An election in Canada is more than a year away

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And here is the evidence:

Harper to visit India, China for 1st time

Last Updated: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 | 2:35 PM ET Comments205Recommend50

CBC News

Once you think about it you realize how stupid this is. Our economy depends on foreign trade and we need new markets desperately and it takes Harper 3 yrs to get the gumption to visit China, where he is probably unwelcome, and India, where his visit will likely have little impact. Chinese Canadians will think “better late than never” while Indo Canadians will give a low level cheer!

This is for Canadian political optics and nothing else! It is sad when a PM has to do something he obviously didn’t want to or didn’t see the reason to do!

 

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In 1940 Hitler and Stalin were doing their very best to destroy Poland

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I just viewed Andreaj Wajda’s film about the Katyn Forest Massacre. This event characterized Stalin’s paranoid politics as no other event could. We have the basic human honesty of the Poles to thank for that. They seemed beaten down by Hitler, Stalin and their own Communist politicians, but they survived and now they are telling their stories.

This morning I read that the conflict in Kashmir has taken the lives of over 70,000 over the last 40+ years. The title of this post by Arundhati Roy, an Indian writer, is titled “Is Democracy melting?”

I can recall too many reminders that India is the oldest and largest democracy in the world that works! And there is little doubt that if you need to find evidence of how messy democracy can be, there is no better democracy than India’s.

In the dirty thirties and bloody forties of the 20th century it was all about Hitler and Stalin. Now there is a leaky virulent strain of political violence that nests very effectively in SE Asia.

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Wajda’s movie gave me the creeps with it’s forthright truth telling. The story revealed by Ms. Roy gives me the shivers, especially because so many new Canadians are from SE Asia. Will the virulent strain of political violence leak from Kashmir to India to Canada?

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Lyon’ Brian Mulroney and hypocrite Steven Harper

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My goodness the Conservative Party in Canada organized a “love-in” for Brian Mulroney in Montréal to mark the 25th anniversary of Mulroney’s landslide federal electoral victory in 1984. Mr. Harper, in his inimitable rope-a-dope style, wasn’t there because he was bowing and scraping in the US.

The real joke about this is that Lyon’ Brian managed to talk for 30 minutes to that crowd of conservative ministers and Québec Conservatives without ever uttering the words PM or Steven Harper! But then Brian is well known for his oratund speaking style with its special bravado about his own deeds and glib glossing over of his obvious misdeeds.

Brian finished his speech with false tears and a quote from a John Diefenbaker speech, “and now I lay me down to fix my wounds to get up and fight on again” or words to that effect. Lachrymose and very Lyon’ Brian!

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Thomas Friedman has travelled and seen how the world (China) is advancing

while the US is stagnating because of the current paralysis of its governance, which he labels our one-party democracy. His column in today’s NY Times is a devastating commentary about this gawdawful situation and he sums it up this way:

The G.O.P. used to be the party of business. Well, to compete and win in a globalized world, no one needs the burden of health insurance shifted from business to government more than American business. No one needs immigration reform — so the world’s best brainpower can come here without restrictions — more than American business. No one needs a push for clean-tech — the world’s next great global manufacturing industry — more than American business. Yet the G.O.P. today resists national health care, immigration reform and wants to just drill, baby, drill.

“Globalization has neutered the Republican Party, leaving it to represent not the have-nots of the recession but the have-nots of globalized America, the people who have been left behind either in reality or in their fears,” said Edward Goldberg, a global trade consultant who teaches at Baruch College. “The need to compete in a globalized world has forced the meritocracy, the multinational corporate manager, the eastern financier and the technology entrepreneur to reconsider what the Republican Party has to offer. In principle, they have left the party, leaving behind not a pragmatic coalition but a group of ideological naysayers.”

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What did Paris look like under Nazi occupation between June 1940 and July 1944

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These images come from an exhibit (“Les Parisiens sous l’Occupation”) of Nazi propaganda photos of Paris life.

The first scene is Place de la Concorde. A German soldier is present on the far right of this image.

Then the inevitable parade down the Champs-Élysées:

Quite extraordinary!

Who says that Daily Kos is “too serious and lefty”?

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This was added to a Peggy Noonan “abbreviated pundit post” about Obama’s upcoming inaugural address on Jan 20, 2009:

I hope he uses phrases like “veriest varlet that ever chewed with a tooth” and “thou art a boil, a plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle long-tongu’d babbling gossip” or even “false of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand” like Shakespeare did. Now those were the classics [and Cavett adds a few more]. And maybe if he speaks English, people won’t be so deferential the way they were to His Juniorness. Which I only care about because Obama is a Democrat. But I digress. Let me return to setting unrealistic high expectations for Obama.

Reads like funny and ironic to me!

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Havana, Cuba today vs. Paris according to Roger Cohen

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I usually find Roger’s thoughts of the day quite conventional. Today I was surprised, pleasantly, to read this thought:

What Havana has been able to preserve in its crumbling architecture, thanks to socialist economic disaster, is that very pungent texture Paris has lost to modernity.

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I didn’t expect to say this but Roger C has given me a reason to want to visit Cuba sooner than later!

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Only in red state America and from Al Qaeda!

 

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Here’s the msnbc headline:

Mayor sorry for kids’ ‘assassinate Obama‘ chant

Parents in Idaho town accused of ‘damaging young hearts and minds’

Yes it is 2008 and yes a black man was voted in decisively to be No. 44, but somethings don’t CHANGE much anyway! Click here to be disgusted!

After reading this I wonder which is worse vitriol in Idaho or from El Qaeda?

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the reputed second-in-command of Al Qaeda, has apparently responded to the election victory of President-elect Barack Obama in a vitriol-laden video message posted on Web forums on Wednesday.

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The first full interview of Pres-Elect Obama and Mrs. Obama

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It was on the CBS Sunday night TV stalwart “60 Minutes“. The interview was done by Steve Croft in Chicago. Apart from the usual program ending contribution by Andy Rooney, it was Croft and Barack and then Croft, Barack and Michelle.

I was so fascinated with the quality of the exchanges between Croft and his guests. It’s rare and moving to see and hear two sane politicians, and that is not an oxymoron in this case, responding to direct questions as well, as openly and credibly, even though guardedly, about the process of transitioning into the most powerful political office in the world.

Croft, Barack and Michelle gave the impression that they were engaged in a careful word dance between three people that respected each other and their words. Barack and Michelle left little doubt about the openess and closeness of their emotional and mental connection. It was a tour de force performance by all three, a rare event on public TV dealing with US politics!

The interview was a very fitting way station on this journey into political power. Watching it gave me happy goose bumbs, unlike the sinking feeling I always get when I see and hear McCain and his wife Cindy.

Dave Winer weighs in with choice video parts of the interview!

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The headline in Salon – Obama and the dawn of the 4th Republic

This photo leads a Michael Lind think piece that puts the 44th President in the line back to No. 1, George Washington:

This essay outlines is a novel integration of Obama’s election with the 43 elections that preceded his. I found this in Boing Boing.

UPDATE:

Check this link out for the Time Mags perspective “The end of the Reagan era”