Barrel Strength

For a man who is descended from ministers to two Tsars, Ignatieff seems to have forgotten a key element of the old family gameplan: a summer mobilization when your enemy has no need of a dicey Schlieffen plan is itself fraught with potential disaster. And does he think his last flirtation with a Triple Entente will be any more successful?

True, this time the war will be over by Christmas but the Russian nobility may be pulled down by the Reds much sooner than the last time around.

Fundamental to a functioning democracy is an educated and informed electorate.  The last US presidential election exemplified a gullible electorate that was unable to think independently or logically.  Well the “stupid American” can take a rest now and make room for the dumb Japanese.

Wife of Japan’s Prime Minister-elect claims that she was once abducted by aliens and has been to the planet Venus.  She also knew Tom Cruise very well – in his previous incarnation when he was Japanese.

There was a time when views like that got you locked up with a lifetime supply of lithium pills, but these days it is just an alternative point of view.  In 1972 the world was like this: “Subsequently, the paper published an attack on the character of Muskie’s wife Jane, reporting that she drank and used off-color language during the campaign. Muskie made an emotional defense of his wife in a speech outside the newspaper’s offices during a snowstorm. Though Muskie later stated that what had appeared to the press as tears were actually melted snowflakes, the press reported that Muskie broke down and cried, shattering the candidate’s image as calm and reasoned.”