Elements of Style Rap

Move Your Story Right Along: The Elements of Style Rap | Brain Pickings:

I expect a clusterf*ck

Does anyone want to bet me that when the Harper Cons finally get around to announcing the new Employment Insurance rules, they won't be a total clusterf*ck?
This is the gang who can't shoot straight. They've already messed up the census, Old Age Security, Parks Canada, Aboriginal organizations, arts funding, gay pride parades, etc etc.
After several years of underfunding the EI bureaucracy to the point that hundreds of thousands of people already can't get their claims processed and can't even get a phone call answered, they're going to expect overworked EI staff to implement some poorly-written, punative and inequitable new rules that haven't gone through any review or vetting process to make sure they make sense, and for which the computer programming isn't going to be completed either.
It's going to be chaos across the nation.
 Food banks and the Sally Ann better gear up.  Landlords and banks had better get ready for thousands of people not able to pay their rent or their loans or their credit card bills because their EI cheques aren't arriving.  
Oh, and I have to ask once again -- whatever happened to the $57 billion EI surplus that we accumulated when Paul Martin was prime minister?

Some fun now

So Conrad Black's delicate fee-fees are hurt because Thomas Mulcair referred to him as a "British criminal".
I guess the truth hurts, doesn't it.
See, I told you this would be fun.

G20 Justice

OK, here's how it should be.
Those 30 police officers who apparently are going to be charged for the police riot that was the G20? First, kick them in the face.

Then scoop them up off the street and bus them to a wire cage in a warehouse, ziptied,  and let them sit there for a day without much water or food.  Laugh at them and ignore any of their requests for help.
Then, take half of them and drive them to Scarborough and abandon them there in the middle of the night without any money to make their own way home somehow.
Then, for the other half, keep them in jail.  After a few weeks, take them to court one by one, for bail hearings. But don't let them actually see a judge. No, let their continued detention be decided by a Justice of the Peace who apparently will believe everything said by the prosecutors about how awful they are.
Then, if they do get bail, make sure it is it very restrictive house arrest, and don't allow them to talk to any of the other officers involved, and make sure other police are hanging around outside their houses all the time to "monitor" everything they are doing, just as if they were some kind of terrorists.
Then, after a year or so of this, let them have their trial.
And, after two years, release a report on how they were treated.
Now, that would be G20 justice.

Oops, sorry

Canadian Press has "corrected" its bullsh*t story about how Paul Martin's government was more secretive than Harper's is:

"The story's claim that Commons committees during Martin's majority of February to May 2004 spent the most time meeting in camera is thus erroneous, as are other rankings in the story."

Gee, don't drown us in detail, CP!
This retraction will, I'm sure, make the same headline news across Canada as the original story did.

Shorter

Shorter Jim Flaherty:

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

Too many secrets

When I read this story about how Paul Martin's Liberals supposedly had "more" secret meetings than the Harper Cons I thought, "this is probably bullsh*t" but I didn't know how to prove it.
Thanks, Kady

Thus far, I've not heard a single Conservative MP make the claim that the Liberal government was just as heavy-handed when it came to squelching debate during the days when they held the majority at committee. Given the increasing criticism that this government has faced for doing so, you'd think that at least one veteran from the Reform/Canadian Alliance/pre-2004 Conservative days might have thought to mention it.
As for the New Democrats, while no formal survey has been undertaken, those who have experienced opposition life under past majorities have made it clear that the current practice -- wherein government members automatically move to clear the room when an opposition member attempts to put forward a motion for debate -- is, as far as they can recall, unprecedented.

Step program

14 Steps That Will Evolve Your Views On Gay Marriage  Here's the one I liked the best:  imagine how stupid you'll look in 40 years

Stop, children, what's that sound

I think there's something happening here. What it is, not exactly clear.
But the Montreal Gazette has scored a major interview with one of the leaders of Anonymous who is hiding out in Montreal from the FBI.
He calls himself Commander X and he makes some powerful observations:

There’s a really good argument at this point that we might well be the most powerful organization on Earth. The entire world right now is run by information. Our entire world is being controlled and operated by tiny invisible 1s and 0s that are flashing through the air and flashing through the wires around us. So if that’s what controls our world, ask yourself who controls the 1s and the 0s? It’s the geeks and computer hackers of the world. . .
In Syria and Tunisia, Libya, Egypt in Nigeria in the Ivory Coast, we have saved so many lives I can’t even count – activists and journalists and bloggers and people who come to us to keep themselves safe in these extremely hostile environments – and I’m unwilling to lay that kind of work down. . . .
“Information terrorist” – what a funny concept. That you could terrorize someone with information. But who’s terrorized? Is it the common people reading the newspaper and learning what their government is doing in their name? They’re not terrorized – they’re perfectly satisfied with that situation. It’s the people trying to hide these secrets, who are trying to hide these crimes. The funny thing is every email database that I’ve ever been a part of stealing, from President. Assad to Stratfor security, every email database, every single one has had crimes in it. Not one time that I’ve broken into a corporation or a government, and found their emails and thought, “Oh my God, these people are perfectly innocent people, I made a mistake.”. . .
Wherever I go, whether Oakland, San Francisco, Montreal … I see the same stuff. I see people rising up demanding justice and these brutal, paramilitary police departments being used to crush them and sure, I get involved

Anonymous may be more effective than we realize -- for one thing, the online surveillance bill that Anonymous didn't like now seems to have disappeared.

Done.

Let's see more journalists shutting down political "spokespeople" like this who can't defend their candidate so they attack the press instead:
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The right side of history

I've said before, we usually don't get to choose the battle, we only get to choose our side. I'm glad to see Obama chose the right side today.
In Canada, Paul Martin showed true leadership when he described how his own support for gay marriage had evolved following the Supreme Court ruling.  Now Obama is showing Americans how they also can change their thinking:

. . . over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don't Ask Don't Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

Every Major's Terrible

Didn't take long:

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.