Justice with mercy

I am glad that Guy Lafleur is not going to jail.

Great line of the day

This is a line, not for just a day, but for the ages.
This was said by Japan's central bank and has been quoted solemnly on dozens of financial news sites without any sign that anyone thought it was a funny way to describe good news, or sorta good news, or not bad news really, or not as bad news as it could have been, or .... oh, whatever:

economic conditions, after deteriorating significantly, have begun to stop worsening.

Well, that's a relief isn't it?
(H/T to a commenter on Calculated Risk.)

A committee?

Was that the best you could do for unemployed Canadians, Iggy?
Call it a "blue ribbon panel" if you like, but its just a fucking committee.

Here's a suggestion

A Montreal woman has the same name and birthdate as a criminal and apparently its up to her, rather than to the Canadian government or the border guard agency, to do something about it:

Ménard says a police officer suggested she change her name to avoid future confusion.

So what would they think if she changed it to Josee Vermer?
Or how about Lisa Raitt?
Rona Ambrose?
Would anybody with those names be handcuffed at the border?

I love the internets

Yesterday was World Naked Bike Ride day

Intelligent design

From Effect Measure

Great line of the day

BCer on whether Iggy should go ahead and force an election now:

It looks like the Blue Jays have come back down to Earth, and like most average Canadians I don't have a cottage, so I say let's go.

Shorter

Shorter Pat Buchanan:

If a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx actually got to Princeton and Yale on merit then she would have to be smarter than just about every white man in America including me, and how could that be?

Buchanan is finished -- nobody cares anymore what racist drivel he is spouting.

Thanks

There's a great scene in The Great Escape where Steve McQueen is lying tangled in the barbed wire fence with his dying motorcycle, and he pats the cycle in gratitude for its attempt -- its at the 2:30 point of the video.
I was reminded of this when last night Fleury patted the crossbar:

'It [the crossbar] made a big save for me and I just said 'Thank you,'' said Fleury, who rubbed the iron after dodging a key bullet.

What a great game that was.

Saturday Morning Cartoon

It's been a tough week at work so I haven't been able to blog much -- here's two cartoons to make up for it -- featuring The Shropshire Slasher



and the fair Melissa

Its sorta like that movie

Final Destination.

Oh, so its our fault then?

You know the phrase, when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging?
I guess Lisa Raitt hasn't heard it.
Or maybe she misunderstood it!
Because now she's saying its the fault of reporters that her remarks were "so inflamed":

Raitt told Toronto radio station CFRB that when she spoke of the isotope shortage and radioactive leaks as being “sexy,” she meant only that they would be “attractive for people to report on.”
“I knew what I had said, I certainly knew the spirit in which I had said it, which was by no means to be disrespectful to cancer victims or parents,” Raitt said . . . “I didn’t think that it would have been so taken out of context and so widely reported and so inflamed,” she said.

The Ottawa Press Gallery will be so impressed.

Jealous

An idiotic Globe and Mail column by a nitwit called Sarah Hampson trashes the Obamas' trip to New York to see a Broadway show. She asks:

Was I the only one on the planet who thought I was watching a new reality dating show for politicians, in which husbands and wives vie for a prize for being the best possible spouse of all time?

Yes.
This has been another edition of short answers to stupid questions.

Wow

Dexter just strikes me as a very likable man -- and, good campaigning aside, never underestimate the power of simple likability in politics

Great line of the day

Impolitical writes about how the Harper Conservative government ignores judicial rulings they don't like:

A supposed 'law and order' government that hypocritically puts on elaborate presentations replete with backdrops full of nifty slogans to make a show of being strong criminal justice types. That 'law and order' posturing is a farce in the face of these repeated rulings. On the one hand they seek to ratchet up penalties and sentences, yet on the other, when they're the ones being handed a sentence in the form of these lost Federal Court cases, they ignore those judgments. They're the lawless ones with no moral authority to support their latest electoral gambits. They cynically count on the Canadian people not to understand their hypocrisy.

Emphasis mine. Thanks to Boris for the link.