Out of control

Are Toronto police out of control?
They're not just criminalizing dissent, now they're criminalizing being a student.
A couple of weeks ago, it was Alex Hundert.
Yesterday it was Jaroslava Avila.
These people are just trying to do student stuff, like living a normal life and participating in discussion panels. Toronto police act like these people are violent "most wanted" fugitives -- stalking them, targeting them, tracking them down late at night and arresting them for violating their G20 bail conditions.
I'm waiting for the Canadian judicial system to put a stop to this, because when people get arrested the impact on their lives can be terrible. (HT Chet)
I expect police chief Bill Blair will asked WTF is going on in Toronto, during his interview on Monday with Steve Paikin. Yes, that Steve Paikin.
"I keep on speaking because that's all I have" says one of the protesters in this video --

Get real

Maybe its because I don't live there, but I don’t really care how disdainful everyone feels toward Obama or how disappointed everyone is with him or how Obama's minions have hurt the delicate fee-fees of the progressive left.
I attribute a lot of the crap dished out at Obama to racism - I'm not saying some criticism isn't deserved, but a lot of it is not.
However, be that as it may, we still need to get real. Here's my point -- the present Democratic party in the US may not be particularly progressive, but the Republicans and their nutcase hangers-on and acolytes and lobbyists and appointees are stupid or evil or both.
Anyone who thinks the United States is better off with the Republicans in power rather than the Democrats does not have the best interests of the American people at heart, nor of the world. Over just eight years, Bush and Cheney and the Republicans almost destroyed the US economy, and they almost took the rest of us down with them.
If they get into power again, they will run the United States into the ground.
No country in the world — particularly Canada — should want to see another Republican administration take power in the United States.

The tabloid formerly known as Macleans

I was glad to see Parliament condemn Macleans magazine for their smear-article about Quebec.
When the American tabloids blared that aliens endorsed Clinton, they at least had a photo! Macleans had nothing, except ancient prejudice.
Warren Kinsella points out that the Macleans is printing a tired old retread of a decade-old smear

Patriquin’s “story” declines to provide the reader with a study – any study – that proves that Quebec is “the most corrupt province in Canada.” They won’t, either, because no such study exists. Patriquin just made it up, and someone at the magazine went along with it because they thought they’d dazzle a few more dentist waiting rooms with their wit. Personally, I hope every person in Canadian public life kicks the living shit of Matrin Patriquin and his magazine this week. They richly deserve it.

And Montreal Simon adds:

while Patriquin's article was shabby and ridiculous, Andrew Coyne's stinky little sidebar was far more grotesque. A hideous mixture of selective facts, gross generalizations, and psycho-social babble that should, if there was any justice, shame him FOREVER.

I wonder if Chantal Hebert will be continuing to appear with Coyne on the National's At Issue panel? She doesn't particularly like Quebec-bashers.

The other shoe just dropped

The feds announced several deputy minister appointments at 5 pm last Friday and now we know why -- sounds like they didn't want anyone to notice that their Throne Speech announcement to review government operations and find millions in "government-wide efficiencies" is finished.
Wow, that was quick!
So I think we can all anticipate the conclusion which such a superficial review is going to reach: privatize!
And now do we also have an explanation for some inexplicable decisions -- like, for example, ordering Statistics Canada not to do the long-form census anymore? If corporations and agencies want the kind of data that they used to get from the long-form census, they're now going to have to hire someone's private company to get it for them.

Explaining the Tea Party

I've been trying hard for the last few months to wrap my head around the Tea Party in the States, trying to understand what their problem is. Now, thanks to Matt Tabbi, I can just stop trying:

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"
"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."
"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"
"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit.

And their name is stupid, too.

Thanks but no thanks?

First we read that Conservative finance minister Jim Flaherty endorsed Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford and then we see that Ford's support is dropping.
Hmmm -- I wonder what would happen if MORE federal Conservatives started helping the Ford campaign?

Thin edge

This is another "thin edge of the wedge" story but its going our way for a change.
One of the unintended side-effects of cases like the Robert Dziekański tasering has been that police are increasingly hostile toward anyone near them with camera -- we saw lots of this during the G20 protests, when people had their camera memory cards wiped.
Now a circuit court judge in Maryland has dismissed the "wiretapping" charges that an ambitious prosecutor tried to bring against a motorist who posted a video on YouTube of a policeman giving him a ticket.
Not so fast, said the judge:

Judge Emory A. Pitt Jr. had to decide whether police performing their duties have an expectation of privacy in public space. Pitt ruled that police can have no such expectation in their public, on-the-job communications.
Pitt wrote: "Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public. When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation. 'Sed quis custodiet ipsos cutodes' ("Who watches the watchmen?”)."
Graber was also charged with possessing a “device primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of oral communications" -- referring to the video camera on his helmet. The judge disagreed with the prosecutor that the helmet cam was illegal, and concluded the state's argument would render illegal “almost every cell phone, Blackberry, and every similar device, not to mention dictation equipment and other types of recording devices."

Shorter

Shorter Immigration minister Jason Kenney:

Not only do I not want to be bothered with actual facts, I want my department to make up some facts that will support my opinion!

Friday afternoon news dump

So the Cons are playing musical chairs with their deputy ministers, announcing these appointments at 5 pm on Friday afternoon even though they aren't taking effect for two weeks.
Which possibly means that one or more are controversial -- any thoughts about which ones?

Great line of the day

From Dr. William F. Harrison who provided abortions at his Arkansas clinic in spite of threats:

It is not always possible for one to determine how we will die, but it is always ours to choose how we will LIVE. I choose to live unafraid.

TV week

This was the week of the new TV shows. Here are some quick takes:
I really liked Detroit 187 -- with the mild quibble that the "rogue cop with a tragic backstory and a heart of gold" scenario is getting rather tired. But Shaun Majumder is going to be pretty good in this, I think. And they actually film it in Detroit, which is an interesting city visually as well as socially.
Boardwark Empire? Eh, not so much -- the script is trying to repeat the Sopranos formula, but Steve Buscemi, as much as I love him, can't pull off Gandolfini's genial psychopath with a heart of gold.
Blue Blood also had the tired "rogue cop rescues the child by torturing the scumbag" scenario, but had a neat twist at the end with the secret society stuff.
Not sure about The Event -- likable characters, but I lost it at the third or fourth flashback within a flashback. And does anyone actually think that Blair Underwood looks Hispanic? So just do the big Kang-and-Kodos reveal already and lets move on! Now, Jimmy Smits looks Hispanic though I'm not sure whether he can singlehandedly save Outlaw when everyone else in the cast seems to be a cardboard replica of a real person.
Defenders was much more interesting than I had thought it would be -- interesting characters and a truly intriguing legal case with the involuntary manslaughter angle and gaming the judge not to properly instruct the jury. If they keep this up. they could have a real show here. We passed on Hawaii 5-0, thinking it would probably be terrible, but apparently it wasn't.
Good Guys has improved so much it is almost unrecognizable from the early shows -- particularly Colin Hanks.
Castle just gets better and better -- interesting plots, and one of the only shows on TV that shows a normal relationship between a father, teenage daughter, and grandmother. Though of course there is also Modern Family - hysterical. And I know exactly what Claire means about appreciating memories with your family -- saving sunshine in a jar.
NCIS seems to be bringing the Director into the stories more now, a good thing because the Director/Gibbs relationship is more nuanced. And I hope they're cutting down on the Crazy Abby subplots.
For a while there, NCIS was falling into the familiar pattern which we often see on TV shows written primarily by men, where the men characters are just normal people but the women are all types -- nurturing mother, sexy bitch, little girl lost, crazy comic relief.
I guess CSI and Criminal Intent are what they are -- serial killers, explosions, autopsy porn, everybody spends 20 hours a day at work. And this year's soap opera on Bones is going to be Angela's pregnancy? Oh, please!
Next week -- The Good Wife, and Human Target!
And I think Flashpoint will be back sometime, too.
Every fall we go through this -- we enjoy catching the new shows when they come out, but then we usually only watch a few over the rest of the season. Considering that there is only a couple of hours of TV watching time available for us in the evenings, if that, and considering that we also want to keep up with sports, not to mention the occasional movie or documentary or Dog Whisperer or Sell This House -- and blogging, don't forget blogging -- it means there's never any way that we could watch all the TV series that we potentially might enjoy. We now have one of those TV boxes where you can record a show anytime, and now I've got several hours of recordings that I am not sure when, if ever, I will watch.
And every fall, it seems that at least one of the shows I like dies an early death

Unique

On The National tonight the At Issue panel was talking about the relationship between the Harper government and the senior civil service. Chantal Hebert said "What do you do with a government that doesn't let the facts get in the way...that says experts are not useful?" Alan Gregg noted that Mulroney listened to the civil service, while the Harper government "is unique in not doing that."
Well, I guess Harper wanted to go down in history for SOMETHING unique.

Moscow Cat Theatre

What a video!

1.7 million views already



Here is how they did it -- only took 124 takes!
H/T

Reading the tea leaves

I expect the next few weeks will be rife with election speculation.
While John Baird perishes the thought, Flaherty is busy issuing The Usual Warnings Of Doom.
And if Harper is successful in winning a Canadian seat on the Security Council on Oct. 12, and considering how the Bastarache Inquiry in Quebec is going to echo the federal Liberal sponsorship scandal, and considering how the Harper Cons are hopeful that the long gun registry vote will jeopardize some NDP rural seats, and while the Afghanistan prisoner torture issue is in a lull, and before the Cons have to table a fall fiscal update, and before Sheila Fraser or the Parliamentary Budget Office can publish more critical reports, and before everybody's EI premiums go up, and maybe Harper can go a month or six weeks without firing some long-suffering civil servant, and . . .
Fixed election dates? What a quaint idea.