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felis_ultharusLife
So yesterday was my fourth Valentine's Day single.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
montrealais and I had a night in, with pizza.
Normally I can handle it quite well, but for the first time in my life almost everyone I know is part of a couple. It's just really difficult because I'm almost at the point where I've given up hoping for Mr. Right, and I'm ready to settle in for a life of quiet monasticism.
Writing is gradually getting back on track. School is less painful than usual -- that thing with Shakespeare I was complaining about a couple of posts ago? We read two scholarly articles on just that issue, including a copmplete history of homophobia in interpreting the sonnets.
For more than a century, many of the sonnets were only availible in censored form, covering up the love sonnets to a male. I wonder how they handled Sonnet 20...?
Politics
So, Harper promised that no one would be able to go from lobbying to politics without a five-year interval between the two. This is remarkable since his Defence Minister is a former arms-industry lobbyist.
And half his cabinet voted for a bill requiring politicians crossing the floor in federal politics to return for a by-election. Now they have Emerson.
If they keep fighting corruption, they won't be able to operate as a party.
The real joke this week was that the official who ran the much-maligned gun registry -- a woman with a remarkable name right out of 1950s science-fiction, Maryantonett Flumian -- is now Deputy Head of Service Canada and Associate Deputy Minister of Human Resources and Social Development.. According to the Auditor General, financial mismanagement was at least partly responsible for the registry costing about 20 times more than expected. Flumian was in charge of the registry, and the Conservatives blamed her for the disaster.
The Liberals gave her a similar plum job last year, putting her in charge of a lot of the bureaucracy's spending, and the Conservatives ripped them a new asshole for it. After all, she was running the crossroads of the government bureaucracy, which coordinated everything from passports to job assistance. That meant she'd be playing with a lot more cash.
Now they've given her this job. No one's quite sure if this is a promotion or not, but she seems to have most of the same duties, plus several new ones.
As for Flumian herself, the only explanation is she has a bottle of Felix Felicitas stashed away somewhere. How does a person screw up so badly not only get promoted by the party that hired her, but also by the party that tried to destroy her?
So yesterday was my fourth Valentine's Day single.
montrealais and I had a night in, with pizza.Normally I can handle it quite well, but for the first time in my life almost everyone I know is part of a couple. It's just really difficult because I'm almost at the point where I've given up hoping for Mr. Right, and I'm ready to settle in for a life of quiet monasticism.
Writing is gradually getting back on track. School is less painful than usual -- that thing with Shakespeare I was complaining about a couple of posts ago? We read two scholarly articles on just that issue, including a copmplete history of homophobia in interpreting the sonnets.
For more than a century, many of the sonnets were only availible in censored form, covering up the love sonnets to a male. I wonder how they handled Sonnet 20...?
Politics
So, Harper promised that no one would be able to go from lobbying to politics without a five-year interval between the two. This is remarkable since his Defence Minister is a former arms-industry lobbyist.
And half his cabinet voted for a bill requiring politicians crossing the floor in federal politics to return for a by-election. Now they have Emerson.
If they keep fighting corruption, they won't be able to operate as a party.
The real joke this week was that the official who ran the much-maligned gun registry -- a woman with a remarkable name right out of 1950s science-fiction, Maryantonett Flumian -- is now Deputy Head of Service Canada and Associate Deputy Minister of Human Resources and Social Development.. According to the Auditor General, financial mismanagement was at least partly responsible for the registry costing about 20 times more than expected. Flumian was in charge of the registry, and the Conservatives blamed her for the disaster.
The Liberals gave her a similar plum job last year, putting her in charge of a lot of the bureaucracy's spending, and the Conservatives ripped them a new asshole for it. After all, she was running the crossroads of the government bureaucracy, which coordinated everything from passports to job assistance. That meant she'd be playing with a lot more cash.
Now they've given her this job. No one's quite sure if this is a promotion or not, but she seems to have most of the same duties, plus several new ones.
As for Flumian herself, the only explanation is she has a bottle of Felix Felicitas stashed away somewhere. How does a person screw up so badly not only get promoted by the party that hired her, but also by the party that tried to destroy her?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 09:18 am (UTC)My new estimate is zero budgets for this government, or one co-written by the NDP and the Bloc and shoved down their throats. These guys are undercutting the parody artists, giving this kind of stuff away.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 01:58 pm (UTC)But I've also been studying Harper for 4 years. The man is shrewd. He's an expert at this game. Why throw it that he's so close to victory?
I know why he got Emerson. Emerson was within a hair's breadth of closing a deal on softwood lumber with the US. Paul Martin told Emerson to hold off on it until after the election, because Martin wanted the opportunity to talk tough.
When Harper poached Emerson, he poached the deal, so that should be announced soon. And Harper will make it look like his own success.
Fortier is part of his Quebec strategy. He wants to do an end-run around the Bloc and rebuild the Westerner/Québécois coalition that kept Mulroney afloat. He must have something up his sleeve, though, to prevent the obvious weak point: the Western conservatives and Québécois conservatives despise each other.
But Flumian makes no sense. She has no strategic value, and Harper should be avoiding her like the plague.
I don't like it. The man's an expert chess player. I don't believe he's losing now. He does everything in secret, and most of his tricks don't come to light until it's too late.
A theory is running that he's getting all the really nasty stuff done early, in hopes people will forget. Question is, what he's building the groundwork towards...?