My free political advice to the PM as we enter the election campaign:

You can't have it both ways Paul.

Are you the Paul Martin who was Finance Minister in the Chretien government? You know, the guy who steered us to umpteen balanced budgets and who slew the deficit? Oh, yeah? Then you were also , a senior Cabinet Minister, the deputy chair of Treasury Board,and a member of the Quebec Caucus... you know, one of the guys who brought us Adscam, right?

NO?

You knew nothing of the actions of the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party?

Well that's Gomery told us, at any rate?

You repudiate those actions?

Well then, damnit, perhaps you dissociate yourself completely from the filthy corrupt people responsible for that abomination! Maybe even leave the Liberal name behind! Yeah....With your connections and big bucks, you could certainly found your own party, a fiscally conservative, socially progressive party that panders to the provinces! Le Parti Paul Martin! sounds like a winner to me...Force your caucus to choose sides! Force your candidates the same! Come on, last election your people ran as L'equipe Martin, basically forsaking the Liberal brand, and when you did all those great things all those many years ago, it was as FINANCE MINISTER Paul Martin, not as "Liberal MP" Paul Martin, no?

I'm just jokin', Paulie. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? It may be a Paul Martin Government, but its a Liberal Government all the same, and like it or not, you people have been in power for over a decade. And we are getting tired, Paul, oh so tired of your shenanigans. Ultimately, you will be judged by the electorate as a Liberal, because like it or not, all your attempts to "re-brand" notwithstanding, that's what you are.

Question is.. are people sick enough of you guys to throw you out on your ear?

We'll find out in January.

Memories of Cordoba: Inside the Awe-inspiring Mezquita, June 2005 

In no particular order...

Looks like we will be having a Christmas election campaign. I'm not entirely sure why this is a big deal, but the pundits would have us believe that this rare occurence in Canadian politics will have far-reaching impacts. I remain skeptical on the supposed significance of a December campaign, and I expect that this election, like so many others in recent memory, will be characterized by voter apathy, low voter turnout, and a continuing decline in Canadians' statisfaction with their electoral system and the political class at large.

Oh, yeah, and crap like THIS doesn't help improve the public's perception of their leaders. How stupid do these guys take us for? This is really too rich.

~~~~~~

I read something eerily prophetic the other day:

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher."

Those words were spoken by a young attorney on January 27, 1838 in his "Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois". It was his very prescient reminder that it is often within a society that the seeds of destruction take root.

~~~~~~

Another disturbing quote on the death of Europe, and Western society's inexhorable march towards demographic disaster (one of my favourite hobby horses). This one, from George Weigel, author of The Cube and the Cathedral -- Europe, America, and Politics Without God: "by 2050, 60 percent of Italians will not know from personal experience what a brother, a sister, an aunt, an uncle, or a cousin is." Quoted in Ed Thomas, "Theologian Suggests U.S. Learn from Europe's Shift Toward Secularism
June 15, 2005

Is Western civilization intent on committing suicide? Apparently some people are now actively campaigning for the wilful eradication of our species!

Blog Revolution

Pajamas Media
founded by Charles Johnson and Roger Simon (the bloggers who broke and disseminated the fake National Guard memo story and brought Dan Rather's Career to an ugly end) is relaunching.
The National Review Online has more here.

Open Source Media will now be one stop-shopping for people who like to get their news from the guys sitting in their living rooms in their pajamas writing -- to paraphrase Jonathan Klein's now-famous description -- and not just from ideologically-driven politically-connected elitist twits from the Mainstream Media. One of the most trenchant satirical takes on the media elite is, of course, this guy.

Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just lost the picture, but, uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has apparently been taken over -"conquered", if you will - by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

Sleep deprivization

My main squeeze and I went to the Remembrance Day Ceremonies at the National War Memorial last Friday. I was quite pleased to see how many people had shown up. This year being the Year of the Veteran, I suppose people were more inclined to take a little time to honour the sacrifice of those who fought and died for Canada.

What started off as a spontaneous, completely unscripted show of respect in 2000, the year the tomb of the unknown soldier was unveiled, has now become something of a tradition: Again this year, at the conclusion of the ceremony, once the barriers came down and the VIPs had left the cenotaph, crowds of people paraded by the large bronze tomb to deposit their poppies on the bronze lid. In minutes, the tomb was completely carpeted with the bright red flowers. I found that strangely touching.

Later on, I bumped into one of my old militia buddies from my days with the
Lake Sups, now a Sergeant in an intelligence unit. The encounter made me a bit nostalgic and got me to thinking about the good times I had with that unit. They weren't all good times, of course. I remember times on summer course in Wainwright, Alberta or Gagetown, New Brunswick, when things got really tough.

One of my abiding memories is the torment of sleep deprivation. Every soldier who has experienced this misery could tell you stories of the games your mind can play on you when you are five days into a week-long exercise and you are trying to function on a hour's sleep a night. Field exercises on leadership courses, in particular, are deliberately structured so that it is impossible for candidates to get more than one or two hours of sleep in any twenty-four hour period. This is meant to simulate the reality of living under combat conditions and test your ability to cope with physical hardship in a high-pressure environment.

One exercise in Gagetown sticks out in my mind. My platoon was in a defensive position, and we had been attacked and gassed repeatedly over two days, so everyone was in Top-High, meaning we were wearing full Nuclear/Chemical/Biological Warfare (NBCW) gear and gas masks. It was the phantom hour of four-thirty in the a.m., the time when attacks usually occur, and I was in a bad way. My fireteam partner was grabbing some shut-eye in the bottom of the trench and aside from the sound of his shallow breathing through his gasmask, there was complete silence.

Suddenly, as I felt myself drifting into a dozy state, I heard a distinctive metallic thump, very close by. I tensed, cocking an ear a peering into the darkness to try to discern some movement in the killing zone to my front. There was nothing. I relaxed a tiny bit, and gripped my C-7 rifle. Then, a couple of seconds later, I heard the sound again. I was sure that I had heard something, but once again, I couldn't see anything moving to my front. I looked through the optical sight, scanning my surroundings. Nothing. In the minutes that followed, I heard this sound several more times, and each time, I got a little more nervous. I began thinking that maybe one of the psychotic directing staff was nearby, and had decided to fuck with my head.

There was a story, circulating around that time, that a few weeks back, one of the candidates from another platoon had spotted a pink bunny rabbit and a giant yellow duck frolicking in the field in front of his defensive position, and had reported this to his section commander over the radio. At first, this was written off as the twisted hallucinations of a sleep-deprived idiot, and the exhausted troops overhearing this situation report over the company frequency had shared a good laugh. An hour or two later, another candidate reported the same thing. By the time the third report came in of an identical phenomenon, there was no longer any laughter, and some candidates began speculating on the onset of some form of mass hysteria, a madness brought about by sleep deprivation. The story goes that the Regimental Sergeant Major and Commanding Officer of the Infantry school had rented some costumes and gone out into the field as a lark, just to throw a mind-fuck into the poor buggers who were on the exercise.

Now this story is probably apocryphal, and in subsequent years, I'm certain that I heard a couple of variations on that little tale, but at the time, it sounded plausible, and as I stood in my trench, listening for more metallic bangs, I began to convince myself that I too, might soon be visited by pink bunnies and yellow duckies. Finally, after several more minutes of anxiety, I discovered the answer to the mystery. As I rested my face against the coolness of the rifle propped on a sandbag at the lip of the trench, I heard an even louder bang, and immediately felt a sharp pain in my knees. Shaking my head to clear out the cobwebs, I noticed that I seemed to be hunkered in the trench a bit lower than I had been a few seconds before.

It turns out that I had been passing out from exhaustion every few minutes, and as I drifted off, my knees would crumple, and hit the front of the corrugated iron of my trench. This was the metallic banging sound I had been hearing. The sound would then jolt me out of my daze momentarily and I would spring up and scan the training area for a few minutes until I began to fade out again, at which point my knees would hit the front of the trench again, startling me awake. Did I feel stupid? What do you think?

A few days ago, I came across this exchange on some web board, and it made me laugh:

Want to practice sleep deprivation?
It's called college dude...
Do what I did- take a full course load at college(at least 16 units), juggle intramural sports (I did crew), and pledge a fraternity (preferably one that hazes) and you'll come closer to the FUN of sleep deprevation =)

-Bro


Been both places (college/work/fraternity/IM sports life versus BN) and can compare. They don't.

While I am sure you may feel sleep deprived with your collegiate/life pursuits, you "only know what you know". The next time you are going to crew practice or enroute to your next class and are so tired that you have to sprinkle Copenhagen speckles in your eyes to stay awake as you pause to borrow a couple quarters from a talking cheeseburger so you can stick them into the nearest tree to get an icy cold Coke to come out the bottom of it, come back here and tell us about it. We'll be able to relate.


Unless you have gone through sleep-deprivation, military-style, don't talk to me about how tough those grad-school all-nighters were!

A meeting of the minds

Funny anecdote about British philosopher A. J. Ayer I stumbled across:

At a party in 1987 Ayer, then 77, encountered Mike Tyson harassing Naomi Campbell and demanded Tyson stop. Tyson said "Do you know who the fuck I am? I'm the heavyweight champion of the world." Ayer replied "And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic! We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest that we talk about this like rational men."

A few remarks before we proceed

To those of you who may have noticed how sloppy my blog is getting, what with the idiosyncratic line spacing and odd paragraph structure: duly noted.

I only just realized that when I import text into blogger, I have to re-do the sentence and paragraph breaks, or it comes out looking all cock-eyed.

I promise to be more diligent in the future.

Quebec Dehors!

The veil has been lifted from my eyes and like the song says, was blind,
but now, I see...

Quebecers have it too damn good in Canada to ever willingly leave! A net benefitter of Federal Transfer payments, the province will continue to hold the sword of Damocles over Canada's head as long as it can. The minority, those hardcore sovereignists who favour outright independence --Parizeau comes to mind --can at least be admired for their willingness to cross the Rubicon. I think most soft-sovereignists, who are in the majority, secretly dread the prospect of going it alone. That doesn't stop them from leaving that tantalizing possibility on the table. And every once in a while they make the right noises and rattle the cages in what has become a particularly clever democratic con. Separatism is a chimera, a bluff that has somehow lasted 40 years.

As the only "viable Federalist alternative" the Liberals (both the provincial and federal varieties) also benefit from this shell-game, vowing to defend Quebec's interests in the Federation (read: allow Quebec to continue to take out more than they put into the Federation) even as they raise the specter of the unholy alliance of separatists and those scary Western Conservative-Reform-Alliance freaks who don't represent mainstream Canada. They are right about the Conservatives being freaks, but so what... At this point, I'd vote for the freaks over the crooks.

I think the secret of the separatists' success is to just keep coming up with clever ways of making us believe their impotent little threat is real, while reassuring Quebecers that a vote for sovereignist candidate is really a vote for a voice for Quebec --seemingly contradictory messages.

Every 15 years or so they have taken to holding a referendum (preferably immediately adjacent to another constitutional humiliation), just to remind us they have us by the short-and-curlies. The referendum question is just ambiguous enough that people don't really understand what they are voting for.... Theirs is a policy of uncertaintly, and their domain is a land of bright futures, emotional appeals, and promises never realized.

Ultimately, the separatists devour their leaders as eagerly as they acclaim each successive saviour as they arrive on the scene. We've gone through two supposedly separatist premiers who were too milquetoast to bite the bullet and re-referendum since Parizeau went down in flames a decade ago.

Now, no matter how badly Federalists cock things up in the coming months and years, I predict that Quebecers will not go all in on a clear question in the next Referendum, tentatively scheduled for October 2010. When all the smoke clears, everything will be the same as it ever was, and the litany of grievances can continue.

The man that Ghazi Algosaibi, the Saudi cabinet minister, described as "the dismantler of sovereign nations and destabilizer of whole regions" wrote about the bizarre little polity right across the Ottawa river in a recent issue of The Western Standard.

You oughtta read it, there are some very juicy bits!

At this point, I'm starting to wonder how soon it will be before someone outside Quebec decides to start an expulsionist movement.

Andre Boisclair should be treated humanely by Quebecers -- as in put down like the Humane Society puts down stray dogs.

Two Things:

ONE

John Ivison makes a good point in last Wednesday's column:

One suspects that Gomery's relatively measured language was in part dictated by
his desire not to give the sovereigntists too much ammunition. Regardless, in
the short term, his report should help the Bloc sweep away many of the remaining
Liberal seats outside the federalist salient of Montreal at the next election.
Martin may have escaped censure yesterday, but a near wipeout in Quebec could
leave his hopes of a majority government in tatters. He could still eke out a minority government but, in that event, his life
expectancy as leader would be similar to that of a fruit fly.
For the rest of the country, Gomery has presented a challenge: Are you prepared
to hold your politicians accountable when a judge finds members of the ruling
party were running an elaborate kickback scheme in order to fund that party?
If we are not, we can hardly blame Quebecers if they decide they want no part of
it.

TWO

Maybe we should not want any part of a Province that seems to so maliciously predisposed to take offence at
anything.

Memo to Quebecers outraged by the conduct of the GG: One of your two major political parties wants to elect a guy who, by his own admission, liked to snort the occasional line of coke into his head while he was a Minister of the crown,both commiting a crime and indirectly supporting the activities of Les Hells. The GG made some jokes about it. Deal with it.

The real joke here is a party that would actually consider having this piece of crap for a leader. Pathetic

PQ, please pick this guy as your leader!

November 2, 2005
Gov. Gen. blasted for coke joke

SAGUENAY, Que. (CP) - Andre Boisclair, the front-runner in the Parti Quebecois
leadership campaign, says he is upset by comments made about him by Gov. Gen.
Michaelle Jean.
Jean referred to Boisclair in a speech she gave at the annual Parliamentary
Press Gallery dinner on Oct. 22. In her speech, Jean cracked several jokes about
Boisclair, including one that played on the dual meaning of the word coke, and
saying that Boisclair always follows the party "line."
The event was broadcast on a cable television network.
In mid-September, Boisclair admitted to using cocaine in the 1990s while he was
a minister in the cabinet of the provincial government. But he has revealed few
details.
Speaking prior to a debate between PQ leadership hopefuls on Wednesday,
Boisclair said he was shocked at Jean's behaviour before the 600 invited guests,
including Prime Minister Paul Martin.
"The images speak for themselves and everyone who saw those images understand
that they're out of place," Boisclair said.
"Mrs. Jean was not participating in a private event. Mrs. Jean was participating
in a public event, televised, taped."
Jean's speech, in which she also joked the only reason she was appointed to her
vice-regal post is because she is "hot," has drawn the ire of other PQ members.
Interim party leader Louise Harel and the party's intergovernmental affair
critic Jonathan Valois both criticized Jean's comments as inappropriate earlier
this week.
Boisclair's past has been an issue in the leadership campaign and it was again
before and after Wednesday's debate.
Four of his rivals stated publicly before the debate that the former cabinet
minister should come clean about his past.
"I invite him to stop running away and to answer the questions. He answers or he
withdraws," Pierre Dubuc told reporters. "We can't continue like this."
Another candidate, Jean Ouimet, expressed concerns about what other revelations
about Boisclair's past might come out during an election campaign against the
Liberals.
Boisclair's main rivals, Pauline Marois and Richard Legendre, were not among the
group.
Following the debate Boisclair was confronted with the question yet again at a
news conference.
He told reporters he did cocaine "a few times."
When pressed for more details on the time frame of his use, he replied "seven or
eight years ago."
"Listen, I made a mistake and I regret it very much. But it's a mistake of the
past. A long time ago. I never had a dependence problem," he said.
Boisclair also declined to say who supplied him with the drug and became visibly
frustrated when a reporter asked him if that person had ties to organized crime.
"Honestly, do we ask Jean Charest where he bought his pot from? If the person
who sold him pot had links to criminals," Boisclair said before cutting the news
conference short.

Pure douchebaggery!

Gomery

Here is the comment I would have written on the Canada.com sound off board, if only I had not been at work....

Bravo Allan Cutler!

Remember folks, one honest man helped start the avalanche... More than ever,
Canadians should see the value of a strong public service, governed by ethics
and in the public interest, and politically neutral. The alternative is more
unethical scumbag bureaucrats like Chuck Guité. Guité facilitated the operation of a
parallel unaccountable bureaucracy run by PMO for the benefit of filthy bastards
like the sorry parade of Quebec operatives and politicos that we saw at the
Gomery inquiry.

Even after 13 years of uninterrupted Liberal Government, it is worth the effort
for public servants to remind themselves that they while may work for the
Government, but they don't work for the LIBERALS.

The Liberals are finished in Quebec for a while, I think.

If people are looking for real reasons to fret about the Middle East, I submit for your consideration:

Exhibit A: The first stirrings of civil war in Iraq, and perhaps eventually, in the islamic world between Shia and Sunni

An increasingly Bellicose Iran

Iran has a long term strategic interest in supporting the Shia majority in Iraq, particularly once the yanks are gone, against the Sunni insurgency. However, just about every other neighbouring arab nation is Sunni. Will Iraq be the battleground for islam's version of the Thirty Years' War? With recent sectarian violence, are we witnessing a prelude to the start of a major war within islam?

Duceppe calls for the creation of an army for Quebec. OK, to do what, exactly? In the last two centuries, Quebec Nationalists never saw a conflict they weren't ready to denounce as British or American imperialist aggression... and we all know how things turned out for them the last couple of times Quebecers took up arms...

W's brother cynically uses his skillful handling of Hurricane to crap all over whiny incompetent douchbags from nearby state

From Saint Petersburg times, by way of Cox and Forkum:

Gov. Jeb Bush praised Florida emergency management officials on Monday while
blasting the efforts of Louisiana officials during Hurricane Katrina.
Bush said Florida responded successfully in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma
because the state relied on the expertise of local emergency managers. He said
relying on federal emergency officials can be a fatal blunder.
"Our system is a bottoms-up system," Bush said. "In the case of Louisiana it was
left to the federal government to fill a void and the consequences are there for
the rest of the world to see."
"This is the model for how to respond to hurricanes," Bush said of Florida.
"Compare this to what happened a month and a half ago in other parts of the
country."

Happy Saint Crispin's day

On Today's date, 590 years ago, King Harry's English whipped some French monkey ass at the battle of Agincourt:

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say "To-morrow is Saint Crispian":
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

William Shakespeare's Henry V

Randomosity

I watched the first part of CBC's Trudeau II, which has gotta be the cheesiest and nonsensical title for a this TV movie they could come up with. It's actually a prequel to the Trudeau movie they did with Colm Fiore a while back. That one covered his years in public life. This one covers the years he spent going to university, and his time as a lawyer and left-wing intellectual. From what I can gather from this movie, Trudeau spent most of the war acting petulant and supercilious with authority figures, whining about conscription, and being cold and distant to his girlfriend while Canadian boys were fighting the krauts across France, Belgium and Holland. I note he also spent some time growing a really stupid looking amish beard, traveling the world so that he could hang out in chinese opium dens getting high and learn some yoga. His time bouncing from university to university studying whatever caught his fancy is also mentioned in passing. A disconcerting picture of this Liberal icon emerges: that of a thoroughly unsympathetic provocateur and dilettante --a term he actually uses in conversation with another character when talking about himself.

I'm not sure where the creators of this telepic were going... Are we meant to grind our teeth over the injustice of Trudeau being denied a Rhode Scholarship, knowing as we do what the future had in store for the man? Are we meant to laugh along with the ineffectual "silk stocking socialists" of the Quebec intelligentsia (another term used in the movie) as they mock the hidebound establishment and ossified clergy that propped each other up in the Duplessis years? The main character in this biopic is nervy, restless, unfocussed, moving from one incident to the next without any sense of who he is or what he wants to accomplish

By the end of the first part of the miniseries, I felt pretty ambivalent about the Trudeau character as rather unsympathetically portrayed -- by two different actors, mind you -- and yet, I'm not sure that was the intent of the producers. While the film is far from a hagiography, the several messianic references are too blatant to miss. Not knowing much about Trudeau's life before his meteoric ascent to the pinacle of Federal politics, I can only assume that things will pick up for the guy in the next instalment, which covers the late fifties and sixties, and that the writer and director will get to the point.

Earlier, I watched the Parliamentary Press Gallery Gala on CPAC. That's the annual dinner where the GG, PM, and leaders of the other party give speeches poking fun at themselves and each other. A dorky Canadian roast, I guess is the best way to describe it. I think this kind of thing should be required viewing for voters. At times entertaining, even gratifying, but most importantly, illuminating. A PM normally bereft of eloquence sheds his nervous manner and aggravating stammer to crack a few funny and surprisingly self-depracating and self-aware jokes at his own expense. A stiff cold-fish of a Leader of the Opposition emerges as a witty and genial guy with a knack for mimickry. Even the NDP boss came across as a funny guy, singing a clever little medley of songs about his party's lamentable recent tendencies towards whoredom.

If people could see more of the lighter side of these three blowhards, and if each of them were just a little more natural and frank about their opinions with the electorate... if they could only be themselves a bit more, speak a little more plainly, and pay a little less heed to their handlers and spinners, we might start to have decent voter turnouts in this country.

The Secret Past of Gil Grissom Uncovered

With Cronenberg's A History of Violence coming out in theatres, I found myself thinking about the idea of people re-inventing themselves.

Do many people realize that the bearded, somewhat heavyset, hard-of-hearing shift supervisor with the sardonic gaze on the CBS hit CSI is none other than the star of two of the coolest flicks of the 1980s?

A few years ago, a friend turned me onto Michael Mann's 1986 movie Manhunter, a stylish adaptation of Thomas Harris' novel "Red Dragon", later to be re-adapted in 1992 by Brett Ratner as a "prequel" to Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. William Petersen, who stars as Will Graham (a role played ably by Edward Norton in the Ratner version), blew me away with his intensity and the compact physicality he brought to the part of the deeply damaged FBI profiler investigating a series of grisly murders.

One year earlier, Petersen played the lead in William Friedkin's To Live And Die IN L.A., a gritty crime drama about a Secret Service agent's obsession with the counterfeiter who killed his partner. I just saw both movies again quite recently and, notwithstanding the dated 1980s soudtracks of each flick, I am amazed at how well both films have aged.

I'm equally amazed that after back-to-back star-making performances like that, Petersen simply disappeared. Here we had a charsmatic, athletic (Petersen went to Idaho State University on a football scholarship), and genuinely talented actor whose career seemed to have real "heat", as they say in the business. Indeed, a role that would have cemented his status as a Hollywood A-lister, a part in Oliver Stone's Platoon, was offered to him.... and he turned it down.

So what did Petersen take on instead? A part in that well known 1987 made-for-TV opus Long Gone. Never heard of it you say? Indeed. And from that point on, no one heard much about Petersen, either. At least until 2000, when he appeared in The Contender, and began playing Grissom on CSI. The rest, as they say, is history

This is an interesting case of someone forsaking stardom only to have it thrust upon him anyway - A man on the cusp of stardom gave it all up, it turns out, because he didn't want to spend too much time away from his family... and ended up getting a second shot.

Good for him!

Politique

My "priviledged" position as a someone "in the know" on certain policy trends currently making waves in the Government prevents me from commenting at length on what I have observed in the past couple of weeks.

But that don't mean I can't hop up on my soapbox to talk politics for a minute or two...

First off, the Dingwall thing. I gotta wonder why they can't just cut the guy loose sans severance. From what I gather, this guy is a second-rate Cape Breton political hack, grown fat through his abilities to exploit the patronage culture that pervades Atlantic Canada (yeah, I said it). A thoroughly unremarkable MP and mediocre cabinet minister under the Chretien regime, I doubt he is in tight with the Martinites. Why the kid glove treatment? Paul Martin didn't hesitate to sack several other Chretien appointees when it suited him, including another former bag-man, Alfonso Gagliano. Does this guy know where the bodies are buried?

Next, Pete McKay. I like the guy, don't get me wrong, but I wonder if he made the right decision in staying with the Federal Conservatives instead of jumping to the Nova Scotia Tories. Full disclosure: we lived on the same floor of one of those awful downtown Ottawa apartment buildings a couple of years ago --the kind that Edward Norton referred to as a filing cabinet for young professionals and old ladies in The Fight Club. Back then, when I asked the then-deputy-leader of the PCs what he thought of the Alliance, he scoffed "Regional Protest Party! No vision for the whole country." If he pulled a Jean Charest, he could be premier of Nova Scotia within weeks, if not months. Instead, he will continue to be second-banana in a perenial second-place party that has stalled out in the polls and appears to desperately need a shot in the arm. It's looking bad on the right side of the political spectrum in Canada right now, folks. Don't believe me? Ask THIS GUY. Maybe Elmer's boy, with visions of a Mulroney-style renaissance (OK, maybe not quite Mulroney style!), is taking the long view and biding his time as his party languishes in the political wilderness.

Finally, pizza. What is the deal with Liberals and controversial pizza? First we had Judy Sgro's problems with the pizzaman, and now, it is outrage over a certain Minister's famous $136 pizza. If this trend continues, stay tuned for a kinky panzerotti sex-scandal to complete the italian-food-scandal trifecta...

Cognitive dissonance

I'm increasingly blown away by human imaginativeness, creativitiy, and our odd ability to brainwash ourselves into holding contradictory viewpoints.

Take for example, these good folks at a recent peace rally in San Fran. You or I could never hope to convince them that the people they are making common cause with view them with disgust and contempt, and some would gladly butcher them like pigs given half a chance. Whereas the state they oppose actually accepts and tolerates their lifestyle choice.

Reminds me a bit of folks who trumpet a woman's right to choose and then lament the demographic timebomb that is ticking away right now, threatening our social safety net. Uh, anyone see the correlation? No babies now means no one to pay mom and pop's hefty medical and pension costs in two or three decades. Immigrants, you say? Ah, yes, lets go abroad and recruit an underclass of young labourers to support our aging baby-boomers and pay increasingly greater amounts into pension plans that will be depleted by the time they are old enough to use them. How very progressive of you!

September 2005 MTP Grads and sweatlodge survivors