Category: The Libranos

Mickey I. Comes Home, Or, Not So Shiny Pony (plus the Machiavel)

Shiny Pony 10 Comments

From a review of the Mickster’s recent memoir at the Wall St. Journal:

…
By the book’s midpoint, however, Mr. Ignatieff begins succumbing to the temptation to do what every defeated politician wants to do, to the detriment of many a memoir: set the record straight. I doubt many readers will care to hear about all the ways in which the Liberals were right and the Conservatives wrong; about how the Liberals pressured the Conservatives into passing an economic stimulus that “saved the Canadian economy from depression”; about how the Conservatives underfunded government services. This is the kind of stuff that turns engaging political memoirs into yawners.
All this score-settling reaches an unintentionally hilarious climax over the matter of a series of negative TV ads that the Conservatives ran against the author. Mr. Ignatieff lived outside Canada for the vast bulk of his professional life, and although he may have done remarkable things since he left the country in 1972, the fact remains that he was gone for a very long time. So in the run-up to the 2009 elections, the Conservatives produced ads that called attention to Iggy’s extended expatriation. Each ad concluded with the devastating words: ” Michael Ignatieff : Just visiting.” Most would see a 34-year absence as a political liability for someone seeking national premiership. Not Mr. Ignatieff…

And then just to confound all those Liberals we find this at The Atlantic:

Machiavelli Was Right
The shocking lesson of The Prince isn’t that politics demands dirty hands, but that politicians shouldn’t care.
Michael Ignatieff
…
So if we return to the Situation Room and to the decisions presidents make there, Machiavelli’s The Prince tells us the question is not whether one human being should have the right to make such terrifying determinations. The essence of power, even in a democracy, is to use violence to protect the republic. It matters to the very soul of a republic, however, that the violence used in its defense never be gratuitous. His is not an ethic that values action for its own sake. Machiavelli praises restraint when it serves the republic. It may even be advisable, for example, for the president to stay the order to dispatch cruise missiles to Syria if he cannot discern a clear target or a defensible strategic objective.
What he refuses to praise is people who value their conscience and their soul more than the interests of the state. What he will not pardon is public displays of indecision. We should not choose leaders who agonize, worrying about the moral hazards of the power they exercise in the people’s name. We should choose leaders who sleep soundly after taking ultimate risks with their own virtue. They are doing what must be done. The Prince’s question about the current president would be: Is he Machiavellian enough?

So we can see what country about which he really agonizes and why he was a lousy Canadian politician; we really don’t interest the visiting Prince. Truly just visiting, eh?

Oh, Shiny Pony! – Caption Contest Winners

Political Animal Shiny Pony 148 Comments

First, the runners-up.
– Brenda in BC

SHINY PONY: First thing we gotta do when I am PM is round up Ezra Levant and send him to re-education camp. I’m thinking of also forcing him to go vegan and take yoga classes! Some manscaping may also be in order.
SUZUKI: Hahahahahahaha! That gets my vote!

– Rufusrastasjohnsonbrown

“Gotta help me out here Dave,it was OK when Elizabeth May was a groupie, but now she wants to be a bodyguard.”

– Bestman

So I sez to the orphanage, “Why should I take your lousy $10,000 for a speech when I can get $20,000 from the homeless shelter down the street?”

And the winner…

suzuki_trudeau.jpg
. . . and then I told them that we needed a carbon tax, get this…
‘to get Keystone XL approved.’

Send me an email and we’ll get you set up with a book, Mr. Stricker.
(original post edited for results)

Luckily, Liberal

The Libranos 22 Comments

Sun News;

By the end of Wednesday, I not only found that lovely three-storey pile McGuinty called home for nearly nine years but apparently that “stately renovated detached” home on a “family-friendly dead end street” with its “custom cook’s kitchen,” a walkout to a deck and yard, five bedrooms and finished basement — according to a recent real estate listing — just sold on Sept. 17.
The purchase price was $1.7 million.
The home was bought by the Ontario Liberal party for $995,000 in early 2004 — meaning they made more than $700,000 on the deal […]
Still, McGuinty did manage to charge taxpayers an average of $11,778 per year, not exactly chump change, for the last five years for his Toronto housing allowance, according to Ontario legislature documents.
Zita Astravas, a spokesman for Premier Kathleen Wynne, told me Wednesday — via e-mail — that he was entitled to expense utilities, telephone costs, the use of a cleaning woman, cable TV rental, furniture rental, moving expenses and contents insurance to Ontario taxpayers on top of that free Rosedale house.

Oh, Shiny Pony!

Shiny Pony 21 Comments

BC Blue:

[This] photo of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau running alongside his new ‘star’ ex-Lt-General Andrew Leslie is being questioned as a complete fraud.
It was apparently taken at the Sept 22 Army Run in Ottawa (see here) but the issue is that the bib Trudeau is wearing (#20603) is supposedly registered to a Leslie Philippa in the female 25-29 age bracket.

h/t Marina

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