Category: Shiny Pony

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

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

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)

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