Photo Courtesy of The National Post

How you doing? Sniffly? Sneezy? Got a frog in your throat or a crick in the neck? Do you feel, to use the vernacular, like you want to barf up a lung?

Nope. “Fine.” That’s good to hear. And on that account, I say told you so.

With spring springing and the arrival of longer, warmer days and the promise of fun and excitement in the great outdoors, it’s time to take accounting of the pandemic flu season that just past. Or perhaps that should be non-demic.

I was serving on the Community Editorial Board of my local daily, The Guelph Mercury, this time last year. As the coming swine-flu-pocalypse was starting to break, I waxed sarcastically about the media’s attention to hysteria, and how when all the beans are counted, common medical sense will bear out and all the worry will have been for not.
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Harper: Playing Hardball Credit: Art Threat

In an earlier posting, I had discussed why certain politicians are more successful than others and the influence of Machiavelli on modern politics. Stephen Harper was cited as one of those successful politicians: someone concerned primarily about his own interests and someone willing to do what it takes to succeed. The recent treatment of Helena Guergis for the missteps that she and her husband Rahim Jaffer are alleged to have committed implies self-centered and tough behaviour on the part of Harper. Harper decided to take merely the word of a semi-anonymous source to justify the call for a police and ethics probe and for turfing her from caucus. Although the allegations could be true, clear evidence does not appear to have been presented. Furthermore, at no time does it appear that Harper asked Guergis for her side of the story nor did he inform her about the nature of the allegations. This behaviour seems to bolster earlier descriptions of Harper as a cold opportunist, and someone not particularly fond of women. Many journalists have pointed out that this behaviour allows Harper to remove unequivocally a difficult cabinet minister from Government and from a relatively safe seat that the Tories will probably win again without Guergis.
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Churchill: A Great Leader, Reader & Writer Photo Credit: John Stodder Blog

More books are sold in Canada during the winter months than any other time of the year. It probably has to do with the frequent gift-giving occasions during that time of the year. Stumped for a gift idea, we will often resort to buying books. Most books, however, are probably read during the spring and summer months rather than the winter months. During winter, we are probably too busy trying to keep warm to read too many books.

It is around this time of year that I occasionally reread Winston Churchill’s second volume of his world War II memoirs, “Their Finest Hour”, which after some 55 years after its publication remains an inspiring narrative, composed by one of history’s greatest leaders. Despite the enormous trauma of war, he still found the time to read widely and write eloquent and copious memoranda on a daily basis.

We should follow his lead and try to write or read daily , despite the stress of daily life or the unpleasant cold of winter months. If one is interested in updating their reading lists, I have a few suggestions. In addition to Churchill’s memoirs, history and political junkies will enjoy “Vietnam, If Kennedy Had Lived” by James Blight et al, which was mentioned in an earlier blog posting. Another good book on JFK is Herbert Parmet’s biography “Jack: The Struggles Of John F. Kennedy”. History buffs will also enjoy “Napoleon & Wellington” by Andrew Roberts. This is a unique biography and is not strictly speaking a ‘joint’ biography. Unlike other books that have looked at the showdown between these two military geniuses, it focuses on what each General thought, wrote and said about the other.
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As Operation Moshtarak continues at this very moment it is pertinent to once again draw our attention to the tactics being deployed on the ground in Afghanistan. The spotlight has recently been on the political attempts to bring stable government to the country in the form of President Karzai’s premiership but the foundations of this will truly be built by the military actions of the ISAF. It is this need that has brought about Operation Moshtarak. With time running out before the withdrawal of troops begins, large offensives will be the order of the day in an attempt to create a legacy of stability from which the West-backed Karzai can act.

While it is all too easy to scrutinize and criticize tactics from the safety of our homes, there needs to be a realization of what lies ahead. However, simultaneously, the ISAF forces need to take action and snatch the initiative. Inaction would be just as deadly and allow the Taliban to seize upon this passivity. It is this conflict of ideas, along with numerous other factors, that causes the current situation inside the country to be so precarious.
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Just when I think I’m stuck for a blog idea, Shawn Graham, bless his little heart, comes out with another gem. On Thursday, what should come on the radio but a story about how New Brunswick’s premier is finding himself under a little bit of media pressure. He feels that the media is giving him a hard time, henpecking him and ignoring the opposition. He’s feeling bruised and battered, and he’d like all those reporters to be a little bit more accommodating.

Mr. Graham has been on a bit of a tear since his government took office, and he now finds himself the least popular premier in Canada. One recent survey put his popularity at 15%, and we are now only seven months away from what might be the most eagerly awaited provincial election in New Brunswick history. In his short time in office, Mr. Graham has managed to tamper with post-secondary education, the health care system, and French immersion. The biggest gaffe, though, was when he broke a major election promise by attempting to sell the provincial power utility. It is this – the proposed sale of NB Power to Hydro Quebec – that might be the final nail in the popularity coffin.
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Courtesy of Macleans.ca

Last week in the United States Congress, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky took a lot of guff for stalling the renewal of unemployment benefits for millions of out of work Americans. Bunning was the sole voice of objection to passing the proposal by unanimous consent, and after being asked again to drop his objection shortly before midnight by Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, the besieged Bunning replied simply, “tough s**t.” After the close of the debate after 12am, Bunning said he was ambushed by Democrats and forced to miss the Kentucky-South Carolina basketball game on account. To which a nation of people worried about putting food on the table this month replied, “Now we know who the real heroes are.”

Bunning made himself a pariah by the media, the picture of a politician out of touch with everyday, normal Americans, which furthered the narrative of a broken governmental system in Washington. If that weren’t bad enough, The Daily Show and others made him a farce, as his fanboy disappointment left many to ponder, “Has this guy never heard of Tivo?”
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Sidney Crosby Seals Gold Victory For Men's Hockey: Who Cares? Photo: The Star-Ledger

Canadians can now stop the hand-wringing, and finally we can hoist the red and white high towards the clouds, but how large was our Vancouver Olympic victory really? We did win more gold medals than any other country in Winter Olympic history. In terms of sporting success and country size, our victory was actually much larger than most people think. With a population nine times larger than ours (which means a much larger young population base from which to select top athletes) and with significantly larger financial resources, the U.S. won only 11 more medals, and they actually won significantly fewer gold medals than Canada. Put another way, Canada won 0.466666′ gold medals per million people (the medal some people consider the only one worth winning), while the United States won only 0.033333′ gold medals per million people. Yes, the Americans won the most medals, but they did not win 9 times more medals which their population would suggest they should. Furthermore, most of these medals were not the more prestigious gold medal category. When factoring in population and financial considerations, some small countries actually do extremely well in Olympic events, even if the medals won are few in number. So given Canada’s small stature and her gold medal record, even when considering the home-field advantage, we accomplished truly Olympian athletic feats: we actually did more than own the podium.
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Simcoe-Grey MP Helena Guergis. Photo credit: Canadian Press.

Flying can be stressful, and I suppose that being an MP is stressful as well. While most of us have experienced the former, few have the opportunity to live through the latter. In late February, Helena Guergis had the misfortune of experiencing both.

For those of you who were caught up in the Olympics and missed the news, Helena Guergis, MP for Simcoe-Grey, apparently threw a diva fit at the Charlottetown airport on February 19. The incident became public when someone sent an anonymous letter describing the tantrum to Liberal MP Wayne Easter.

According to the letter, Ms. Guergis and her aide arrived very late for an Air Canada flight. While clearing security, her footwear set off an alarm so security staff asked that she remove it. In response, Ms. Guergis allegedly removed her boots, chucked them in a bin, swore, and then declared PEI a hellhole (or shithole, depending on the source). After abusing the staff but still clearing security, she ordered her aide to fetch her boots for her. She then discovered that the glass doors leading to the tarmac were locked. She reportedly beat on the doors and tried to force her way out. Of course, the whole time the plane was being held for her. She finally boarded and left the hellhole behind.
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Team Canada wins gold in Women's Hockey (photo: AP)

The Vancouver 2010 Olympics are now over, with the nation receiving a classic showdown of hockey supremacy in the form of the men’s gold medal game between arch rivals Canada and the United States to top things off.

A little more than a week ago, with the medal count looking very different than it did at the end of the Games, Canada’s much trumpeted and controversial ‘Own The Podium’ campaign was enduring a litany of criticisms that it had failed to produce the Olympic hardware that it was specifically designed for.

‘Arrogance,’ many said, ‘unrealistic,’ ‘overreaching,’ ‘doomed to failure,’ were among the chants coming from both domestic and international skeptics for whom the program was a contentious and decidedly un-Canadian effort to dare secure more medals for this country at a Winter Olympics than ever before.
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Machiavelli: Tutoring Canadian Politicians. Photo Credit: Din Merican

“Great men are almost always bad men.”
- Lord Acton

Fortune is a woman, and if you wish to conquer her, you must beat and coerce her. And she always smiles upon the
young man, because he commands her with the greatest audacity.

The Prince
By Niccolo Machiavelli

Because the great English historian had written extensively about liberty and federalism, it should not be surprising that Prime Minister Trudeau had read Lord Acton’s work. And because Machiavelli had written his political books in the early part of the 16th century, it should not be surprising that his work contained sexist and offensive passages such as the foregoing one. What might surprise some readers is the fact that Pierre Trudeau and other prominent political and military leaders have consulted Machiavelli’s books throughout the centuries for their sage advice.
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