The Carefully Engineered Ascendancy of Public Stupidity
Maybe people who had survived the Great Depression and World War II were a little more wary, spent a little more time looking over their shoulders. The postwar years gave…
The Mound of Sound
No Use Suing Over Spilled Wine, Eh?
This one’s going to pull at your heartstrings. It concerns an overlooked group of victims of Hurricane Sandy who may have suffered enormous losses into the hundreds of thousands or…
The Feral Hogs of High Finance
The Toronto Star’s Richard Gwyn chronicles how the masters of high finance have fallen low. Today the status of the professions of banking and of financial management is nearer to…
This is How We Look to the Neighbours
Here’s a fascinating photograph showing how Earth appears from Saturn. The image was taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. We’re that blue dot just below the bottom ring. We are indeed…
In the Belly Of The Whale – Two California Swimmers Almost Go the Way of Jonah
They were just out for a little whale watching
Speaking of Boiled Frogs, Here’s Paul Beckwith
Just in case you’re not familiar with the blog, PostArctica, there you’ll find a piece written by Paul Beckwith, a climate scientist at the University of Ottawa. Paul has just…
Canada’s Boiling Frog Government
I’ve said it before but Gwynne Dyer seems to say it better so, here goes: If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, so they say, it…
Of Royal Births, Past and Present.
I can imagine the lockdown in place for the birth of the next future heir to the British throne. It must be miserable for journalists trying to be the first…
She Didn’t Deserve a Pardon. Dubai Owed Her an Apology.
Norwegian Marte Deborah Dalelv won’t be going to jail in Dubai for the crime of being raped. Of course to those twisted bastards in Dubai the actual crime was having…
When Extending Life Becomes Prolonging Death
There was an item recently in the Vancouver Sun about how a lot of the current crop of young people will live 100-years or longer. Wow, one hundred years. If…
Obama’s Climate Change Policy a Plot Against Red States
You know, Red States – high unemployment, low education, high crime, shorter lifespans, constantly at the trough for federal handouts – those Red States. Well, according to a “scholar” at…
A Peasants’ Magna Carta
A working group of the United Nations Human Rights Council met in Geneva last week to begin formulating a draft U.N. Declaration on the rights of peasants and other rural…
Why I Worry So About Canada’s Middle Class
All you need to do is take a hard gaze south of the 49th to understand why Canada’s political apparatus is failing our middle class and what lies in store…
What Do Harper, Mulcair and Trudeau Have in Common? Plenty.
It strikes me that if you want to avoid trouble it’s probably best not to look the other way while it approaches. There’s something about taking one upside the head…
19 Things We Can’t Say About Afghanistan
Canada’s indulgence in martial boosterism has come and gone. We’re no longer all that keen on kicking Taliban ass in Afghanistan. Like our American counterparts we hardly even mention the…
A Farmer’s Lament
I think that, at some level, most progressives “get” what this Brit farmer is saying. Food, especially cheap food, is on the mind of many Britons this week after the…
Krugman Warns of China’s Unstable Economy. Will Ottawa Listen?
Maybe Steve Harper picked a bad moment to bind Canada’s economic future to China’s. The way Paul Krugman sees it, China has a structural time bomb within its economy and…
Legendary White House Correspondent, Helen Thomas, Dead at 92
She covered every administration from Kennedy to Obama and ruffled a few feathers along the way. Helen Thomas, whose bottomless curiosity and unquenchable drive made her a prominent White House…
The End of Growth
It’s not the custom of people my age to go back and re-educate themselves on economics and I know why – ugh! I thought I understood economics from three or…
Obama’s Finest Moment
This is the face of leadership. Barack Obama delivers an unscheduled address on Trayvon Martin to the White House press corps.