Is it just me? Or are there others out there somewhere, who find it unbelievable, to say the least, that the 24-year-old Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan has just been sentenced to 90 days in jail? Several years ago the excellent American journalist William Langewiesche (who now “resides in California and France”) wrote about a Washington […]
“The radio crosses boundaries which stopped the press,” the near-great Canadian economic historian Harold Innis declared in the late 1930s, in a talk on “Canadian-American Relations” at the University of Maine. Television just stiffened the trend, starting in the 1950s. And now the Age of the Internet, starting in the 1990s, is crossing boundaries all […]
“When the demonstrations began in Bangkok in March,” a New York Times report tells us, “the protesters’ central demand was that the government step down, but the movement has splintered and the ultimate aims have become unclear.” You don’t have to spend too much time on the deeper background to the current troubles in Thailand […]
One hundred years ago today, more or less, was apparently also a historic time in the United Kingdom. On May 6, 1910 (100 years from the date of the British election last week) George V had become King on the death of his father, Edward VII. Meanwhile an election that took place from 15 January […]
David Brooks is an American conservative journalist who even non-conservatives can read with interest. His March 4, 2010 column in the New York Times on “The Wal-Mart Hippies” has attracted some wider attention – and been reprinted, eg, in the March 6, 2010 print edition of the National Post in Canada. It seems to me, […]
Who just said: “I think the lesson of the last 25 years is that it doesn’t work …Â Taxes are going to have to be raised. … The Republicans think their mission in life is to cut taxes. Sorry … game over. We’re now in the tax-raising business. And we’re going to be in the […]
“History has many cunning passages,” T.S. Eliot from St. Louis, Missouri said about 90 years ago (by which time he was already living in London, England). But having a Republican like Scott Brown deal “a devastating blow to President Obama’s domestic agenda Tuesday night by capturing the Senate seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy” […]
These are not easy days for aspiring progressive voters in Canadian federal politics, at the edge of four by-elections that actually will happen on Monday, November 9. According to the October 29 EKOS poll, eg: “Stephen Harper’s federal Conservatives lead the second-place Liberals by a double-digit margin for the fourth week in a row, suggesting […]
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2009. 2:00 PM EDT. As expected the Harper minority government’s ways and means budget motion sailed through the Canadian House of Commons easily this morning, with the support of the Bloc Québécois and the New Democrats. The vote was 224 Yea to 74 Nay, with only Liberals voting against. As a result, […]
On the Calgary Herald website there is a photograph of “Prime Minister Stephen Harper at a news conference in Calgary Sept. 1, 2009” – just after Michael Ignatieff announced “Liberals will vote against government.” And it is at least arguable that the prime minister looks a little like a cat who has just swallowed the […]
