The bank’s financial planner gave my retirement plan a gander,

She said, “It’s not a plan you jerk, you better get back to work.”

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It was the end of the world in Haiti, a nation so poverty racked,

A people who needed helping, we ignored and nature attacked.

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It has been reported by the Toronto Star that Michael Ignatieff is being sent back to school. In his case, it is at the university level. It is hardly likely that he will learn anything about politics there but he will have a chance to rebuild his confidence and develop new speech ideas. And that is critically important for him. The idea is for him to practice sharing his liberal philosophy with the students.

A university audience is a unique opportunity to speakers. It is an audience that you can challenge with words and concepts. You can test ideas. Admittedly, the up to 50-minute format of lecture time makes for a demanding effort. Your most sympathetic member of the audience is the professor whose class you are addressing. They appreciate the break you have given them.

Hopefully, Michael will not draw upon his academic specialty for his lectures. A world-renowned historian, he really needs to discuss Canada’s future. Despite the interesting parallels he could draw between Harper’s Conservatives and Oliver Cromwell’s Roundheads in 17^th Century England, Michael needs to keep his attention on our 21^st Century needs.

What Michael really needs to discuss and clarify is how real liberalism fits into the new century. What will not work for Canada is the right-wing liberalism of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin that was evident over the turn of the century. While claiming that these were times when budgets could be balanced, they were balanced on the backs of Canadians who could least afford the costs. It was Martin, as finance minister, who destroyed the efficacy of Employment Insurance—turning it into a tax centre instead of a safety net for Canadian workers. He squeezed funding to the provinces while allowing the excesses of the sponsorship scandal. Neither Chrétien nor Martin left a legacy of true liberalism for their successors.

True liberalism is people oriented. It does not put government, business, process, organization or other bureaucracy ahead of the needs of individuals. True liberalism is like the movie ending cliché where the hero risks personal life and limb to go back for the cripple or aged parent or child or the nubile young woman so that they can walk forward together, into the future behind the credits in a feel-good ending.

This forward look is critical to the future of the Liberal Party. This was the liberalism of Pearson and Trudeau that lead the country from the 1960s through the 1980s. It is the kind of leadership that would have directed more investment to people instead of infrastructure over the past year. It is a strategy that would have been paying dividends through people instead of leaving us just with massive debt.

So let us see how Michael fares with the university crowd. They are critical audiences but they are also people who can measure the man and his ideas. Their assessment will be most telling.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Some people want to protest Harper’s dissing of democracy,

To march in mid-winter in Canada, they have gotta be crazy.

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That idea of flying in the nude was growing like a weed,

Until it was said “A cavity search is also what we need.”

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We’re going to stop terrorists from flying, it is job number one.

But if tourists no longer want to fly, haven’t the terrorists won?

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Michael Ignatieff wants a liberal program for the country

Stephen Harper has a program but never shows an entry.

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Remember when flying was no big deal? I remember one day, hopping an SAS flight to spend a fun weekend in Copenhagen. Flying was a regular aspect of my work and I adapted easily to it. It was so routine, I used to arrive at the airport about ten minutes before any flight departure and have the doors close on my behind as I headed for my seat. Not any more my friend. Flying is a lousy option today.

Driving is already getting worse. Shortly after 9/11, driving to visit relatives near Boston, I was talking to a woman at a place where we stopped for lunch in the Hamptons. She saw the Ontario plates and was curious about how long it took us to cross the border with the new restrictions. I told her honestly that the three-minute delay at the border was no problem. She was horrified and I think she hurried off to call her congressman and complain about Canadians getting across the border so easily. Today, you line up for an hour or more and then it still takes just a few minutes to convince the border person that you are an unlikely terrorist.

But flying today is a one-size-fits-all experience. You are a terrorist until proved innocent. So much for that vaunted American article of jurisprudence that says you are innocent until judged guilty. They are actually saying that you need to be at the airport four hours before your flight so that you can stand in line. What standing in line for four hours has to do with protecting America from terrorists, I have no idea.

The latest craze at airports is the idea of somebody seeing you naked. That sounds like the most revolting job since we gave up scrubbing out cesspools by hand. I could save all the airports a lot of money: make everybody fly naked. All you have to do is check your clothes and carry-ons with your luggage. I think, to be fair, the cabin crew should also be naked. After all, you need someplace to look.

And what the heck was President Obama doing on television the other day complaining about the lousy protection of America because somebody did something in his pants? I thought Obama was the boss. Why he cannot hire some more intelligent intelligence people is beyond me.

All I know is the days of the friendly skies are long gone. Paranoia is now the norm. If I need to go to the United States of America for any reason, I will walk across the border. It is a minimum delay system. On the other side, they have very nice buses if you are going some distance. Not since 1934 when Frank Capra directed Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It happened one night, has anyone done so much for bus travel.

Next time someone wants to fly you away to some romantic locale in America, just tell them “No thanks, but have you considered a bus?” And do Hawaii by cruise ship, that can be really romantic.

– 30 –

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Winter has come to Babel with snow, winds and ice,

Maybe you like winter but the weather’s hardly nice.

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“Flaherty,” Stephen Harper said, “Your budgets are a fright.

You only have until March this year to finally get one right.”

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