All is forgiven.

“…And during a friendly chat with Chicago residents, [Ford] ended up mistakenly saying Manitoba was across from Detroit — rather than Windsor.”

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Interesting read on plummeting water levels.  Tells you plenty,

On the lake I’m on, up North, the water used to touch the bottom of my dock.  It’s now so low, my tin boat can slide right under the dock’s lowest point.  My bigger boat is pretty close to doing likewise.

Reminds me once again that, when someone tells me global warming is a myth, I’m in the presence of a goddamned fool.

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Quote:

“Enlightened Liberals—both of them—felt they wanted a dramatic change from the Pearson brand of poker politics, a candidate who could re-establish public trust in the party and reawaken confidence in itself. As soon as Trudeau hinted that he might be available, historians smelling of water biscuits, lobbyists desperate for credit ratings, the usual whisky priests and progressive thinkers of every vintage began coalescing behind his candidacy.”

My God, that man can write.  What a giant he is.  Newman leaves everyone else behind in the dust.

(Oh, but my counsel to the candidates I’ve advised always remains the same: Peter C. Newman is a journalist, first and foremost.  You enter into a room with him and his tape recorder at your peril.)

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“Those people”? Which people is he referring to?

No answer will be forthcoming, but it probably doesn’t matter.  I now think that Mitt Romney is well and fully done, like dinner.  Game, set, match, etc.  You can’t write off half the United States of America, and then expect to become president.

Barring some cataclysm that hurts Obama, I’d wager that’s that.

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My favouritest sports writer ever, Cathal Kelly, in a typically great column, here.  Provocative and informative, like the best columnists are.

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Here’s Randy Denley’s pledge to run again as an Ontario PC candidate.

And here’s his employer, the Ottawa Citizen, letting him still write about provincial politics.

I await Glen McGregor’s outraged denunciation with anticipation.

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The CAW negotiating team, as seen on CTV’s web site.  All guys, all white.  If Harper, McGuinty or any other level of government showed up with a senior team as homogeneous as this, they’d get (deservedly) creamed.  I’m sure there are women and minorities at CAW, but I sure don’t see them here.

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Toronto’s “mayor” is in Chicago today to drum up “business.” Many media are with him to document any pratfalls; Mike Harris and Ernie Eves are there to observe the proceedings, too, in the way that parents cast a watchful eye over troublesome children.

The whole thing reminded me of something, and then I remembered. That’s Rahm on the left, and Rob on the right (natch).

Neil McNeil alumnus John Candy would’ve been a better mayor, though.

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The return of Parliament, the anniversary of the Occupy Movement, and the NHL lockout may seem like improbable subjects for a single opinion column. But bear with us.

In Hegelian terms — you remember The Hegelian Dialectic from first-year poli-sci, don’t you? — the disgusting money fight between greedy multi-millionaire hockey players, and greedy multi-billionaire hockey team owners, is the THESIS. That is, it is one side of the debate.

The ANTITHESIS — the other side of the debate — is found in the Occupy Movement, this week celebrating its one-year anniversary.

Some will say that the Occupy Movement isn’t as active as it was a year ago, and that is perhaps true. But the rich and the powerful are deluding themselves if they think the ideals that motivated the Occupy kids are passe. There is just as much rage that the rich are getting much richer, and that the poor are getting much poorer; that hedge fund managers continue to receive multi-million-dollar bonuses, while average folks lay awake at night, wondering how to pay the hydro bill.

So, that’s the THESIS and the ANTITHESIS: Greed and avarice on one side (the NHL), a pervasive feeling of disgust on the other (Occupy). Action, reaction.

Two polarities which neatly set out one of the great philosophical conflicts of our age: The 99% versus the 1%. How does it all come together to form what German philosopher Georg Hegel called the SYNTHESIS? That is, the thing that resolves the conflict between the two?

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An evangelical Christian who must be read:

I tried to watch it, but I couldn’t make it halfway to the 13-minute mark. Everything about it was tawdry, pathetic, even pornographic. All but the most fundamentalist believers from my evangelical Christian tribe who watch that video will be appalled and ashamed to be associated with it.

It is hate speech. It is no different from the anti-Semitic garbage that has been all too common in Western Christian history. It is sub-Christian – beneath the dignity of anyone with a functioning moral compass.

Islamophobic evangelical Christians – and the neo-conservative Catholics and even some Jewish folks who are their unlikely political bedfellows of late – must choose.

Will they press on in their current path, letting Islamophobia spread even further amongst them? Or will they stop, rethink and seek to a more charitable approach to our Muslim neighbors? Will they realize that evangelical religious identity is under assault, not by Shariah law, not by the liberal media, not by secular humanism from the outside, but by forces within the evangelical community that infect that religious identity with hostility?

If I could get one message through to my evangelical friends, it would be this: The greatest threat to evangelicalism is evangelicals who tolerate hate and who promote hate camouflaged as piety.

No one can serve two masters. You can’t serve God and greed, nor can you serve God and fear, nor God and hate.

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