Author: kirbycairo

The prorogation of of the Ontario parliament yesterday by Dalton McGuinty was probably not unconstitutional  the way Stephen Harper’s was. Harper’s act of prorogation violated the British parliamentary traditions because he shut down parliament specifically to avoid losing power with an impending confidence vote that he knew we was going to lose and

I supposed many people have always been obsessed with novelty. For some people the new is always better than the old. But, at the risk of sounding old myself, it seems to me that our era is more than any other infatuated with the lastest innovation, the newest thing. Sometimes this infatuation

In the wake of the tragedy of the suicide of Amanda Todd, blogger are understandably talking a lot about the question of bullying. What do we do? How do we put a stop to it, or at the very least prevent it from becoming so desperate that young people (and

I am somewhat bemused by the surprised being expressed by many people concerning Obama’s rather poor performance in the presidential debates last night. Have people simply not been paying attention for the past four years? Let’s face it, as much as I hate the Republicans and as much as I,

Everywhere (on blogs and in the MSM) I keep hearing people tell me that Justin Trudeau has to demonstrate that he has substance as well as style. They say that he has to prove that he has solid approaches and policies and that he is not just a “pretty face.”

I admit that I am very far gone down the path of misanthropy. My opinions of society and those who inhabit it are so low that I find it challenging just to keep going with everyday tasks. I am not depressed. Depressions is a much to mild and parochial word for what

The so-called Appeal of Conscience Foundation has ruined any small shred of credibility that it had (not that it ever had much) by giving a statesman award to a man like Stephen Harper. Besides the fact that one would have to be in a coma to ever imagine Harper as

I haven’t blogged much lately. I don’t know about the others out there but the situation (at least here in Canada) is increasingly disheartening. When you live under a government that is essentially fraudulent and does absolutely everything in its power to undermine discourse and debate while simultaneously dismantling every aspect of

As though to punctuate the irony of breaking diplomatic ties with Iran, Harper signed a trade agreement with China a day later. When he was leader of the opposition Harper never tired of condemning the Liberals for their association with China and now he spends much of his time courting

Continuing on with the problem of language laws and the issues that the election of the PQ raises, I thought I would make a few more comments. These thoughts were inspired somewhat by a quick exchange between myself and the blogger Montreal Simon, a blogger who I enjoy a great deal

Ok, I admit it – I have never really understood the drive for Quebec sovereignty. I have generally not been sympathetic to nationalist movements except where they have been driven (generally in the third world) by an effort to foment feelings against colonial power. But in general terms I think that

Ok, I will go out on a limb here and predict that Obama will lose the up-coming election to Mitt Romney.  This victory will not be based upon Romney’s popularity but on the near complete failure of Obama as president and the hopelessness of the Democrats in Congress. No matter

Among the many important differences between the right and the left is that if the position of the left is incorrect, it is an honest mistake. Socialist philosophy is fairly simple really – it proposes that the so-called market economy is not necessarily effective or efficient in certain areas of our social

Here are some interesting parallels – Jean Charest of Quebec is fighting an election in the midst of a major investigation into corruption, the results of which could easily drive him from office if he were to win re-election. Richard Nixon fought the 1972 election amidst an investigation into a major corruption

Politically speaking, I exists in two extremes these days. On the one hand I am intensely pessimistic. It is now clear that Harper has de facto control of Elections Canada and this make our Prime Minister more or less like Vladimir Putin. Harper has turned the military into an arm of the Conservative Party and

I am not surprised that Harper was so quick to agree to a meeting with Mayor Ford. They are, after all, cut from the same cloth; buffoonish clowns, agressive haters, bigots, tyrants, and fools. Of course rather than Laurel and Hardy, what we have here is Hardy and Hardy. Can

I seldom comment on provincial politics – particularly a province in which I no longer live. But BC politics has become interesting in the past couple of years and, for a couple of reasons, our political eyes keep turning to the province. The first reason that BC seems more interesting

Political strategies are, I think, subject to ‘sell-by’ dates and the whims of fashion. Though some elements of strategy are perennially useful, others change from decade to decade or era to era. What works in one time and place may not work in another. Many people are now realizing that Prime Minister

The rise of the Harpercon regime has largely been the direct result of a media that has utterly failed to do its job in any meaningful way. Of course, we occasionally see a green-shoot of truth in the mainstream media about the insane cabal that is our government, but overall

For those of you who didn’t catch it on CBC, Nazanin Afshin-Jam, the spouse of our own Minister of Defence, was interviewed the other day concerning Iran. Now, other than being born in Iran, Ms. Afshin-Jam has no particular qualifications concerning politics or human rights, unless of course you count her participation