Why does it seem like it's always the good ones that go first?


J-Lay died of cancer today at age 61. As an example of how unfair life is, consider that Stephen Harper will probably live to be 100.

Room Service

By GABLE.

Stolen from the Globe and Mail.

NDP intentions clarified!

Thanks to a responder from my last posting, I was directed to a weblog with some inside info on the negotiations that went on between the Liberals and the NDP prior to the Tuesday vote (a motion to curtail Canada's military participation in Afghanistan by 2009).


According to ceasefireinsider,

The Liberal motion was uncritical of the military mission and supported its continuance unchanged, yet called for the government to notify NATO that our troops would be withdrawn from the combat mission in Kandahar when the current commitment ends in February 2009.

(snip)

In politics, the wording of a motion is important. When I first read the Liberal motion last week, I feared that it was D.O.A., or Dead-on-Arrival. The motion let the Conservative government off the hook by not expressing any concerns at all about the failing mission, did not call on the government to change the focus from war-fighting to peacebuilding, and missed what is becoming an obvious solution to the war: a diplomatic settlement.

We urged the Liberals to make a small amendment to their motion in order to win NDP support, and Former UN Ambassador for Disarmament Peggy Mason actually suggested specific changes to the language that would likely have been palatable to both Liberals and the NDP. We sent the suggestions to every Liberal and NDP Member of Parliament. The NDP even proposed an amendment during the debate, but the Liberals rejected it.

Whew!

That is a relief. If this account is factual, though, it only increases my still relatively small fear that Dion is listening to the wrong people.

He must have some sort of workable strategy! I am even possibly prepared to accept some triangulation at this point.

Also, it lets me off the hook for my potential 'J-Lay' confrontation. As a Canadian, of course, I reflexively recoil from anything confrontational.

WTF is up with the NDP?

After lunch, on the way back to my cubicle I was informed by my main news provider, the Elevator News Network (ENN), that the Conservatives had defeated a Liberal motion that Canada withdraw from Afghanistan by 2009.

They accomplished this through the support of the NDP. What is that all about?

If the NDP is up to their old trick (infuriatingly obvious during the Harris years, here in Ontario) of supporting the Tories for short-term political advantage, I am going to have some sharp words to share with 'J-Lay' the next time I happen upon him relentlessly glad-handing hapless passers-by.

If the bill had gone through, it would quite possibly have made our part in the occupation of Afghanistan the big issue in the next election.

And what sort of "progressive" entity wouldn't want that? The mind boggles...

The NDP, apparently.

An appeal from the heart

I have searched high and low on the internet, but I cannot find that photo from last summer of Jack Layton and Olivia Chow in a canoe, paddling through a Canadian Shield-type landscape.

The reason I am obsessed with that shot is that, at the time, I ignored it as another meaningless photo opportunity. Then, later, I read a column (I forget where) in which the writer stated that Jack Layton was the only person he had ever seen that could look indignant while paddling a canoe.

This got a big laugh from me because, in my mind's eye, Jack did look angry about something, like maybe someone off-camera had loudly farted.

Maybe it is the moustache? It looks bristly and, well, indignant. As supporting evidence of my theory, I cite 'Gorgeous' George Galloway. He has a closer cropped, toothbrush-style moustache, but he also looks indignant, almost by default.

Truth be told, I would grow a moustache if I could, be damned the grey hairs!

Anyhoo, does anyone out there have a graphic of that shot that they can send me?