I've become increasingly impressed with David Frum, GWB's Canadian Axis of Evil speechwriter, of late. It's not that I agree with him increasingly, but he's such a breath of fresh air within the Republican party, the GOP ignores him at their peril (or, I certainly hope it's to their peril) He did (is doing?) an interesting Reddit AMA today (link) A ( Read more... )

Their crappy musicians dominate the pop charts with their bland mindless music (link), its citizens cockily believe they live in the "greatest country in the world" (link), nationalistic logos (link, link, link, link) and a quest for world dominance pervade its sports culture, and, most telling of all, one has to cross the border in order to ( Read more... )

I encountered what I thought was a fascinating graphic this morning. A recent poll indicates that US Republicans as compared to Democrats and independents are far less likely to want a congressperson to be willing to compromise.  Republicans favoured a congressperson who'll stick to his/her guns over one that will compromise by a 2 to 1 margin. ( Read more... )

I've just been reading about a case of an American getting charged at the Canadian border because he had what customs deemed to be child pornography on his computer. The "Comic Book Legal Defense Fund" is fighting the case apparently on the grounds that the material would have been legal in the US, that the Canadian analogue of freedom of ( Read more... )

As  a followup to my post a couple of weeks ago about the CRTC and SunTV, I thought I'd post some follow up. It seems the proposed rule change was rejected and, of more interest to me, consider how Robert Kennedy Jr. has (misre)presented the story.

It's pretty incredible how wrong he gets it, especially the part about how loving and serene and ( Read more... )

Thoughts? I just watched Rex Murphy on The National, who sounded really disappointed, as do I, but as someone who has been following American politics after Harper had the Parliament prorogued, it's totally understandable why the visit is so short. Two Wars, Economic Meltdown (banks AND housing), less social safety net than we have, continued ( Read more... )

I'm fascinated by this story about a new historical monument near Fort York, created by Douglas Coupland. It represents the War of 1812 and is a figure of a British soldier, rendered in gold, standing over a toppled American soldier, in silver.   (a post by superstition78  alerted me to it)

Is it a laudable preservation of a key historical event in the form of ( Read more... )

I'm so thankful I'm a Canadian ( Read more... )

So the bailout failed. What do we think, as Canadians? Is our economy still as closely tied with that of the US as it was in the 80s? Or can we weather this storm independently?

A few things I heard or read this morning gave me a bit of pause.

1) A letter to Cary Tennis' advice column in salon.com.   It's an odd topic to discuss in a letter to an advice columnist but it is a clear and somewhat compelling description of the writer's worries about the U.S., its effect on Canada and its future intentions. (Link -- login may ( Read more... )