Armageddon avoided for now

By my admittedly inexpert calculations, five hours later and the Chelyabinsk meteor would have hit north of Edinburgh.
Twelve hours later, it would have been uncomfortably close to Saskatoon.

You never know what's coming for you.
                 - Benjamin Button

They'd all freeze here anyway

Our good news today:

In a bizarre exchange in a place known for bizarre exchanges, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird told the House of Commons Wednesday that “Canada will never be a safe haven for zombies.”
“I want to assure this member and all Canadians that I am dead-icated to ensuring that this never happens,” Baird said.

Reassuring, isn't it?

Newest viral

Yes, Gangnam Style had more intellectual substance, but Harlem Shakeis funny, too:
"

Great line of the day

The Sixth Estate rips apart the latest Harper Con talking point -- leaked to one of their most reliable courtiers Jane Taber -- about how Senator Duffy isn't really defrauding the taxpayers he's actually just defrauding the health care system because PEI doesn't have a cardiac unit so Duffy just has to pretend to live in Ontario so he can use their cardiac doctors, or something... Anyway, Sixth Estate ends with this:

I guess we now know why right-wingers are so paranoid that lazy, self-interested gits are ripping off the welfare system. That’s what they think is going on, because it’s exactly what they do when given the opportunity.

Media frenzy

The media frenzy around where Mike Duffy really lives just shows the truth of the saying "be nice to the people you meet on the way up because you'll see them again on the way down."
He hasn't been particularly nice to Canadian journalism either before or during his Senate career:

In the 1990s, Duffy sued Frank magazine for defamation, referring to Duffy as the "Puffster". Duffy claimed that the magazine's satirical attacks against him cost him the Order of Canada. Frank settled out of court with Duffy.
In 2008, a panel of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled that Duffy had violated broadcasting codes and ethics during the 2008 federal election. The panel concluded that Duffy's decision to air 'false starts' of an interview with then-Liberal leader Stéphane Dion “was not fair, balanced, or even handed" and that during the same broadcast, Duffy “significantly misrepresented the view of one of the three members of his Panel...Liberal MP Geoff Regan.” ...
In March 2010 Duffy criticized the University of King's College and other journalism schools in Canada for teaching Noam Chomsky and critical thinking. He went on to say that journalism schools in Canada were churning out leftists who thought private enterprise was bad. The head of King's School of Journalism reacted with surprise to Duffy's criticism, saying that Manufacturing Consent was not part of the curriculum. She also said she would not apologize for teaching critical thinking to journalism students. A number of editorial comments were written in response to Duffy's criticism.

The press can hardly wait for the tar and feathering, because it just couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

Saturday morning cartoon

The Box - Simon's Cat - YouTube: ""

Its the crash off-screen at the end that slays me.

Don't piss on me and tell me its raining

The latest robocall scandal is going to bite the Harper Cons in the ass, to coin a phrase.
They could have done a reasonably neutral poll to find out what Saskatchewan people actually thought of the urban ridings proposal.  This might have given them some valuable information about how widespread the desire for urban ridings actually is, information which they might have been able to use to build a case for rejecting the boundary changes.
But no.  The Harper Cons think they can create their own reality.  They got pushy and they got sneaky.   Result:  disaster.
Saskboy got one of the calls and reports on what the robo-voice said:

Last week I got a robocall from “Chase Research” and listened to it all, taking notes when I realized it was a Conservative push-poll and would cause a scandal....It referred to “drastic” changes to “traditional” riding boundaries and said the new way would pit “rural vs urban” against each other. After being negative about the situation, it asked for a yes or no option to the changes, or to have options repeated.

They embarrassed themselves and, now that the scandal has erupted, they have a poll that they cannot use. In fact, when Conservatives now start talking about how "the Saskatchewan people" want to keep the boundaries as they are, the press and the commission members can just laugh them out of the room.

...in question period, NDP MP Craig Scott, in a question, noted that no party with a "classic sense of ethics" would attempt to pressure a boundaries commission to reverse its proposals by using what he called "robocon propaganda." Surprisingly, it was Harper rather than one of his ministers who stood up to answer Scott’s question, perhaps an indication of how seriously the prime minister views the issue.
Harper replied, "There are actually parliamentary hearings into this. Obviously there is political input, although the final decision is independent,' meaning, perhaps, his office will not try to influence the Conservative MPs who dominate the committee.

Well, dream on about that. Still, thanks to their own clumsy hubris, the Harper Cons can no longer just quietly bury the redistribution report.

Hubris

More legal trouble for Mayor Rob Ford

“The audit revealed more than 100 apparent contraventions of the Municipal Elections Act, including the finding that Ford spent more than $40,000 above his legal spending limit. Additionally, the auditors found that Ford, in apparent contravention of election laws, accepted corporate donations, received a loan from Ford’s family company (Doug Ford Holding Inc.), and began spending money before the campaign was legally permitted.”

You can't make this stuff up.

Shorter

Charles Pierce describes the Republican performance at Chuck Hagel's nomination hearing:

A few great Pierce lines:

...This is the equivalent of a clown taking singing lessons from a goat.
... It was like watching Rent performed on the set of Show Boat.
...There is some criticism rising that Hagel was not properly prepared for his testimony. I'm not sure anybody could have been. How could anyone be properly prepared for Jim Inhofe and Ted Cruz in the same day? Those kind of mushrooms are still illegal.

#J28 photos

Ottawa:


Calgary:


Toronto:


Sault St. Marie:


Edmonton:


Calgary:


Winnipeg:


Texas:


Michigan:


New Mexico:


And see this video of Idle No More solidarity around the world.

Day of Action #J28

Idle No More is rallying worldwide on Monday

...jingle dancers across the country have been invited by organizers to dance on Parliament Hill following a rally on Victoria Island.
In Vancouver, hundreds of protesters plan to march to the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Building, according to the event’s Facebook page. In Calgary, more than 300 people have RSVP’d for a peace march that will converge in “the biggest Round Dance the downtown core has ever seen!”
In Regina, Sask., 287 people had registered on Facebook to attend an evening of music and speeches. And in Winnipeg, more than 2,000 had registered to take place in a flash mob round dance.
Dozens of rallies are planned for cities across Ontario – including nearly 400 people expected to gather in downtown Toronto – and the Maritimes, according to Facebook.
Just over 250 people had RSVP’d for an Idle No More rally in Montreal, and another hundred people RSVP’d for a sunrise ceremony that then plans to organize transportation to the rally in Ottawa.
In Melbourne, Australia, 61 people were registered for a Haka flash mob in support of Idle No More. In Malmo, Sweden, 115 people said they were attending a rally in support of Idle No More. That rally was set to include dancing and drumming, according to the group’s Facebook page.
And events have been planned in a number of cities across the United States, including New York City, Washington and Las Vegas.

Here's the facebook list of J28 events -- Saskatoon's event is beginning at 11 am (Common Cause) and at noon to 4:30 (Idle No More) at Station 20 West.

Shorter

Shorter Globe and Mail:

Next time I need a job, I hope Sun News remembers that I supported their "mandatory carriage" campaign.

Le Blog

Jean-Paul Sartre's Blog at the New Yorker:

Wednesday, 22 July, 1959: 10:50 A.M.
This morning over breakfast S. asked me why I looked so glum.
“Because,” I said, “everything that exists is born for no reason, carries on living through weakness, and dies by accident.”
“Jesus,” S. said. “Aren’t you ever off the clock?”

(h/t)

Whine and jeez

I used to like Phil Mickelson until he started whining about how awful it is that he is going to have to pay more taxes on an income of merely $40 million a year. As Tbogg notes, Mickelson got his start playing on a city-owned golf course.  But now he's rich so he complains about paying the taxes that would help out other kids.  I'll bet his sponsors were none too pleased with his threats to quit playing -- now he says he's not going to insult us again by talking about how tough it is to be Phil Mickelson.
Cry me a river, Phil.

I just looked around and he's gone

1968 was the year I was finishing high school.  Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. There were violent riots at the Democratic Convention, Prague Spring ended in disaster, Nixon was the US president, and my cousin had to go to Vietnam.
But 1968 was also the year that Pierre Trudeau got elected.  And Apollo 8 took the Earthrise photo that December.  From that perspective, it seemed we might survive.
I sometimes wonder what kind of president Bobby Kennedy would have made.