One year

I missed posting on the one-year anniversary but Steve didn't:

This majority is Harper in his full glory. The bully with no regard for democracy, the authoritarian right wing ideologue in the pocket of narrow economic interests, prone to low rent tactics that forever undermine any level of civil discourse, this is Canada under this "regime". There is nothing to endorse here, an embarrassing episode in Canadian history which future generations will shake their heads at

Save this column -- it's going in my "I love the Internets" list.  It will take a few years, I think, but someday all of Canada will see the Harper Conservatives as clearly as Steve does now.

We are all Guy Fawkes now

Oh, those darn "civil libertarians" are at it again!

But civil libertarians are concerned that the legislation will give police the power to break up peaceful protests, which are frequently filled with people in costumes, masks or even face paint that could be construed as concealing identity under the new law.

Why are they being so mean to the police?  Of course our police would only use this new legislation to protect innocent businesses from those awful Black Bloc people.  They wouldn't ever use it against the rest of us, I'm sure.

I'll Have Another

I love watching horse races, especially when an unknown comes out of the pack and wins, like the Canadian-owned California horse I'll Have Another, ridden by a rookie jockey in the Kentucky Derby 2012:

And yes, I'd like to have another, at the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.

Yes, bring them in

I couldn't agree more with this article if I had written it myself.

When immigrants arrive, they not only fill gaps in the work force but pay taxes and spend money on housing, transport and consumer goods. Productive capacity increases and there is a ripple effect across the economy. And studies show that their offspring tend to be among the country's best-educated and initiative-taking young people.

Yes, exactly.
I keep hearing wailing and gnashing of teeth about how our pensions and social services are unsustainable as us baby boomers retire.  What tripe!  Canada can easily import all the future taxpayers we will ever need, and they'll make our country better, too:

Evelyna Prochorow, 21, came from Kazakhstan by way of what her family found a crowded, unwelcoming Germany. She was 8, the sixth of 13 children, and barely spoke a word of English. A decade later, she graduated near the top of her high-school class. She is a broker at Harvest Insurance, her sister is a legal assistant nearby, and the evangelical church that is dear to them is here (with more under construction). Unlike many small-town Canadians her age, Ms. Prochorow has no desire to be anywhere else.

Star wars day

May the fourth be with you!

Gutless

Why would anyone think that a man as cowardly as Mitt Romney should be president of the United States?
Also, what John Cole says -- why any gay person would support the Republicans is beyond me, too.

Just a barrel of laughs

Oh, why not let Conrad Black come back to Canada? We could do worse and we need the comic relief -- think of how much fun we'll have skewering his pompous OpEds!

Shorter

Shorter Andrew Coyne:

I'm shocked SHOCKED that the Liberals and NDP are not sufficiently outraged at what the Harper Conservatives are doing now.

So what are they doing now? Well, here's Bill 38:

The bill runs to more than 420 pages. It amends some 60 different acts, repeals half a dozen, and adds three more, including a completely rewritten Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It ranges far beyond the traditional budget concerns of taxing and spending, making changes in policy across a number of fields from immigration (among other changes, it erases at a stroke the entire backlog of applications under the skilled worker program), to telecommunications (opening the door, slightly, to foreign ownership), to land codes on native reservations.

But nowhere in Coyne's column is a statement that the Harper Conservatives are wrong to try to govern this way. Instead, somehow, this is all Parliament's fault.

. . . the increasing use of these omnibills extends Parliament’s powerlessness in all directions: it has become, if you will, omnimpotent — a ceremonial body, little more. What is worse, it cannot even seem to rouse itself to its own defence . . . today’s Parliament is so accustomed to these indignities that it barely registers.

Gee, isn't it just too bad that we don't have some people watching what goes on in Parliament who could maybe tell us what's going on there, or maybe even criticize it, or something. Oh, well....

Arrested for jogging while brown

The news story doesn't mention the racial angle at all.  So I guess Windsor police and prosecutors think its OK to arrest people for jogging while brown:

As he [plainclothes police officer Van Buskirk] was heading back to the station he saw a man, who turned out to be [Dr. Tyceer] Abouhassan, running along Dougall Avenue next to Jackson Park.
He pulled Abouhassan’s headphones off, then asked him why he was in the park and why he was talking to girls.
Abouhassan replied that he didn’t know what Van Buskirk was talking about, and asked who he was.
Van Buskirk grabbed Abouhassan by the neck. The doctor stepped back and tried to get away. Van Buskirk pursued and punched him in the face at least three times.
The detective then called the tennis club employee, who said it wasn’t the same guy. At the hospital Abouhassan learned he was under arrest for assaulting a police officer. The Crown later stayed that charge.

I'll just bet they did. Now the police officer involved has pleaded guilty to assault.
But what I found curious about the story is why this obviously innocent and blameless doctor was ever put under arrest for anything whatsoever.
(h/t)

Going Godwin

When the Harper Conservatives talked about a law and order agenda, I didn't think they meant Godwin's law about bizarre Nazi analogies too.
But nobody escapes the Spanish Inquisition, nobody can win a land war in Asia, and nobody can stop themselves from slinging Hitler at their enemies, however inaccurate the reference.
So now we have #HarperHistory trending on twitter as we consider all the other craven examples of NDP's historical perfidy over the years. Like these:

Noah's Ark was just another pet project by the NDP for its union buddies. #HarperHistory
The NDP killed Bambi's mother. #HarperHistory
The Titanic sunk after it collided with the NDP. #HarperHistory
The NDP shamefully stood by in the fight against plaque and gingivitis #HarperHistory
The NDP was on the grassy knoll. #harperhistory
The NDP's pro-serf policies and insistence on taxing feudal lords was an impediment to trade throughout the Middle Ages. #HarperHistory

When will those guys learn to get with the program and start sending Canadians to war like everyone else always wants to do.?

Words I thought I would never say

I never thought I would actually be happy to see the PCs win in Alberta. But that's just so much better than the alternative.
Warren Kinsella called it:

Wildrose has been dropping sharply since the bozone layer eruptions began. The PCs now own Edmonton, and the huge Wildrose lead in Calgary has vanished. Rural Alberta is rural Alberta: WCC, blah blah blah.
Contrary to what Canada’s conservative-dominated media pundits may tell you, (a) the PCs have run a solid campaign under Stephen Carter (he of Nenshi fame) (b) the homophobic, racist stuff has hurt Wildrose and (c) there has been a lot of vote moving around in the past few days, just as Tom Flanagan wrote about, presciently, in respect of the 2004 federal vote. It matters.

Happy spring

A photo from the soap bubble festival today in St. Petersburg, Russia:

What a week!

It was one of those weeks at work. And the next ones are going to be worse!
For me, the light at the end of the tunnel is shining on about June 15.

Its SUCH a mystery!

How mysterious -- first nobody knows who "Pierre Poutine" could possibly be, even though he apparently made thousands of calls on election day from one disposable cell phone.
Now nobody knows who accessed the lists of non-Conservative supporters in Guelph who got those thousands of calls sending them to the wrong polls.
But don't worry, the Harper Conservatives are just trying to help all they can:

"As you know, we have proactively reached out to Elections Canada and offered to assist them in any way we can," party spokesman Fred DeLorey said Monday night. "That includes handing over any documents or records that may assist them."

And they even did their own investigation:

Conservative party lawyer Arthur Hamilton...was asked by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to get to the bottom of the matter.
Hamilton, a veteran who handled the party's legal business in the In and Out elections-spending affair and the Helena Guergis scandal, is said to have concluded that no party workers outside of Guelph are implicated, a point that party representatives repeatedly emphasize.
... Hamilton interviewed key party workers, asking them about their knowledge of events and instructing them not to discuss the matter publicly.

Maybe now we need to get Duckman to take the case.

Shorter

Shorter Marcus Gee:

Toronto City Council should help Rob Ford do something because otherwise voters won't get any benefit from electing a buffoon as mayor.

Dumbest stuff on wheels!  We all knew (the lefty blogosphere) that  Rob Ford would be a disaster as a mayor and as a leader, not because he was right-wing but because he is an incompetent egotist.  And now the Toronto city council is supposed to let Ford "win" sometimes because the city might be better off if some of Ford's half-baked ideas are supported?  It doesn't work this way.