WINNIPEG - The city of Winnipeg is getting ready for its close-up.
The Manitoba capital is being featured on an upcoming episode of the television show "The Office" when Steve Carell's cringe-inducing character visits on a business trip.
Writers for the show - which is set in Scranton, Penn. - said they chose Winnipeg because it struck the right balance "between exotic and obscure."
The show was filmed in Los Angeles but got four shipments of local props from Winnipeg's tourism bureau, including local beer and Old Dutch potato chips.
The sad truth is asbestos continues to be a sacred cow to governments because the lone surviving mine with its 700 jobs is located in the one-industry Quebec town of Thetford Mines.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Just like the "Seinfeld" episode where George wanted everyone to call him "T-Bone," Beyonce Knowles would like to be known by a bold new name.
The R&B singer has christened herself "Sasha Fierce" for her new double album, "I Am ... Sasha Fierce," due in U.S. stores on November 18, and has released a lengthy justification for the comical moniker.
"I have someone else that takes over when it's time for me to work and when I'm on stage, this alter ego that I've created that kind of protects me and who I really am," the former Destiny's Child frontwoman said in a statement.
"Sasha Fierce is the fun, more sensual, more aggressive, more outspoken side and more glamorous side that comes out when I'm working and when I'm on the stage."
Yeah, this feels like a Koko to me.
The Greens still don't belong at the debates in their currently accepted format. (And if someone gives me two to one odds on a $25 wager, I'll take the Greens getting zero seats in the election. Think about that....The entire field vs. zero.)
[answering what we could assume about a recent poll] That Elizabeth May will continue to build on her momentum. (Right up until it runs out on E-day when the Green vote splits all across the land and no little Greenies get to go to Ottawa. You watch, it'll happen.)
I mean it was silly -- and I regret that I supported it at the time -- for the leader of a party that had 4.5 per cent of the vote last time to be given equal time with the prime minister whose party had 36 per cent of the vote, or the Liberal leader who had 30 per cent.
There is only one woman who could give the political alpha males that can barely wait for Stéphane Dion to make his resignation official today to pounce on the Liberal leadership a real run for their (borrowed) money, and it is Green party Leader Elizabeth May.Her entry in the Liberal race would be one of the best things that could happen to both parties...
The Liberals will need a leader who can speak (in both official languages) intelligently about the economy, someone who knows how to run things should the country sour on the Harper Conservatives, an orator who can inspire, and one who is open to new ideas that might put the party back into the discourse in the wide swaths of Canada where the party has almost disappeared.
Can I help make Liz May - Liberal Leader happen? Please? I'll even cut a modest cheque if it can assist the cause. The Loony Tunes theme is playing in my head right now...~Oh what fun we'll have...~
The idea of [Bob] Rae as Liberal leader is not as crazy as it sounds. I know many Tories who are eager to face a Rae-led Liberal team in the next election but that is a mistake. Rae is articulate and passionate, he can provide a hopeful vision for the future, and he knows how politics works. He wouldn't pull a hissy-fit and not talk to the Liberal pollster for ten months if he disagreed with the pollster's advice. He wouldn't wait until the eve of the election call to have a campaign plane ready. He wouldn't highlight his leadership rivals as part of the Liberal team, giving them a platform to build their profiles and reputations. He wouldn't fire the people with two and three decades of Parliamentary experience and bring in his own people -- actually he would, but those people have two and three decades of political experience themselves. Politics isn't for amateurs, and Rae has been doing it for a long time. Dion was a cabinet minister for a decade and didn't seem to pick up how Ottawa works.
...What crippled their [Conservatives] hopes was the retreat of francophone Quebeckers into the comfortable embrace of the Bloc. That party has been the choice of francophone Quebeckers since the 1993 election. In five consecutive elections, the Bloc has won the largest number of Quebec seats, and will do so again next week.By voting Bloc, many francophones have fundamentally altered their view of how to pursue their interests. They no longer see Canada as a federation or a country, but rather as an entity from which to extract benefits while making a minimalist contribution to the country's governance. [emphasis added - h.]
Quebec has become, for federal political purposes, largely a demandeur society rather than a participating one, with voters secure that their provincial government will always be demanding, comforted that any federal government will pay attention to their interests, and possessed of an opposition party that speaks only to and for their interests.
Is a 35% drop in the stock market (from its June peak) a crisis in itself? No it is not. The stock market does not owe you a living. It's down 35% from four months ago, but it was up 50% in the three years before that (see chart). The present "crisis" has taken prices on the TSE all the way back to where they were in the dark days of 2005 — when they had just finished climbing 50% in two years. Think back to that time. You were rich! You were happy! You were counting your money!
Maybe you should have sold then. But you didn't, because you wanted more. Now you're paying the price. You've given up three years of gains. But you're still up 50% from where you were five years ago. And, if you're sensible, you'll make up for not selling then by buying now. Those who were on the buy side on October 19, 1987 made a killing in the months that followed.
Not willing to risk it? Fine. Just sit tight. Worried about your retirement? If you're anywhere under 55, you'll be fine. You don't need the money for 10 or 15 years. Stocks will have more than recouped their losses by then (at a compound annual growth rate of 5%, you double your money every 14 years). If you're over 55 — what are you doing in the stock market?
This bears emphasis: If you're old enough to be worried about your stocks, you're too old to own them. Stocks earn more in the long term, because they're riskier in the short term. You should be heavily in stocks when you're young, because you're not going to need the money any time soon. But you should be gradually shifting into safer investments — bonds, T-bills — as you get older. By the time you're of retirement age, they should be only a small part of your portfolio. That's not complicated. It doesn't take a PhD or a high-powered investment adviser. It's just common sense.
It's not enough to claim one knows something, it is imperative to demonstrate it.
To improve the functioning of the economy, during the 1980s Sweden initiated the deregulation of many sectors. This began with the financial service market but continued with most transportation markets, the electricity market etc. In portions of what was previously a public sector monopoly (for example schools and health-care), there are now some opportunities for private and cooperative activities. Other important structural reforms include stricter competition rules, an expenditure ceiling for the public sector, an independent Riksbank (Swedish central bank) plus Sweden's membership first in the European Economic Area (EEA) and then from 1995 in the EU.
Harper is to release his party's platform tomorrow. It will not contain any major new initiatives, but will tally up promises made to date, the largest of which has been a $600 million cut in the excise tax on diesel fuel.
9:51 PM Andrew Coyne - Should we negotiate with the Taliban? The questions are ALL framed from the left…
9:54 PM Andrew Coyne - So we’ve got one party that favours record levels of spending, pulling out of Afghanistan, pandering to Quebec nationalism, flirting with deficits, handouts to large corporations, etc.
9:55 PM Andrew Coyne - And we ‘ve got FOUR parties to its left!!
