Segacs’s World I Know

The Habs opened the regular season tonight with a 2-1 shootout loss against Buffalo.

Lang played a great game. Tanguay, not so much. Kovy is hogging the puck again, but it’s definitely the Kovy of 07-08 and not of 06-07 on the ice. Captain K, Pleks and AK all look good. Breezer is back to his cringe-worthy self. Markov doesn’t look too comfortable in his new role yet. Lapierre, wtf was up with Lapierre? And as a team, these guys are still getting used to playing on lines together. A lot of missed passes, blueline confusion, the usual stuff for the start of a season. And very nearly a photo finish. But in the end, it wasn’t enough.

And Price. Price, Price, Price. Yeah, so he lost the shootout, but the kid still made 35 saves tonight, and looked really sharp doing it. The kid’s the real deal. He’ll improve on shootouts with practice.

All in all, we looked pretty damn good out there. We came away with a point, and we’ll build on it. Bring on the Leafs!

Well, it was lively and even funny at times. That’s all I can really say about the debate format that provided more of a chance for attack zingers than real reasoned debate. Still, I guess it made for good TV, since we were all glued to the screen for a couple of hours – the longest I’ve watched the CBC for in a while. My initial impressions:

• Stephen Harper seemed surprisingly nervous. Though his calm tone of voice contrasted well with the others, as it did two years ago, and he had the advantage of incumbancy, his positions lacked the moral clarity that they used to hold. He seemed almost wishy-washy, and he got backed into several embarrassing corners, namely on Iraq, on arts funding, and on a promise not to raise taxes that will surely come back to haunt him. He seemed rattled by May’s presence, and his showing was surprisingly poor, especially compared to expectations. I can respect someone whose views I don’t necessarily agree with, but it’s hard to respect someone who doesn’t show the courage to have those views. He missed chances to take the stance of the right on issues such as foreign policy. But then, he also had a horribly biased moderator (I mean, what kind of question is “do you think Harper is a barbarian?”). And ultimately, he can be declared the winner if only because he won the portion on the #1 voting issue, that being the economy. The rest probably won’t matter much. Still, I was surprised to see him looking so shaky.
• Stephane Dion is obviously the worst debator of the group, and had the worst showing tonight by far. His debate style mirrors the problem plaguing his election campaign: He lacks charisma, leadership ability, and the confidence to get his ideas across. I did like that he talked about standing up for what it means to be Canadian, believing in our accomplishments, and regaining our place in the world. And I also believe that he has better ideas than his debate skills would seem to indicate. But there’s no doubt that he needed to do a whole lot better than he did in order to have any chance of picking up votes tonight. This was a missed opportunity for Dion.
• Jack Layton accomplished something I didn’t think possible: he managed to make me hate him even more than I already do. I will give him points for consistency, mind you. He consistently managed to take the exact views I disagree with each and every time. Quite the achievement. Seriously, though, he was the only candidate who actually managed to get across what he stood for, rather than just spending all of his time attacking the others, and he deserves some grudging praise for that. I still can’t stand his used car salesman smile, his annoying little moustache, and his habit of saying “Exxon” in every second breath.
• Gilles Duceppe had nothing to gain or lose in this debate. He didn’t make nearly as strong a showing as he did in the English debate in the last election, mind you. As expected, he talked a lot about the province’s rights, and issues important to Quebec. He also scored the most points on the arts funding issue and – surprisingly – did a better job of defending environmental rights than either Dion or May. He had one of the best lines of the debate, when asked what he would do first if elected Prime Minister, he glibly said that he won’t ever be PM… and neither will three other people at the table. But mostly, he seemed tacked on, since he didn’t really answer any of the questions with a real policy answer.
• Elizabeth May was impressive. Period. She’s obviously a skilled debator and, though her style seems vaguely reminiscent of our neighbours south of the border, she scored a lot of clear zingers. I disagree with her on a lot of issues, but she did the best in terms of being prepared with statistics, facts and researched answers. She scored a lot of points that way, and she rattled Harper’s cage more than once. Where I felt she missed an opportunity, though, was in getting her party’s message across. The Green Party platform is all about how every other issue is related to the environment and cleaner, healthier, better living. May’s debate style lended itself well to the format, but she scored more points on attack than on ideology. Since people voting Green are mostly doing it out of ideological reasons, I felt she could have been clearer on what she stood for. Still, I think a lot of heads were turned by her showing in this debate. And she certainly had a right to be there, probably even more of a right than Duceppe.

Overall, the debate won’t lead me to change my vote, but then, I wasn’t really on the fence. For undecided voters, I suspect that Dion will have lost ground, Layton might have gained some among people who actually agree with him (read: not moi), and May probably picked up some points. What this will mean for Harper’s chances at a majority, though, is anyone’s guess.

And no, I didn’t watch the US vice-presidential debate.

As I watch the US presidential campaign unfold, it’s easy to feel a bit smug. Our election issues are – on the whole – pretty boring, mostly because things are – on the whole – pretty good here. Not to discount the importance of Arctic sovereignty or softwood lumber tariffs or anything. But compared to some of the issues before Americans, our elections are downright tame.

Here are the top 5 issues being hotly debated south of the border that are thankfully not really on the radar screen in our election:

1. The war in Iraq. Because, well, we’re not actually fighting in it. The war in Afghanistan is, of course, an issue here, but it’s not nearly as divisive as Iraq is for Americans.
2. Terrorism and national security. Canadians are just plain less worried about this issue than Americans are, no matter what side of it they are on. Whether it’s because we’re more rational or more naive, the fact is that most Canadians don’t really believe that there is an imminent threat of terrorism, and the issue really isn’t showing up in our election discourse.
3. Gay marriage. It’s been legal nationwide since 2005. Since then, thousands of same-sex couples have tied the knot in Canada, our wedding industry has benefited from an influx of marriage “tourists” from the US, and everyone else basically yawned and went on with their lives. Even Stephen Harper isn’t bothering to rehash the issue in this campaign, recognizing the futility of beating a dead horse.
4. Abortion. Yeah, there have been a few rumbles, which have mostly consisted of scare-tactics by the Duceppe camp against Harper – who has stated that he has no plans to re-open the issue. As explosive as the issue is in the US election, here, it’s basically a non-issue, just as it has been in virtually every Canadian election campaign since the 1970s.
5. What our candidates look like. While Americans choose between their first-ever African-American president and their first-ever female VP, us Canadians have an election that’s about the candidates’ politics and not about their skin colour or background. Of course, that’s because they’re all a bunch of white guys (except for Elizabeth May). But I suspect that even if our PM candidates were a bit more representative of the country, we’d still manage to talk less about their skin colour or gender than the Americans do. Besides, Kim Campbell won’t exactly go down in history as a great Canadian leader, but I’d still rather have her than Sarah Palin any day.

The economy is, without a doubt, the #1 voting issue for both Americans and Canadians. As it should be. Polls have shown that the other top election issues for Canadians are healthcare, the environment and poverty. We can hopefully expect these issues to dominate tonight’s debate, and the above issues to hardly rate a mention.

Sometimes, it’s good to be Canadian.

The great debate isn’t between Obama and McCain, or between Biden and Palin, or between Harper, Dion, Layton, Duceppe and May. No, it’s over which debate to watch tonight on TV: the Canadian English PM debate, or the US vice-presidential debate.

The Canadian debate is obviously more relevant to us as Canadians. But for sheer entertainment value alone, the US VP debate is likely to be much more exciting. Start exercising that channel flipping thumb; you may need it.

You’ve heard of Rock the Vote? Now we have a movement targeted at a slightly different demographic.

Sarah Silverman’s The Great Schlep is a movement to encourage Jewish (and other) Americans to travel to Florida to visit their grandparents and encourage them to vote for Barack Obama:

(Warning: NSFW).

My New Year’s Resolutions for 5769 are:

1. Walk to (and from) work. See the post below. This one’s an easy resolution to make now, and might be tougher to stick to when the minus-30 weather begins, but I’m certainly going to try to stick to it!
2. Pack my lunch. I’ve lapsed into laziness, and the cost of buying lunch several times a week is adding up fast. Bringing lunch is cheaper and healthier; eating out should be for special occasions only.
3. Eat healthier. Kinda follows logically from #2, but also includes a clause against sitting in front of the TV eating chocolate chips out of the package. (Yes, okay, we all know I’m a chocoholic!)
4. Improve my Spanish from Sesame Street-level to semi-conversational. The Coffee Break Spanish podcast is awesome.
5. Find a new volunteer project. I haven’t been involved in a good project in a while, and it’s time.

I usually end up not keeping new year’s resolutions. But this time, maybe by making them in September instead of December, it’ll be a better time of year to kick off new habits. It’s all about baby steps, anyway, not big leaps.

Shana Tova, everyone!

Q: If a cyclist going the wrong way on a one-way street collides with a jaywalking pedestrian, who is at fault?

Ruti at Ki Yachol Nuchal has a great post filled with anecdotes of random acts of kindness that fly in the face of the stereotype of the “rude Israeli”.

My favourite: “A teenager’s wallet disappears. Nine months later, it is returned, with ID and 100 shekels intact. Exactly as he lost it.”

Almost the exact same thing happened to my sister when she traveled to Israel a number of years ago. She’d accidentally left/lost her purse somewhere. It was returned intact, with a note, by international parcel mail, almost a year later. Everything was still there, including the contents of her wallet.

Yes, random acts of kindness do exist. Pay it forward.

(Via Meryl’s coverage of the latest Havelil Havalim.)

This one’s a real doozy: EU worried about freedom of religion in Iran.

Every joke I could make here would be just too easy, so I’ll let it speak for itself.