Now that's leadership!

Saskatoon city council has boldly gone where politicians always go to cut budgets -- they're grinding a few more dollars out of the poor:

The largest decision made Tuesday was to decrease by $5 a city subsidy for monthly bus passes for those on social assistance. The move will increase the cost of the pass to $25 for an estimated 2,800 transit riders and add an expected $160,000 next year to city coffers.

Outstanding, guys!

When you care enough to give the very best

In Nancy Nall's comments today, apropos of nothing in particular, they got talking about what gifts to give to the kids of relatives you don't like (the kids or the relatives or both). Here's some of the best:

They cranked out two of the most obnoxious kids I’ve ever been forced to buy Christmas presents for, so it was always books. Hearing them hiss “Books. Again.” was probably the only reason I had to look forward to the holidays. What can I say? I ought to get myself some passive-aggressive cards printed up. . . .
My brother in law bought a used tuba for his (now former) friend’s daughter. . . .
I once got one of my brother’s kids an electronic drum kit. He was so pissed at me that his Xmas present to me was membership in the NRA. . . .
I know a guy who bought an obnoxious in-law’s kids toy firefighter helmets equipped with flashing lights and sirens. Every time he had to visit, he took the kids a box of batteries.

Hubris

The end of history was announced in 1992.
The permanent Republican majority was announced in 2001.
Now Harper has announced the end of Canada's ‘long Liberal era’.
Well, we'll see...

Always listen to your mother

This is why your mother always told you to wear a slip under a dress, no matter how warm it is.
And the idea that this photo is lèse majesté is just silly.

Move along, move along

British Prime Minister David Cameron is getting sucked into the phone hacking scandal because he hired Andy Coulson AFTER he had been convicted of fraud
Hey, that reminds me -- didn't our Prime Minister also have to deal with a scandal because he hired someone sleazy? Now, who was that guy anyway? Did we ever get to the bottom of whether he tried to use his PMO connections to get money for his girlfriend? No? Oh well, it was all so long ago -- several weeks at least...oh, look, a royal visit!
I'll bet Cameron is experiencing some Harper-envy right about now...

Stupid

As Obama tries to get the Republicans to act like adults in dealing with the debt ceiling, his blogosphere is onside NOT.
In anticipation that Obama might have to actually make a deal with the devil, the blogosphere is starting another one of its periodic "evil Obama" spasms.
Ian Welsh asks compared to McCain, was Obama actually the lesser evil? Welsh says Bush "failed to slash Social Security. Obama is probably going to do so soon" -- let's not remind anyone that Bush actually WANTED to slash Social Security and actually PROPOSED slashing it, oh no its much more important to criticize Obama's supposed thought crimes.
And Firedoglake thinks we should discuss whether Obama is the Worst President Ever -- they're mad because Obama has supposedly "betrayed his base at every turn".
As No More Mr. Nice Blog says

If I'm following this logic correctly, the results from the Bush presidency were horrible and the results of the Obama presidency are horrible so far, but we ought to give Bush credit because he doled out the horrors deliberately.
By that logic, I guess we ought to ask: who piloted a mass transportation vehicle in the most monstrous way in the past century -- the 9/11 hijackers or the captain of the Titanic?
Really, it's an open question, isn't it? Oh, sure, the 9/11 hijackers killed nearly 3,000 people with malice aforethought, but that's just the point. The malice aforethought is a good thing -- they served their base. The fact that the captain of the Titanic didn't want to kill people very possibly makes him a worse person.
Right?

It is beyond stupid. As John Cole says, these people are fucking clinical.
Ah, yes, the "evil" Obama -- the man who appointed Sotomayor and Kagan to the Supreme Court, who saved the US car industry (and Canada's, too), who promoted equal pay for work of equal value, who ended DADT, who reversed 8 years of Republican tampering with every social and administrative agency of the US government, who forced Mubarak to resign, who did not attack Iran, who passed health care reform, who .... well, look it up.
None of these things would have been done by McCain. Many of them would not have been done by Hilary, either.
Obama hasn't taken down the US financial industry. No president would have, not Hilary, not any Republican, certainly not McCain.
And Obama hasn't reversed the imperial presidency started by Bush and Cheney. It ain't gonna happen, no matter who is elected in the future. McCain certainly would not have reversed this either, and neither would Hilary. Considering the dysfunctional US Congress -- ever since Newt Gingrich was elected Speaker, they have been a collection of clowns and fools -- no president is ever going to let these guys run things the way people of the calibre of Tip O'Neill and Ted Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson used to.
That ship has sailed.

Junk mail

Various journalists are blaming the postal workers for the mail backlog -- they're forgetting that it was Canada Post management that decided to lock out its workers for two weeks in June and settle the dispute by legislation rather than negotiation.
Now, we've had a week of mostly junk mail, while Canada Post apparently still struggles to set priorities:

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers claimed Wednesday that its members were being forced to deliver out-of-date flyers rather than bills and cheques, "setting themselves up to be blamed by an angry public."
"The CUPW is concerned that decisions made by Canada Post senior management to first lock out and then delay delivery will be blamed on postal workers," wrote the union in the mid-week release.
"Canada Post is prioritizing junk mail over cheques," said Alain Duguay, CUPW president of the Montreal local, adding that he has seen passports collecting dust that date back to early June. "I'm really wondering if there's a collusion to privatize."

We've had four or five bills delivered this week, plus a batch of junk mail -- but my father-in-law hasn't received his Father's Day cards yet.

This is the way "The World" ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.
The Telegraph reports that the phone hacking scandal which has destroyed Britain's 168-year-old News of the World newspaper all began with Prince William straining a tendon in his knee:

In November 2005, Clive Goodman, the paper's royal editor, wrote a brief story revealing that Prince William had strained a tendon in his knee and sought medical advice. A week later, he revealed that the prince had borrowed some broadcasting equipment from his friend Tom Bradby, an ITV journalist.
The stories baffled Royal officials, since so few people knew about them. In a conversation between Bradby and the prince, the two established that the information could only have come from voicemails they had left one another.

Apparently there are now 4,000 people who have been informed that their voicemails were hacked. What I wonder is, how easy is it to hack into someone's voicemail account? Is it happening here, too?
UPDATE: And now Prime Minister David Cameron is getting dragged into it.
DOUBLE UPDATE: I guess hacking into someone's phone is pretty easy.

Panic

Its just in fun until someone loses an eye. Then its a sport.
The Republican wingnuts in Congress are turning the US debt ceiling fight into a sport and the Village is starting to panic at the prospect.
David Brooks is horrified at Republicans cheering the prospect of defaulting on the US debt:

If the debt ceiling talks fail, independents voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.
And they will be right.

Richard Cohen is calling republicans "a cult" and Megan McCardle says the sky is falling. Even David Frum says Republicans need to smarten up, though of course its all Obama's fault really.

Organ donors-in-waiting

In the story about this year's Darwin Award Winner in New York state, we also find out that Michigan is trying to become the go-to state for people in need of organ transplants.

Happy July 4th‬‏

Toronto Pride

Mayor Ford missed a good party.

Happy Canada Day‬‏

Holiday road

Just in time for summer driving, hackers are changing the highway signs again in Kentucky and in Newfoundland.
Hope everyone is prepared for the zombie apocalypse!

Here we go again

The Conservatives act like its their own personal money and they can spend it however they like.
I'm not talking about what's in their pockets.
I'm talking about what came from our pockets -- our taxes.
It's NOT your money, Harper. It belongs to Canada.
And we want it spent the way the government's own rules say it should be spent.
Instead, we get the Harper Conservatives letting Tony Clement shovel $50 million into his own riding without any paper trail at all.
And then this same bunch of yahoos gleefully cut off grants to festivals and parades and arts organizations and all sorts of other community activities that the people of Canada support, just because Harper doesn't like them.
It happened to Toronto Pride, and pride activities across the country, and Montreal's Divers-Cité, and FrancoFolies de Montréal and now Toronto's Summerworks
And are we really going to hear, again, another raft of mealy-mouthed spin that the cut was just a coincidence and doesn't really reflect ideological hostility from the Prime Minister's Office?
Oh, please.