Shaking Off

(Cross posted at LiveJournal and Facebook)

I’m thinking of a politician. He has many detractors but is nonetheless an elected official who is very popular where he’s from. Some of his various political positions include opposition to gay marriage and support for a two-tiered health care system. He’s a man for whom religion is very important and talks openly about his faith. His foreign policy includes maintaining close ties with Israel and sending more troops to fight in Afghanistan.

Who am I thinking of? You’re thinking probably some real conservative figure, maybe Stockwell Day? Well you’re wrong. I’m thinking of Barack Obama. While he does have a lot of other opinions on various issues, many of which wouldn’t fit nicely into this little game we played, the fact of the matter is Mr. Obama isn’t nearly as left-wing as some people would like to believe. I laughed out loud the first time I heard him being called a “socialist.” If Mr. Obama is a socialist then Jack Layton must currently be planning a revolution of the proletariat. Read more »

(Cross posted at LiveJournal and Facebook)

This is my first entry. In the future, when I become the next Kissinger-Sadat-Cromwell-Wilson-Sun-Romero*, we will all be able to look back here and say, “this is where it all began.” Forgive the hubris but I have high hopes for myself.

Eventually I’ll get married. To someone very interesting, perhaps an Irish Catholic socialist with matrilinial Jewish heritage, red hair and an alto voice who is a scholar on liberation theology. We’ll get along despite our differences.† We’ll settle down somewhere, and after gaining my citizenship I’ll take the position as Ambassador to the United Nations (unless of course I decide to be a missionary in Taiwan). We’ll live in a house built from imported Lebanese Cedar, the same wood the Phoenicians used to build their great navies and King Solomon used for the construction of the temple in Jerusalem. I’d like to summer on Bouvet Island if Norway agrees to cede it to me. As I said, high hopes.

This picture appeared in The Globe & Mail about a month ago (AFP/Getty Images). It apparently depicts “opposition gunmen” whatever that means. Lebanon is not unlike Northern Ireland where you have militias on both sides fighting each other. So I guess that makes pretty much everyone a terrorist.

Now what I want to know is why these boys are so well dressed. Their hair is done up all nice and the guy on the right has a very well-sculpted beard. The guy beside him in the maroon has a semi-greaser look going on but that’s neither hear nor there. Did a group of friends meet together and say, “Yo man, let’s gel our hair and then go get our terrorist on.” Or were they just in the middle of a day out on the town when the fighting broke out? If that’s the case did they have to run home to get their AK-47s or do they always carry assault rifles around with them?

And what’s with the bandanna over the face? Is he pulling off a bank heist in the wild west? It’s got a bunch of colours on it and at least two American flags and I’m thinking that’s not standard hijab wear. He’s holding some sort of stick. It looks like it has electric tape on it. Maybe it’s a hockey stick? Was he in the middle of hockey practice? Sorry folks, that is unlikely because Lebanese hockey is dead and there was only one player to begin with.

And that’s all I’m going to say. I’m off to the land of the vikings.

* When I first wrote this almost a year ago I was a political realist so I’m not quite sure how Wilson made it onto the list. Over the past months however, I’ve transitioned into a strongly idealist position thus making the inclusion of Kissinger an anomaly. I’ve kept the wording unchanged for historical purposes.

† I think it would work surprisingly well considering that I’m a Fine Gael supporter which would effectively make our marriage a miniature version of a Fine Gael-Labour coalition.