST): Looking back over the predictions, it seems that Kerry is exceeding expectations by quite a margin, which Dean is about as expected and Edwards is underperforming. Approaching 40% may well make tonight a Kerry blow-out.

Posted by David Mader at 08:44 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Laissez-Faire in Unlikely Places

Like, say, in the locker room after our hockey game. Discussion turned to a proposed student fee for the expansion of the school's fitness facilities. One of the fellows had, it seems, been on an interested committee this year or last, and was explaining why the fee had been proposed and why it was a good idea. And to my surprise, a whole bunch of the other guys started coming down on him - arguing that they oughtn't be made to pay for a service they didn't use. The proponent argued that many, perhaps most students used the facilities in question; the opponents countered that, if this were true, those students should simply pay a higher annual fee for those services.

I'm always harping on about the basic market orientation among college-aged kids nowadays, and I think this is a legitimate example of that. I eventually spoke up, if only to defend the poor proponent who was really getting rhetorically beaten on, by saying that until Canadian students were made to pay something approximating the actual market costs of tuition and related services, schools would never have enough money to develop 'adequate' facilities and would have to continually go to students in lame referenda.

The fact is, though, that such an argument basically dodges the issue, which might be said to have public sector ramifications. Another guy pointed out that if every student in every 4-year cycle took the same user-pay attitude, the existing facilities would never have been built. Of course, it's quite possible that those facilities ought not to have been built in the first place, though undoubtedly proponents would argue that the availability of facilities contributes to the attractiveness of the school to future consumers students. I think that line of thinking eventually gets us back to my 'basic' problem of tuition-subsidization, which ultimately leaves less money available for any sort of investment in facilities and expansion - or whatever else students might want in the aggregate.

As you can see, I'm still thinking this one over, and I'm interested to know what my readers, students or others, think of the question. I should point out that I do know how I'll vote, or rather I know that I won't vote, since as a soon-to-be-graduate I won't be enjoying the benefits or paying the costs of the expansion. But if you all can convince me that I'd be doing future cohorts of students a favor by investing their money in a facility they might not use, I'm quite willing to change my mind.

Posted by David Mader at 08:07 PM | (1) | Back to Main

Blair Passes First Hurdle

The House of Commons has passed Tony Blair's proposed top-up fee bill 316-311 reducing the Labour Party's 161-seat majority to a margin of five votes. The last-minute endorsement of erstwhile rebel Nick Brown was said to have swayed about 30 MPs to the government lobby.

Though the margin was slim, party whips had played up the (very real, I think) possibility of an outright defeat, and a victory puts Blair in good standing to receive the results of the Hutton Enquiry. In fact, I think Oxblogger Josh Chafetz called this one right:

If Blair wins the university fees vote and takes only a few glancing blows from the Hutton Report, he'll come out of all of this strengthened. If he loses the fees vote and gets smacked by Lord Hutton, he may well have to resign. My prediction: he'll win the fees vote by a tiny margin and come out okay but not great from Hutton's Report. He won't have to resign.

We'll have to wait for Hutton, but it looks like that's about right.

Posted by David Mader at 03:10 PM | (0) | Back to Main

More Hampshire Predictions

Andrew Sullivan clocks in: "Kerry 35, Dean 28, Edwards 17. Percent, that is. All three survive."

Posted by David Mader at 02:02 PM | (0) | Back to Main

The Emerging Moderate Majority

Newsweek finds that young Americans are more conservative in their ideals, and more moderate in their politics, than might be expected:

Fifty-four percent of young voters say they approve of the president’s handling of economic issues (with 44 percent saying they disapprove) and 57 percent approve of his handling of foreign policy (42 percent disapprove). The approval ratings don’t necessarily translate into vote for Bush, however: 37 percent said they would definitely vote to reelect the president while 34% they would definitely vote to elect someone else.

Young voters who participated in the poll had a range of political affiliations with 47 percent identified as Democrats and 40 percent identified as Republican. A clear majority of young voters also seems to support the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq. Fully 60 percent say the White House made the right decision when it invaded Iraq and only 37 percent call the war a mistake.

And so on. Newsweek calls the findings 'surprising'. Only surprising if you're an out of touch boomer, alas.

Posted by David Mader at 01:55 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Stifling of Dissent

Is it me, or does Al Franken have an, uh, interesting understanding of the principle of free speech?

Posted by David Mader at 01:48 PM | (0) | Back to Main

The Internet is a Big Place

[Or, Welcome to Maderblog]

Every so often I like to poke around in my referrer logs, and since Maderblog has experienced a bit of a bump recently [that's no bump - that's an upward trend! -- ed. Oi, you, none of that here] I thought I'd highlight some visitors as a way of saying thanks.

Of course displaying my ability to watch back, as it were, might prove something of a disincentive to keep visiting, but hey, blogs are all about a back-and-forth.

First, thanks to all the visitors from academic institutions. McGill tops the list, understandably, but thanks to readers at Yale, Texas Tech, North Florida, Waterloo, Western Ontario and Yeshiva University.

Thanks to my interesting-institutional visitors, including you good folks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Southam, AmGen (huzzah for biotech!) and ThinkNordic (huzzah for electrical cars!).

Thanks to visitors from Ontario and Quebec and the prairies, thanks to visitors from California and Washington State and New York and Florida and the Great State of Texas, thanks to visitors from Great Britain and France and Spain and Japan.

Thanks to everybody who's come by and had a look. Dan and I have a blast doing this thing, and we hope you enjoy it just as much - and that you keep coming back.

Posted by David Mader at 12:32 AM | (0) | Back to Main

January 26, 2004

Watching, Ottawa?

Something extraordinary will happen at Westminster tomorrow evening. The British House of Commons will hold a vote.

Yes, it's true: Parliament - both Commons and Lords - votes regularly. But tomorrow's vote is widely recognized to be among the most important of Prime Minister Tony Blair's political career. But that's not the extraordinary part.

The extraordinary part is that nobody knows how the vote will turn out.

The vote is on a seemingly marginal issue, a government plan to introduce variable 'top up fees' allowing British universities to charge students a tax above tuition based on income in order to expand school coffers. Various groups of rebel labor MPs have, however, promised to oppose the government motion which comes on the very same day that Lord Hutton will release his findings on the suicide of scientist David Kelly¹.

High drama indeed. Much could be written about each component - about the Hutton inquiry, about British universities, about anti-Blair Labour MPs - but what interests me is the prospect of a hugely important government motion which might very well fail.

Compare this circumstance to the state of affairs at the Canadian Houses of Parliament in Ottawa. Canada has long enjoyed only an echo of the greatness of Westminster, which itself has matured over hundreds of years. At present, because of the power the Canadian Prime Minister holds over his party, and because of the cronyism and graft available to that same Prime Minister, the idea of a back-bench rebellion is absurd. It would be remarkable indeed for a vote as important as tomorrow's to approach with the same level of uncertainty. It might not be impossible, but to occur Canada would need to have the same depth of political intruige and character.

But Ottawa is no Westminster. Those of us who long for the restoration of real representative government in Canada would do well to watch the news from Britain tomorrow. We'll see no less than true Parliamentary democracy in action.

¹_{Edited 01/27/04 00:50 EST. You know, as I was writing I consciously thought to myself, "I'd better not mix up Kelly and Kay."}

Posted by David Mader at 11:34 PM | (1) | Back to Main

Never Again Means Action Now

Lord Molyneaux:

My mind has often gone back to our arrival in Belsen as I stood beside my commanding officer, a First World War pilot and a man of great integrity. Before us was a huge mound of bodies near the Jewish quarter of the dreadful huts. My CO asked: "Molyneaux, did you ever think you would see such an example of what one group of human beings could do to another set of human beings?" I innocently replied: "Perhaps this evidence will ensure that it doesn't happen again."

Shaking his head, my CO said: "I hate to think you may be mistaken."

I now admit that I was wrong because I didn't realise that the rewards of tyranny and terrorism would be so great, and that therefore authorities and governments would lack the courage and resolution to stamp out such evils.

Now, the usual response of governments is mere condemnation of an atrocity, describing an outrage as "unacceptable". Next come a string of concessions to the offender, leading to a craven suggestion that the victims must share some of the blame, and then concessions to the demands of the perpetrators.

Opinion formers appear to have forgotten Kipling, who warned of the outcome.

"It is always a temptation
To a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
'Though we know we should defeat you,
We have not the time to meet you,
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.'
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That, if once you have paid him the Dane-geld,
You never get rid of the Dane."

Increasingly, the general public weakens in its resolve. Under the label of moderation, it is fashionable to plead for understanding; to do a Chamberlain and settle for a piece of crumpled paper in the mistaken belief that the word of dictators and terrorists can be trusted. Today, we should reflect on our responsibilities, and those of our governments, to stand up to the prejudice and tyranny that can still, today, lead to genocide. These events happened in my lifetime. They are not lost in the past; they could still happen again today.

Posted by David Mader at 10:24 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Steyn on Hampshire

From tomorrow's Telegraph:

Sen John Edwards, the pretty-boy southern lawyer, does a much better job of this sort of thing. I caught him at Gorham Town Hall way up in the mountains on Saturday morning. It was a brutally cold morning – 40 degrees below freezing – but the place was packed and we all came away enthused, unlike at a Kerry rally where you come away trying not to think about why you're not enthused. Next to the groggy, haggard Kerry, Edwards has a fabulous, glowing complexion. In Gorham, surrounded by leathery weatherbeaten chapped blotched Yankee faces on all sides, the North Carolina trial lawyer looked like a star. If he'd taken my question, I'd have asked him for the name of his moisturiser. True, his stump speech often sounds less like a political platform and more like a laundry list of class-action suits he'd like to get a piece of – we need to act against credit card companies that charge excessive interest etc – and he has nothing of interest to say about the war. But his qualified support – or qualified lack of support – seems to suit a Democratic electorate that recoils from Joe Lieberman's full-throated backing of the Iraq liberation and isn't quite suicidal enough to nail its colours to the mast of the fruitcake anti-war Left.

Steyn, ever obliging, also makes some predictions:

1) Senator John Kerry 29 per cent
2) Governor Howard Dean 28 per cent
3) Senator John Edwards 19 per cent
4) Senator Joe Lieberman 12 per cent
5) General Wesley Clark 10 per cent
6) Everybody else 2 per cent

Time will tell.

Posted by David Mader at 09:49 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Rethinking 'Bird Brained'

This is pretty incredible:

The finding of a parrot with an almost unparalleled power to communicate with people has brought scientists up short.

The bird, a captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour...

He uses words in context, with past, present and future tenses, and is often inventive.

One N'kisi-ism was "flied" for "flew", and another "pretty smell medicine" to describe the aromatherapy oils used by his owner, an artist based in New York.

When he first met Dr Jane Goodall, the renowned chimpanzee expert, after seeing her in a picture with apes, N'kisi said: "Got a chimp?"

He appears to fancy himself as a humourist. When another parrot hung upside down from its perch, he commented: "You got to put this bird on the camera."

Sounds too good to be true; if true, it's certainly amazing.

Posted by David Mader at 02:18 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Updates From New Hampshire

No, I'm not talking about Josh Marshall, I'm talking about Dave Barry:

So anyway, when I arrived at the bowling alley, about 15 minutes before North Carolina's Sen. Edwards, trouble was brewing. It was like The Perfect Storm, with two powerful opposing forces on a deadly collision course:

• On the one hand, you had hundreds of people there to see the candidate, including a large, aggressive press corps that was not wearing appropriate bowling footwear.

• On the other hand, you had league bowlers, who were there to bowl, dammit.
[...]
Into this festive scene surged Sen. Edwards, whose campaign theme is that he is going to bring America together. He stood on a platform and gave a speech, surrounded by a dense crowd of media and applauding supporters. About 25 feet away, outside the crowd, the bowlers offered their rebuttal. It was a weird kind of stereo: In one ear, I'd hear Sen. Edwards explaining how he would provide economic opportunity to all Americans; in the other ear, I'd hear: "OUR WHOLE NIGHT IS RUINED! YOU DON'T GIVE A (bad word) ABOUT US!''
[...]
As the crowd dispersed, I overheard this exchange between an Edwards volunteer and a bowler:

Bowler: Go Bush. You guys suck.

Volunteer: You shouldn't generalize. We don't ALL suck.

Bowler: Yeah, you do.

That's what's so great about the primaries: people talking about issues.

Heh.

Posted by David Mader at 11:23 AM | (0) | Back to Main

The Emerging Conservative Majority

As part of my effort to highlight the emergent conservatism of the 'millenial' generation - folks my age, and especially college students - I point to this report from the USA Today:

Still, modern kids' political engagement pales next to that of the freshmen class of 1966, the survey's first subjects, 60% of whom said it was "essential or very important" to keep up with politics.

Since then, the survey shows, students' political views also have shifted to the right. Liberals still outnumber conservatives, but just barely: 24% say they hold liberal political views; 21% call themselves conservatives.

The percentage of liberals has nose-dived from its high of 38% in 1971. The percentage of conservative students, as low as 14% after Richard Nixon's second presidential inauguration in 1973, has hovered near the 20% mark since 1981 and Ronald Reagan's first term. Then, as now, the largest group by far remained students who call their their political views "middle-of-the-road."

Studies like this have their limits, of course. It seems to me an awful lot of politically-conscious university students would describe themselves as liberal regardless of their partisan political preference. Heck, I'd call myself a liberal - and I'd qualify it by adding the prefixes 'classical', 'whig' or 'neo'. Self labelling therefore has its drawbacks, and I'd wager that the 21% of college 'conservatives' significantly understates the percentage of students who hold economically 'conservative' (which is to say basically free-market) views. Because 'conservative' also has strong social-policy connotations, I think studies like this also miss the political transformation currently underway towards a more laissez-faire attitude among younger Americans.

Posted by David Mader at 11:06 AM | (0) | Back to Main

Edwards

David Frum expands upon the issue of John Edwards' youth (scroll down to the second item):

Isn’t there too something fatally unready about John Edwards? Commentators keep calling him “young.” Edwards will be 50 in November. Ten other US presidents (Polk, Fillmore, Pierce, Grant, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Clinton) were Edwards’s age or younger on coming into office. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the most politically adept of them all, was only one year older. What the critics mean is not that Edwards is too young, but that he seems too callow.

If that's true on an absolute scale - if Edwards appears callow on a stump by himself - imagine how he'll look on a scale relative to President Bush.

Posted by David Mader at 10:49 AM | (0) | Back to Main

Being Wrong, Being Right

Andrew Sullivan has a must read post on David Kay's resignation, the lack of Iraqi WMDs and the importance of the global war on terror.

I've always put less of an emphasis on WMD than even Sullivan, and I've written before that putting WMD at the fore of the arguments for the Iraqi operation was a mistake. Still, Sullivan is absolutely right to say that, as Kay himself has said, there seem to have been no significant stockpiles of WMD (as opposed to WMD-producing programs, of which there were quite a few) in Iraq prior to the war. It's important to figure out how virtually every intelligence agency in the world was fooled into believing - nay, confirming - the pre-war reports.

Posted by David Mader at 10:04 AM | (1) | Back to Main

January 25, 2004

Howard Dean...

... is off of his [censored]-damned tree:

"You can say that it's great that Saddam is gone and I'm sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone," said the former Vermont governor, an unflinching critic of the war against Iraq. "But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before."

And the Cubans enjoy universal health-care. Honestly, is this anything but a 'trains-run-on-time' defense of totalitarianism?

Yes, a defense. Later in the same article Dean suggests that through the UN there might have been found a 'better' way of removing Hussein. Presumably the UN route would have been preferable because it would have involved a 'peaceful' removal of the most egregious elements of the ruling regime. Presumably the US-led war has resulted in a 'lower standard of living' because it involved the violent removal of the entire regime. If those are indeed the assumptions behind Dean's statement - and I think it's most reasonable to conclude that they are - then Dean can only be suggesting that Iraqis would now enjoy a better life if the Ba'athist bureaucracy, and not the Coalition Provisional Authority, were now running Iraq.

But perhaps I'm over-analyzing; and besides, I've been told numerous times recently that rational objectivism is an insufficient standard. So tell me, then, Governor: just how does the fear of police-statism factor into the 'standard of living'? How do you measure the fear one feels upon leaving one's house? How much value can you place on the grief for lost loved ones?

Or do you regret the unemployment caused by a sudden reduction in the demand for mass-grave diggers?

Shameful; despicable: these words have long lost their rhetorical power. Howard Dean's comments are not just unsustainable, they're unbelievable.

Posted by David Mader at 06:50 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Have You Seen...

... the new Samizdata.Net? Man, does it look good. I've long held the Dissident Frogman to have the nicest-looking blog on my blogroll, but now he's gone and designed one that trumps his own.

Posted by David Mader at 04:51 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Bush '04

Glenn Reynolds:

As for those Bush/Churchill analogies, remember what happened to Churchill the minute people felt safe.

Yup.

Some thoughts: I think that's true not only of the war, but of the economy as well; Bush has been saying since January '01 that his program of tax cuts would help turn the economy around. Now that the economy's turning around, the economists and policy wonks have begun to debate whether Bush's tax cuts helped or hindered. But most folks don't care; they see the economy getting better, they feel the economy getting better, and they start looking forward rather than backward. If the tax cuts weren't responsible, the 'recession' is over anyway; if they were, they've had their effect. The question now is what to do with the improved economic situation. Bush's tax-cutting agenda has, I think, played out its political usefulness (although this year's tax preparation may prove a helpful reminder as folks realize how much more they get to keep).

On both the war and the economy, then, Bush's successes will be hard to turn into electoral capital. Folks will be looking ahead, and will be less inclinded, I think, to give Bush another four years because of what he did in his first term.

I had some fun horrifying some friends last week by arguing (not very well, thanks to the free flowing brewskies) that Bush was the best president since Lincoln. It's an absurd claim, of course, if only because comparing presidencies is impossible. It gets even more tenuous when I freely admit that on domestic policy Bush has been underwhelming (to be charitable). In part that reflects my own interest in foreign affairs, and in part it represents the importance I place on the war which I believe is currently being waged. My point was, and is, that Bush displays a vision and direction on matters foreign which I believe is as important to the future of the United States - and the free world - as the New Deal, the Truman Doctrine or any other program or policy since Reconstruction.

I'm not sure how much the election of a Democrat would alter the prosecution of the war on terror; many institutional changes are already underway or complete which will ensure a continued campaign regardless of the partisan color of the White House. Nonetheless, I believe that Bush displays a far greater understanding of the stakes, and a far greater degree of leadership, than any of the Democrats.

But, as Reynolds points out, that leadership means little when the nation sees no more immediate threat - no reason to be led. The Bush campaign may well concentrate on reminding or convincing people of the continued threat. It would be more effective - and more welcome - for them to rather display the same leadership and vision on the domestic front as they've displayed abroad. Yes, the war goes on, despite our great successes. Yes, the economy must be bolstered even as it grows at an astounding pace. These are signs not only of past success, but of future opportunity. How will President Bush exploit these opportunities in his second term? He's worked hard to bring the promise of America - and humanity - to formerly terrorized regions of the world. How will he help America to fulfill her own promise?

Posted by David Mader at 04:36 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Red Paris Watch

Whoa.

Posted by David Mader at 01:30 AM | (0) | Back to Main

January 24, 2004

Hey! I Know That Guy!

Today Forbes; tomorrow the world:

Not that long ago, the best and brightest of Canada's business school graduates were passing up investment banking or management consulting jobs and jumping into the high-tech industry with the promise of big salaries, lavish stock options and the chance to be on the cutting edge.

But in Canada, as in the United States, these jobs became scarce after the tech bubble burst. Some companies that were recruiting aggressively on business school campuses in the late 1990s have disappeared, while others focused on slashing costs. The number of tech workers in Canada is down 15 percent from three years ago.

Now another shift is apparently under way. Tech companies that survived the downswing are again starting to recruit candidates for master's degrees in business administration, albeit modestly...

Venture capitalists in Canada have retrenched after bankrolling too many companies in the late 1990s, but Seguin envisions a 50 percent jump in venture capital spending on Canadian companies this year to about C$1.5 billion. Still, that is far below 2000 levels of C$5 billion.

Recruitment on campus seems to reflect that situation.

The Rotman School is still not getting hordes of tech companies, said Dan Mader, a second-year student.

"I think that we're still going to have more people getting jobs in areas like finance than we are in tech," said Mader, 25. "But we're starting to see posts again from companies like IBM, and ATI, and companies like that, which just were not happening at all last year."

You tell 'em, Dan. But wait - your perspective wouldn't be shaped by your own professional movement from the tech to the finance sector, would it?

I'm just askin'.

Posted by David Mader at 05:41 PM | (0) | Back to Main

January 23, 2004

I Have a Scream

Traffic on Maderblog has experienced a bit of a bump in recent days, and much of it is coming from search engine hits for the terms 'Dean Shriek' and 'Dean Screech'. Interesting that I'm high on the returns for both of those; I suppose mainstream media is using the term 'yell'.

What's really interesting, though, is the sudden burst in interest in Dean's performance. Thanks to James Lileks and others, it's already become a cultural event; I wonder whether the obvious increase in internet interest is drawing the sort of web-based attention that Howard Dean would rather not have.

Or maybe it doesn't mean anything.

Posted by David Mader at 02:00 PM | (0) | Back to Main

January 22, 2004

Belinda on Drugs

No, I mean she's elaborated on her anti-legalization stance.

The 37-year-old billionaire businesswoman told an offbeat Vancouver radio show that liberalizing pot use would lead to increased searches and delays in the flow of goods at the U.S. border.

"I think it's a bigger issue than we're willing to admit if we were to decriminalize marijuana," she told JACK-FM on the popular morning Larry and Willy show.

"If we were to decriminalize marijuana I think our great neighbour to the south would have a lot of problems with that and I think it would very much affect the Canadian economy."

Just in case you thought I was overstating the case.

Posted by David Mader at 06:27 PM | (6) | Back to Main

I Have a Scream

It's been dubbed the "I Have a Scream" speech, delivered on — of all days — the Martin Luther King holiday.

Three guesses which speech they're referring to...

Posted by David Mader at 02:08 PM | (0) | Back to Main

This Is Where Dan Forgot to Put a Title

But at the moment, all we know for certain this morning is that this much-watched campaign was off the rails less than a day after it began.

"There are reports," the station weatherman broke in, "that conditions are starting to improve." For the Belinda Stronach campaign, they can't improve fast enough.

Ouch.

Posted by David Mader at 02:01 PM | (1) | Back to Main

Doing More for Less

My buddy and reader Charles, who's a reservist, sends along this clip from Rick Mercer's new show.

Posted by David Mader at 01:55 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Growth is by What is Contrary

David Frum puts a brave face on the Iowa results and the Democratic turn towards sanity by arguing that a real competition will force the President to develop and enunciate his policy positions going into a second turn. One would hope that would happen in any case, but I imagine Frum is right to say that more vigorous competition will prompt more vigorous policy enunciation. Is it worth it, though, to have a fully enunciated plan and an election loss rather than a safe election win and a more vague agenda?

Probably, yes. But in political terms the choice might not be so clear.

Posted by David Mader at 01:45 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Join the Club

Mark Steyn:

I’d say the big winner from Iowa was the number two guy: John Edwards, the pretty-boy trial lawyer from North Carolina. He made by far the best speech and he’s a poor boy who pulled himself up from hardscrabble roots. Self-made is an easier sell than John Kerry and his Swiss finishing school. He’s from the south, which makes him more appealing than Kerry in electoral-college terms, and he’s likeable, which neutralises one of George W. Bush’s biggest advantages. Right about now, the mainstream media will be figuring that out and deciding he’s their new dreamboat, now that Dean’s gone bananas and Clark’s kinda weird.

I wonder whether Kerry's 'fatigue', which Steyn sees as a liability, might actually be an asset in a competition with Bush - whose own fatigue denotes hard work and experience. Anyway, he's Mark Steyn and I'm not, though on Edwards we sound the same - and the same as pretty much everybody else. Read the whole thing.

Posted by David Mader at 01:40 PM | (0) | Back to Main

York

This kind of stipulation is technically known in legal circles as stupid.

heh

Seriously, though, Paul Cooper and Yaakov Roth are friends of mine so I know a lot about what going on here. It really is an example of the worst of student politics. A group of "outsiders" works hard and wins an election, just to have the establishment refuse to hand over power. Pathetic.

Posted by David Mader at 10:16 AM | (0) | Back to Main

January 21, 2004

One Blogger to Another

Joe Katzman is giving Belinda Stronach blogging advice. Click here and scroll down a little. So Joe - is that an endorsement? Or just some friendly advice?

Posted by David Mader at 10:58 PM | (0) | Back to Main

All Belinda, All the Time

So the Belinda campaign has come out with some tentative policy positions, which can now be contrasted with the policy positions of the other major candidates. Tony Clement's policy positions are... um... well ,so far they're not entirely enunciated. And Stephen Harper's are... well... I suppose they're the status quo, but since he doesn't even have a campaign website yet, I can't really tell.

Look, I don't mean to overstate the case, but the fact is that Belinda is now playing the game, and while the other candidates bide their time, only she is going to look like she's actually running for the leadership.

So anyway, Belinda's framing her self - as more or less every conservative for the past ten years has done - as a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. The terms are preposterous for a number of reasons - not least because 'fiscal conservatism' really means 'economic liberalism' - but in any case the best judgement of the claim will come from an evaluation of the policy proposals.

So here they are, as presented in the National Post, and with my take on them. They're obviously entirely vague at this point, but they're more than anybody else is saying, and since we pundits can't bring ourselves to just shut our mouths, I'll take a crack at them.

Making mortgage interest payments partially tax deductible and Allowing students and parents to deduct tuition fees from income tax: These are political no-brainers. As attempts to affect consumer behaviour through the manipulation of the tax code I'm not crazy about them; as letting Canadians keep their money while encouraging home ownership and education, I think they're the easiest sell a politician could hope for.

Giving Canada the world's most competitive tax structure, which would include scrapping the capital tax: This seems to be a perennial promise from both major parties, and I'll believe it when I see it. Of course international tax structure comparison involves the aggregation of all jurisdictional levies, and unless the provinces play ball this would require a substantial reduction in all federal taxes. It's a great sentiment, and I'm interested to see how Belinda and her team propose to turn it into policy.

Placing Canada inside a North American-wide security perimeter, as the United States has promoted: Yes. This might not be a political no-brainer, but it should sure be a policy no-brainer. A security perimeter will involve the harmonization of certain border policies, which in practice will mean adopting US practices and policies. The challenge will be to counter the inevitable leftist caterwauling about 'sovereignty' by emphasizing not only security but the importance of an open US-Canada border. More on that in a second.

Boosting funding to the military: I'd be surprised if even Jack Layton weren't promising to do this. The question is, by how much? And to what end? Defense policy is about more than just money, and just throwing cash at the Forces will do little to restore Canada's military capacity and her credibility.

Putting more federal money into medicare: Insofar as this means the Feds under a Stronach government would continue to meet their shared responsibility with the provinces on health-care funding, fine. Insofar as it means boosting funding without a fundamental reevaluation of that funding mechanism, not fine. All the money in the world won't fix a command-and-control system in health care, and more money threatens simply to encourage the centralized manipulation of a system that should be freed of bureaucratic tinkering.

Scrapping the federal gun registry, but stiffening punishment for gun crimes: Part A is dandy, but is also more or less a sine qua non of a Conservative leadership bid. Part B is a little baffling. It's obviously a sop to the anti-gun crowd and an attempt to soften the 'blow' of scrapping the registry, but it sounds an awful lot like mandatory minimums, which are an affront to a liberal democracy. You'd think that a basic Conservative tenet would be that crime is crime, and that justice is blind. Murder with a knife is just as abhorrent as murder with a gun, and both should fall under the same criminal law.

Abandoning any thought of decriminalize marijuana possession: [sarcasm]Ah, yes, this must be the social liberalism Ms Stronach professes[/sarcasm]. This is all about the United States. The Stronach camp is a business team and they understand the importance - the paramount importance - of cross-border trade. Anything which jeopardizes the flow of goods and services across that border threatens the livelihood of all Canadians. Forget trees, forget mines, forget farms: Canadians live on the US market. If the Americans told Canadian politicians they could improve border flow by appearing in public without pants on, Canadian polticians would be well advised to tone their legs. The Americans are obviously and publicly unhappy with drug legalization. Canadians have quite quickly come to take pride in their supposed social liberalism relative to the US, and scrapping legalization can quite easily be portrayed by critics as a cave-in to Washington. Trying to sell the move as a necessary policy to keep the border open - and Canadians employed - won't be easy. Keeping drugs illegal has its own significant problems as well.

This state of affairs presents something of a quandry for a libertarian-leaning conservative like me. I'm as tempted as anyone to tell Washington to get stuffed on this one, since I think the US war on drugs is a wrong-headed and failed policy. But the fact is that the US border is Canada's everything. No, really, it might as well be the singular interest of Canadian parliamentarians. It's just possible that by conceding this and other issues to Washington in return for a freer border (perhaps through an expanded security perimeter approaching a customs union), Canada would gain a new influence south of the border. An expanded Canadian trade might lead to the geographic concentration of Canada-interested US voters - and consequently to Canada-interested lawmakers. Those lawmakers could then press for drug policy liberalization, making Canada's own liberalizing efforts easier.

Or maybe that's all pipe dreaming. And maybe it doesn't matter: marijuana crimalization is, at least on the Montreal streets, a running gag. But the police resources wasted on this ridiculous policy is no joke, and it's hard to support the policy's perpetuation. Still, as I say, the border is all. If it closes, legalization will be a moot point: none of us will have the money to buy.

All in all, then, Belinda's tentative policy positions aren't that bad, considering. There's obviously been some thought put into them. They're far from complete or comprehensive, however, and it will be interesting to watch them get flushed out in the coming weeks. It will also be interesting to learn where the other candidates stand on these, or indeed any, issues.

UPDATE (22:49 EST): Maybe Belinda's on to something.

Posted by David Mader at 07:33 PM | (1) | Back to Main

The Nice Factor

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting piece investigating its limits.

Posted by David Mader at 03:37 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Wells

I have a feeling that Paul Wells may be unimpressed by Belinda Stronach. Just a hunch, though.

Posted by David Mader at 10:22 AM | (0) | Back to Main

January 20, 2004

Dean's Shriek

Is it just me, or does his wierd oral exclamation sound faintly like Coach Z's 'jeoarb'?

Maybe it's just me.

Posted by David Mader at 11:13 PM | (2) | Back to Main

Instapundit

More influential than you thought.

Posted by David Mader at 11:00 PM | (0) | Back to Main

The State of the Union

As long as the Middle East remains a place of tyranny, despair, and anger, it will continue to produce men and movements that threaten the safety of America and our friends. So America is pursuing a forward strategy of freedom in the greater Middle East. We will challenge the enemies of reform, confront the allies of terror, and expect a higher standard from our friends...

America is a Nation with a mission - and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace - a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman. America acts in this cause with friends and allies at our side, yet we understand our special calling: This great Republic will lead the cause of freedom.

Read the whole thing (as prepared) here.

Posted by David Mader at 10:31 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Quote of the Day

With all the attention on Belinda today, it may surprise you that this post isn't about her. Actually, its about her father. Answering the allegation that his daughter was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, Frank Stronach protested that this wasn't the case. His example? When she was young, he didn't yet have his own pool, so she had to swim in a public swimming pool. You know, with ordinary, non-rich folks. Wow. Doesn't that just scream woman of the people.

I know, I know, I'm being petty. Still, it was pretty funny, wasn't it?

Posted by David Mader at 10:14 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Belinda on the Net

Two posts on Canadian politics in one day - what's going on? Must be something I ate.

Whoever is running Belinda Stronach's campaign deserves some healthy credit. I had the TV on during dinner, and in a clip of her announcement I noticed that she spoke against a background emblazoned with her campaign URL, www.belinda.ca. Well, over I went, and lo and behold - it's a professional looking, snazzy site. It sure puts Tony Clement's site to shame. Heck, it even has a blog (sort of - more on that in a second).

The site looked somehow familiar, though the color scheme is - um - untraditional, and I realized where I'd seen the template before. It looks a whole lot like the old Dean for America site, which seems to have been toned down somewhat in recent weeks. The big buttons; the dual sidebars; the flash-style newsfeed: it's all more or less standard south of the border, and it's all there.

What's not there, alas, is much substance. I mentioned the blog. It right now has two posts, which is perhaps understandable since the campaign is so young. But compare those two posts (here and here) with her On the Issues page.

It's the same stuff.

And that stuff, while it might be appropriate for a blog if it were only published on the blog, is certainly inadequate in terms of policy positions.

All that being said, Stronach - and her campaign - deserve full marks for their snazzy website. It's not yet clear how much influence the web can have in Canadian politics, but as a blogger and a believer I'm inclined to say that it's an unrealized potential. At the very least it can't hurt. If Stronach really want's to capitalize on the web, she needs to get more substance up there - and she needs to use the blog as more than just an outlet for pre-packaged soundbites. To be fair, she and the campaign seem to be trying to do just that. Belinda.ca will be a site to watch in the coming weeks and months.

And Messrs. Harper and Clement - I hope you fellows are taking notes.

Posted by David Mader at 06:53 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Steyn to Buy the Spectator?

I'm not sure how else to decipher this cryptic passage in his latest Telegraph piece:

Suppose he demanded to know from the Messrs Barclay whether they proposed to carry on running certain columnists, and whether, say, Barbara Amiel and Mark Steyn mightn't benefit from a course in Islamophobic electrotherapy treatment. This isn't entirely theoretical on my part, since a couple of pals and I had been mulling over a bid for The Spectator. It comes as a shock to discover that the entire British newspaper industry is now sorta semi-nationalised.

Emphasis added. Maybe Steyn, in Steynean fashion, is just cracking wise. Anyone know anything more?

Posted by David Mader at 06:32 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Stronach

I usually leave the Canadian punditry to Dan, but I couldn't pass this by. Belinda Stronach has announced her candidacy for the Conservative Party leadership, and she's received a ringing endorsement from CTV political reporter Craig Oliver:

"Frankly, she's way out of her league. I felt she was answering with memorized answers, her speech... was read in a very flat way. It was generalities, cliches, and one doubted she had the understanding of what she was saying.

"She kept saying she's not a professional politician. Someone should have told her that politics -- especially at the national level -- is not a game for amateurs.

"I wish she'd back out. I think she's going to be embarrassed and humiliated by the time this is over."

Ouch. Just from the article it sounds as though Stronach's campaign is taking its rhetorical cues from old (as in mid-1990s) Republican handbooks. That's a mistake in all sorts of ways. Stronach's got money and she's managed to get some big-name backers, so she's probably not going anywhere soon. Whether those backers will stick with her when her amateurism starts to embarrass her - and them - or whether she'll surprise us all by proving her competence remains to be seen.

Posted by David Mader at 03:20 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Dean

I've listened to the Dean screech twice now, and I don't think I can bring myself to listen again. On first hearing it I considered it a sort of latter-day Huey Long schtick. But while Long was a demagogue, he was also a masterful politician (in the context of his contemporary politics). Dean honestly sounds like a demagogue unhinged. I'm all for passionate politicians, but to say that such a display is unpresidential is a tremendous understatement.

NRO's Byron York has more, and pseudonymous blogger Armed Liberal presents some cultural evidence of the repurcussions of the shriek.

Posted by David Mader at 03:09 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Edwards

Me, last night: "I think the big winner tonight, though, is John Edwards."

Dan, last night: "If I was a betting man, my money would be on Edwards."

Andrew Sullivan, last night: "For me, the big winner is Edwards."

Paul Wells, last night: "I'm kind of hot on John Edwards right now."

Despite the lesson that Iowa seems to have taught pundits about predictions, I came very, very close last night to posting a prediction that John Edwards would be the Democratic presidential nominee.

The reason can be framed as a response to Neal Starkman, who 'explained' President Bush's popularity by pointing to the 'S-factor': "Some people -- sometimes through no fault of their own -- are just not very bright." Well, I was ready to go way out on a limb last night and predict Edwards because of what might as well be called the 'nice factor'.

Iowa is now being said to have (possibly) marked the end of the angry-left insurgency as mainstream (even leftist) Democrats in the state chose more 'viable' candidates over the insurgent Dean and alter-insurgent Clark. If Kerry and Edwards remain the frontrunners, Democrats nationwide will face a choice between two styles of politics. Kerry offers the pessimistic critique: here's everything that Bush is doing wrong, so elect me. Edwards offers the optimistic alternative: here's what we can do right; give me a chance. Side by side Kerry may well have a better and more powerful rhetorical style, but Edwards - if my analysis is correct - will still come across as the more attractive candidate.

But the 'nice factor' isn't just about aesthetics. It's a very real and very important political force, both in history and at present. Ronald Reagan owned the 'nice factor' for more or less his entire life; he was dubbed the 'Teflon president' by frustrated critics who couldn't understand why their criticism - on the deficit, on Iran-Contra, on many other things - wouldn't stick. What they didn't recognize was that people always believed that Reagan was, fundamentally as well as superficially, a nice guy. Sure, he screwed up, but he wasn't malicious, and while his opponents were screaming doom and gloom, he was looking forward. (It helped, of course, that his optimism brought results).

President Bush has a strong command of the 'nice factor.' His weakness is a capacity for arrogance; but in a debate with an angry Democratic opponent the 'nice gap' would be immediately evident. 'Niceness' exceeds simple civility, however; in fact civility, which Edwards plays up a bit too much for it to appear totally genuine, is the most superficial component of the 'nice factor'. Civility is properly a consequence of the more fundamental components - optimism and hope. President Bush has hope in humanity, and in America, and he frames his message - accurately or not - in such language. A Democrat who is unceasingly critical without basing his criticism on a similar fundamental optimism can never hope to match the poise of the President.

As it stands, Edwards seems to enjoy a huge 'nice gap' over Kerry, and while this could change as Kerry shifts gears to take on Edwards, I suspect that - assuming these two are the real deal - it won't. But in the end I've decided not to destroy any hope of credibility by making my Edwards prediction. There were three main reasons.

First, despite his advantage in 'niceness', Edwards suffers from what Reagan once so devastatingly called 'youth and inexperience'. Edwards is a one-term Senator who still enjoys dark hair and an appearance of youthfulness. Vigor can be a political asset, of course, especially when the electorate is looking for a changing of the guard (see Clinton, William J). In 2004, however, the electorate is more likely (I think) to be looking for competence in the office of the Presidency. Man to man Bush has a huge advantage here. The juxtaposition of the youthful senator with the now-grey-haired and slightly haggared Bush will remind voters of the trials the President has gone through - and the successes he has had. His very appearance will suggest competence in the job he's done for (almost) four years. Kerry, who's older and who appears older still, therefore has an 'experience' card to play on Edwards, since in a juxtaposition I'd wager that the President would come across as more youthful and vigorous than the Massachusetts senator.

The second reason I hesitate to predict Edwards is that I've never actually seen the man. I don't mean in person; I've never seen any of the candidates in person. I mean I've never seen footage of a live-action John Edwards. I've never seen him on television; I've never seen him deliver a speech or engage in a debate. A large part of that has to do with my own news-consumption habits (as I don't watch TV news on principle), though I think part has to do with Edwards' own relative obscurity to date. I have no idea whether - as many seem to say - Edwards comes across calm and reasoned or as an empty Gore-bot.

And third, and perhaps most importantly, I'm not going to make any prediction based on the freakin' Iowa Caucuses. Reader Steve helps to explain why in the comments to Dan's post. After New Hamphsire we can start talking, maybe, about trends. Until then we know no more, and perhaps less, than we did last weekend.

(By the way, I recognize the superficiality of my political analysis here. I think it has two roots: first, the fact that I've been taught much of my US political history by a man who is really a social historian; and second, my belief that most voters decide late and based on feeling and perception rather than policy and analysis. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's where I'm coming from with this post. Whether these are the 'right' choices for the Democratic Party from some sort of objective standpoint is another matter entirely, and one I expect I'll address in the near future.)

Posted by David Mader at 01:30 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Belinda

Belinda Stronach will launch her campaign for Conservative leader later this morning. Contrary to initial reports, her launch will not be held on the Magna campus in Aurora. Instead, it will be held a few blocks away.

Belinda's been in media training for the last week with John Laschinger and Jamie Watt - two of the best, so look for her to be polished and on message. Also, look for a flashy event. She's trying to make herself look like a "real" candidate.

The real test, though, is how well she can handle questions. Can she perform when she doesn't have a script. Tony Clement answered questions for an hour when he announced last week. If Belinda ducks the questions or only answers a few then we know she isn't ready for prime time.

Posted by David Mader at 12:52 AM | (2) | Back to Main

Stick a Fork in Him...?

Is Dean done like dinner? After hearing the results tonight, I thought so. And after seeing his atrocious speech, I'm pretty well convinced.

My brother makes a good point in the post immediately beneath this one: Dean's "non-traditional" support is less likely to move the numbers in a caucus than in a primary. Still, Dean needs to jump to the party's mainstream in order to win the nomination. He still doesn't look like he gets it.

I say its now a Kerry/Edwards battle and if I was a betting man, my money would be on Edwards.

Posted by David Mader at 12:50 AM | (1) | Back to Main

January 19, 2004

Iowa

A slow internet connection prevented me from posting earlier on the Iowa caucuses, which appear to have dealt former favorite Howard Dean a significant blow. It's a bit hard to forecast caucuses, which work differently than primary elections, but CNN is putting the returns at 38% Kerry, 32% Edwards, and only 18% Dean. Dick Gephardt, who polled only 11%, is said to be seriously considering dropping out of the race before New Hampshire.

Dean's been the story for months, so the lead tomorrow will probably be 'The Dean Setback - Is It Terminal?" Dean gets a second chance in New Hampshire; if he rebounds, he's the comeback kid; if he falters, it's curtains for the angry insurgent.

I think the big winner tonight, though, is John Edwards, who's received good pundit reviews but who has garnered much less popular attention than front-runner John Kerry. All of a sudden Edward's isn't just 'one of nine', but one of two - as both he and Kerry far outpolled the rest of the crowd.

It would be a mistake, of course, to treat Iowa as the end of the contest. Joe Lieberman opted to forego the contest entirely, focusing his hopes on the New Hampshire and (more especially) South Carolina primaries; moreover, New Hampshire is a separate and entirely different contest. That's not to deny the importance of Iowa; it's just to say that nothing is settled.

ONE MORE THING (22:20 EST): Could Dean's poor showing have been predicted? Hindsight is 20/20, but if Dean really is the insurgent he claims to be, his support will be concentrated among folks who haven't been traditional members of what you might call the 'Democratic Party tradition" - the sorts of folks who might be expected to vote in the Iowa Caucuses. My understanding of the caucuses is somewhat restricted, but it seems to me Dean's core wouldn't include the strength at the community level needed to sway individual caucuses and through them state delegates. Dean's challenge has been to make the leap from elitist insurgent to broadly-appealing candidate, and Iowa may well demonstrate his failure to do that. New Hampshire will be the test.

Posted by David Mader at 10:18 PM | (0) | Back to Main

All You Need to Know About the Mars Mission

This post by Dana at Canadian Comment just about sums it up, I think.

Posted by David Mader at 08:40 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Stalwart Citizens and Allies

Read this tribute to those murdered in Sunday's terrorist attack in Baghdad, issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority and published by pseudonymous CPA blogger John Galt.

Many of the victims who bore the brunt of Sunday’s vicious crime are the brave Iraqi men and women who work side-by-side with us on a daily basis, coming into harm’s way for no other reason than they seek to build a way of life rather than destroy one.

They are the translators, interpreters, and technical experts who share their laughter, ideas, knowledge and friendship with us freely.

They are the drivers and guides who escort us in forays into the Red Zone and beyond.

They are the local shop-keepers on “Souvenir Alley” who provide us with memorabilia and distractions from the daily grind.

They are the ordinary workers who toil inside and outside of the palace so that the important missions of CPA can proceed apace, even while our living conditions are steadily made more comfortable.

They are the fabric of the society we are seeking to weave stronger. They not only share our dangers, they face others we can only imagine...

After Ambassador Bremer returns from his important mission to the U.S. and United Nations, there will be an appropriate memorial for the brave souls we lost on Sunday, a ceremony recognizing the valor and honor displayed by our Iraqi colleagues each and every day. You are our heroes.

Until that time, all of us on the American and Coalition team extend our sincere condolences to our Iraqi friends and the families who lost loved ones or suffered deeply as a result of the attack at “Assassins’ Gate.” May God give you strength in your time of need.

Posted by David Mader at 08:19 PM | (0) | Back to Main

"This is not Jihad. This is terrorism."

A very encouraging piece out of Baghdad:

When the raid was over, three men were dead, a Syrian and two Yemenis. Two of the men were shot trying to escape; the other blew himself up in the front yard. Inside the house, U.S. troops found a weapons cache...

"Had I known who they were, I would have turned them in myself," said Almas Zia Youssef, 24, standing with curious onlookers outside the house where her neighbors were killed at dawn.

"This is terrorism," she said of foreigners who sneak across Iraq's desert borders to join the anti-American insurgency...

Many Iraqis are growing angry with the insurgents because of the increasing number of innocent Iraqis killed or injured in attacks. On Sunday, 31 people were killed and about 120 wounded in a suicide car bombing near coalition headquarters...

We were liberated from oppression that lasted for 35 years," said a neighbor, Bilal Ibrahim, 20, referring to the ouster of Saddam. "No jihad (holy war) or resistance is needed at all."

"This is not jihad. This is terrorism," another neighbor, Fadi Jamal, 18, said. "They are killing Iraqis. We don't need Arabs in our midst."

Not only is this encouraging from a Coalition-strategic standpoint, it refutes the anti-war cant about the 'Arab street' and the notion that Iraqis somehow value peace and security for themselves and their families less than Americans do.

As an aside, I'm guessing the article was written by a relatively young and non-British reporter, because I can't imagine an old-timer would use the phrase "Two of the men were shot while trying to escape" unless he meant something else entirely.

Posted by David Mader at 04:20 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Red Sun Rising

The Japanese are going to war for the first time since 1945. Well, that's not strictly true: Japanese forces have participated in UN peacekeeping missions since the early 1990s, and Iraq has moved beyond 'major combat operations'. Still, more or less everyone - in Japan and out - recognizes that the deployment of troops to Iraq marks a significant moment in Japanese history. Many in Japan have argued that the troop deployment violates the country's post-war constitution, which restricts the military to purely defensive activities; on the other hand, support for the deployment appears to be rising.

There's certainly support for Japanese deployment in Samawa, where the troops will be stationed:

"Everyone is thinking that they would like to work for a big Japanese company, like Hitachi," said Ahmed Kassim, a young man running a street stall.

"The Japanese will give us lots of jobs."

Well, I certainly hope so.

I must admit that while I welcome the participation of Japan in Iraqi military operations, and while I recognize that Japan remains much more of an ally to the US than many NATO countries, something about remilitarization makes me just the slightest bit nervous. Pacifist protest within the country coincides with some more disturbing trends, such as the recent decision to restore the Imperial naval ensign, as well as the lingering Japanese nationalism which compels politicians to make visits to war shrines. I understand, as well, that Japanese curricula have very little to say about Japanese atrocities during the war, though I can't back that up with a link.

All that being said, I think it's much better that Japan be involved. Nationalism will once again become a factor, and nationalist wars will break out anew, but the immediate threat faced by Japan as well as the 'west' transcends national boundaries. Japan is a valued partner and ally, and an active if limited role in building a peaceful Iraq will demonstrate the partnership. Finally, as Prime Minister Koizumi himself said, Japan has a responsibility as any other nation to bear the burden of peacekeeping.

One way or the other, and press hyperboly aside, the deployment of Japanese troops to Iraq really is historic. Which is neat.

Posted by David Mader at 02:19 PM | (0) | Back to Main

This is a Cheap Shot

So let me get this straight. Says Howard Dean of his wife: "I do not intend to drag her around because I think I need her as a prop on the campaign trail."

Until, at least, he thinks he needs her as a prop on the campaign trail.

Sheesh.

Posted by David Mader at 10:29 AM | (5) | Back to Main

January 16, 2004

Fixing a Bad Idea

Although a couple of days old, this Nick Kristof piece in the New York Times makes a point similar to mine regarding international labor standards such as a uniform (or real-dollar constant) minimum wage:

One of the most unfortunate trends in the Democratic presidential race has been the way nearly all of the candidates, including Howard Dean, the front-runner, have been flirting with anti-trade positions by putting the emphasis on labor, environmental and human rights standards in international agreements.

While Mr. Gephardt calls for an international minimum wage, Mr. Dean was quoted in USA Today in October as saying, "I believe that trade also requires human rights and labor standards and environmental standards that are concurrent around the world."

Perhaps the candidates are simply pandering to unions, or bashing President Bush. But my guess is that they sincerely believe that such trade policies would help poor people abroad — and that's why they should all traipse through a Cambodian garbage dump to see how economically naïve these schemes would be.

The article's emphasis on individual cases is more of a romantic approach than my own 'cold' rationality, but the point is the same. International standards would hurt the poor for the sake of the rich - precisely the opposite of their claimed effect, and precisely identical to the supposed effect of globalism as claimed by its critics.

The political question is the degree to which each of the candidates is motivated in these calls by Big Labor pressure and pandering. (It's not strictly a Democratic issue, by the way, as the President's outrageous steel tariff demonstrated).

The economic question - and the humanitarian question - is this: to the degree that these calls are genuinely motivated by a concern for the improvement of the lot of the world's poorest, how best can we move forward in achieving such an improvement?

I think there are three main streams of approach. The 'market capitalist' approach recognizes that the fastest way to improve the lot of developing-world laborers is to allow 'industrialization' and market penetration to proceed unhindered. In the short term this would have little effect on the appearance of deprivation in the developing world, as wages would remain low relative to the developed world and stories of abuse (both human and environmental) would continue. The advantage is that there would be only a short term; the transfer to interim-developed nation status would be much quicker than might be hoped under an interventionist approach.

The second stream might be called the 'mixed-market' stream. Mixed-market schemes would seek to alter the behaviour of the global market for the benefit of developing-world producers. The Fair Trade movement is a good example: by artificially raising prices in the developed world, Fair Trade theoretically raises wages for developing-world producers, allowing them to both improve their immediate lot and, more importantly, provide for their children to move into a higher-income service. The problem with such an approach is that it cannot be maintained in the long-run; it cannot hope to alter the global market in any good (meaning that it will ultimately simply impoverish the producers in one region rather than another); and it does not address the basic problem of developing-world economic growth. This last point is the most important: Fair Trade does nothing to ensure that the children of developing-world producers will have a more lucrative service to go into.

The third stream is the most enigmatic, and might be called simply 'charity'. By disassociating aid from market mechanisms, developed-world donors can at least theoretically improve the immediate lot of developing-world producers without distorting the market in the manner of a mixed-market initiative. Charity,at least in the traditional sense, nonetheless suffers from similar problems: it may create a disincentive to market development by providing an immediate reward which is not contingent on any economic activity. At the same time, IMF and other governmental aid programs which seek to tie aid to market reforms have proven less than fully successful.

There remains, I think, another approach to aid which may provide a more hopeful approach. As Hernando de Soto has argued, one of the greatest obstacles to the amelioration of the world's poor is the lack of available capital by which they might create new commerce and new wealth. In the long run developed nations should be assisting developing nations to bring their large extra-legal sectors into a uniform property system. In the short run, developed-world citizens should consider assuming the risk for the loans which developing-world citizens cannot acquire. There have alreading been projects in Latin America in which poor women in rural areas were given risk-free loans with which they were able to improve their lot; defaults on these loans were (if I remember correctly) relatively small. The assumption of risk on these unsecured loans would be a form of charity, measured by the cost of the risk. The advantage of such a system is that it would provide a required but yet unavailabkle market mechanism without distorting the larger market process. It would bring immediate advantage to developing-world producers (and others) while acting as a spur, rather than a disincentive, to economic growth.

Developing-world laborers want money; but more importantly, they want opportunity. If we can give them that, it would be worth the cost.

Posted by David Mader at 01:27 PM | (7) | Back to Main

January 15, 2004

That was fast

Stephen Harper has only had a serious challenger for a matter of hours, and already the race to lead the Conservative Party of Canada is getting ugly.

In a press release sent out by his campaign today, Harper takes a thinly veiled swipe at Clement:

I knew that there would be risks to my leadership when I formed this new party, but I put this merger together to encourage people like Tony to get involved in the party again after a long absence.

Makes you gag, doesn't it? Last time I checked, the formation of the Conservative Party of Canada wasn't exactly a single-handed effort. The party was "formed" by the MPs of both parties, and by thousands of party members across Canada. Its nice to see that Harper thinks that he's the only one that matters. Even if he were referring to the agreement that led to the merger, he seems to be forgetting the person he made a deal with: Peter Mackay. Oh well, I guess when you're as important as Stephen Harper, nobody else matters.

The really offensive party of the press release, though, is the implication that Tony is getting involved in the party again after a long absence. Tony was heavily involved in founding the Canadian Alliance. This was during the period when Stephen Harper had quit politics and was sulking in Alberta. It didn't look likely that he could become leader, so instead he spent his time writing pessimistic articles about building a firewall around Alberta. When Stockwell Day was forced out, the situation suddenly changed, and Harper came rushing back to federal politics to win the leadership. Meanwhile, Tony Clement worked hard to support the Alliance during the 2000 federal election and then stayed involved with the party as much as his job as a senior Ontario cabinet minister allowed him. So the idea of Stephen Harper critiscizing Tony Clement for being absent from federal politics is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

You'd almost think Harper saw Clement as a serious threat.

Posted by David Mader at 07:15 PM | (3) | Back to Main

Tony!

Tony Clement announced his candidacy for leader of Conservative Party at a press conference in Ottawa this morning. He went on to answer questions for quite a while demontrating several things that make him such a great candidate. First, he has significant government experience. Second, he has deep public policy knowledge. Third, he is used to dealing with the press. Fourth, he is bilingual.

There are a lot of rumours going around right now as to who is supporting Tony. First, people are reporting that Jim Flaherty and Frank Klees, the two semi-declared candidates for leader of the Ontario PC Party, are supporting Tony. I've even heard a further rumour that John Tory, runner-up in the recent Toronto mayoral election and potential Ontario PC leadership candidate, will join them as Tony's Ontario co-chairs. Having all three of the front-runners in the Ontario race as his backers would send a clear message that Tony is the serious Ontario candidate.

There is also a rumour that Chuck Strahl, who everyone now expects will drop out of the Conservative Party leadership race, will endorse Tony.

Of course, these are just rumours. We'll see in the coming days how things turn out. For now what's important is that Tony is in the race and his campaign is off and running.

Posted by David Mader at 06:53 PM | (0) | Back to Main

January 14, 2004

Maybe They Should Send Her a Card

There's something terribly wrong with this article from the Scotsman:

Young Mother Achieves her Ambition to Be A Suicide Bomber

A 22-year-old Palestinian mother of two became militant group Hamas’s first woman suicide bomber today after boasting with a smile she wanted to attack “where parts of my body can fly all over.”

Reem Raiyshi achieved her ambition at the major crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Israel where she blew herself up, taking her own life and that of four Israelis.

In a vid