The World Organizer

Promising to invent the Internet?

On education, we will expand exchange programs, and increase scholarships, like the one that brought my father to America, while encouraging more Americans to study in Muslim communities. And we will ... create a new online network, so a teenager in Kansas can communicate instantly with a teenager in Cairo.

And it goes on and on:

On economic development, we will create a new corps of business volunteers to partner with counterparts in Muslim-majority countries. And I will host a Summit on Entrepreneurship this year to identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world.

On science and technology, we will launch a new fund to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries, and to help transfer ideas to the marketplace so they can create jobs. We will open centers of scientific excellence in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and appoint new Science Envoys to collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, and grow new crops. And today I am announcing a new global effort with the Organization of the Islamic Conference to eradicate polio. And we will also expand partnerships with Muslim communities to promote child and maternal health.

All these things must be done in partnership. Americans are ready to join with citizens and governments; community organizations, religious leaders, and businesses in Muslim communities around the world to help our people pursue a better life.

Plus, if they recognize Israel (1948 version) now ... $5000 off a brand-new Buick.

Take that, Sarah Palin!

Field-dressing a moose is so 2008. Our GG has raised the bar about half a dozen notches.

Those Liberal Convention Highlights In Full

The Liberal Party of (a few scattered parts of) Canada has held its leadership convention. I didn't watch a second of it but I understand it was full of deeply symbolic moments. Perhaps the most moving came just after the conclusion of the "Stéphane Dion Memories/Souvenirs" highlight video (running time: 12 secs.), when new leader Michael Ignatieff ceremonially tasered Kyoto the Dog. Mr. Dion may or may not also have been presented with a leatherette-bound copy of his all-time most favourite book, Hot Air.

For his part, the new leader unveiled his all-new catchphrase, "We Can!", reprising his Ecto-award winning L. Ron Hubbard imitation of 2006. Nor was he short on policy, the centrepiece of which is a plan to come up with a "life-long learning" strategy. Whether Mr. Ignatieff's national life-long learning strategy will resemble his personal life-long learning strategy -- which involved getting the heck out of Canada for, like, about 57 years -- remains to be determined.

The Convention was cut short as the leader was obliged to rush off to write a previously-scheduled Canadian citizenship "cultural values" test -- by dint of good fortune finding himself seated next to French immigrant M. Dion and therefore able to copy some really, really long answers to the question about the 14 types of state-approved composting.

However all this may be, we here at I, Ectomorph -- in the spirit of Obamanian nonpartisanship -- desire to convey our best wishes to the new leader. To the old one we wish "happy trails". Being in the company of Edward Blake is not such a bad thing.

*Note to potential outraged commenters: the above is intended as satire. Any resemblance between events described herein and actual events at or following the federal Liberal convention is purely coincidental. Comments concerning the citizenship status of any Liberal leader, past or present, are not to be taken seriously or as offering a legal opinion. No actual dogs were harmed in this blogpost.

You're doin' a heckuva job, Nappy

Big story of the day is that Mexican swine flu is spreading. No doubt U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is at this very moment throwing all of her department's resources into sealing off the Canadian border. (Wouldn't want any Canadian information about the epidemic to interfere with the machinations of BHO's health bureaucracy.)

Dauntless Hero

General Wolfe 250 years on, at the University of Toronto (from the "picture is worth a thousand posts" department):

If he catches you, you're through (except he won't)

This has to win some sort of prize as the most biassed report of a national voting intentions opinion poll ever to occur in peacetime.

In fact, you'd barely even recognize it as a national poll, given that Mr. Leblanc of the Globe and Mail has chosen to focus almost exclusively on a 7 point Tory drop in Quebec. You'd think that if that gets 9 paragraphs, the 13 point Tory gain in Ontario would warrant at least one -- but in fact you have to consult the linked pdf to find out about the Ontario result. We're told that the Tories benefitted elsewhere in the country from the afterglow of the Obama visit (not that any real evidence is given for that explanation) but that this Obama-inspired lead may not be enough to outweigh the "big drop" in Quebec. But why wouldn't a 13 point gain in Ontario, a larger province, outweigh a 7 point loss in Quebec?

Why isn't the remarkable fact that the poll shows a 5 point national swing from Liberal to Conservative mentioned until halfway through the article (and even then somewhat obliquely), after the author has droned on and on about a 7 point decline in one province (with respect to which the poll has a 6 point margin of error)?

The real story here -- it there's any story at all in a poll of this type -- is conspicuous by its absence in Mr. Leblanc's account: namely that just as the Globe and Star are trying to cloak Wile E. Ignatieff in the ACME Gown of Inevitability, those birdbrained Conservatives have left them in the dust in the MSM's own beloved Ontario.

Meep meep!

New Colossus?

If it turns out to be true that the new U.S. administration is going to ramp up taxes drastically on the "rich" (those with $250,000+ in family earnings), would it not be a good idea for Canada to start tarting itself up, tax wise, in an attempt to lure its share of America's productive upper classes north of the border? America, give us your fired, your cash-poor...yearning to breathe free of the taxes Obama is undoubtedly about to put on breathing.... Surely, if the U.S. economy is to be remodelled along the statist egalitarian lines that so distinguished Sunny Jim Callaghan's U.K., Canada has a golden opportunity to emerge as the New Colossus of economic freedom.

At very least it should solve our doctor shortage as the Canadians who fled to Chattanooga and Abilene realize that they'd do at least as well in Regina or Windsor, plus get hockey on TV. At best we could see a good chunk of Wall Street relocate to Bay, or Hollywood move up to Vancouver, or Warren Buffett start house-hunting in earnest around Tuxedo or River Heights.

Anyway, I throw the idea out there, no doubt to be shot down by the usual suspects.