Well, I have to admit the Argos did get one right

Exclusive shot of @SSKRoughriders fan's brains reacting to their team committing another penalty. #ArgosLive pic.twitter.com/otI9tJna0F

— Toronto Argonauts (@TorontoArgos) August 9, 2015

Actually, I argue that the #Riders won the game, we just lost the officials!

Debate prep for the rest of us

Excellent column from Greg Fingas on what to watch for in this debate:

the overarching theme should be one of judgment under pressure.... only the debates tell us how a leader relates and responds to competing parties and philosophies in the heat of the moment.

He also ways to watch for:

each leader’s willingness to respond directly to questions and challenges, even when they don’t fit neatly into a party’s existing talking points... (and) a leader’s ability to defend policies at more than a surface level ... watch especially for any willingness (or refusal) to acknowledge when an opposing leader makes a point worthy of consideration.

Chantal Herbert discusses the importance of the debate for Trudeau:

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has the most to win from the exercise. It is his best chance to shore up his battered credentials as a serious contender for the job of prime minister.
In the reverse, an underwhelming Trudeau performance could relegate his party to the sidelines of the main battle once and for all, and take a heavy toll on the morale of his troops.

And some great tweets to share:

So far all these photo ops of Harper with people behind him look like hostage videos. Vote for me and dad gets to come home! #elxn42

— Steve V (@FarAndWide) August 4, 2015

Harper campaign making it tough for reporters to cover his events. Solution: Don't cover his events. http://t.co/cqlPY6SMpN #cdnpoli #elxn42

— jimbobbysez (@jimbobbysez) August 6, 2015

The Harper Con tradition to bribe us with our own money

Quel suprise! The Harper Cons have announced another tax credit, this time for home renovations:

The tax credit would apply to renovation costs between $1,000 and $5,000, allowing a taxpayer to get back up to $750 a year.
“The home renovation tax credit helps every homeowner regardless of income,” said Harper

Yeah sure, except that people making lower salaries don't usually have even a thousand dollars to spend upgrading their houses, and don't benefit much from the plethora of Harper Con tax credits anyway.
But bribing us with our own money is a Harper Con tradition.





Hat Tip to Politics and its Discontents for this great cartoon.

Effective advertising, eh?

Well, those annoying Harper Con ads we've been seeing all summer appear to have convinced Canadians that Trudeau "is not ready" to be Prime Minister.
But they haven't made The Kitten Whisperer any more endearing.
So who is left standing?
Yes, you've got it:  NDP surges past Conservatives, Liberals in latest poll | Toronto Star:



And it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.
A guy who did NOT vote for Bill C51.

Shut up, Jake, its election-time!

Everybody is talking about the Harper Cons fiscal advantage if he calls a mid-October election this weekend.

I have another question about such an early election call: what information will Canadians NOT be hearing about during the next eleven weeks?
Does Stats Canada still get to release or update unemployment rates during an election campaign? What about government economic forecasts and updates? Both would, I think, prove that Canada is in a recession. And what about other types of information -- in 2008, DND restricted interviews with the military during the election campaign.
Not forgetting, of course, the League of Extraordinary Canadians has already been silenced, along with federal scientists and any other reality-based federal employees.

Watching Gawker implode -- grab the popcorn

I have often enjoyed reading Gawker, particularly for goofy posts like this:


Not to mention how they single-handedly made Rob Ford's cocaine use into a major story in the United States, where it would otherwise have been ignored.
But what I don't like about Gawker is its juvenile and parochial tendency to start little wars with other New York media organizations -- Reddit, for example, and the New York Post, and now Conde Nast.
I haven't done any research on this because I don't want to affect my amateur status, but I would think these bizarre wars are a combination of 1) the Gawker organization hiring executives and/or reporters with grudges against former employers, and 2) inadequate editorial judgement which allows too many stupid stories to be posted by people with agendas instead of news judgement.
And now it has all come tumbling down. Last night I was shocked to read Gawker's mean-spirited and gratuitous "outing" of a Conde Nast chief financial officer -- I wasn't the only one, and Twitter death rays roasted Gawker all last night, resulting in Gawker removing the story earlier today, issuing a non-apology apology which was apparently misleading about how the removal decision was made, and now its own editorial staff is flipping out about the removal.
This isn't going to end well.

Things I didn't know

Did you know there is an "anti-vaccine" movement now for dogs? Today I Learned About The Anti-Vaccinating Dog Movement. How incredibly stupid can some people be?
And I didn't know that judges could be this stupid -- there are three children in Michigan who were "sentenced" in June to an indefinite stay in a juvenile detention facility because this idiotic woman decided they should have a relationship with their father. Yes, I know.
And I've been busy watching Wimbledon and Vasek Pospisil's incredible run there, in singles and doubles. I must admit, after the way Pospisil was treated in the quarterfinal -- Murray's disdain, the referee's interference -- I was more than a little glad that Murray did not make the Wimbledon final this year.

SCOTUS drags the US into the 21st Century

Now the United States will experience "gay marriage", just like dozens of other countries already have.





With this, plus yesterday's Obamacare decision, the United States has been pulled kicking and screaming into the modern world.
I can only hope that people in the United States will have the same epiphany that Paul Martin did -- he said that following the Canadian supreme court decision in 2005, he realized marriage equality was not a religious issue but a civil rights issue.

This is not an Onion story: "white supremacists worried that Charleston shooting makes them look bad"

When I first read a tweet about this article, I thought it had to be an Onion joke:

White supremacists on Thursday quickly tried to distance themselves from the suspect in the mass shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, worried that a white man killing nine people in a black church in South Carolina looked bad for their movement.

But its not -- this is actual reporting!

Stormfront commenters continued to hold out hope Thursday morning that perhaps Roof wasn't motivated by racism -- maybe it was anti-Christian hatred instead -- and their movement could keep what they think of as their good name.
"Lets not jump to conclusions and call him a WN [white nationalist] until there is an indication as such... The fact that he targeted a church gives me an inkling that it was religion-related," wrote WhiteVirginian.
"Yep, bad news for gun rights advocates as well," wrote maththeorylover2008. "Another nail in the coffin for the 2nd Amendment."
Time and again, many Stormfront members emphasized that their online community is one inclined to peace and racial harmony -- albeit segregated.

Ridiculous, isn't it.

This kind of pushback began almost at once, though -- when I was watching CNN on the night it happened, the anchors were already questioning the police chief's description of the shooting as a "hate crime" and then of course Fox started right in with the "anti-christian" spin.

So I wonder if anyone is going to start talking about how racism is just "biological wiring."

Jerks will be jerks, unless the military won't tolerate it

So the Canadian military explains rape with a "boys will be boys" statement:

Military sexual misconduct due to 'biological wiring,' Gen. Tom Lawson says. Is he saying 'boys will be boys'? Deplorable excuse! #CDSFail

— Joyce Murray 梅麗喬 (@joycemurray) June 16, 2015

Actually, assholes will be assholes and jerks will be jerks, unless the Canadian military takes responsibility for who they are admitting and what they are training men to do.  Zero tolerance would be a place to start.

Thanks, Tabatha

Brilliant column by Tabatha Southey on Caitlyn Jenner and how bizarre and inappropriate the pundit reactions have been to her. Tabatha points out this essential truth:

...[transgendered] people are not a dilemma that needs to be solved, by you or anyone else.

Experimental science

xkcd: Placebo Blocker:





I recall talking to a psychologist once about how people reacted to getting a diagnosis of a life-threatening disease.  So we thought perhaps we could do an experiment where we gave half the group a case of the flu, and the other half a life-threatening disease, and then we could evaluate which group behaved with more nobility and grace.  But this was in the days before ethics boards...

The Stupid is everywhere!

What a triumph!
The Australian minister of agriculture had kept his country safe from rabies now that Johnny Depp’s little dogs have left the country. They will soon be followed by Johnny Depp himself, and by every other film star and film production company on the planet.

Omar coming!

After 13 years, Omar Khadr is finally out of jail.

The Harper Con reaction to Omar Khadr's release on bail reminds me of The Wire:


I can laugh at the ridiculous over-reaction of the Harper Cons to the news of Omar Khadr's release, but this has been a shameful episode in Canadian history:

"We left a child -- a Canadian child -- in Guantanamo Bay to suffer torture… We, Canada, participated in this torture . . . Canadians should be deeply disturbed that the rights of a fellow citizen - even one whose family and name are unpopular - were so callously abused and ignored."

Alberta will have some fun now

So much for boring old Canadian elections, eh?
NDP wins stunning majority in Alberta election, Jim Prentice resigns
Now, of course, the NDP will have to figure out how they can possibly run the province -- 40 years of pent-up frustration, everybody wanting everything changed RIGHT NOW! and they're stuck with a civil service that has never worked for anyone except the Alberta Conservatives.
I'll bet they'll be having some fun now, huh.