tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12543342151641161602024-02-07T20:48:58.355-08:00Notice of Motion"Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-20217769424263858022010-08-04T05:53:00.000-07:002010-08-04T05:55:43.035-07:00Lies, damned lies, and empiricism<a href="http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/mocked+online+over+crime+comments/3357152/story.html">"We do not use statistics as an excuse not to get tough on criminals."</a><br />--Pamela Stephens, spokestype for federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson"Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-25456923132716365872010-05-13T13:58:00.000-07:002010-05-13T15:01:49.020-07:00Clutching ClaudeOver at <a href="http://lowetide.blogspot.com">Lowetide</a>'s, an argument recently developed over the nature of "clutch" performances: some players are reputed to perform at their best in key games. I was one of several commenters taking the position that this was probably illusionary. One commenter challenged this view by asking "How else do you explain Claude Lemieux's playoff stats?" My response was as follows:<br /><br /><i>Regular season PPG: 0.647<br />Playoffs PPG: 0.675<br /><br />What's to explain?</i><br /><br />That was a little glib, though, primarily because scoring tends to go down significantly during the playoffs (each team is playing against better teams on average than they do in the regular season, after all); a quick analysis of the 2008-2009 season showed an 11% decrease (limiting the analysis to teams that qualified for the playoffs), so for Lemieux to have increased his scoring by 4% in those circumstances is actually pretty impressive, on its face.<br /><br />I'm of the view that, when it comes to sports performance, statistics can tell the whole story, but sometimes you need a lot of them, so I decided to look into Lemieux's career in more detail. The first things that struck me as surprising had nothing to with my hypothesis, but I thought I'd mention them anyway: first, Lemieux only spent four seasons with the Avalanche (as an Oilers' fan, I suppose I have observer bias from seeing him so often during those four years), and second, the Devils of the early nineties were a higher-scoring team than the Avalanche of the late nineties. Anyway, onward.<br /><br />If we're going to test the hypothesis that Lemieux was a clutch playoff performer, we need to compare his playoff production to his regular season production, and then adjust it for the decreased scoring during the playoffs. That last bit is the tricky part: you can't just apply an across-the-board decrease, because the decrease hasn't been the same from era to era and, more importantly, isn't the same from team to team: teams eliminated in early rounds, unsurprisingly, see a much bigger dropoff in scoring than those eliminated in later rounds. So what I decided to do was compare Lemieux's shift in production each year to his team's shift in production during the same year. This will produce some small sample sizes, especially in years in which Lemieux's team was eliminated early, but we'll worry about that later.<br /><br />Claude Lemieux, it's worth noting at this point, was part of some pretty good hockey teams. Of course, he was a pretty good hockey player, so all else being equal a team with Claude Lemieux was better than a team without him, but he won the Stanley Cup with three different teams, and played with goalies like Patrick Roy (in both Montreal and Colorado) and Martin Brodeur, and scorers like Peter Forsberg and Joe Sakic. Good teams. This is supported by the fact that he appeared in 18 seasons' playoffs on six different teams; only the 2000-2001 and 2002-2003 Phoenix Coyotes failed to qualify. Moreover, despite the fact that in any given playoffs half of the teams are eliminated in the first round, Lemieux's teams advanced to the second round twelve times, to the third round nine, and to the Stanley Cup Finals five times.<br /><br />Anyway, here are the annual production shifts for Lemieux and the teams for which he played (team stats are goals per game, while player stats are points per game). I've bolded the years that Lemieux performed better than his team.<br /><br /><b>1986 (Montreal):<br />Team: 4.13 to 3.08 (25% decrease)<br />Player: 0.30 to 0.80 (167% increase)</b><br /><br />1987 (Montreal):<br />Team: 3.46 to 3.94 (14% increase)<br />Player: 0.70 to 0.76 (9% increase)<br /><br />1988 (Montreal):<br />Team: 3.73 to 3.36 (10% decrease)<br />Player: 0.78 to 0.45 (42% decrease)<br /><br />1989 (Montreal):<br />Team: 3.94 to 3.19 (19% decrease)<br />Player: 0.74 to 0.39 (47% decrease)<br /><br />1990 (Montreal):<br />Team: 2.93 to 2.64 (10% decrease)<br />Player: 0.46 to 0.36 (22% decrease)<br /><br /><b>1991 (New Jersey):<br />Team: 3.40 to 3.00 (12% decrease)<br />Player: 0.60 to 0.57 (5% decrease)</b><br /><br /><b>1992 (New Jersey):<br />Team: 3.61 to 3.57 (1% decrease)<br />Player: 0.92 to 1.00 (9% increase)</b><br /><br />1993 (New Jersey):<br />Team: 3.67 to 2.40 (35% decrease)<br />Player: 1.05 to 0.40 (62% decrease)<br /><br /><b>1994 (New Jersey):<br />Team: 3.64 to 2.60 (29% decrease)<br />Player: 0.56 to 0.90 (61% increase)</b><br /><br /><b>1995 (New Jersey):<br />Team: 2.83 to 3.35 (18% increase)<br />Player: 0.42 to 0.80 (90% increase)</b><br /><br />1996 (Colorado):<br />Team: 3.98 to 3.64 (9% decrease)<br />Player: 0.90 to 0.63 (30% decrease)<br /><br /><b>1997 (Colorado):<br />Team: 3.38 to 3.12 (8% decrease)<br />Player: 0.62 to 1.35 (118% increase)</b><br /><br /><b>1998 (Colorado):<br />Team: 2.82 to 2.29 (19% decrease)<br />Player: 0.55 to 0.86 (56% increase)</b><br /><br /><b>1999 (Colorado):<br />Team: 2.91 to 2.79 (4% decrease)<br />Player: 0.62 to 0.74 (19% increase)</b><br /><br />2000 (New Jersey):<br />Team: 3.06 to 2.65 (13% decrease)<br />Player: 0.54 to 0.43 (20% decrease)<br /><br />2002 (Phoenix):<br />Team: 2.78 to 1.40 (50% decrease)<br />Player: 0.50 to 0.00 (100% decrease)<br /><br />2003 (Dallas):<br />Team: 2.99 to 2.83 (5% decrease)<br />Player: 0.19 to 0.14 (26% decrease)<br /><br />2009 (San Jose):<br />Team: 3.13 to 1.67 (47% decrease)<br />Player: 0.06 to 0.00 (100% decrease)<br /><br />So of those eighteen playoff performances, he exceeded his team's performance eight times, and fell short of it ten times. That's about what you'd expect from a random sampling - slightly worse, actually. Of course, some of the times he exceeded his team's performance were pretty epic: 1986, 1995, and 1997, for example. But viewed as a whole, that's not the record of a "clutch" player, that's a "streaky" player: sometimes he's really on, and sometimes he's really off. If you divided his regular season play into twenty game segments, I have no doubt that you'd find some segments that looked a lot like 1986, and others that looked a lot like 1989. When you take a large sample size like the career of Claude Lemieux, sometimes things will go really well for periods of time, and other times they'll go really badly.<br /><br />But let's be fair: the above treats all playoff years the same, which is misleading. After all, 2009 looks a little less like a total collapse on Claude Lemieux's part when you realize that he played all of one post season game. So let's sort the above years, not chronologically, but by the number of post-season games in which Lemieux played. Then, if we see that the bolded seasons all appear at the top, we can decide that he really is clutch.<br /><br />2000 (New Jersey):<br />Team: 3.06 to 2.65 (13% decrease)<br />Player: 0.54 to 0.43 (20% decrease)<br /><br /><b>1986 (Montreal):<br />Team: 4.13 to 3.08 (25% decrease)<br />Player: 0.30 to 0.80 (167% increase)</b><br /><br /><b>1994 (New Jersey):<br />Team: 3.64 to 2.60 (29% decrease)<br />Player: 0.56 to 0.90 (61% increase)</b><br /><br /><b>1995 (New Jersey):<br />Team: 2.83 to 3.35 (18% increase)<br />Player: 0.42 to 0.80 (90% increase)</b><br /><br />1996 (Colorado):<br />Team: 3.98 to 3.64 (9% decrease)<br />Player: 0.90 to 0.63 (30% decrease)<br /><br /><b>1999 (Colorado):<br />Team: 2.91 to 2.79 (4% decrease)<br />Player: 0.62 to 0.74 (19% increase)</b><br /><br />1989 (Montreal):<br />Team: 3.94 to 3.19 (19% decrease)<br />Player: 0.74 to 0.39 (47% decrease)<br /><br />1987 (Montreal):<br />Team: 3.46 to 3.94 (14% increase)<br />Player: 0.70 to 0.76 (9% increase)<br /><br /><b>1997 (Colorado):<br />Team: 3.38 to 3.12 (8% decrease)<br />Player: 0.62 to 1.35 (118% increase)</b><br /><br />1988 (Montreal):<br />Team: 3.73 to 3.36 (10% decrease)<br />Player: 0.78 to 0.45 (42% decrease)<br /><br />1990 (Montreal):<br />Team: 2.93 to 2.64 (10% decrease)<br />Player: 0.46 to 0.36 (22% decrease)<br /><br /><b>1991 (New Jersey):<br />Team: 3.40 to 3.00 (12% decrease)<br />Player: 0.60 to 0.57 (5% decrease)</b><br /><br /><b>1992 (New Jersey):<br />Team: 3.61 to 3.57 (1% decrease)<br />Player: 0.92 to 1.00 (9% increase)</b><br /><br /><b>1998 (Colorado):<br />Team: 2.82 to 2.29 (19% decrease)<br />Player: 0.55 to 0.86 (56% increase)</b><br /><br />2003 (Dallas):<br />Team: 2.99 to 2.83 (5% decrease)<br />Player: 0.19 to 0.14 (26% decrease)<br /><br />1993 (New Jersey):<br />Team: 3.67 to 2.40 (35% decrease)<br />Player: 1.05 to 0.40 (62% decrease)<br /><br />2002 (Phoenix):<br />Team: 2.78 to 1.40 (50% decrease)<br />Player: 0.50 to 0.00 (100% decrease)<br /><br />2009 (San Jose):<br />Team: 3.13 to 1.67 (47% decrease)<br />Player: 0.06 to 0.00 (100% decrease)<br /><br />Of his "clutch" performances three took place in low sample size situations, in which his team was eliminated in the first round. If we confine our analysis to years where Lemieux's team qualified for the Stanley Cup finals, we see two "clutch" performances and three sub-expectation performances.<br /><br />Claude Lemieux built his reputation as a playoff performer on his performances in 1986, 1999, and to a lesser extent 1994 and 1997. Some of those performances were remarkable, so it's only natural that they'll remain in our minds while, for example, his four series 1989 vanishing act is forgotten. But viewed in the context of his entire career, these were less "clutch" performances and more instances of a player's hot streaks happening to coincide with big games.<br /><br />But what about that 4% overall career increase? Numbers are deceiving: throughout his career, Claude Lemieux played approximately one playoff game for every twenty regular season games he played. During his last four seasons, when his skills had faded, he played 214 regular season games and 13 playoff games. His consistently low points per game total during this period therefore dragged his regular season points per game total down significantly, but had very little effect on his playoff total. If we ignore those seasons, his regular season points per game climbs to 0.697, while his playoff points per game goes to .710 - leaving the increase at under 2%."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-29994806753003858182010-04-19T10:05:00.000-07:002010-04-19T12:24:18.168-07:00Steve fixes the Edmonton OilersAs I've mentioned repeatedly in my status updates, it's exam time, and I'm running out of reasonable ways to procrastinate, so I'm starting to turn to really idiotic stuff. Accordingly, I just spent about half an hour deciding what I would do if I were the Oilers' GM, and because there's nothing more enjoyable than reading an uninformed sports fan's opinion of what he thinks the highly trained professionals managing his favourite sports team should be doing, I've decided to share the fruits of my labour with you.<br /><br />My one rule is that I've tried to limit my options to things that the Oilers actually might do; with that in mind, while I think the they should jettison Khabibulin however they can, that's definitely not going to happen, so I'm leaving him in as the starting goalie. I'm also trying to avoid making the standard fan assumption that other teams are just itching to give us great players signed to value contracts in exchange for our flotsam; similarly, I'm trying to make realistic estimates of contract numbers. I might not be very good at either one, since I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'm trying.<br /><br />With that in mind, here's what I'd do if my last name were Tambellini.<br /><br /><b><u>Players under contract</u></b><br /><br />Of players who could conceivably start next season in the NHL, fourteen are currently under contract with the Oilers next year. Like everybody else who played for the Oilers this year, they're a bunch of bums, but we can't get rid of all of them (or so I'm told), so we should figure out who we're keeping.<br /><br /><b>Shawn Horcoff</b> (Signed through 2014-2015 at a cap hit of $5.5 million): Keep. The Oilers are not deep in defensively competent centres (please do not quote Horcoff's plus/minus unless you're prepared to also cite the underlying statistics), and Horcoff's contract is probably too big, and his 2009-2010 season too bad, to move. I actually don't think the contract is <i>that</i> bad: he was victimized this season by terrible linemates and some bad luck, and if he stays healthy, gets decent linemates, and stops being expected to do everything himself next year I think he either breaks 50 points or acts as an elite shutdown centre; $5.5 million's a lot for a guy in either of those roles, but it looks a lot better than paying $5.5 million for 36 points and a pile of goals against.<br /><br /><b>Dustin Penner</b> (Signed through 2011-2012 at a cap hit of $4.25 million): Keep, obviously. The only argument for trading him is if you think the Oilers have no chance of being competitive by 2011-2012, and I think that's premature. Plus, who knows? He might actually re-sign.<br /><br /><b>Ales Hemsky</b> (Signed through 2011-2012 at a cap hit of $4.1 million): Keep. Everything I said about Penner goes double for Hemsky (well, at least single).<br /><br /><b>Patrick O'Sullivan</b> (Signed through 2010-2011 at a cap hit of $2.95 million): Buy out. I liked the trade that brought him in, but I was plainly wrong to do so. While it's unlikely that he could be traded, he's young enough that the buy out rules are very favourable.<br /><br /><b>Robert Nilsson</b> (Signed through 2010-2011 at a cap hit of $2 million): Buy out. Everything I said about O'Sullivan also applies to Nilsson, except for the part about liking the trade that brought him here.<br /><br /><b>Ethan Moreau</b> (Signed through 2010-2011 at a cap hit of $2 million): Trade our buy out. Nobody would take him at the trade deadline, so buy out might be the only realistic option (Jim Matheson <a href="http://www.edmontonjournal.com/sports/hockey/edmonton-oilers/Oilers+about+purge+roster/2923884/story.html">says</a> that the Oilers will do it, too), though his play did improve after the deadline. He's been the captain of what has by all accounts become an extremely dysfunctional team, and if the way he plays with the young guys (refusing to pass to them, taking offensive zone penalties to hamper their scoring chances) is any indication of the way he interacts with them off the ice, I don't want him anywhere near them.<br /><br /><b>Ryan Jones</b> (Signed through 2010-2011 at a cap hit of $0.975 thousand): Keep. If he was an impending unrestricted free agent I'd shrug my shoulders and let him walk, but he's big, can play some, and is under contract. I expect he'd spend the season on the fourth line and the press box, but you're not going to fill your roster with world-beaters.<br /><br /><b>Zach Stortini</b> (Signed through 2010-2011 at a cap hit of $700 thousand): Keep. He's cheap and he's a perfectly acceptable fourth liner (and still improving some, by my eye).<br /><br /><b>Sheldon Souray</b> (Signed through 2011-2012 at a cap hit of $5.4 million): Trade, obviously. I don't like doing it, because I have to think that we'll be taking back somebody even more overpaid than him, but he obviously has to go and a trade is the only realistic way of getting rid of him.<br /><br /><b>Tom Gilbert</b> (Signed through 2013-2014 at a cap hit of $4 million): Keep. He and Whitney have the look of a legitimate top pairing, the Oilers are very short on legitimate NHL defenseman who haven't demanded to be traded, and Gilbert's trade value is suppressed at the moment by a season in which he didn't score much. In view of all that, there really isn't an argument for trading him.<br /><br /><b>Ryan Whitney</b> (Signed through 2012-2013 at a cap hit of $4 million): Keep, for the same reasons as Gilbert, minus the suppressed trade value.<br /><br /><b>Ladislav Smid</b> (Signed through 2010-2011 at a cap hit of $1.3 million): Keep, for all the same reasons as Whitney, plus his could prove one of the best value contracts this year.<br /><br /><b>Taylor Chorney</b> (Signed through 2010-2011 at a cap hit of $942 thousand): Send him to the minors. I don't think he'd have to clear waivers, and he's not ready for the NHL (no shame in that, as defensemen are notoriously slow to develop). He's also a soft, offense-first defenseman on a team that badly needs somebody more like Andy Sutton.<br /><br /><b>Nikolai Khabibulin</b> (Signed through 2012-2013 at a cap hit of $3.75 million): Keep, regretfully. He's old, overpaid, overrated, and facing drunk driving charges, but the Oilers have decided that he's their starting goalie, so there's not much point in arguing.<br /><br />In summary, I'm proposing to keep five forwards, three defensemen, and one goalie at a total cap hit of $28.575 million. I'm not factoring in buy out effects because I'm too lazy to check what they are; apparently they're negligible, though, at least for O'Sullivan and Nilsson.<br /><br /><b><u>Restricted free agents</u></b><br /><br />Of players who could realistically start 2010-2011 in the NHL, the Oilers have nine impending restricted free agents. Here's how I'd handle them.<br /><br /><b>Sam Gagner</b> (Coming off an entry level contract with a cap hit of $1.65 million): Re-sign, obviously - he's 20 years old and has scored 131 NHL points. He's already one of the Oilers' top offensive players (that's called "damnation by faint praise", kids), and shows promise of improving. I would look for a long-term contract, but there's every chance he wouldn't go for that for any reasonable amount. In any event, for next season I'm budgeting a cap hit of $3 million, which might be way off in either direction, but is my best guess (that's called "damnation by faint praise", kids).<br /><br /><b>Andrew Cogliano</b> (Coming off an entry level contract with a cap hit of $1.133 million): Re-sign. He's coming off a terrible year, which means that his trade value is low and he should be cheap to sign to a one year contract. Plus, he'll have something to prove next year, if you're into intangibles. It's well documented that he benefited from some unreasonably good luck in his first two seasons, and he probably won't score 45 points like he did in his rookie season, but I'll bet he gets more than 28. And after another year played on a one year contract, the worst case scenario is that the Oilers are in the same situation as they are now: having to decide what to do with an impending unrestricted free agent with low trade value. Best case scenario, they have a choice between giving him a big raise or trading him for actual value. After his season, you'd think Cogliano would accept his qualifying offer, but because of the bonuses on his entry level contract doing so would mean a de facto pay cut, so I'm budgeting the generous sum of $1.2 million.<br /><br /><b>Marc Pouliot</b> (Coming off a contract with a cap hit of $825 thousand): Re-sign. <a href="http://lowetide.blogspot.com">Lowetide</a> called him a "perennial prospect", which is about right. Somehow, without my having noticed, Pouliot has spent parts of five seasons in the NHL, playing 176 games. It's worrying that he still hasn't established himself as an NHL player, but he's had injury trouble (this year it was, in Pat Quinn's words, a "pubis thing") and has shown progress. Of the Oilers' prospects (perennial or otherwise), I see Pouliot as the best hope to evolve into that elusive checking centre, so I say keep him. I'm budgeting $1 million for him, probably on a short deal (his upside isn't great enough to lock him in).<br /><br /><b>Gilbert Brule</b> (Coming off a contract with a cap hit of $800 thousand): Trade. He's coming off an excellent year, but he did it on a team where he was getting plenty of icetime with good linemates, since the Oilers weren't exactly flush with alternatives. That, his history, and his abnormally high shooting percentage leave me with some doubt that he can replicate his year, let alone improve on it. While I could be wrong about that, I'd rather sell high than sign him to the kind of money he'll probably expect.<br /><br /><b>J-F Jacques</b> (Coming off a contract with a cap hit of $525 thousand): Trade or do not qualify. The following is an exhaustive list of Jacques' qualifications to be an NHL player: he's very big. He's accomplished nothing of note in 109 NHL games, and his bad back does not inspire confidence that another contract would work out well. I don't know if he has trade value; if he doesn't, the Oilers should just let him walk.<br /><br /><b>Ryan Potulny</b> (Coming off a contract with a cap hit of $595 thousand): Much like Brule, Potulny's coming off a good year which I think may be an aberration based on getting icetime better than he'd get on a real team. Like Brule, I think his next contract will be an overpay, and his trade value is as high now as it's likely to be.<br /><br /><b>Theo Peckham</b> (Coming off a contract with a cap hit of $600 thousand): Re-sign. He's the type of defenseman the Oilers need and he's looked good in most of his NHL action. I think the Oilers can afford to have one rookie defenseman, and Peckham's my pick; it's not as though there are many other contenders. I'm budgeting $800 thousand for a short-term contract.<br /><br /><b>Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers</b> (Coming off a contract with a cap hit of $625 thousand): Trade or send to the minors (effectively waiving him). There isn't room for Drouin-Deslauriers and Devan Dubnyk on the Oilers next year, and while Drouin-Deslauriers' numbers were better, Dubnyk is younger, has less NHL experience, and looked to be improving as the year wore on. I suspect that there's no trade market for Drouin-Deslauriers, in which case we should send him to the minors; the worst case scenario is that somebody picks him up on waivers, and that would be no disaster.<br /><br /><b>Devan Dubnyk</b> (Coming off a contract with a cap hit of $700 thousand): Re-sign. If the Oilers were looking to compete this year, I'd suggest getting an established NHL backup, but since they're not they can afford to continue developing Dubnyk. I'm budgeting $1 million short-term, which he should be grateful to get since Oklahoma but for the grace of me goes he.<br /><br />I'm proposing to re-sign three forwards, one defenseman, and one goalie at a total cap hit of $7 million. That brings our total roster so far to eight forwards, four defensemen, and two goalies at a cap hit of $35.575 million.<br /><br /><b><u>Impending unrestricted free agents</u></b><br /><br />The Oilers have five pending unrestricted free agents, all of whom are sufficiently middling that they shouldn't be the subjects of bidding wars; accordingly, I'm assuming that all would be willing to re-sign for a reasonable price.<br /><br /><b>Fernando Pisani</b> (Coming off a contract with a cap hit of $2.5 million): Re-sign. Okay, maybe I'm being sentimental, but did you know he's one of only three Oilers remaining from the 2006 Cup run? When he's healthy, he's still a competent checker, of which the Oilers need more; assuming he'd take a massive pay cut (when he signed this contract, he was not far removed from Conn Smythe consideration; now, he's scored 23 points in the last two seasons combined) I'd bring him back. I have him at $1.2 million, but even that number might be...sentimental.<br /><br /><b>Mike Comrie</b> (Coming off a contract with a cap hit of $1.25 million): Re-sign. I'm a late convert to this cause, since the Oilers have too many small skill players, but since I'm proposing to eliminate O'Sullivan, Nilsson, and Brule, there may be room for Comrie. He had a pretty decent season when healthy, and can score goals without needing to be on the top line. Plus, Hilary Duff is probably the biggest celebrity ever to visit Edmonton for non-work reasons (not her work, at least). I have him getting $1.5 million.<br /><br /><b>Ryan Stone</b> (Coming off a contract with a cap hit of $600 thousand): Do not re-sign. Remember what I said above about Ryan Jones? "If he was an impending unrestricted free agent I'd shrug my shoulders and let him walk..."? Well that's Stone. He's fine as a fourth liner, but we have enough of those guys.<br /><br /><b>Jason Strudwick</b> (Coming off a contract with a cap hit of $700 thousand): Re-sign. He is not a good NHL defenseman, but he's apparently a great mentor to the younger players and one of the only veterans who crosses the age divide reportedly created by Moreau et al's highjinks. I'd platoon him with Peckham in the sixth spot, but if anybody in the top six went down for any period of time I'd bring in somebody else to slot ahead of Strudwick. $800 thousand should be plenty.<br /><br /><b>Aaron Johnson</b> (Coming off a contract with a cap hit of $540 thousand): Do not re-sign, probably. He's better than Strudwick, though not by all that much, but ideally there's only room for one of them on the team. If the Oilers can't fill out their blue line with players you'd like to see play 82 games, then Johnson can come back, but that's not ideal.<br /><br />I'm proposing to re-sign two UFA forwards and one defenseman, at a total cap hit of $3.5 million. That brings the total roster to ten forwards, five defensemen, and two goalies, for a cap hit of $39.075 million.<br /><br /><b><u>Draft</u></b><br /><br /><b>Tyler Seguin</b>: I don't actually have a strong opinion on who the Oilers should draft: on the one hand, Seguin's trending upwards while Hall isn't so much, and Seguin plays the more important position. On the other, Hall looks more NHL-ready now, and has put up results over a longer period of time. People in the know seem to think that Seguin's the more likely pick, so I'm going to assume it's him. Left to my own devices, I might not bring him into the NHL yet (to avoid getting the clock running on his entry level contract, if nothing else), but he's going to be the key PR piece on a team that will milk him for all he's worth, so it's a safe bet he'll be in Edmonton. I'm not really clear on what a player like that gets on an entry level contract once bonuses are considered, but I remember it being surprisingly high, so I'm just going to say $2.5 million.<br /><br />Seguin brings the roster to eleven forwards, five defensemen, and two goalies, for a cap hit of $41.575 million.<br /><br /><b><u>The rest</u></b><br /><br />This leaves three forwards and two defensemen. Some of those may come from within the system, as Jordan Eberle, Magnus Pääjärvi-Svensson, and Linus Omark are all threatening. I'm going to pencil one of them in (probably Eberle) at a cap hit of $1.625 (same as Gagner's entry level).<br /><br />Some of the spots may be filled by trade: I'm proposing to trade Souray, Brule, and Potulny for sure, and Moreau, Drouin-Deslauriers, and Jacques if anybody will take them. For the most part, I'd rather take prospects (not NHL-ready prospects - there are quite enough of those on my roster already) and picks, and fill the remaining vacancies on the UFA market; in other words, I'd rather not add anything to the roster through trades. In Souray's case, that's probably not viable, as the Oilers will have to take a big contract back to make the trade work; Michal Roszival's a name I keep hearing, so we'll assume it's him or somebody like him: a defenseman with a cap hit of $5 million.<br /><br />Our cap hit is up to $48.2 million, and we still need two forwards and one defenseman. That leaves us plenty of room to sign some good unrestricted free agents of Daryl Katz is okay spending to the cap without any intention of contending, but it seems more likely that these guys will be getting about $1.5 million each. For all three, I'd look for defensively responsible veterans on one year contracts. The forwards should include a centre who can play on the third or fourth line and maybe sit some games out if everything's working really well with Pouliot and Seguin; Matheson suggested Manny Malhotra, who's currently making $700 thousand in San Jose and probably won't re-sign there after the Sharks do their annual post-first round playoff defeat shuffling of the deck chairs (or he might - who knows what's going to happen in San Jose when Marleau's contract expires). Somebody like him would be good. For the other forward, I'd want a winger who can contribute a little offense - somebody like Pisani before his playoff performance made him unreasonably expensive. Those guys don't grow on trees, so we might need to settle for less. The defenseman should be somebody who likes to block shots with his face - like a Steve Staios or a Jason Smith when they were first acquired for the Oilers.<br /><br />The resulting team isn't good. It's only got three players who indisputably belong on the top two lines, in Penner, Hemsky, and Gagner, but it's got a lot who can make forays: Horcoff, Seguin, Cogliano, Eberle, Comrie, and maybe one of the two unrestricted free agent signings if we're lucky. It would have sufficient checkers in Horcoff, Pisani, and those two unrestricted free agents.<br /><br />Defense is a little better: Gilbert and Whitney would remain intact, and Smid and Roszival are probably both legitimate second pairing guys (not necessarily with each other - I'll leave the exact pairings to Tom Renney). If the UFA signing is a really good one, it could be a second pairing guy too; if not, he should at least a respectable third pairing with Peckham or Strudwick. Goal is a question mark, but that's inevitable if we're keeping Khabibulin.<br /><br />The Oilers almost certainly don't make the playoffs with that lineup. What they do is develop kids at a respectable rate and finish the year with a pretty good draft pick and plenty of cap space (though Roszival would still be on the books for another year). The only key pieces who will need new contracts are Smid and possible Gagner (and maybe some other guys, if we're lucky enough to have them develop into key pieces). If the they show enough promise, and the team is sufficiently non-dysfunctional (or "functional), that unrestricted free agents don't stay away in droves, they should be able to add the necessary pieces to make the playoffs in 2011-2012."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-87865792058739068302009-12-11T10:06:00.000-08:002009-12-11T10:16:50.360-08:00It wasn't supposed to be like this!Pity David Swann. The Calgary MD - by all accounts a model of decency and integrity - took over the Alberta Liberal Party in the wake of one of its periodic shellackings at the hands of the Progressive Conservatives. Now, barely two years later, there's evidence that the criticisms his party has been throwing at the government since it became official opposition sixteen years ago are finally starting to stick: the Liberals are tied with Ed Stelmach's governing P.C.s, and <i>ahead</i> of them in both Calgary and Edmonton. Not even the most optimistic prognosticators would have predicted this two years ago.<br /><br />The bad news? <a href="http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Wildrose+Alberta+poll+finds/2329126/story.html">Well...</a>"Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-82345778328297763792009-10-21T14:38:00.000-07:002009-10-21T14:50:41.124-07:00Dept. of the World's Least Terrifying Bogeymen<a href="http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Vote+splitting+favours+Alberta+Liberals+premier+warns/2127364/story.html">Stelmach: voting for the WRA will benefit the Liberals</a>.<br /><br />Pop quiz: in how many Conservative-won ridings was the Liberal vote at least half of the combined Conservative/WRA vote (i.e. the minimum number that could possibly result in a Conservative/WRA vote split electing a Liberal) in the last election?<br /><br />Answer: 22<br /><br />How many of those were outside of Edmonton and Calgary?<br /><br />Answer: 4. And three of those were St. Albert, Medicine Hat, and Lethbridge West.<br /><br />So <i>if</i> 100% of the WRA's growth in the next election comes from the P.C.s (a dubious proposition, given the number of voters inclined to vote for the strongest available opposition party, especially in Calgary's current political climate),<br />and <i>if</i> voting patterns in the last election are a good indicator of voting patterns in the next election,<br />and <i>if</i> the PC-WRA vote is split in each riding in exactly the way that most benefits the Liberals,<br />then the Liberals will 31 seats in the next election. That's nearly half of what the P.C.s won in the last one!<br /><br />Terrifying."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-70537011125576846682009-10-12T20:54:00.001-07:002009-10-12T20:54:45.915-07:00Geez, am I ever out of touch<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2009/10/12/turner-resigns-liberal-candidacy.html">I didn't even know he was running</a>. But I pretty much reflexively support any candidate who promises to raise taxes, so I wish he'd have stuck around."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-16669276189903789142009-10-06T08:36:00.000-07:002009-10-06T09:05:56.119-07:00Restrain your equinesBefore we get <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/is-the-empire-peter-lougheed-built-about-to-fall/article1312765/">too excited</a> about this business of the Wildrose Alliance being the natural successor to the United Farmers of Alberta, Social Credit League, and Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta - parties that came seemingly out of nowhere to topples Alberta dynasties - there are a few things worth remembering:<br /><br />1. <b>This isn't the first time the Wildrose Alliance has had a seat.</b> Hell, it isn't the first time Paul Hinman's had a seat. He won one in the 2004 election, granted under the banner of the Alberta Alliance rather than the Wildrose Alliance (though the label changed part way through the term, once the Alberta Alliance merged with the Wildrose Party). That was hailed as a brave new threat to the Klein Conservatives on the right. The Alliance had secured a foothold, said conventional wisdom, and the next election might be like 1967, when Peter Lougheed led the hitherto moribund Tories to winning a shocking six seats from the unassailable Ernest Manning. And then 2008 rolled around. The breakthrough did not come. In fact, Hinman lost his seat.<br /><br />This situation can be distinguished from the last one on a few bases: in 2008, there was a strong feeling of "give Ed a chance", while the sense now is that he's worn out his welcome in a few short years. In 2004, Hinman eked out a narrow victory over Conservative incumbent Bryce Jacobs; in 2009, Hinman blew the Conservative out of the water. 2004's victory was in a rural riding; 2009's was in an urban one, exactly where the WRA wasn't supposed to make inroads. So there are signs that something is indeed happening here, but we ought perhaps to be slightly more deferential to Stephen Stills in evaluating what it is.<br /><br />2. <b>This isn't the first time a surprising by-election result has been seen as a portent of shocking things on the horizon.</b> In 2007, Liberal Craig Cheffins' victory in Klein's Calgary-Elbow seat was seen as a sign of an imminent Liberal breakthrough in Calgary. In 2008, the Conservatives continued their dominance of the city, including Calgary-Elbow. In 1982, Gordon Kesler of the separatist Western Canada Concept won an Olds-Didsbury by-election handily. That one attracted national attention, just as Hinman's has. Six months later, the WCC ran candidates in 78 of 79 ridings. All of them lost. Kesler's 1,400 by-election victory in Olds-Disbury turned into a 5,800 vote defeat in Highwood. Daryl Jaddock, his replacement as WCC candidate in Olds-Didsbury, lost by 2,300 votes. While conventional wisdom is trumpeting the significance of Hinman's victory, it might remember that it has always maintained, quite correctly, that by-elections are different beasts from general elections.<br /><br />3. <b>The Progressive Conservatives hold 72 of 83 seats.</b> The Wildrose Alliance holds one. The Conservatives won 53% of the vote in 2008. The Wildrose Alliance won 7%, in what was supposed to be their breakthrough election (by comparison, the Conservatives got 20% in 1967, in what actually *was* their breakthrough election).<br /><br />It's too early to predict with any accuracy what the 2012 (?) election will bring. But let's not go nuts in the meantime."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-6976015615530105682009-09-14T19:54:00.000-07:002009-09-14T20:28:10.968-07:00On minority governments and contradictory first principlesThis current fuss about a possible early election, like so many fusses, can be blamed primarily on the fact that nobody except me understands Westminster-style parliamentary systems.<br /><br />Here are a couple of things that I think we can probably all agree MPs should strive for during minority parliaments:<br />1. Adhering to something approximating the platform that got them elected, and<br />2. Avoiding unnecessarily frequent elections (four elections in five years probably qualifying as unnecessarily frequent).<br /><br />Does that make sense? I think that makes sense. We'll call these first principles against which MPs' performance must be evaluated.<br /><br />How have the current MPs been doing? Well, the Conservatives have been doing very well: they've been able to pass the legislation they want (though you can quibble about how closely that resembles what they were elected on) without having had to make many compromises with opposition parties. They've never voted to defeat the government, and their leader has never asked for Parliament to be dissolved, so they're certainly not trying to trigger an election.<br /><br />And the opposition parties? Well, since all opposition MPs (unless we're going to broaden the term to include Andre Arthur) ran on platforms quite inconsistent with what the government's been up to, the only way to adhere to principle 1 is to vote against the government, including on confidence motions. So far, the NDP and the Bloc have done quite well at this (though the NDP shows signs of caving). The Liberals, not quite so much (though they show signs of changing this as well). Of course, voting against the government on a confidence vote seems likely to result in an election, which means that the NDP and the Bloc have been failing pretty lamentably at principle 2. In fact, it appears to be impossible to adhere to both principles, as long as the Conservatives show little interest in putting forward legislation consistent with the opposition parties' platforms (and indeed, why should they? They're doing just fine without needing to do that, and doing so would necessarily hurt their own principle 1 performance).<br /><br />If that was the case, the Westminster parliamentary system would appear to be a pretty lousy way to govern a country. Along those lines, the Globe and Mail recently asked <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/is-canada-broken/article1286163/">Is Canada Broken?</a>. While, axiomatically speaking, the question deserves a stupid answer, I'll try to give it a good one: no. While I'm no great believer in the Westminster system, it's not so flawed that it provides no solution to situations like this one, and the opposition parties, no dummies, realized it when, in late 2008, they proposed making Stephane Dion Prime Minister. Indeed, that proposal was about the only way they could adhere to both above-identified first principles.<br /><br />Unfortunately, as it turns out (and, I take some pride in saying, as I predicted) many Canadians also hold a third first principle:<br /><br />3. The leader of the party with the most seats in the House of Commons should be Prime Minister.<br /><br />It's only that third principle that makes the situation untenable for the opposition parties (and enormously advantageous for the governing party). Voters who believe in it have no right to complain about a possible 2009 election."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-84322648753693040042009-07-21T20:04:00.000-07:002009-07-21T20:32:11.324-07:00History repeats itself, part 2 * piRalph Klein used to be considered a nice guy.<br /><br />I realize that this is a surprising thing to say about a man who's best remembered now for throwing change at the homeless, ridiculing recipients of Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped, making lewd jokes about female cabinet ministers, and hunting nuns for sport, but it's true. When he was running for P.C. leader, the concern -- along with the concern that he couldn't make morning meetings -- was that he was too nice a guy, too inclined to be everybody's (drinking) buddy.<br /><br />Observers became convinced that Klein had the backbone for the job only after three incidents early in his premiership: in 1994 he fired Deputy Premier Ken Kowalski for being a power unto himself and Transportation Minister Peter Trynchy for some questionable business dealings, and in 1996 he fired Social Services Minister Mike Cardinal for mixing the personal and the political unduly. All three were difficult firings: Kowalski was a cabinet heavyweight and an important power-broker, Trynchy was the longest-serving MLA in the province (the last remnant of Peter Lougheed's class of 1971), and Mike Cardinal was close to Klein both personally and politically. But he fired all three unilaterally, and he ruled his caucus from an iron fist from that point until the point several years later at which he started to completely lose his mind.<br /><br />Ed Stelmach's ascendancy to the P.C. leadership took place the same month as Stephane Dion's to the federal Liberal leadership, and comparisons between the two were inevitable. Both were seen as nice guys whose wins were largely accidental, the product of voting systems that hurt their more popular, but also more polarizing, opponents. Stephane Dion, who I quite liked at the time and for whom I retain a good deal of admiration provided when I evaluate him on the basis of sufficiently carefully selected criteria, quickly went about reinforcing that impression. Stelmach sort of seemed to too.<br /><br />Guy Boutilier is no Ken Kowalski, but Ed Stelmach has served notice that he's not fucking around. The only question is whether we as Albertans will mark it eight, or zero?"Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-63569645489647973622009-06-23T00:21:00.000-07:002009-06-23T00:25:02.466-07:00My party can dehumanize criminals just as much as your party can, part 857<i>"We supported all of [the Conservative] crime legislation so I don't understand on what basis they would be [accusing the Liberals of being soft on crime] now, other than that it's their default knee-jerk position when it comes to the Liberal Party and crime."</i><br />- Jill Fairbrother, Liberal spokestype<br /><br />And to how many of those pieces of legislation did the Liberals move amendments making it legal to shoot graffiti artists for sport? Yeah, that's what I thought. Softies."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-76316828142607543182009-05-26T10:30:00.000-07:002009-05-26T10:31:58.152-07:00With apologies to my vegetarian friends......<a href="http://www.canada.com/news/Governor+General+eats+seal+heart+support+hunters/1629555/story.html">this</a> is why Canada needs the monarchy."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-32136044900051001382009-04-24T05:42:00.000-07:002009-04-24T06:06:50.188-07:00DisconnectI pride myself on being difficult to pigeonhole politically; my limited but deeply-felt disagreements with the NDP and my even more limited but similarly deeply-felt agreements with the Conservatives help convince me that I'm able to consider issues on their merits rather than solely on my bedfellow preferences.<br /><br />But sometimes I still feel ill at ease when I lift my head from the pillow to see who's next to me, and at no time is that more true than when other side of the bed is being occupied by <a href="http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2009/04/24/9226566-sun.html">an Edmonton Sun opinion writer</a>.<br /><br />I've written about my discomfort with my Afghanistan position before (most recently <a href="http://noticeofmotion.blogspot.com/2007/11/on-afghanistan.html">here</a>), and I don't have much more to say. I'm painfully aware that I'm commenting from an privileged position (there are people - Afghanis and foreigners - dying over there, none of whom are me), and I'm not at all sure that history will vindicate my position. I'm also frustrated by the sparse data available; indeed, the only evidence Mr. Den Tandt cites in support of his assertion that Canadian troops are improving the country are the words of an American general whose job requires him to say nice things about i. the mission, and ii. Canada's role in it.<br /><br />But I continue to believe that the west had a legitimate national security rationale for violating Afghanistan's sovereignty in 2001 (apart from any humanitarian rationale that may have existed). And the evidence that I've seen - and I cast a pretty wide net in my search for evidence, in diversity if not in volume - continues to support the belief that Canada is doing some good there, even if "victory" is a concept that has lost any meaning that it may once have had. Is it possible that the cost of the mission, in lives, isn't worth the good that it's doing? Sure. And I'm more than prepared to accept that elements of the mission were misconceived, and that it's hitting the wrong combination of development, reconstruction, and security, or that its resources just aren't sufficient to do a proper job of any of those.<br /><br />But what about those women? A couple of years ago, I heard Sima Samar, then the recently-resigned Deputy President and Minister of Women's Affairs of Afghanistan (part of my aforementioned net-casting). The crowd at the talk was decidedly lefty. And Samar did not disappoint, with a litany of criticisms of the west in its approach to Afghanistan. But in response to questioner after questioner seeking her endorsement for the concept of an immediate withdrawal, she emphatically endorsed a continued Canadian military presence. She was obviously frustrated by the state of women's rights in Afghanistan (and I've not seen much since to suggest that it's gotten any better), but her message was clear: things would get a whole lot worse of the international community ended its military occupation.<br /><br />My tentative support for the mission is in its seventh year. Is my position the correct one? I don't know. But I'm confident that an awful lot of the positions opposed to mine are the incorrect ones, even if that confidence puts me on the same page as Sun columnists."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-74444309962299588272008-10-16T17:00:00.001-07:002008-10-16T17:00:59.470-07:00Next up:Jack Layton on humility and restraintItem: <a href="http://www.edmontonsun.com/canadavotes/news/2008/10/16/7110916.html">Joe Volpe calls on Stephane Dion to quit with dignity</a>"Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-52081265532043419422008-10-14T21:51:00.000-07:002008-10-14T21:58:29.081-07:00Apocalypse nowaboutsGood loses seats in all cases. Evil gains seats in all cases. Evil fighting evil for Edmonton-Strathcona. Depressing night. Garth Turner loses. Possible coherence tomorrow.<br /><br /><b>Update:</b> Further sign of the apocalypse: <a href="http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/10/14/lets-hang-the-liberal-leader/">Paul Wells wrong</a>. Dion has to go. If he'd broken, say, ninety seats, I would have said that he should stay on, for the reasons that Wells lists (especially the one about in effect having to prop the Conservatives up). But the defeat was just too thorough, and he is now so drenched in the stench of loserhood, that he will never win. Canadian voters, in their twisted little illogic, will continue to reject him because the fact that they have rejected him before proves that he should be rejected. In a just world, he'd fight another election on the Green Shift and win it. He won't. It isn't a just world."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-47922103724004481622008-10-14T13:06:00.001-07:002008-10-14T13:07:39.308-07:00Coyne collectionThings I didn't know until just now: apparently every prominent Canadian named "Coyne" is related. James Coyne is the father of Andrew Coyne (and also of actress Susan Coyne, who I've never heard of) and the uncle of Deborah Coyne (and therefore the great uncle of Sarah Coyne). Far out."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-19624431922615913802008-10-13T18:59:00.000-07:002008-10-13T20:01:12.107-07:00Fun facts, predictions, etc.Here's an interesting fact: seven times in Canadian history, minority governments have gone into elections: 1926, 1958, 1963, 1965, 1974, 1980, and 2006. The mean lifespan of the minority governments in question was about sixteen and a half months. Six of those elections resolved the minority situation, either by throwing the government out or by giving it a majority. The two exceptions were 1963 and 1965, when incumbent Lester Pearson was as unable to win a majority as Diefenbaker was to take his old job back (interestingly, these two exceptions also comprise the longest minority governments in Canadian history - removing them, the average falls to less than a year).<br /><br />While I'm leery of ascribing motivations to Canadian voters collectively (if they get together in advance of elections to decide what message they want to send and to coordinate their voting accordingly, as seems to be the belief of so much of the pundocracy, they've somehow forgotten to invite me), it seems reasonable to draw some conclusions from this: Canadians are not generally hesitant in their evaluations of minorities, and seem to dislike minority situations enough that they'll vote for stability, even after a relatively short trial period.<br /><br />Which brings us to this election, which gives every indication of deciding absolutely nothing. At the beginning of the campaign, I predicted an increased Conservative minority, which still looks like it will be the case, but I was thinking something on the order of 145 seats. Now, it appears that they'll struggle to break 130. Moreover, it seems very unlikely that any party will see their seats change by more than ten in either direction from what they held at dissolution (in the net, the Liberals are likely to lose a handful of seats to the Conservatives and New Democrats).<br /><br />I've played Prime Minister Forever, an election simulation game that's more fun than accurate, a few times. In it, each party is given a goal, which I suspect corresponds roughly to the parties' actual goals going into the campaign. Not a single one of the pan-Canadian parties is poised to reach its goal from the 2008 scenario.<br /><br />Two questions emerge from this: first, when will the next election be? The popular money right now says "soon" (unless, as Lawrence Martin quite incorrectly suggested, there's some possibility of the Conservatives being replaced by either a Liberal minority or a coalition government without an intervening election), but the popular money isn't the smart money. In January of 2006, I bet no less a light than Edmonton City Councillor Don Iveson that there wouldn't be another federal election in 2006; to say that I won that bet would be understating it. I made that bet because minority Parliaments are, for their first couple of years especially, giant games of chicken, in which each party wants to appear to be taking bold action regardless of how it might play with opposing parties, but each party is also desperate to avoid being seen as responsible for a new election, and indeed desperate to avoid triggering such an election absent some indication that it will improve its standing in it. I don't pretend to know exactly how the Harper government will survive another two years or so, but it will find a way (or, more accurately, the opposition parties will find a way to allow it to). If the Liberals unwisely engage in another leadership campaign, it suddenly becomes pretty easy, but that's by no means a prerequisite.<br /><br />Speaking of leadership campaigns, the second obvious question is, given that every federal leader (Gilles Duceppe doesn't count) will have failed to achieve his/her objective, who pays? Stephen Harper, in my view, is safe for at least the duration of this next government; his leadership brought the Conservatives to government from a place where it seemed an impossibility, and there aren't a lot of saviours waiting in the wings anyway. But he's the only one.<br /><br />Elizabeth May is likely to be gone, unless she can win a seat in a by-election quickly. She probably could have had her pick of at least a dozen ridings winnable to her solely on the strength of her status as Green Party leader; she chose to run in a different one. The Greens will enter this post-election period in no better shape than they entered the last one, and responsibility for that is primarily May's. The Greens have already remained a viable national party for longer than anybody else has done so without winning a seat; one has to wonder if the ghost of Mel Hurtig will be beckoning for it soon.<br /><br />Dion, too, will probably be ousted, though this would be a mistake. I believe that he has established himself as an alternative to Harper in the minds of enough Canadians that, if the Conservatives should falter early in their new government, the Liberals would be better off with him at the helm than with a vacuum (that faint praise wasn't intended to be quite that damning, but there you are). It would be easy to note that only the Liberals will win fewer seats than they did in 2006, but it would be more useful to compare their election day performance to their standing at dissolution than to their 2006 performance. By that comparison, I think Dion has the Liberals on the upswing. Besides that, his baggage has been checked; the same is not true of Rae and Ignatieff.<br /><br />This leaves us with Jack Layton. On the one hand, he will (for the third consecutive election) increase the NDP seat count. On the other hand, the New Democrats were hoping for a breakthrough in Montreal and to at least challenge the Liberals for the title of Official Opposition. Neither will occur. It looks very much like the NDP is very close to its plateau under Layton and, for the first time in a while, there's an heir apparent in Thomas Mulcair. Back on the first hand, polls consistently show that Layton is (inexplicably) more popular than his party, and this is not a party that has historically been quick to turf underperforming leaders. My bet is that he'll stick around for a while as well.<br /><br />All of that said, here are my predictions:<br />* Conservative: 130<br />* Liberal: 90<br />* Bloc: 51<br />* NDP: 35<br />* Independent: 2"Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-58200327855099888972008-10-08T09:53:00.000-07:002008-10-08T09:58:35.172-07:00Subjects that none in the media, and few elsewhere, seem to understandMargins of error. Hey, media, here's a multiple choice question for you: if Party A leads Party B by 4.99% in a poll whose margin of error (95% confidence interval - i.e. "nineteen times out of twenty") is 5%, what is the chance that Party A is, in fact, ahead of Party B?<br /><br />a. 50%: because the poll difference is within the poll's margin of error, it's a statistical tie, so there is equal chance of either party being ahead.<br />b. a hair under 95%: because a difference of 5% gives a 95% certainty of Party A being in the lead, a difference of very slightly under 5% will give a certainty very slightly under 95%.<br />c. it's impossible to say<br /><br />(The correct answer is in the comments section, though I like to think that my limited readership is smart enough that it won't need to check.)"Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-60348324303931227622008-10-07T09:12:00.000-07:002008-10-07T09:18:22.079-07:00Stealing Paul Wells' links again<a href="http://econ-environment.ca/">Exactly</a>.<br /><br />Now, the New Democrats are pretty sure that all economists are out to feast on the flesh of the poor, Swift-style (and it's not just economics they distrust - <a href="http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=21&t=001692">some of them</a> are pretty sure that the underlying math is itself right-wing), so I wouldn't expect them to get this, on acount of ignorance and prejudice. But Harper's got no such excuse to be getting this so monumentally wrong."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-78021287796999942562008-10-02T21:00:00.000-07:002008-10-02T21:01:39.679-07:00Rankings now, commentary tomorrow maybe1. Harper<br />2. May<br />3. Layton<br />4. Duceppe<br />5. Dion<br />6. Palin (and I don't mean Paikin - seriously, she was just awful)"Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-72176964029142530612008-10-02T13:22:00.001-07:002008-10-02T13:59:41.252-07:00Le lendemainAs you may or may not know, I gave Stéphane Dion a hundred bucks back when he was running for Liberal leader (several of my ND friends gave me hell for this; none of them have since recanted and thanked me, strangely). I'm an admirer of his going back to the Clarity Act. I would very much like to see this election result in a Liberal government (minority, preferably), though the chance of that is pretty well at zero. In light of all this, I thought there was some danger that I might go too easy on Dion in my debate reporting. Turns out I might have gone too hard on him. In the debate aftermath, he's gotten the biggest increase in media coverage, and it's been almost <a href="http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=b1c9e2e6-6b9a-47cb-90e8-890319e90f24">entirely</a> <a href="http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/10/02/daniel-goldbloom-on-the-french-language-leaders-debate-dion-the-leader-and-harperphonics.aspx">positive</a>.<br /><br />An Ipsos-Reid poll found that <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081002.welxndionlead1002/BNStory/politics/home?cid=al_gam_mostemail">40% of respondents felt that Dion won the debate</a>, well ahead of Duceppe in second at 24%. More significantly, twenty percent of respondents said that the debate changed their mind about who to vote for. That's a significant number. Also interesting is <a href="http://www.buzzz.tv/tufte/">this</a> (desk pound to Paul Wells for that one), which shows that viewers reacted overwhelmingly positively to most of what Dion (and Duceppe) said, and overwhelmingly negatively to most of what Harper said (though a commenter on Wells' blog points out that these reactions took place almost as soon as the leaders in question opened their mouths, suggesting that participants in the study had made up their minds before they actually listened to what the leaders had to say) (<b>Update:</b> Not so, apparently: <a href="http://carnets.opossum.ca/mario/archives/buzzz_herman_facebook.jpg">this</a> is a pie chart showing the participants' political allegiances going into the debate).<br /><br />Granted, Dion isn't going to perform as well tonight, and granted it's too late for him to win a plurality of seats. But he might be able to salvage the election, and maybe even his leadership, in sort of the same way that John Turner did in 1988. Turner, recall, lost the 1984 election (in fairness, that bit was probably inevitable), with the most enduring moment of the campaign being his telling Mulroney during the leader's debate that "[he] had no choice" but to make a series of patronage appointments. From 1984 until 1988 he was pretty much a lame duck, being plotted against by forces loyal to Jean Chrétien. During the 1988 election, though, fought on free trade, John Turner belatedly emerged as a leader. He lost then too, of course, but he did it with some measure of self-respect and dignity. I believe that 2008 could be Dion's 1988, and carbon emissions could be his free trade. And I even think that if the gap between the Liberals and the Conservatives is less than, say, twenty seats, he might get another chance. But it's possible that I'm being naive here.<br /><br /><b>Update:</b> Of course, not all the news is good. <a href="http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/columnists/story.html?id=6ba56aa4-303b-48e1-8a25-6ef4941f08b4">Don Martin</a>, inexplicably western Canada's most prominent national pundit, suggests that Dion's performance didn't matter, since only the Conservatives and the Bloc have a chance of winning a majority of Quebec's seats. I'm not sure where he's getting that the Conservatives have a chance at winning a majority of Quebec's seats, but they plainly do not; <a href="http://electionprediction.org">electionprediction.org</a> currently has the absolute best case scenario for the Conservatives as being 21 Quebec seats. Personally, I suspect they'll wind up with as few or fewer than the Liberals. But this is the same Don Martin who went from touting Stockwell Day as the Great Right Hope (from an Alberta base, recall - he had no excuse for ignorance) to complaining that he was all media-pleasing sizzle and no steak, without apparently considering what this said about his own susceptibility to sizzle."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-69012154110086027512008-10-01T20:37:00.001-07:002008-10-01T20:39:06.544-07:00And now for something completely differentDespite the fact that I follow American legislative politics moderately closely, I'm always surprised by how many prominent people I've never heard of. For example, today I was looking at the Senate roll call on the bailout package, and I thought to myself "Who the fuck is Byron Dorgan?" What's more, he's apparently been in office since 1992. Crazy."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-78524725328887664852008-10-01T16:39:00.000-07:002008-10-01T20:58:57.247-07:00Liveblogging the French leaders' debateThis live bloggery is likely a pointless exercise since a. I don't have any readers, least of all readers who are refreshing my blog every five minutes, and b. I don't think many of my readers (many of the zero, that is) will actually be watching the French debate. That said, I don't believe I've ever liveblogged anything before, and I might as well cut my teeth while nobody's watching (normally I excuse myself to the washroom to cut my teeth). Also, in a futile effort to recapture past glories, I'd like to try to put together a faux transcript of the English debate, like I did <a href="http://carlosthejackass.blogspot.com/2006/01/transcript-of-this-evenings-leaders.html">last time</a> (seriously, (re)read that: I'm pretty awesome).<br /><br />In any event, here are a few quick predictions about tonight:<br />1. Dion will win the debate. It won't do him any good.<br />2. Either tonight or tomorrow, Dion will make an ill-advised policy commitment during the debate, since it worked so well for Martin last time. It will probably be tomorrow, but in case it's tonight I want to be on record as having predicted it.<br />3. Jack Layton will come across as a grinning, sanctimonious jackass.<br />4. Elizabeth May will keep things classy.<br />5. Everybody but Harper will mention Afghanistan at every opportunity, which I will find frustrating because it will remind me that the parties with whom I agree on other issues are completely wrong (flippantly so, too) on Afghanistan.<br />6. Harper will hold is ground. In strict terms, he'll probably perform worse than Dion and Duceppe, but it won't affect his seat count much.<br />7. Duceppe will continue the process of saving his essentially anachronistic party for another election. This will cause Dion to breath a sigh of relief.<br /><br />All times are Atlantic time.<br /><br />Anyway, let it begin:<br /><br />8:50 - The stupidity gets started early, as a caller to CPAC's pre-debate coverage asks why immigrants each get $1800 upon arrival in Canada. Also there are kids killing kids in school. Also, somebody (she used the pronoun "they", and I'm not sure who she's referring to) doesn't care about the Canadian people. Quote: "I'm very upset." You don't say, maniac lady.<br /><br />8:58 - I know I'm about a decade behind on this one, but Bernard Lord would have made a fantastic Conservative leader.<br /><br />8:59 - Liberal strategist: "People will pay taxes as long as you provide them services." Also, as long as you have the coercive power of the state requiring them to.<br /><br />9:00 - Okay, debate's about to begin. Switching to the French feed now, as the need for authenticity trumps my need to watch this in a language that I haven't completely lost due to atrophy. Apparently.<br /><br />9:01 - Harper looks like he's ready to kick some ass, and looking forward to the opportunity. Layton looks like a grinning, sanctimonious jackass. Duceppe looks really uncomfortable. Of course, he always does.<br /><br />9:02 - "Thank you to all leaders for courageously agreeing to this debate." Also, in one case, threatening a lawsuit if you weren't included.<br /><br />9:05 - Best line of the night so far to Duceppe: "There are two conflicting visions in this election: Mr. Harper's and Quebec's." Hey, I said "so far" - we're only five minutes in.<br /><br />9:06 - Layton: "Canadians are very worried about the economy." Grinning smugly.<br /><br />9:07 - Question: Are the leaders concerned about their family's retirement savings? I'll vote for whichever party's leader says "No, I've got a fat MP's pension lined up."<br /><br />9:09 - Hmm - the video feed's cut out for me. I still have the sound, but I guess this means the end of my snarky remarks about Layton's facial expression.<br /><br />9:10 - No, it's back. Just in time to see Layton grinning smugly.<br /><br />9:12 - Advantage Harper so far. Layton's been the only opposition leader to get himself any speaking time, and Harper's won those exchanges handily.<br /><br />9:13 - Duceppe accuses Harper of favouring Alberta over Quebec. I'm briefly disgusted with his willingness to fan the flames of regional tension for the sake of political points, but then I remember that that's sort of why he's in politics.<br /><br />9:14 - Elizabeth May speaks French like the Steve Smith of 2008, and the Steve Smith of 2008 isn't winning any French language debates.<br /><br />9:17 - I'm not sure precisely what metric I'm using here, but Harper and Dion both look like Prime Ministers. The others, not so much. And I'm willing to bet a fair bit that Dion won't look like a Prime Minister tomorrow night.<br /><br />9:18 - I missed the explanation of the format, but whatever it is it's working really well. The leaders are the limiting factor on the quality of debate, which is as it should be.<br /><br />9:23 - Dion's plan is to produce more, consuming fewer resources in doing so, and have the whole thing run by super intelligent flying monkeys.<br /><br />9:24 - Man, I hope I'm not using up all my good lines before the mock transcript.<br /><br />9:26 - Layton's beating the low gas prices drum again.<br /><br />9:27 - Dion: "Oil prices went up forty-five cents per litre while Mr. Harper was in power, but I don't have the demagoguery to pretend that it's his fault. It's because there are a whole bunch of Chinese who are starting to drive cars."<br /><br />9:29 - To my surprise, the cheapest dig of the night so far comes from May, when she accuses Harper of stealing his <s>environmental platform</s> sales tax policies (thanks Neil!) from John Howard.<br /><br />9:33 - Dion is on. I suspect he's sugar-coating the price of lowering greenhouse gas emissions (if cutting greenhouse gas emissions increased economic growth in the short run, which is essentially what he's claiming, more governments would be doing it).<br /><br />9:34 - Are you satisfied with the Canadian food inspection system? My guess is the straw poll comes back 80% no.<br /><br />9:35 - Duceppe's doing pretty well too.<br /><br />9:36 - I think I've nailed down the problem with Layton: he's a Ph.D. in political science and a former university professor, but he thinks he's Tommy Douglas. Leaders shouldn't be afraid to be elitist; some of us *want* to be governed by elites.<br /><br />9:37 - The moderator just <i>actually forgot about Dion</i>. Ouch.<br /><br />9:38 - Remember what I said about the format working really well? I take it back.<br /><br />9:40 - Do they not take a break this debate? I have dishes to wash!<br /><br />9:42 - To judge by facial expression, Layton just <i>couldn't be happier</i> about the Harper government's failure to implement Kyoto.<br /><br />9:43 - Okay, I promise: no more cracks about Layton's facial expression until at least 10:30.<br /><br />9:44 - Dion just said "economy of the twenty-first century". No posts for the next few minutes while I dig out a shot glass.<br /><br />9:45 - When Elizabeth May speaks French, she has basically the same inflection as Asian Reporter Trisha Takinawa.<br /><br />9:46 - For anybody who was wondering, my immigrant girlfriend has just advised me that nobody gave her $1800 upon her arrival in Canada.<br /><br />9:48 - Harper hit Dion with the Liberal environmental record, and Dion <i>didn't respond with "You think it's easy to make priorities?"</i> Thank goodness for small miracles.<br /><br />9:49 - Apparently my girlfriend had to <i>pay</i> $1800 to come here.<br /><br />9:50 - $250 was to have a seventy year old man hit her on the knee with a hammer, and then yell at her from across the room to test her hearing.<br /><br />9:51 - Harper seems to be enjoying himself. Dion seems very relaxed for a guy about to become the first Liberal leader since before Laurier to fail to become Prime Minister.<br /><br />9:52 - Apparently the civil service worked very hard on the government's greenhouse gas plan. We certainly wouldn't want to hurt the civil service's feelings by criticizing it. Harper certainly never did anything like that when he was opposition leader.<br /><br />9:53 - The guy asking the question about leadership looks a lot like Mr. Bean. Great question, though ("say something nice about the leader to your left"). I hope to hell all of the candidates give legitimate answers. Least likely to is Layton, on Dion, followed by Harper on Layton. Then Dion on Duceppe.<br /><br />9:55 - Duceppe does well, but he also had it pretty easy. Apparently May is strong on the environment - who knew?<br /><br />9:56 - Layton starts off strong, calling Dion a smart and honest man, but then he goes off about how he (Layton) will be happy to work with the leaders of all parties when he's Prime Minister.<br /><br />9:57 - Harper's speaking about Layton with something approaching genuine affection.<br /><br />9:58 - Dion disappoints - he pulls a Layton, starting with genuine praise for Duceppe's commitment to his cause and willingness to cooperate with his fellow opposition leaders, but then says that he lacks ambition in saying that the Conservatives needed to be held to a minority.<br /><br />9:59 - Man, May can't think of anything nicer to say about Harper than that he's a good father to his children. And he's committed to his beliefs, but behaves like an autocrat. Wow - worst answer of anybody. I didn't call that one.<br /><br />10:01 - Tip to the moderator: asking, in essence, whether it's important to treat your opponents with respect isn't a real question, least of all as a follow up to that last one.<br /><br />10:02 - In answering, Jack Layton quotes Ed Broadbent. May reminisces about Broadbent's last speech. This is sounding increasingly like a eulogy.<br /><br />10:04 - Harper assures us that he doesn't believe in personal attacks. Either he's completely divorced from his party's ad strategy (which is possible - I don't pretend to know how knee-deep party leaders are in this sort of thing) or he has a very narrow definition of personal attacks.<br /><br />10:05 - Dion calls him on it (though he nails Harper on a set of personal attacks that weren't against him, which is probably wise).<br /><br />10:05 - Now Dion and Harper are getting in a shouting match about who's responsible for debasing political discourse in this country.<br /><br />10:06 - Now Duceppe's calling Harper on having called Bloc MPs a waste of salary. Harper's denying it - no idea who's telling the truth here.<br /><br />10:07 - Will the parties entertain the possibility of a coalition? Layton assures us that as Prime Minister he will frequently consult all opposition leaders. He's sort of coming across as playing make believe.<br /><br />10:09 - Did they have to have the gun control question against the backdrop of Dawson College?<br /><br />10:11 - Dion's kicking ass, but he's coming across too much as the most effective opposition leader, when he needs to come across as the Prime Minister in waiting. Not that Layton's attempts at that are working either, mind you.<br /><br />10:12 - Recognizing that Duceppe, as the guy with the narrowest constituency, has in many ways the easiest job, he's still easily the least wishy-washy guy up there. Though I've actually been pleasantly surprised at how little equivocating there's been from anybody - not a Paul Martin in the bunch.<br /><br />10:14 - Duceppe and May are tag-teaming Harper on his ridiculous criminal justice proposals - good on them.<br /><br />10:16 - Moderator: "Mr. Harper, if you're returned with a minority government will you be prepared to make your criminal justice proposals a confidence motion?"<br /><br />10:16 - Harper doesn't want to predict the future.<br /><br />10:17 - Moderator: "Mr. Layton, if a minority government presented this to you as a confidence motion immediately after the election, would you be prepared to defeat the government over it?" Yes.<br /><br />10:18 - Apparently the worst thing Dion can think of about Harper's proposal is that there's no room in the jails for all those fourteen year olds. Weak.<br /><br />10:19 - Layton's French is deteriorating over the course of the debate - weird.<br /><br />10:20 - Duceppe's talking about how, if the Bloc doesn't like a law, it will vote against it. That's a golden opportunity to go after Dion, and he's not. That's not a good sign for the Liberals.<br /><br />10:21 - Question from the public: "Concretely, what does the recognition of the Québécois mean?"<br /><br />10:22 - Harper: The recognition was a good thing, and he thanks Québécois for their enthusiasm.<br /><br />10:23 - Dion: I'm proud to be a member of that nation, and I thank Mr. Harper for involving him in the process of its recognition. Dual identity is a good thing, but my fellow Québécois need to be fully engaged in Canadian affairs.<br /><br />10:24 - May: I'd like to recognize a whole bunch more nations!<br /><br />10:25 - You can probably figure out on your own what Duceppe has to say on the subject. Among other things, he's upset that Québec doesn't have a seat at UNESCO. Hey, dinkwallet: section 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867 - read it.<br /><br />10:26 - Layton: Arts cuts = bad (in my experience, that's how New Democrats talk).<br /><br />10:27 - Apparently when Harper wanted to move the nation motion, he sent Duceppe an inaccurate copy of the resolution. This is interesting.<br /><br />10:28 - Harper doesn't deny it, just accuses Duceppe of denouncing him unfairly for trying to recognize Québécois.<br /><br />10:29 - Dion says Liberals will double the arts budget. In his defense, that's almost the first fistfull of dollar bills he's flung about this debate, but still.<br /><br />10:30 - Layton's still smiling like a jackass.<br /><br />10:31 - Moderator: "Mr. Harper, are artists lazy?" No. Moreover, the Conservatives have apparently increased arts funding.<br /><br />10:32 - The grin momentarily vanishes as he asserts that most Canadian artists live in poverty. This is apparently the most solemn moment of the debate.<br /><br />10:33 - Dion asserts that artists are also important to the economy of the twenty-first century. Shot!<br /><br />10:35 - The moderator accuses the candidates of looking at their watches, but <i>Dion's not wearing one</i>! Comedy!<br /><br />10:39 - Layton's accusing Harper of opting for tax cuts over fixing health care. Somewhat surreally, Harper responds by touting his tax cuts.<br /><br />10:42 - Dion seizes control of the health care section of the debate, by actually proposing a plan (which is throwing money at it, but throwing money at it in a specific way, rather than the general way that Layton's advocated so far).<br /><br />10:43 - Harper blames the provinces for not working with him on health care, and emphasizes that health care is a provincial responsibility (<i>there</i>'s a guy who's read the Constitution Act, 1867!).<br /><br />10:44 - May points out that, division of powers notwithstanding, Harper promised a wait times guarantee last election. She must be a Paul Wells reader.<br /><br />10:45 - Duceppe on health care: the problem "c'est cette attitude de 'Ottawa knows best'".<br /><br />10:46 - Layton to Duceppe: will you protect public health care, or can only the NDP be counted on to do that? As Duceppe attempts to provide a nuanced answer, chaos reigns.<br /><br />10:47 - Question from the public on Afghanistan: why withdraw from Afghanistan in 2011, and how will Canada do so without losing face? Afghanistan hasn't been mentioned until now, blowing away my prediction.<br /><br />10:48 - May: The current mission is ineffective and politically-motivated. A new (and unspecified!) approach is needed.<br /><br />10:48 - Duceppe: The Afghanistan mission isn't properly balanced - too much money on the military, not enough on development. Also, Harper would have put us in Iraq. Then he gives Layton hell for not supporting a Bloc motion to pull troops out in February 2008 (I'm going to have to look into that).<br /><br />10:49 - Layton to Deceppe: "The NDP's the only party with a clear position on Afghanistan, and you know it." This belligerence between the NDP and the Bloc is a new thing (I don't think Layton and Duceppe disagreed on *anything* in 2006's debate). I guess this is what happens when the NDP smells Quebec seats.<br /><br />10:50 - Dion defends the Afghanistan mission pretty eloquently, but says that we need to give our allies notice that it's time for somebody else to put up.<br /><br />10:51 - Moderator: Karzai has said that he wants to negotiate with the Taliban, which has killed many Canadian troops. How does that make you feel?<br /><br />10:52 - Dion: This is a decision for the Afghan government to make. Harper says that he'll pull out in 2011. Harper also said that he wouldn't dissolve Parliament early.<br /><br />10:53 - Based on the Layton grin-o-meter, Canadians dying in Afghanistan is a far more delightful topic than poor artists.<br /><br />10:54 - May: There are problems with the Afghan government, and the mission has exacerbated these. We need to work for peace, and you can't get peace without talking to your enemies.<br /><br />10:55 - Duceppe is the first to bring up the 0.7% of GDP figure for foreign aid, and claims that Canada has actually backslid to 0.27%. This breed terrorism. "If the economy's so strong, Mr. Harper, why are we giving less to international aid?"<br /><br />10:56 - Layton's back to agreeing with Duceppe.<br /><br />10:57 - Dion: "The reason that Mr. Duceppe will never be Prime Minister is what he just said." It turns out that he means Mr. Layton; there's an entirely different set of reasons that Gilles Duceppe will never be Prime Minister.<br /><br />10:57 - Layton to Dion: "The difference between you and me is that when we're going in a bad direction, I'll reverse course. You said that 2009 was the latest withdrawal you'd accept, and then you made a deal with Harper."<br /><br />10:58 - Dion to Layton: "Because Harper hadn't taken the preparations to get us out. I wasn't going to endanger the lives the Canadian troops are protecting before arrangements were made to replace them. That's the difference between you and me."<br /><br />10:59 - Harper: "I find it ironic to hear Mr. Dion speak about respecting international obligations, given his record on Greenhouse gas emissions as environment minister."<br /><br />10:59 - Duceppe and May to Harper: "You opposed him every step of the way, going so far to call Kyoto a socialist plot." This is the best exchange of the night.<br /><br />11:00 - On balance, great debate. Good format. I wouldn't have thought to eliminate opening and closing statements, but I guess there's never really much of substance in there anyway. Dishes now, analysis to follow.<br /><br />11:01 - No, wait - CPAC's about to do an internet poll on who won. I can't miss that for dishes.<br /><br />11:02 - For what it's worth, I'd say in terms of actual performance, it went Dion-Duceppe-Harper-Layton-May, but in terms of good they did to their cause, it would be Duceppe-Harper-Dion-Layton-May. We'll see if CPAC viewers agree.<br /><br />11:03 - This just in: Liberal talking head thinks Dion performed well, and that Harper was on the defensive the whole time. I wonder what the other talking heads will think?<br /><br />11:04 - New Democrat talking head thinks that it was a good debate, but that it would have been better if Harper hadn't been afraid to respond to Layton's questions.<br /><br />11:04 - Ooh, here's the Green guy; let's see if he can claim with a straight face that May won.<br /><br />11:05 - Nope: the environmental focus means that *everybody* won (i.e. not just the leaders). Which is probably fair. But now he's giving May credit for steering the debate towards the environment, which is laughable since i. May didn't steer shit, and ii. the debate was carefully segmented into issue-based sections. He acknowledges that her French was the weakest, though.<br /><br />11:06 - They replaced Bernard Lord with a different Conservative. Didn't catch his name, but he wouldn't have made an awesome Conservative leader.<br /><br />11:07 - Duceppe holds a presser. Was he surprised to agree with Dion on so much? "No, I knew there was a fair bit of agreement on issues between the two of us. Between Harper and me too, actually, though there are major policy differences as well - Harper's out of touch with Quebec on a lot of issues, and the Bloc is the only party that can hold him back from a majority." Good debate, though.<br /><br />11:09 - I can't find the poll on the CPAC site. Can anyone else?<br /><br />11:11 - Duceppe clearly feels good about his performance, so he, at least, seems to agree with my analysis.<br /><br />11:16 - Harper's doing his press conference, and seems to be taking aim mostly at the Liberals. Which is odd, because I don't think there's a single mostly French riding in which the Conservatives and the Liberals are competing hard against each other.<br /><br />11:18 - Dion's turn. He's an entirely different politician in French.<br /><br />11:21 - Trolling the internet for debate coverage, I stumbled across this Elizabeth May quote: "I'm not going to pretend at the end of the next election I'll be prime minister. I'll let Jack do the pretending." Har.<br /><br />11:22 - Okay, I'm pretty sure that last comment no longer qualified as part of a live blog, so I'll wrap this up. Thanks for reading <s>everybody</s> Neil.<br /><br /><b>Update:</b> Shockingly, the <a href="http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/10/01/macleansca-liveblog-canadian-leadership-debate-day-1/">Maclean's liveblog</a> of this thing was better than mine. Check it out.<br /><br /><b>Update:</b> Wells <a href="http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/10/01/post-debate-post-hes-a-man-hes-got-a-plan-notwithstanding-that-eerie-sense-of-deja-vu/">thinks my second prediction came true</a>. Frankly, I don't see it - in Wells's own words, the plan amounts to "hold a lot of meetings", which isn't quite on the order of removing the Notwithstanding Clause from the federal arsenal."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-630114942959263272008-09-17T16:02:00.000-07:002008-09-17T16:05:02.856-07:00Dept. of controversial statements that I don't bother substantiatingOf the four national parties, there are two that are treating voters and opponents as anything approximating adults."Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-39090199060086351022008-08-27T20:14:00.000-07:002009-03-25T11:16:54.268-07:00Dispatches from somewhere in North America II<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Day 3: August 12<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>The highlight of the first part of the day is the shower.<span style=""> </span>I quite enjoy showers at the best of times, when they’re more creature comfort than adventure, but one of the highlights of the Copper King is the weirdest contraption that has ever sprayed water on me.<span style=""> </span>A great skeleton of piping, it has three valves that regulate pressure at various points of the shower.<span style=""> </span>The pipes that surround the showerer are also filled with little pin pricks that spray water (the Copper King’s proprietor warned that if you turned the valves such that all of the water came out of the pin pricks instead of the shower head, it would hurt a great deal and you therefore shouldn’t do it; he was overstating it somewhat).<span style=""> </span>Following the shower and the included breakfast, we took a tour of the Copper King.<span style=""> </span>Our guide was a woman in her twenties who apparently delivered the tour by rote memorization, as evidenced both by her high rate of speech, her total lack of inflection and by her need for cue cards once she forgot the words.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The only sight we specifically wanted to see in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Butte</st1:place></st1:City> was the local brothel, which had been continuously operational until 1982 when the Madam was sent to prison – for tax evasion (the brothel holds some kind of world record on which I’m not quite clear; I believe it’s something like “oldest surviving building originally constructed for use as a brothel”).<span style=""> </span>Entrance to the brothel was free, and we were greeted by a jumble of artifacts including, most notably, an old school and decidedly unerotic-looking vibrator.<span style=""> </span>It’s moderately-interesting, but as long as we’re there we figure we might as well take the tour for a few dollars.<span style=""> </span>We hand our money to the moustached man surveying our move, and ask him when the next tour is.<span style=""> </span>“Right now,” he replies, grabbing a flashlight.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>It turns out this man is Rudy, who is the current owner of the brothel, which he bought after co-leading a movement to save it when it was slated for destruction in the early nineties.<span style=""> </span>This got him a fair bit of media coverage, including an appearance on Jay Leno’s Headlines feature, which features unintentionally humourous headlines, advertisements, and the like.<span style=""> </span>Rudy’s appearance was when the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Butte</st1:place></st1:City> paper ran a feature on the efforts to save the brothel, highlighting the efforts of a former prostitute at the brothel.<span style=""> </span>Under the headline, which was something like “Former call-girl fights to save brothel”, was a picture of Rudy lounging on a bed with eyes that, deliberately or not, look like they’re inviting the viewer to come hither.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>The tour itself is fascinating.<span style=""> </span>Because Rudy has evidently not yet succeeded in securing serious government or other funding to restore the building to its former glory, it looks basically like it did when he acquired the building, just a little cleaned up.<span style=""> </span>The artifacts in the front room are just things he found in the basement, which hadn’t been used for the last years of the brothel’s operation.<span style=""> </span>He’s opened up a room that had been boarded over in the sixties, with a lipsticked cigarette still sitting in the ash tray.<span style=""> </span>The tour was so good, in fact, that it made me question the benefit of restoring some historical buildings.<span style=""> </span>For the rooms that did have to be cleaned up a bit, the last madam – the one imprisoned for tax evasion – was helpful in advising.<span style=""> </span>She’s still alive, but doesn’t come around much anymore due to a recent stroke.<span style=""> </span>I ask Rudy whether the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Pekin</st1:place></st1:City> was originally used as a brothel, but he responds emphatically in the negative.<span style=""> </span>Pity.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>Inexplicably, we decided to eat lunch at another place recommended by the fellow from the Copper King.<span style=""> </span>This one was a mesquite barbecue place and, in contrast to the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Pekin</st1:place></st1:City>, was delicious.<span style=""> </span>I guess the lesson is that you don’t go for Italian food in <st1:City w:st="on">Bangkok</st1:City>, and you don’t go for Chinese food in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:State w:st="on">Montana</st1:State></st1:place>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">We want to get to Yellowstone for the night, but we figure that we can afford some more time in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Butte</st1:place></st1:City>, for which we’ve both developed a great affection.<span style=""> </span>The historical district, where we’re staying, is reputed to have some great antique shops, so we decide to check those out.<span style=""> </span>Catrin pays more attention in these stores than I do, but I note with interest a petition in a store run by two delightful old ladies opposing setting more Montana land aside as wilderness (it complains of a plan initiated by environmental groups and out of state logging companies that is now receiving consideration by Congress).<span style=""> </span>What surprises me is that the petition, in its lengthy preamble, does not attempt to explain what harm the bill would do, satisfying itself with asserting that “we don’t need more wilderness”.<span style=""> </span>As with Albertans, I have some trouble with the contrast between Montanans’ great friendliness and their frequently apparently evil political views.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is regrettably time to leave <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Butte</st1:place></st1:City>, which is, I’m happy to report, more beaut than butt.<span style=""> </span>As we drive out, we see what appears to be a giant statue of the Virgin Mary on the surrounding hillside.<span style=""> </span>This town does not cease to surprise.<o:p><br /></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Not far outside of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Butte</st1:place></st1:City>, we cross the continental divide.<span style=""> </span>I briefly wonder whether a trip from <st1:City w:st="on">Edmonton</st1:City> to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Fredericton</st1:place></st1:City> should include passage over the continental divide, but the scenery is beautiful and I put the thought out of my mind.<span style=""> </span>On the trip south, we allegedly pass through a number of small Montana towns, but I’m noticing that it’s sort of difficult to evaluate on the basis of population density alone what constitutes a town in Montana, which seems to enjoy an evenly-distributed, if sparse, population.<span style=""> </span>We also get lost for the first time and, despite my assurances that I know exactly where we are (<st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Montana</st1:place></st1:State>), I eventually agree to pull into the nearest city to orient ourselves and buy lunch.<span style=""> </span>This turns out to be <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bozeman</st1:place></st1:City>, where we pick up some groceries (including an embarrassing attempt by Catrin to buy “a hundred grams” of smoked turkey breast) and eat them for lunch in the supermarket parking lot.<span style=""> </span>I have eaten some of my favourite meals in supermarket parking lots.<o:p><br /></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The original plan was to camp in Yellowstone, but Catrin’s fear of bears has not abated (especially since, in contrast to Jasper which has never experienced a bear-related human fatality, five people have been killed by bears in <st1:place w:st="on">Yellowstone</st1:place>).<span style=""> </span>She generously offers to sleep in the car again, but I’m pretty sure taking her up on this would make me somehow unchivalrous, so we drive to <st1:place w:st="on">West Yellowstone</st1:place>, just outside the park gate, and look for a room.<span style=""> </span>Despite it being midweek, most places are full, but we eventually find a cabin and RV park that advertises vacancy.<span style=""> </span>I hope that these vacancies are for the cabin and not the RV park.<span style=""> </span>I go to the office to check, but it is locked.<span style=""> </span>As I am looking for another entrance, a dreadlocked tornado emerges from the locked door and invites me in.<o:p><br /></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Sorry,” apologizes the tornado, who introduces herself as the park’s owner, “I lock the door whenever I’m not in the front part of the office.<span style=""> </span>I really should put a sign up.<span style=""> </span>I use a lot of signs.<span style=""> </span>See?”<span style=""> </span>She presents me with a handful of ballpoint on looseleaf signs proclaiming things like “Still asleep – ring bell” and “Back in five minutes”.<span style=""> </span>It emerges that the advertised vacancy exists in both sections of her park – “If it was only for RVs, I’d have put up this sign,” she explains, holding up one that reads “Cabins full”.<span style=""> </span>She then proceeds to identify me as a Canadian based on my accent, and explain, unsolicited, that she lives in <st1:place w:st="on">West Yellowstone</st1:place> because of the snowboarding.<span style=""> </span>I am glad to escape her one-sided conversation and get to the cabin, which is essentially a separated motel room (fortunately, it is priced accordingly).<br /><o:p></o:p><br />Soundtrack:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me</i>, Various (spoken word comedy)<br /><i style="">Neil Young Unplugged</i>, Neil Young<br /><i style="">Has Been</i>, William Shatner</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Day 4: August 13<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We know we are underappreciating <st1:place w:st="on">Yellowstone</st1:place> when we start booing the elk.<span style=""> </span>I feel a little bad about this, since it’s not their fault that they’re elk, but there really comes a point at which you have to put your foot down.<span style=""> </span>We’d be driving through the park and we’d see a grouping of cars pulled over with people with cameras and binoculars looking excitedly at something, and we’d wonder whether it was a grizzly, or even a wolf (which I’ve never seen, though one of the bikers we stayed with at the Copper King said he’d seen one in Yellowstone earlier in the week) and it would just be another damned elk.<span style=""> </span>I really do hate to be a patronizing homer, but visitors to Jasper, even the Japanese tourists, are much more discriminating about what they point excitedly at.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>Truth be told, <st1:place w:st="on">Yellowstone</st1:place>’s a bit of a disappointment.<span style=""> </span>This might be because it couldn’t possibly live up to its advance billing, or it could be because our schedule didn’t allow us to backpack or do any of the other activities that might have allowed us to more fully appreciate the place, but I think that maybe it’s just because Yellowstone is overrated.<span style=""> </span>As noted above, it fell short of its reputation as a hotspot for wildlife viewing (though we did eventually get a good look at a bald eagle, and I also got the closest I’ve ever been to a moose – maybe those of us who grew up near the Rockies have just been spoiled in this regard), and, if we were to rank parks in terms of beauty and majesty, Yellowstone would be well back of both Glacier and Jasper.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>What it does have going for it is geothermal activity, and walking amongst the assorted geysers and boiling pools and bubbling mud pits is, in my view, the only reason for anybody with access to other national parks to bother with <st1:place w:st="on">Yellowstone</st1:place>.<span style=""> </span>One of the interpretive centres we saw included quotes from early explorers about the wonderful nature of the area and about how it needed to be preserved.<span style=""> </span>Somehow, though, I have trouble imagining that this was the early explorers’ dominant reaction.<span style=""> </span>Surely to them the blighted landscape, smell of sulphur, and emerging boiling water must have made the place look like a gate to hell (one child we saw, talking aloud in a world of his own as children sometimes do, offered a pretty nice description of one of the areas as a “crazy alien mud planet”).<span style=""> </span>Towards the end of the day, we also watch an eruption of <st1:place w:st="on">Old Faithful</st1:place>, which is a pretty powerful display of Earth’s power, even though the eruption we saw was apparently a relatively small one.<span style=""> </span>Sitting around with hundreds of other tourists watching steam emerge from a big hole in the ground until, surprisingly suddenly, water starts spewing out dozens of feet in the air is a surreal experience.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>We spend the night at a motel in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Gardner</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">Montana</st1:State></st1:place>, at the north end of the park.<span style=""> </span>We sleep unmolested by bears.<o:p><br /></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>Soundtrack:</p> <ul> <li>Mix CD made for Catrin by a friend of hers after she broke up with her last boyfriend, Various</li> <li><i style="">Real Live</i>, Bob Dylan</li> <li><i style="">XXX</i>, Alice Cooper</li> <li><i style="">Victory Day</i>, Tom Cochrane and Red Rider</li> <li><i style="">XXX</i>, Joan Jett</li> <li><i style="">Hit Parade</i>, Spirit of the West</li> </ul>"Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1254334215164116160.post-58903209684621552902008-08-13T22:54:00.000-07:002008-08-13T23:43:01.497-07:00Dispatches from somewhere in North America I<p class="MsoNormal">As some of you may not know, I'm moving to Fredericton effective September 1, and am taking the scenic route. I intend to chronicle this trip as much as possible on my blog, but time and limited internet access may interfere. Here's the first of what I hope will be quite a few installments.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /><b style="">Day 1: August 10<o:p></o:p></b><o:p> </o:p><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Arguably August 10 is not day 1, since we left Edmonton on August 9, but we spent our first night at friends’ in Calgary, so it felt more like visiting them than it did like starting out on a three week trip across North America, so I’m going to stand by August 10 being the first real day.<span style=""> </span>We started off with a hearty – in the sense of “swimming in grease” – brunch with a few friends, and then set off to the south.<span style=""> </span>After picking up groceries in <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">High</st1:PlaceName> <st1:placetype st="on">River</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> (“home of the Right Honourable Charles Joseph Clark!” I inform an uninterested Catrin), we make a brief stop at Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump, and then set a course for the border.<span style=""> </span>As we approach Cardston, our right window shows fields of wheat against a backdrop of mountains.<span style=""> </span>“Okay,” says Catrin, “where are the cowboys?”<span style=""> </span>“To hell with the cowboys,” I reply, “where’s the cross of St. George?”<span style=""> </span><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The original plan is to stay in <st1:placename st="on">Waterton</st1:PlaceName> <st1:placetype st="on">Lakes</st1:PlaceType> <st1:placetype st="on">National Park</st1:PlaceType> and then cross the border to <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Glacier</st1:PlaceName> <st1:placetype st="on">National Park</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> early the next day.<span style=""> </span>However, we want to drive the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier, and it apparently gets pretty busy, so one of our guidebooks advises us to hit it as early in the morning as we can.<span style=""> </span>Since we have no idea who long crossing the border will take (we’re slightly concerned that the presence of most of our worldly possessions in our car will make it look like we’re planning to stay in the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> for good), we decide to get it out of the way tonight.<span style=""> </span>After a mercifully complication-free crossing, we enter <st1:place st="on"><st1:state st="on">Montana</st1:State></st1:place>, stopping for the night at a campground near St. Mary, just outside the park boundary.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The campground we choose is called Koa Kampground Kabins, though it offers tent sites as well.<span style=""> </span>As I register, I ask the fellow at the desk – a very friendly man, which will fast become a theme in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montana</st1:place></st1:State> – if the KKK thing raises many eyebrows.<span style=""> </span>“Not that I’m aware of,” he answers, “you’re the first one to mention it, at any rate.”<span style=""> </span>My eyebrows are decidedly raised, but the place seems nice enough, and offers an all you can eat pancake breakfast for four dollars, so we stay.<span style=""> </span>It has a hot tub to, in which I partake despite my reservations that this doesn’t really qualify as camping.<o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Later that night, as we lie in our tent, Catrin begins to worry about bears again (she and bears have something of a history since she met one twenty minutes into a backpacking trip on to which I lured her by assuring her that I’d never seen a bear while backpacking).<span style=""> </span>She eventually decides that she wants to sleep in the car, to which I assent with something slightly short of good humour, helping her move her sleeping bag.<span style=""> </span>I should mention here that northern Montana, being directly adjacent to southern Alberta, is really freaking windy, so standing outside in my underwear helping her put her sleeping bag into the car (and to rearrange the car’s contents sufficiently to allow her to recline her seat) isn’t my idea of a good time, and I get back into the tent as soon as possible.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Soundtrack: </p> <ul> <li><i style="">Tom Cochrane and Red Rider, </i>Tom Cochrane and Red Rider</li> <li><i style="">Harvest Moon</i>, Neil Young</li> <li><i style="">Hearts and Bones</i>, Paul Simon</li> <li><i style="">Traveling Wilburys Volume 1, </i>The Traveling Wilburys</li> <li><i style="">The Paul Simon Songbook, </i>Paul Simon</li> <li><i style="">Bridge Over Troubled Waters</i>, Simon & Garfunkel</li> <li><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><i style="">Broken Arrow</i></st1:place></st1:City>, Neil Young and Crazy Horse</li> <li><i style="">Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me</i>, Various (spoken word comedy)</li> </ul> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p><b style="">Day 2: August 11<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><st1:placename st="on">Glacier</st1:PlaceName> <st1:placetype st="on">National Park</st1:PlaceType> is beautiful (this will actually also be a recurring theme about <st1:place st="on"><st1:state st="on">Montana</st1:State></st1:place>).<span style=""> </span>I’m not ready to give it the win over my beloved Jasper, but it’s like a lusher, more deciduous version of <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Alberta</st1:place></st1:State>’s mountain parks.<span style=""> </span>Its designers also showed a little more aesthetic sense when it came to laying down roads, so the drive through the park is truly spectacular.<span style=""> </span>And yet, despite the place’s otherworldly beauty, most people there seem, like us, to be only passing through.<span style=""> </span>We camped next to a group of cyclists going from New Hampshire to Vancouver (they’ve been on the road for six weeks, and expect to be for another two), and during the pancake breakfast (Catrin declines to partake, for some reason) I meet a couple of bikers from Minneapolis who are taking their Harley up to Banff.<span style=""> </span>They’ve visited there before; in fact, several years previously they’d taken their kids through most of western <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>, including a pile of national parks.<span style=""> </span>Their eight year old daughter’s favourite part of the trip was West Edmonton Mall; I die a little inside.<span style=""> </span>We meet a lot of (motor) bikers, actually; I’m at loss for hypotheses as to why this may be.<o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">True to Montana’s libertarian bent (we see three Ron Paul signs while we’re in the state, compared to one for Obama and none for McCain), quite a few of these bikers don’t wear helmets, which strikes me as profoundly dumb (though one such biker, himself from Idaho, tells me that wearing a helmet while riding on the highway is nothing more than the difference between an open casket and a closed one).<span style=""> </span>Hang around in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montana</st1:place></st1:State> for long enough, though, and the libertarianism starts to make some sense; everything’s so perfect there already that it does seem that government couldn’t do anything but screw things up.<span style=""> </span>The highways, though, offer a reminder of the price of this pigheaded independence: there are fatality markers wherever somebody died in a car accident on one of them, and there are a terrifying number.<span style=""> </span>I can’t help but to think that a lot of them were unhelmeted bikers; probably a few more were motorists refusing to wear seatbelts, which are technically mandatory.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Besides the natural beauty and the fatality markers, there are a few more things you notice when driving around <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montana</st1:place></st1:State>.<span style=""> </span>First of all, drivers there have an unnerving (to me, at least) tendency to yield to you when they’re oncoming and you’re trying to make a left turn.<span style=""> </span>That’s the friendliness at work again, I guess, but I’d rather have the certainty of needing to wait for a break in traffic.<span style=""> </span>As well, <st1:state st="on">Montana</st1:State> businesses have a strange habit of replacing the letter C in their business names with either a K or an S, as the situation demands (only a few examples we noticed: Kleaners, <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Kars</st1:place></st1:City>, Senter).<span style=""> </span>Could be some kind of bold libertarian thing, I guess.<o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">After a brief picnic stop at the pristine Swan Lake (this lake is not unique: we passed enough of them that Catrin was reminded of the part of <i style="">Forrest Gump</i> when the title character says “So I went to the White House, <i style="">again</i>, and met the President of the United States, <i style="">again</i>”) Catrin needs a bathroom break.<span style=""> </span>Since we’ll probably have to justify it with a purchase of some kind, we hunt for a café where she can get a coffee.<span style=""> </span>In Drummond, we find the Bull’s End, and decide it’s worth a shot.<span style=""> </span>We walk through the doors and into a stereotype.<span style=""> </span>There are three customers, all of them sitting on stools at the counter: one obese woman in her sixties doing a sodoku, and two old guys in white T-shirts and suspenders saying things like “No doubt about it”.<span style=""> </span>It’s around four in the afternoon by this point, and you get the impression that all three of those customers have been in there for most of the day.<span style=""> </span>After looking at the menu (the “Chef salad” consisted of ham, turkey, two kinds of cheese, tomato, and egg), Catrin gets her coffee and I get a bowl of beef noodle soup.<span style=""> </span>Both are about what you’d expect, but cheaper; in keeping with the time warped feel of the place, the coffee costs seventy-five cents (though Catrin had to order a glass of milk too, since they only had cream).<span style=""> </span>As we walk in, <i style="">Ellen</i> is playing on the TV; despite the state’s conservatism, time and network television wait for no man.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">During a commercial break, some sort of an advocacy commercial comes on:<br />Talk to your children about sex,” is advises.<span style=""> </span>I’m a little surprised that this is a message that is getting play in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montana</st1:place></st1:State>, until the next line is “tell them you want them to wait until they’re married.”<span style=""> </span>This is more what I was expecting.<span style=""> </span>What I was not expecting was the end of the commercial, when the viewer’s attention was directed to a website for more information.<span style=""> </span>It had a .gov domain name.<o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The day’s destination is <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Butte</st1:place></st1:City>, about which I know very little besides that its name can be mispronounced in a childishly amusing manner (Catrin never grows tired of this).<span style=""> </span>It turns out it’s a charming town, smaller than I expected, with a pretty nice core of nineteenth century buildings, harkening back its history as a prosperous mining town.<span style=""> </span>The mine’s still there, re-opened recently as a result of rising commodity prices, but the prosperity has gone into hiding.<span style=""> </span>The streets are empty – we see two dogs before seeing any people on them – and it only gets more dire from there.<span style=""> </span>High on the list of business items in finding a laundromat (while we’ve only been on the road for two days, we haven’t had a chance to wash the clothes we were wearing in the days before our departure), which we do without too much difficulty.<span style=""> </span>This is a typical sized laundromat, I’d say – probably twenty washing machines, and half as many dryers – but well over half of the machines are out of order.<span style=""> </span>Which isn’t really a problem, since we’re the only customers in the place.<span style=""> </span>The walls are covered with photographic portraits of cowboyish or just plain hickish looking men, which I’m informed are the result of the previous owner’s hobby for amateur photography.<span style=""> </span>The current owner is a reserved older guy named Michael.<span style=""> </span>One gets the sense that he will be the last.<span style=""> </span><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Butte</st1:place></st1:City>’s every bit as much of a time warp as the Bull’s End.<span style=""> </span>Its remaining residents are struggling to avoid becoming a ghost town, but not struggling too hard.<span style=""> </span>It occurs to me that as much as it harkens back to a more glorious era, it could also be seen as a glimpse into the future – <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Alberta</st1:place></st1:State> after the oil runs out.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">We’re staying in the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Copper</st1:PlaceName> <st1:placename st="on">King</st1:PlaceName> <st1:placetype st="on">Mansion</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>, built by William Andrews Clark in the late nineteenth century and more recently used as a bed and breakfast.<span style=""> </span>Clark was a <st1:city st="on">Butte</st1:City> copper baron (hence the name of the building) and later a <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> senator.<span style=""> </span>It’s a spectacular building, richly deserving of the title of “mansion” even in an era in which the word is held to a higher standard than it was a hundred years ago, and it’s easy to forget <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Butte</st1:place></st1:City>’s apparently grim present while in it.<span style=""> </span>John, who owns the mansion with his sister (they inherited it from their mother, who bought it from the Catholic church, who bought it from Clark’s son) recommends a few dinner places, and we choose the Pekin, a local Chinese restaurant owned by the same Chinese immigrant family for the last eighty years.<o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">On the way there, we stop by the laundromat to put our clothes in one of the three dryers marked as “good”.<span style=""> </span>It turns out to be mislabeled (at least, I’d say so, on the basis that it doesn’t work – Michael disagrees, assuring me that it is a good dryer: “it makes me money”).<span style=""> </span>When we share our dinner plans, Michael frowns.<span style=""> </span>The <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Pekin</st1:place></st1:City> is “pretty boring,” he warns us, “nobody in this town has much taste.”<span style=""> </span>We take his suggestion of a 24 hour greasy spoon under advisement, but ultimately opt to stick with the <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Pekin</st1:place></st1:City> on the basis of the promised atmosphere.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Pekin</st1:place></st1:City> does deliver a unique atmosphere.<span style=""> </span>All the tables seat four, and each is located in its own salmon-coloured, curtained booth (I hypothesize that the restaurant used to serve as a brothel).<span style=""> </span>A glass of the premium wine goes for $2.75, fifty cents more than the house stuff.<span style=""> </span>As for the food, if I had to describe it in three words those words would be “really fucking awful”.<span style=""> </span>Catrin barely touches hers, though I finish mine on principle alone.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>Since we still have time and hunger, we decide to check out Michael’s recommended greasy spoon (hey, his recommendation about the <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Pekin</st1:place></st1:City> was pretty solid).<span style=""> </span>We sit at the bar, where we enjoy our conversation with the bartender.<span style=""> </span>He’s probably about our age, smaller than me, with more facial hair and fewer teeth.<span style=""> </span>He’s friendly, though, and shares with us a variety of local lore (turns out Even Knievel was from <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Butte</st1:place></st1:City>, and there’s an annual festival honouring him).<span style=""> </span>He also shares a bit of his personal history; he’s trying to escape <st1:city st="on">Butte</st1:City>, and worked across the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> for a pipeline company for a while.<span style=""> </span>He can’t go back to that kind of work, though.<span style=""> </span>Why not?<span style=""> </span>“I got shot.”<span style=""> </span>Um, any context to that?<span style=""> </span>“It was over a girl.”<span style=""> </span>Right here in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Butte</st1:place></st1:City>?<span style=""> </span>“Yeah.<span style=""> </span>He got me four times, in the arm and the ankle.<span style=""> </span>He was a lousy shot.”<o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The greasy spoon itself, the M&M, has something of a history – the bartender says it’s been visited by 22 American presidents.<span style=""> </span>I try to calculate how far back this would take it, but only get to thirteen before I forget who preceded Herbert Hoover.<span style=""> </span>In any event, 22 sounds unlikely.<span style=""> </span>“How long has it been around?”<span style=""> </span>I ask.<span style=""> </span>“Since 1819,” he replies.<span style=""> </span>22 begins to sound less unlikely a figure.<span style=""> </span>Today, the M&M is decked out with a lot of Barack Obama gear.<span style=""> </span>This seems odd to me, since I know <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montana</st1:place></st1:State>’s a red state, and the M&M doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of place that bucks the trend.<span style=""> </span>“Is this a Democratic bar?” I ask, gesturing at the Obama paraphernalia.<span style=""> </span>“No, it’s just that Obama visited us a couple of times during the primary season.”<span style=""> </span>Indeed, there’s a picture on the wall of Obama sitting at this very bar that I’d have noticed if I was more observant.<span style=""> </span>22 is sounding more plausible all the time.<span style=""> </span>“Do you think Obama has a chance of winning <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montana</st1:place></st1:State>?”<span style=""> </span>I ask.<span style=""> </span>“Oh, he’s got <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montana</st1:place></st1:State>.<span style=""> </span><st1:city st="on">Butte</st1:City>, <st1:state st="on">Montana</st1:State> – “ <st1:city st="on">Butte</st1:City>’s residents seem to prefer to include the state’s name when mentioning their town, presumably to distinguish it from smaller communities in <st1:state st="on">Alaska</st1:State> and <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Nebraska</st1:place></st1:State> “ – isn’t a Democratic town at all, but everyone I talk to is voting Obama.”<span style=""> </span>This strikes me as unlikely, since the polls are showing that this is a close race, and a race in which the Democrat wins <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montana</st1:place></st1:State> is, almost by definition, not a close race.<span style=""> </span>Still, it will be interesting to watch.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Soundtrack:</p> <ul> <li><i style="">Beautiful Freak</i>, The Eels</li> <li><i style="">Left and Leaving</i>, The weakerthans</li> <li><i style="">mix CD made for Catrin by a friend, </i>The weakerthans</li> <li><i style="">Pinkerton</i>, Weezer</li> <li><i style="">Mirrorball</i>, Neil Young (with <st1:place st="on">Pearl</st1:place> Jam)</li> <li><i style="">The Millennium Collection</i>, Aerosmith</li> <li><i style="">Hawks and Doves</i>, Neil Young</li> <li><st1:place st="on"><i style="">Graceland</i></st1:place>, Paul Simon</li> <li><i style="">Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me</i>, Various (spoken word comedy)</li> </ul>"Steve Smith"http://www.blogger.com/profile/00619594380611546733noreply@blogger.com4