Funny, isn't it

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says planned changes to the pension plan for members of Parliament won’t take effect until after the next election, noting it would not be fair to change the rules during the current term.

Funny, isn't it how Conservatives believe that it would be outrageous to change MP pensions retroactively, but civil servants, airline pilots, and everybody else -- even football referees -- are just supposed to suck it up.

They both could have died

What is the matter in Ottawa?
No, I don't mean in that big brown building on the banks of the river.
I mean in the city of Ottawa itself, with its so-called "justice" system.
The most recent horrible story is about jail staff ignoring a woman's screams during a breech birth. Both mother and baby could have died on the isolation cell floor while the pseudo-nurses at the jail were self-righteously assuring themselves she was faking.
And this is only the latest in a series of stories about how Ottawa treats its prisoners. Here's another one, about a woman denied her cancer pills and forced to drink the water in her toilet. Then there were the Roxanne Carr and Stacey Bonds stories.
All these cases involved female prisoners.  And in all cases, the Ottawa authorities proceeded to blame and penalize the victim -- in the latest case, its been two weeks and the new mother is still locked up and hasn't yet been allowed to hold her baby.

A planned visit at the jail during visiting hours Saturday morning was cancelled due to security concerns, Hurtubise said Saturday.

Security?  They thought the baby might spit up?

Today was John Lennon's birthday

John Lennon would have been 72 today:

Why Obama now

Daily Kos: BRILLIANT: Animator for The Simpsons & Family Guy Creates "Why Obama Now"

But they have no shame

Canadian Press informs us that:

The NDP is trying to shame Conservative backbenchers into abandoning their daily game of partisan trash talk in the House of Commons.. . .
New Democrat Matthew Kellway ... questioned whether they have nothing better to do.
"Since the E. coli crisis began, the New Democrats have asked 33 questions about tainted meat, Conservatives not one. Are they talking about the economy or health care? No. Conservatives have made 32 statements and asked 10 questions, 1 out of every 4 Conservative questions (has been) about us, the New Democrats.
"For my colleagues across the way, I ask if this is really what they wanted to do with their life in elected office, indulging the fantasy life of the kids in the PMO?"

I can't imagine a more pointless activity than trying to make the Harper Conservatives act like responsible grownups.

Hey, wealthy lady

Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Mitt Romney Style:

CollegeHumor's Favorite Funny Videos

How stupid do they think we are?

Is anyone the least bit surprised that the Harper claim of "700 new food inspectors" is turning out to be a complete lie and the Ritz claim that XL Foods has a "full contingent" of CFIA staff is, at best, grossly misleading?

"There is a full contingent of inspectors on site, and there was before this incident," said Ritz, listing 40 inspectors and six veterinarians.
"That is a 20 per cent increase over the last couple of years. So we are ramping it up."
[Agriculture Union president]Kingston puts another spin on those same numbers.
The XL plant may have a "full contingent" now, but only after repeated union complaints to fill empty positions at the facility."That plant[XL Foods] was grossly — to the point of illegally — understaffed," Kingston claimed.
"All they've done is fill vacant positions. That's not quite the same as actually increasing the complement."
As for the overall 700 new inspectors everyone from the prime minister down has been citing in defence of the government's handling of the E. coli outbreak, Kingston says the number is meaningless.
"It's totally misleading to the Canadian public," he said. "It's not even worth discussing those numbers because they're simply not relevant to what's happened at XL beef."
"None of those 700 people went into slaughter plants — period."

Beef recall gibberish

This has got to be the most ridiculous "explanation" ever promoted to explain why thousands of beef products are being recalled. Does anyone actually understand what was going on in XL Foods or at CFIA?

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency conceded on Monday it’s a mistake not to require companies to analyze test results from beef trimmings to to allow inspectors to “connect the dots to get the big picture” about a packing plant’s operations.
...“The requirements for analysis of the data — in other words, what they had to do to look at it at the end of the day, weren’t as rigorous,” Arsenault said. “Well, I wouldn’t use that word. They were fairly rigorous because they had to do all that testing, but in terms of connecting the dots to look for these pictures, they didn’t have a requirement to do that.
“We didn’t think that was something that would have been useful. We now know that it is, so that’s why we’re going to change it.”

Huh?  Sounds like they were testing meat here and there and filing the results without looking at them.  How long have these guys been doing this anyway?  Here's the bottom line, the actual story:

U.S. inspectors at the border in Montana first detected E. coli in beef trimmings used to make hamburger during random tests on Sept. 3. The CFIA found traces of E. coli the next day, but it wasn’t until 13 days later that a recall was issued — by the company, voluntarily.

And while Gerry Ritz continues to flail around the Commons pointing his fingers here, there and everywhere, tomorrow I'll be throwing out all the beef in my freezer.  Because the stores I shop at -- Coop, Safeway, Sobeys, Superstore -- now seem to be recalling all the beef products they sold me throughout September.
Those are the dots I'm connecting, boys.

Hooray! Justin is in

Trudeau enters Liberal leadership race: 'I love this great country' | CTV News


And I'm not surprised his first stop is going to be Calgary, the lair of the beast. The national media will be paying the most attention to him and looking for every slight and insult they can find -- gutsy play, typical of the young Trudeau.
And why did he pick Oct. 2 to announce? It was Michel's birthday.

Great line of the day

Talking about the "sex-selective" abortion motion which Parliament is now being asked to vote on, Dawg says:

the abortion “debate” that Harper insists will not be re-opened continues to shamble through the House of Commons like one of the walking dead.

The fetus fetishests are trying their best to get MPs to give them a majority vote on SOMETHING, so they can use it as a wedge to pry the entire abortion issue open again.  Look what has happened in the States, where the fetishists used so-called "late term" abortions to demonize women and create a wedge against Roe V Wade.
It all comes down to is this:  what part of "woman's right to chose" do these people not understand? Whether a priest or a husband or a whole Parliament agrees with their decision, or not, its still the woman's decision to make.

Here's to the new TV season!

Thumbs up!
Great acting, great action
"

Interesting characters, potentially lots of fun


Thumbs down -
What a disappointment - overwrought, trite


Just dumb


Ehhh, maybe -- worth a couple more episodes anyway

Yes, but he was right about Powerpoint

So the Politico piece about how Ryan is going rogue and using PowerPoint now was just a joke though perhaps one that cut a little too close to the bone.
But what Simon said about PowerPoint was actually sort of hilarious:

A word about PowerPoint. PowerPoint was released by Microsoft in 1990 as a way to euthanize cattle using a method less cruel than hitting them over the head with iron mallets. After PETA successfully argued in court that PowerPoint actually was more cruel than iron mallets, the program was adopted by corporations for slide show presentations.
Conducting a PowerPoint presentation is a lot like smoking a cigar. Only the person doing it likes it. The people around him want to hit him with a chair.
PowerPoint is usually restricted to conference rooms where the doors are locked from the outside. It is, therefore, considered unsuited for large rallies, where people have a means of escape and where the purpose is to energize rather than daze.
Ryan’s PowerPoint slides were officially labeled: “Our Unsustainable Debt (U.S. Debt Held by Public as a Share of Economy),” “Your Share of the Debt,” “Who Funds Our Reckless Spending?” and “How the Government Spends Your Money.”. . .
Sources close to the Ryan campaign tell me his two new PowerPoint presentations will be: “How a Bill Becomes Law” and “Canada: Friendly Giant to the North.”

Or maybe he could do the Gettysburg Address in PowerPoint.

So we're just afraid to discuss abortion?

Conservative pro-lifer Laurie Hawn says glibly 'Nobody's anti-life and nobody's anti-choice', a stunningly stupid statement because the 91 MPs voting in favour of Woodward's disingenuous motion to "study" when life begins are not pro-choice at all -- they want some parliamentary committee to decide whether a women can get an abortion or not.
Hawn continues "Canadians ought to be able to have rational, respectful discussions on difficult issues . . . we've got lots of difficult issues that we're afraid to discuss in Canada and I think that's unfortunate."
What a great idea. Too bad us pro-choicers are such cowards, we're so afraid to discuss it.
Here's the level that such a discussion would rapidly reach, Laurie old chum -- the priest who authored this piece wants "to expose evil and to call on public servants to know the difference between serving the public and killing the public." And it would be pretty difficult to discuss anything with someone like this commenter who believes that pro-choicers are history's greatest monsters:

How can anyone with even a shred of decency support this brutal and evil act of barbarism. We will all stand before The Lord Jesus one day, and will have to explain our actions. We must somehow stop this unthinkable atrocity from continuing to butcher children. God have mercy on us all.

Yes, a rational, respectful discussion? Not gonna happen ...

How to play football

Goofy - How To Play Football (High Quality) - YouTube: ""

If the replacement refs could just learn the game, they might avoid more calls like this:

The honoured dead

We just spent the summer watching all those "War of 1812" ads and now we find out that the Harper Cons have spent five years and three-quarters of a million dollars to try to claw back pensions from disabled veterans.
I guess the people who fight Canada's wars are only honoured by the Harper Cons if they're dead and gone.