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!

Wonders of science

Purina in Austria has made a dog-food commercial for dogs.
And it appears to work:

Oh how I wish he'd go away

Don Cherry used to be interesting because he knew a lot about hockey. But in the last few years the game has moved beyond him. He can't keep up anymore.
And aren't we all getting sick and tired of listening to his "you kids get off my lawn" rants? He had an opportunity to demonstrate some real leadership in Canada toward reducing needless violence in hockey, and he blew it.
Go. Away. We. Are. Trying. To. Watch. The. Game.

This is why people are so mad

from #Occupy Rochester

Ballad of Gordon

RossK is writing a series of posts called Here's to the State of the Golden Era, summing up the legacy of Gordon Campbell.

Makes me embarrassed to be a Liberal.

Creepy

Twitters about Christy Clark's v-neck, jokes about Elizabeth Warren's appearance, comparing Rathika Sitsabaiesan's cleavage photos, amazement that Alberta conservatives would elect a female leader -- did I wake up in 1970 by mistake?

Never give up, never surrender

Against all odds, facing terrible polls just a few weeks ago, Ontario Liberals win!

The lesson is, never give up, never surrender.

Shoot the messenger

CBC reports that Conservative MPs are deciding not to investigate all the recent Auditor-General reports about government mismanagement and malfeasance.
Well, I guess that explains why the Cons are trying to abolish the CBC, doesn't it.
And NDP MP Guy Caron wonders what will happen to all the auditor general reports still to come over the next four years.
Well, I would guess they're trying to figure out a way to avoid making auditor-general reports public, so we won't even know they exist.
Problem solved.

The grapes of wrath

...and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. . .(Steinbeck)

One of the reasons I love reading John Cole is that when he's wrong, he doesn't hesitate to say so:

So yeah, I’m looking back at my snide post where I called the vanguard of this “trustafarians,” and once again, I feel like an idiot. This may still fizzle out without any real change, but right now, it seems to be building, and the reason it is is because a small group of people went out there and publicly voiced their displeasure with the shit I’ve been sitting on my fat ass writing dyspeptic posts about for the last year, but not really doing a god damned thing to enact change. Yeah, it was some jackasses with a drum circle, and no, they didn’t have a point by point plan or coherent media strategy like some anal retentive douchebags like me were demanding. But they went out there and did something, and it seems to be working. Let’s hope it keeps growing.

And read Charlie Pierce's description of who is at OWS now and why they're there.

There are limits

As enjoyable as it is to watch the media ferret out scandals about egotistical ministers jetting around on military planes to attend lobster dinners, I think we've maxed out this story line when we start harping about using a military jet to transport an injured pilot back to Canada.

Let them eat cake

Montreal Simon writes about the champagne drinkers on the balcony watching the #OccupyWallSt protests below:

Whatever else these protests are achieving, they are drawing a line between THEM and US.
Today the fat cats laugh.
Tomorrow they'll be sorry...

But I don't think the balcony people are quite as sanguine as they are pretending to be. They don't exactly know what to do, but they can read the signs, too.

We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore

I've heard people complain that they don't know what the #OccupyWallStreet protest is trying to achieve. But that's the beauty of it -- this is a protest without a goal, so we can all invest in it our own agendas. And that's why its growing, and spreading. Here's a short history of #OccupyWallStreet and who's involved:

There are liberals and conservatives and libertarians and tea party adherents in the crowd. One person described the crowd as not politically “left and right,” but “up and down,” all victimized by corruption in our political and economic systems.

Who could disagree with that?