You can't always get what you want

Conservatives find out they can't use a private members bill to backdoor a retroactive tax on union members unless Parliament approves it first.
Of course, they might still get Parliament to approve it -- after all, the Harper Conservatives do have the endorsement of almost four in ten Canadians, AKA the most massive and overwhelming mandate EVAH!

But at least they would have to admit up front that imposing gratuitous mandatory financial reporting requirements on labour unions is the kind of ideological claptrap that might well result in thousands of people getting charged hundreds of dollars in retroactive taxes.

Great line of the day

Gene Weingarten writes about online journalism and how it makes its money with goofy cat pictures:

“Who, What, When, Where and Why” has now been overtaken by “Huh?”

Would it be wrong to speculate?

Stephen Maher asks why nobody seems to be covering a possible influence-peddling scandal with connections to Harper and the PMO.
Well, perhaps it's because even in his own story, he doesn't get to the point about speculating on possible PMO influence-peddling until paragraph 13. There's all sorts of other juicy stuff in the story, too, about vacations on yachts, jobs with connected construction companies, Revenue Canada officials fired after tax evasion prosecutions, and so on. The PM and his PMO have some 'splainin to do, I think.
And with all the trashing of the CBC that we are hearing from the Harper Conservatives lately, it makes me speculate about what explosive and scandalous news stories Radio Canada just might be working on these days...

Halloween lights

Halloween is the only kids holiday, and in general I think adults should stay out of it and let the kids do it.
But this light show is worth watching.

Ridiculous

Sorry, but regardless of what some professors say and what Quebecor thinks, Toronto mayor Rob Ford looked ridiculous running away from Mary Walsh.

Occupy the wind

From Occupy Saskatoon

Prediction

If the NDP select Brian Topp as their new leader, they will regret it.

This man may be a nice guy and a comfortable supporter of the party status quo who won't challenge or confront other NDP leaders. But he is simply not ready to be the Leader of the Opposition.
Here's his latest blistering attack against Conservatives:

"I think their fiscal policies are feckless. And it is time to say so."

Wow. A real Elmer Fudd moment.
Harper and the Cons will eat him alive.

Doesn't anybody here know how to play this game?

Sorry for the lack of posts -- I had some surgery last week to take an old plate off my fibula, and have been recovering since.
I'm still following the news though -- has anyone noticed how politicians don't seem to understand the meaning of the language they are using anymore?

First there was Herman Cain calling himself "pro-life" because he supports personal choice in abortion? Huh?
Then Lisa Raitt seems to think "the economy" should be considered an "essential service" under the labour code -- she might as well just outlaw strikes completely and make it easier for everyone to understand the new power dynamics.
And the Conservatives seem to have confused an election with a wheat board plebiscite.

Around 2020, when the Port of Churchill has collapsed and nobody is growing Durham wheat anymore and farm income has dropped, we'll be hearing people wonder why they ever thought it was such a good idea to get rid of the Wheat Board.

Petty and pointless

How petty and mean are Canadian politics getting these days?
The NDP accused Conservative labour minister Lisa Raitt and her chief of staff of getting free upgrades on Air Canada flights when she was deciding whether to stop the flight attendant strike -- and now the Cons and Air Canada management in turn leak the supposedly scandalous news that Olivia Chow also maybe got an upgrade to fly from Toronto to Ottawa for Jack Layton's lying in state before his funeral.
Olivia Chow was a grieving widow at the time and had no role in deciding whether or not to prevent the Air Canada strike but other than that, completely the same of course.

#OccupySaskatoon photos

I couldn't attend due to some surgery on Thursday, but these are from a Saskatoon attendee, Jay Hall's Twitter account - he says, This is what democracy looks like:

Choosing your side

I wrote several years ago that we usually don't get to choose our battles, we only get to choose our side.
Now that the Occupy movement is spreading, and crackdowns are increasingly likely, Montreal Simon says its time to decide. He quotes Truthdig's Chris Hedges:

There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.

I have a right to live without hate

The Ottawa Citizen says:

"The arguments of homophobes are easy enough to demolish in the open, using facts and sense. There's no need to drive such arguments underground. Expose them to the light and they wither."

A noble sentiment, but not true.

The "arguments of homophobes" have been blasted across North America for at least 60 of the last 75 years; they"withered" when civil laws against hate speech gave people enough leverage to shut up the most egregious hate-mongers.

Think whatever you like, but why should I have to see and read and cringe and confront any homophobic, anti-Semitic, sexist or racist crap shoved into my mailbox, or handed to me on the street, or broadcast on radio or TV or the Internet?

I don't need it, our society doesn't need it.

People have a right to live without hate.

The Village has spoken

Ron Paul: Eyebrowgate, Or Just Kill Me Now:

"we can’t have a man in the White House who wears fake eyebrows, and poor ones at that"

Romney the dog-sh*tterer will win the Republican nomination by a hair, I guess.

What's that smell?

Everything Rupert Murdoch touches turns into sh*t:

the [Wall Street] Journal had been channelling money through European companies in order to secretly buy thousands of copies of its own paper at a knock-down rate, misleading readers and advertisers about the Journal's true circulation.
The bizarre scheme included a formal, written contract in which the Journal persuaded one company to co-operate by agreeing to publish articles that promoted its activities . . . the scam was promoted by Andrew Langhoff, the European managing director of the Journal's parent company, Dow Jones and Co, which was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in July 2007 . . . Senior executives in New York, including Murdoch's right-hand man, Les Hinton, were alerted to the problems last year by an internal whistleblower and apparently chose to take no action. The whistleblower was then made redundant.

Lese-majeste

The Globe and Mail reports on the implications of the Insite decision :

The Insite ruling forged a new means to strike down laws if there is scientific or statistical evidence showing that a regulation worsened the danger that an individual or group faces.

It's not so outrageous, really -- in democratic theory, we elect our government because we don't want arbitrary, stupid, ideological laws and, if such laws are passed, then we have courts to strike them down.
But the tone of this article, framed with the right-wing "activist judges"epithet, makes it clear that the Harper government is simply furious. The Canadian Supreme Court dared to tell Harper that his laws should not be "arbitrary" or "grossly disproportionate" -- how dare they!