Quotes from Neil Macdonald

In the U.S. - yes, sorry, the U.S. - surgeons and doctors usually give you their cell phone numbers, and tell you to call anytime if anything goes wrong. They often call to follow up after a visit, or go over test results. They have email.

Any reporter who's ever covered the Middle East can tell you about the Arab leader photo op. It is one of the most curious acts of solipsism ever invented. The beloved leader-for-life, a king or a president, always a man, appears on some hideous filigreed-and-gilded couch or chair, chatting with an important visitor.

I am grateful to hockey. As a CBC employee, I would be foolish not to be. Hockey Night in Canada probably pays a good chunk of my salary.

So America's president now says most Jewish American voters are either ignorant or disloyal. It's such a dreadful thing to say, so heavy with historical hatred and violence, that it's utterly unsurprising in U.S. President Donald Trump's mouth. And his supporters nod and say he's right.

Trump eventually slurs anyone who inconveniences him, and the plain, measurable fact is that a large majority of Jewish American voters continue to vote Democrat.

Trump cannot be re-elected without the votes of evangelical Christians, a group of people who, because of their heated eschatological dreams, are simultaneously capable of blindly supporting Israel and regarding American Jews with suspicion.

Like Donald Trump, Trudeau is in high office because of how the system groups and allocates votes. No wonder the Liberals broke their 2015 promise to reform the system and bring in proportional representation.

It's a lovely thing to see intelligent argument, unbending principle and policy go up against demagoguery, nativism and vulgar name-calling.

Canada has treated abortion as just another medical procedure since 1988, when the Supreme Court struck down the old criminal law. Most Canadians seem to think that's fine.

I do not hear any plan for sheltering Canadians from the next global financial crisis, which is coming for all of us as surely as arthritis is stalking the boomers.

Moderation is regarded by the Republican base with suspicion.

Yes, American medicine has its pathologies, but Canada's does, too, and we need to wake up. Government controls everything here, and governments only pay attention to polls at election time, not to angry patients.

The fact is, no modern president, Democrat or Republican, has shown the level of contempt for taking questions from the media that Stephen Harper has demonstrated.

Maybe the Tea Party dream is coming true, and the next Republican presidential nominee will be a blunt-object, red-meat down-the-line rightie.

People who don't own dogs can stay out as late as they please, or drive off on a whim for the weekend, and go on holiday as long as they like, whenever they like, without arranging a kennel, then feeling guilty about arranging a kennel, and then spending even more money to have someone stay in the house and dogsit.

Politicians pose and grip and grin, and mouth blandishments, and, like the beloved Arab leaders, are careful to say nothing. The prime photo op directive, it seems, is to say absolutely nothing.

The fact is, American law encourages whistleblowers and, often, they go down in history as courageous people of principle who made their country better.

I have an aunt named Ida. She's the widow of my late Uncle Basil, nearly 100 years old, and very religious, and has managed to live her extremely long and virtuous life out of the pitiless public spotlight.

For a journalist working in Gaza or the Occupied Territories, a PRESS badge offers limited protection at best. For a Palestinian journalist, it clearly offers none at all.

As stupid as it might sound, older people everywhere would probably be better off if they'd abandoned prudence and borrowed more. That is obviously not what the central bankers or our political leaders want. But that's the situation they've created.

People are told in their churches to vote Republican. I've heard pastors say it from the evangelical pulpit. Congregants are actually told that lower taxes and less government is the Christian way.

Governments, many of them European, are actually offering - and investors are buying - bonds that are worth less at the end of five or 10 or even 30 years than their purchase price.

It's almost ironic sitting here watching stories about Norm's courageous 'battle' with cancer. He actually did a bit on stage about how stupid that is. What battle? It's your own body. Is it a win or lose thing?

Canada needs to be flood-proofed, and somebody has to pay for it. Yes, there are other threats, too - fire, hail, wind, snow load, permafrost loss and shoreline erosion will all cost a great deal of money to remediate - but flooding is the big, urgent one.