The Tucson massacre that left six dead and 14 injured, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, brought into sharp public focus the local sheriff, Clarence Dupnik. He's been the sheriff of Pima County, which includes Tucson, Arizona's second-largest city, for 30 years. For the 20 years before that, he was a police officer. Dupnik has gained attention this week for linking the shooting to the vitriolic political climate in the U.S., and in particular, Arizona.

Speaking at a press conference shortly after the shooting, Sheriff Dupnik said: "The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

While denouncing suicide bombers is the bread and butter of U.S. politics, there was barely a murmur of outrage last February when a suicide bomber flew a plane into a Texas office building, killing one office worker and injuring 13 others.

The extraordinarily muted response can only be explained by the fact that the suicide bomber, Joe Stack, had made it clear his anger was directed against U.S. tax authorities -- an anger shared by many powerful interests on the right.

A sizable number of Toronto electors are preparing to vote for Rob Ford, an anti-government mayoralty candidate, carrying a populist message. Calgary has its own right-wing tribune seeking the mayor's chair. It is standard media practice to talk about the cynical attitude of Canadian voters, the anger at government, and how people have a sneer in their voice when referring to people seeking public office. Playing up distrust of elites is what the Stephen Harper Conservatives do regularly, and their backroom operatives expect voters to buy what they are selling.

About this dismal business of federal politics. The way I figure it, we're waiting for the Harper government to finally shoot itself in the head after shooting itself in the foot roughly every three months. We're also waiting for the Opposition Liberal party, which is already dead on the floor, to show signs of life.

My guess is it's pretty easy to arrange lunch with the Prime Minister. No doubt Stephen Harper often lunches with labour leaders and advocates for the homeless.

So it should be considered no big deal that, among those the PM has lunched with, is U.S. media billionaire Rupert Murdoch, who has probably done more than any single individual in recent years to push American politics sharply to the right.

It's interesting to imagine, however, why our Prime Minister would want to meet with Murdoch, whose Fox News TV channel has poisoned U.S. political debate and nurtured America's extremist right-wing Tea Party movement.

British Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown has come out in favour of a global financial transactions tax. Speaking Saturday in Edinburgh (his home base) to a G20 Finance Ministers meeting on the subject of bank bailouts Brown said "it cannot be acceptable that the benefits of success in this sector are reaped by the few but the costs of its failure are borne by all of us."