Shorter

Shorter Stephen Harper:

Whoops, I've done it again!

(HT for the cartoon.)

Haiti

This is a ray of hope: Canada rushes aid to Haiti

“It's an enormous disaster in a country that can't afford such a disaster, that already has terrible problems,” Mr. Harper said. “Our hearts are with all of them. I can assure you that we are acting as quickly and as comprehensively as we can.”

Watching the NBC coverage, Brian Williams was on the Haiti airport tarmac and he was talking about a Canadian airplane behind him -- it was great to see the Harper government moving so quickly to try to help.
And DART has already been mobilized. It was a week after the South Asia tsunami in 2004 before Martin decided to send DART to help, and I thought at the time we waited way too long.

Smokin' makes you feel good

My response to the story about how smoking helps people feel better is "D'uh!"
Of course it does. Why else would people smoke?
My sister, who never smoked, asked me once why I did, and she was surprised when I told her, because I like it. Theoretically, of course, she knew that nicotine is a drug, she had just never quite realized that the reason smoking is addictive is that it makes you feel good to smoke.
I finally quit four years ago, with help from Zyban -- I would never have made it without this drug. I know, I know, it was just substituting one drug for another, but I had quit before, for three months or six months, and always started again. In some weird way, I think, I needed to re-boot my brain so that I didn't need that smoking boost anymore to feel "normal". And I've been smoke-free ever since, even when I'm around smokers.
Knock on wood -- I make sure I always remember that I could get hooked again in a new york minute if I ever have another cigarette.

Torch relay

Here are some of the videos posted now on YouTube about the torch relay going through Saskatchewan.

A torch exchange in Regina:


Greeted by thousands at the riverbank in Saskatoon:


The torch enters Osler, Sask:


And gets to Prince Albert

Don't it always seem to go

You know, it seems like every time I hear on the radio that the gas prices are going up, I'm sucking fumes and then I have to fill up at the higher price.
But I finally won one -- I just bought 10 stamps on Saturday and now stamp prices are going up 3 cents.
So I am ahead by 30 cents.
Whoopsie do!

Kennedy's seat

Wouldn't it be tragic if Kennedy's Senate seat is won by a Republican, thus killing health care reform in the United States, the goal Kennedy fought for all his life?

Shorter

Shorter Norman Spector

Chretien did something wrong 14 years ago, so the Liberals have no right now to complain about anything Harper ever does!

Sorry Norman, but the statute of limitations has now expired on the Chretien government. Its up to Harper now to take responsibility for what he is doing.

Something to hide

Oh, snap!
The Liberals are building an attack-ad campaign around a "something to hide" theme.
This will be a very strong campaign, I think, because it plays into a larger theme of Harper as untrustworthy for Canada.

The flame in Regina

And here is the news about the flame in Regina.




Regina turned Victoria Avenue into the world's longest shinny game to greet the torch.
Here's what some of the torchbearers said about their experience:

With a mile-wide grin and hoisting her Olympic torch high, 18-year-old University of Regina student Callie Morris waved her red-mittened-hand to the masses gathered before lighting the cauldron just after 7 p.m. to cheers. “Stick with what you love,” she told the crowd at the torch celebration. Morris, a hockey and baseball player and wrestler, added that because she “stuck” with sports, she was able to be an Olympic torchbearer.. . .
RCMP Assistant Commissioner Roger Brown...carried it briefly into Mosaic Stadium, home of the Saskatchewan Roughriders. “There’s a sense of pride whenever we wear our red serge and you get to represent your country, but to do it in this fashion, tonight and with the troops behind us — unreal,” Brown said . . .
...a number of the torchbearers...became instant celebrities as spectators lined up to touch their torch or get a photograph with its bearer.
Kim Smith ... recalled attending an event about six years ago where Olympic gold-winning curler Joan McCusker... placed her gold medal around Smith’s neck. That “unbelievable” experience inspired Smith to take up running. In the last three years, she’s run two half-marathons and plans to run another this year. When she was handed the torch, “your heart gets so big, so overwhelmed to carry a flame that’s going to end up in Vancouver,” said Smith, who was glad to be “a tiny part of history.”
Rick Minett, who was a torchbearer in Melville earlier in the day, was also a torchbearer for the 1988 Olympics where he had a spot in the relay in Toronto. “It’s like getting struck by lightening,” . . . said Minett, who competed in the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii this fall. Minett was particularly proud of how the torch event united Canadians.
An hour after Morris lit the cauldron, the flame was placed in a lantern to continue its journey, and fireworks erupted behind the stage. As music blared and fireworks lit up the sky, Bana Goldsmith stood waving a large Canadian flag tied to a hockey stick, that he used earlier to play in the world’s longest shinny game in downtown Regina. “I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks,” he said.

The torch relay is almost here

The Olympic torch is coming to light up Saskatoon as well as Moosimin, Yorkton, Melville, Fort Qu"Appelle, Regina, Moose Jaw, CFB Moose Jaw, Caronport, Mortlach, Morse, Herbert, Swift Current, Kyle, Elrose, Rosetown, Delisle, Vanscoy, Wanuskewin Heritage Park, Warman, Osler, Hague, Rosthern, Duck Lake, Prince Albert, North Battleford, Battleford, Saulteaux First Nation, Cochin, Maidstone, Lashburn, Marshall and Lloydminster.
Part of the celebration in Saskatoon will be a local show:

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) requested 50 minutes of local entertainment, and organizers have worked for 11 months to provide it, commissioning a new work by Dance Saskatchewan to weave it together . . .Dance Saskatchewan worked with different cultural groups to create a narrative incorporating Saskatoon's culture and history and pay tribute to the province's athletes

If I can find a video of the performance next week I will post it.

Skipping the lines

I was checking out some air flight costs the other day and found that the airlines have increased their nickle-and-dimeing for seat selection, extra bags, special lounges, meals and all that.
So here comes this story about Halle Berry jumping the security line at the Montreal airport and it contained this interesting nugget:

Sometimes celebrities are charged a fee to be escorted.

Really? You mean if I paid an extra fee, I could jump to the head of the security line at the airport? Now that might be worth paying extra for!

Double whammy

It's starting to heat up now: Majority condemn Harper move, poll finds and Influential British magazine slams Harper's suspension of Parliament.
Here's the money quote from the Economist:

Harper may in fact be correct that "Canadians care more about the luge than the legislature, but that is surely true only while their decent system of government is in good hands. They may soon conclude that it isn't."

And by the way, in the last three days, membership in the Facebook group Canadians Against Proroging Parliament has increased to 100,000.

Lunching with the losers

So Stephen Harper paid former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer close to $50,000 and one of the things Ari did was to arrange salon-type events last spring where Harper met with Washington Post and Wall Street Journal columnists Charles Krauthammer, David Frum, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, Anne Applebaum, senior editors Fred Barnes and William Kristol, talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, as well as Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch.
Boris sums up what Canadians got for their money:

. . . the PMO paid Ari a whack of tax payer dollars so Harper could hang-out with the propaganda-mongers of the side that LOST the last US election?

Great line of the day

Nancy Nall writes about positive thinking:

Opti­mism has its place in the world. But it’s one of those things it’s prob­a­bly best to keep to your­self some­times, too. Espe­cially when you’re not the one hav­ing chemo.

Do your duty

This is pure speculation on my part -- doing actual research would ruin my amateur standing, after all -- but I think in the secret heart of this Canada of ours, deep down where people really live, we are getting mad at Stephen Harper.
He isn't doing his job.
And Canadians don't like it when people don't do their job.
Sure, the syncopates in the press gallery can bow and scrape about how "devilishly clever" Harper was prorogue Parliament last week, but Canadians are not impressed with tricky word games. We will tolerate a lot from our politicians in Ottawa -- late lunches and long weekends and summer-time junkets -- but there is a limit. Canadians won't tolerate politicians who think it should be routine to pay themselves for not working.
Sure, we are distracted by hockey and the Olympics, sure we're digging out from snowstorms and thinking about house prices and jobs. That's why the reaction is taking a little time to build up.
But I do believe it is building now.
Now we're wondering why we have to line up along highways to watch more bodies come home while cabinet ministers refuse to answer questions about Afghan prisoners.
We're wondering why the Harper Conservatives kept telling us how damned important their crime bills are and then blithely ditch them because they're trying to save themselves a little embarrassment.
We're wondering why the Harper Conservatives pontificated last spring about how damned necessary it was for Canada to have a steady hand managing the economy, but they don't seem to be capable of getting things done and then they blithely throw the government into chaos by another prorogue.
Newspapers across the country have published editorials and more editorials and letters to the editor about Harper's contempt for democracy. I've been reading some great posts on the progressive blogs, too -- here and here, and here, and here, and everything here . The Facebook group Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament now has more than 53,000 members -- I think about 30,000 joined just today. Rallies across the country are being organized for Saturday, Jan 23.
The Liberals are now trying to catch the wave -- Scott reports tonight that Liberal MPs will be coming back to Ottawa on January 25 to demonstrate to Canadians that at least some politicians are working.
Rick Mercer sums up why Canadians are getting angry:

...This prime minister has gone from the promise of an open, accessible and accountable government to a government that is simply closed.
It is too bad that prorogation isn't something that our soldiers have in their arsenal. When faced with the order to head out on a foot patrol in the Panjwaii district of southern Afghanistan, to risk their lives to bring democracy to that place, wouldn't it be nice if they could simply prorogue and roll over and go back to sleep. Soldiers don't get that luxury. That is afforded only to the people who ultimately order them to walk down those dangerous dusty roads in the first place.

HT to Alison.