Vancouver lightning

On Saturday night, a lightning storm hit Vancouver and a fireworks show was going on at English Bay during the same time. Below are some spectacular photos from Vancouver Sun readers:

So WTF was that all about?

The Via engineers, after two years without a contract, finally go on strike Friday.
Two days later, after disrupting the holiday plans of thousands of people and costing their company hundreds of thousands of dollars, they announce they are going back to work.
Now, I'm a union supporter, but this is ridiculous -- why did they go on strike at all? What was the matter with either the company or the union or both, that they couldn't have worked this out three days earlier?
And here I thought the Toronto strikers had set a new low in Canadian labour stupidity ...

Saturday Morning Cartoon

None of our hotels were like this one...

Another gay festival denied by Cons

I almost missed this story because of traveling, but Dawg sums it up:

Egg, meet face.

It doesn't surprise me in the least that Diverse-Cite's funding was denied regardless of how well they met the program's funding criteria. Why would Tony Clement have been placed in charge of this file anyway, if not to find some excuse for injecting Con politics into government funding decisions? Diane Ablonczy actually seemed to have some respect for the government program rules about how to spend taxpayer money. Can't have that! Clement knows what Conservative Cabinet ministers are supposed to do -- subvert the rules to do whatever Dear Leader wants.
What was most amusing, in a rueful sort of way, was how the media coverage tried to make this into a regional thing, East vs West, or a language thing, Quebec vs Everybody Else, when the actual basis of the story was always a homophobia thing, Teh Gay vs Religious Right. Like I said two weeks ago:

I think Canadian arts organizers can say bye bye to all those other grants which had been given to gay organizations across the country, now that these are also going to be on the Religious Right target list.

Police Entitlement Syndrome

We're not supposed to yell at the police, it hurts their widdle feelings and entitles them to throw their weight around and abuse people and make up charges to arrest them. They've all got PES (Police Entitlement Syndrome)
Is anyone surprised that the RCMP don't want to follow Braidwood's recommendations about taser use? What's the matter with these people? Who do they think they are working for?
PES (Police Entitlement Syndrome) strikes again. And this was obviously also a factor in the Gates case -- the police got Gates to step out onto his front porch, so they could arrest him for causing a "public" disturbance.
They've obviously done this before.
Obama was kind when he described this police behaviour as "acting stupidly".

Toronto experience part deux

Here's a few more Toronto photos -- I loved the juxtaposition of old and new around downtown Toronto. Coming from a city where the oldest buildings are little more than a century old, it was so interesting to see how Toronto has melded their old and new buildings.


We got to the St. Lawrence Market -- everybody and their dog was there.


We saw the Doctor defeat Boston and I got this shot of the last strike out, the one the crowd was so excited about according to the news coverage -- though actually the reason for the excitement was that if Halliday struck out seven batters, Pizza Pizza would give away a free slice for the tickets. so everybody was cheering for this seventh strikeout. It's a great experience to be in the ball park watching the game.


Then we went off to Niagara Falls for a couple of days -- I had never seen the Falls before and it was great even though it was raining much of the time we were there.


And we got a chuckle out of what must be the tackiest tourist street in all of Canada -- here is Frankenstein chomping down on a Big Whopper (don't ask!)

Toronto experience

We're visiting in Toronto and enjoying the Just for Laughs festival -- I haven't been here for 20 years, and then it was for work, so this is the first time I've really seen a bit of the city. What a fascinating, cosmopolitan, interesting city this is, even with some garbage lying about -- though actually its not very bad in the areas we have been in. and we drove past the infamous Christie Pits park, and maybe we were on the wrong side but you really can hardly see where the garbage is piled up, and there were lots of people still using the other end of the park.
Sorry, I wanted to upload some photos, but can't seem to get them to load on the wireless connection here at the hotel, so I may have to wait until next week when I'm back at home.
Update:
Ha! Got it! --
Toronto is full of churches, and between all the downtown highrises and the Eaton Centre we found the Church of the Holy Trinity, where they have their doors open and maintain a Homeless Memorial listing the names of the homeless people who have died on the streets:




And what is it with stairwell kitsch in stores? Last summer we saw Mohamed Al-Fayed's memorials at Harrods in London, and this summer we see Ed Mirvish's moose clock in Honest Eds in Toronto:


I hadn't realized there was a flatiron building in Toronto -- it's beautiful.

Too much fun

We've been traveling and generally having too much fun for a lot of blogging -- I'll post some photos as soon as I can -- but in the meantime here's Stand By Me

Enemies list

Now the other shoe is dropping about illegal CIA programs under the Bush administration with lots of mystery about what the programs were.
The general blogosphere opinion today is that assassination squads are too easy -- everybody knows already the Bushies were cowboying around the world.
Here's what I think -- the Bush administration believed that Democrats and journalists were traitors -- and they announced this many times. So I'm sure the "program" involved illegal spying and ratfucking against Democrats and journalists. Just like Nixon's enemies list part deux.
After all, they were protectin' Americuns and anything is legal if the President says it is.

Driving down the river

I thought this story about the little boy floating 12 km downriver in his toy truck was amazing -- and its also sorta fun that it was posted on the Driving.ca website. Where else would the readers be interested in the brand of truck?

Stupid union tricks

The Toronto union tactic of delaying and harassing taxpayers who are dropping off garbage is backfiring badly on the union.
That the union strategy is to try to make Toronto residents miserable says they don't have any respect for the people of Toronto, who are the source of their paycheques and the only ones who could actually pressure city hall to provide them with a better contract.
The strikers should be doing everything possible to help taxpayers dropping off their own garbage -- thus ensuring that the blame for the mess gets focused on city leaders rather than the union. Instead, here's a typical reaction to the delaying tactics, this letter to the editor in today's Toronto Star:

I don't know about the rest of the Torontonians who have driven to temp. sites to drop off garbage but I have had it. I just returned from a site where I was told to wait. I said no and left my garbage on the picket line with the rest of toronto's garbage. I'm not going to be a hostage to the unions anymore, fire them and I'll be happy to take one of their jobs. They are starting to whine that they have bills to pay and such, well Toronto families and taxpayers have been held hostage for 21 days and enough is enough. You complain about lack of money, GO BACK TO WORK

Exactly the attitude which the union should not want to encourage.

Saturday Morning Cartoon

He's out or safe or either or neither or both

Great line of the day

John Cole notes that some Republicans are saying "Thanks but no thanks" to Palin:

Can you imagine how horrified a Republican in a purple district might be at the thought of Palin coming to town? Why not bring the entire freak show- Rush could emcee, Santorum and George Allen could do their greatest hits, Sanford and Ensign could come and talk about family values, then Sarah could bat clean-up and tell 70% of the district that they aren’t real Americans and like the wrong mustard
And then when the candidate gets killed in the election, Malkin and Red State can write fifty diaries saying that the reason he/she lost was because they were not true conservatives.
I think this has potential.

Emphasis mine.

Do the right thing

The Organizing Committee for the Vancouver winter games needs to do the right thing here.
Our Canadian women ski-jumpers won their lawsuit on the merits when the BC Supreme Court ruled that it is indeed discriminatory that women are not allow to compete in the winter Olympics.

Madam Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon ruled that the women ski jumpers were indeed discriminated against by the International Olympic Committee's decision to keep them off the 2010 Olympic calendar, but added that the Switzerland-based IOC was beyond the reach of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC), which was the target of the ski jumpers' lawsuit, is duty-bound – despite the Charter – to abide by IOC decisions, Judge Fenlon concluded, a situation she confessed was “somewhat distasteful.”“
. . . Men can participate … even though they do not meet the current standard for inclusion. Women cannot,” she said. “In my view, the exclusion of women's ski jumping from the 2010 Games is discriminatory.”

There is a moral imperative now for our organizing committee to go ahead and schedule this event, using the ski jump facilities that Canadian taxpayers have paid to build. It would be tremendously popular, in terms of both media coverage and attendance.
I know, I know -- they just can't do it because the IOC would object.
What I don't know is why Canadians should care.

Epic fail for the Cons

More editorials and comment today on the Pride Parade fiasco.
Murray Mandrake provides an eloquent column that covers all the angles:

. . . That our Conservative MPs find it necessary to appease the minority religious right at the expense of the gay community -- which still feels the need to hold such festivals to counteract intolerance that lingers in the first decade of the 21st century -- is problematic in itself.
. . . our supposedly business-minded Tories should surely appreciate the value of this meagre $400,000 investment in Toronto's pride parade, an event that generates $100 million in economic activity and $18 million in federal tax revenue. That this is something they would need to review says much about their real agenda.
. . . But let's just focus on the 13 Conservative MPs from Saskatchewan who have largely been hiding from the media ever since they broke their promise to deliver $800 million a year on equalization. Wouldn't their valuable time be better spent on the medical isotope issue and Saskatchewan's interest in a nuclear research reactor? What's happened on the clean coal file since the initial promise? What have they done for the forestry sector and displaced Saskatchewan workers? What about the drought? Is the federal AgriRecovery program adequate?
Well, we don't really know.
Evidently none of these problems is quite as pressing to Trost, Vellacott, et. al, as finding out whether a $400,000 grant to a gay pride festival in Toronto that brings in $18 million in tax revenue is money well spent.
Isn't that a little outrageous?

Yes, yes it is.
Brad Trost finally spoke again to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, who apparently "ambushed" him for an interview -- how dare a reporter approach a politician at a public event to ask about a national news story when everybody knows that Saskatchewan MPs aren't allowed to speak to the press about anything important(see above)? Anyway, here's what he said:

"My preference has always been for events that bring the community together to be central in any of our funding programs," Trost said Thursday.

Sounds very kumbaya, but basically this means anything objected to by the religious right is too divisive for Cons to fund. Here's the bait-and-switch:

"My goal is not to criticize Diane, and that's what people are trying to make the story of," he said. "Diane has done a good job as a minister and I didn't want to continue to add to the whole concept of criticizing Diane that was being implied."

Yeah, well, the person who implied this was you, in your original interview. But as much as you would want this to be just a story about a caucus spat, the real story here of course is how the Conservative caucus wants to pander to the homophobic religious right by cutting off funding to gay events. Here's the most revealing quote:

Trost said he was aware the federal government, under Canadian Heritage, funded Saskatoon's Pride Festival in June with a $9,000 grant to the Saskatoon Diversity Network.
"I've been aware of it. I'm a fiscal conservative so I've been urging reductions all across the board on all sorts of issues, not just on heritage funding," he said.

Oh, so you tried to get this grant cut too, did you? But the Conservative caucus isn't about to piss off Heritage minister James Moore, who is described as having liberal views on social issues.
It's all an Epic Fail for the Conservatives, says National Post's Chris Selley:

The Globe and Mail’s Adam Radwanski suggests Trost might have been “fully authorized to slag Ablonczy in public, in hope of appeasing … social conservatives” over funding Toronto’s Pride parade, or Ablonczy’s LGBT photo-op, or whatever it is they’re supposedly enraged about. The problem with that plan—and it’s a whopper, as Radwanski says—is that far more people know about it now than ever did before. Thanks to David Akin and an unidentified “little birdie,” they now also know that the government is positively lavishing gay and lesbian events from coast to coast with taxpayers’ cash. That doesn’t mean this wasn’t some kind of Machiavellian scheme, of course. Remember: these people are idiots. But if it was, it was certainly an epic failure.

The Ottawa Citizen puts forward a case for how all those poor Con MPs deserve our sympathy:

. . . for a number of Tory MPs themselves, already frustrated because they can't speak as candidly as they'd like on abortion, immigration and other cultural issues, the idea of funding gay pride parades doesn't sit well.

I guess it's not easy being mean.