Expansion depends on capturing and using transient energy. The more different means a system possesses for recapturing, using, and passing around energy before its discharge from the system, the larger are the cumulative consequences of the energy it receives.
– The Nature of Economies, p. 47
“…we’d love to run against pretty much any of [the Liberal leadership candidates]. I can’ see Gerard Kennedy or Michael Ignatieff or Bob Rae or Stephane Dion — all smart, decent people — selling with a forty-yeard-old plumber in Peterborough who makes forty grand. The spectrum o ffirst-tier leadership candidates there reads like the perfect list of attendees at a cocktail party in gthe Annex or Cabbagetown. It’s not Main Street. It’s not the kind of slate that can connect with a broad middle-class constituency.
We were joking this morning. What’s Ignatieff’s wife’s name again? [Ignatieff is married to Zsuzsanna] Exactly. So in the next election it’s Steve and Laureen vs. Count Michael and What’s-Her-Name. It’s almost a dream for us.”
– Jason Kenney, parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, quoted in Right Side Up, by Paul Wells, p. 265
“…critics say the automated calls are a twist on push polls — a campaign tactic that is often criticized as deceptive because it involves calling potential voters under the guise of measuring public opinion, while the real intent is to change opinions with questions that push people in one direction or the other.
The calls have set off a furor in the closing days of a campaign in which control of Congress hinges on a handful of races.
Late last week, Representative Benjamin L. Cardin, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Maryland, demanded a halt to the calls, saying “this sort of gutter politics” was distorting his record. Some political analysts said the practice could mislead voters and discourage them from taking calls from more objective pollsters . ..”
– Christopher Drew, “New Telemarketing Ploy Steers Voters on Republican Path”, New York Times, Nov. 6, 2006
“The right wing in America likes to think that the United States government was, at its inception, highly religious, specifically highly Christian, and even more specifically highly biblical. That was not true of that government or any later government—until 2000, when the fiction of the past became the reality of the present … Bush promised his evangelical followers faith-based social services, which he called “compassionate conservatism.” He went beyond that to give them a faith-based war, faith-based law enforcement, faith-based education, faith-based medicine, and faith-based science.”
– Garry Wills, “A Country Ruled by Faith”, in The New York Review of Books, Nov. 16, 2006
“In recent years, a continent born of immigrants — 1.75 million during Queen Victoria’s reign alone — has effectively redefined itself as the most excluding nation in the world toward refugees and asylum seekers. Its immigration policies in the last five years have become the envy of those in the West who see in all but the but the most restrictive laws the specter of terrorism and social anarchy. No other country, in fact, not even the United States in the wake of September 11, has treated those fleeing persecution with such callousness.”
– Caroline Moorehead, “Amnesia in Australia”, in The New York Review of Books, NOv 16, 2006
“…importantly, the [Strategic Advisory Team-Afghanistan] initiative is explicit recognition that the character of armed conflict has undergone a major transformation since the end of the Cold War and that traditional concepts for the use of armed force are insufficient to establish a lasting peace.”
– Col. Mike Capstick, “A Year in Kabul: Strategic Advisory Team – Afghanistan”, On Track, Autumn 2006, p. 14
“Canadians spend $343 apiece on the most important role of any society – defending itself, and advancing its citizens’ interests abroad. The Dutch, who aren’t exactly known as warmongers, spend $658. The Australians spend $648. The British spend $903. We need to get our military spending to 2 percent of GDP (it has hovered around 1 per cent for decades) to protect our citizens at home and fulfill our military obligations abroad. Otherwise we will remain trapped in our lack of capacity when emergencies arise.”
– Senator Colin Kenny, “Canada’s Military Fix: The Illusion and the Reality” in On Track, Autumn 2006, p. 7
National prestige is diplomatic capital; the more unpopular America becomes, the higher the price of foreign support. Mark Malloch Brown, the UN’s deputy secretary-general, recently said that suspicion of the United States has grown to the point where “many otherwise quite moderate countries” are inclined to oppose anything we favor.
– Jonathan Rauch in “Unwinding Bush: How long will it take to fix his mistakes?” in The Atlantic, October 2006
…the conventional wisdom [is] the structure of ideas that is based on acceptability . . .
–The Affluent Society (4th Edition), p. 16
Keynes, in his most famous observation, noted that we are ruled by ideas and by very little else. In the immediate sense, this is true. And he was right in attributing the importance to ideas as opposed to the simple influence of pecuniary vested interest. But the rule of ideas is only powerful in a world that does not change. Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but, as I may note once more, to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.
–The Affluent Society, 4th Edition, p. 17