Newspaper endorsements are just another corporate press release

At the end of an election campaign, a newspaper's endorsement used to mean something. It used to be taken as considered and authoritative judgement by the newspaper's editorial office about that particular election campaign and that particular set of candidates.
Now? Its just another corporate press release.
The Globe and Mail started it off last week in a ridiculous editorial that endorsed the Harper Cons, without Harper, and it was widely mocked on twitter.
Then all of the Postmedia brand newspapers in Canada ran so-called "editorials" written by their corporate office supporting the Harper Cons, and the Edmonton Journal editor described it as the "right" of the Postmedia owners to do this.
Now the National Post has lost their editorial board chair, Andrew Coyne over their refusal to let Coyne endorse the party he wanted to endorse. Their corporate endorsement, of course, went to the Harper Cons.

There's no pearl-clutching in baseball

#THIS. Joey Bat Flip.
https://t.co/CO59JyFCsa

— MLB (@MLB) October 15, 2015

Wasn't that a party?
And its a side-note on the whole thing, really, but illustrative of how Americans think they own baseball.
First, I was amused during yesterday's stunning Blue Jays win by the pearl-clutching of the announcers over how the Toronto fans erupted during the disputed run ruling. The announcers seemed amazed at how angry the Toronto fans were -- why, they acted just like the fans would in any American baseball park and they threw stuff on the field! They so scary, must suspend game!
And then it was hilarious how the Rangers and the American sports media got so busy tut-tutting about Bautista flipping his bat after he saved the day, the game, the downtown, and the season -- how dare he act just like any other player would in any other American baseball park!
CBS Sports writes:

Dyson comes off as whiny little baby in all of this. I understand the Rangers just suffered a crushing defeat and they're looking to lash out, but of all the things to get mad about, they're mad about the bat flip?
Know what's disrespectful? Telling a player how to act after a career-defining moment. Dyson has no business telling Bautista he "needs to calm down," especially considering Dyson instigated not one, but two benches clearing incidents that inning.

Great line of the day

One of the commenters on a Huffington Post about the Ford brothers showing up at a Harper Con rally:

The Ford brothers were there to advise Harper on drugs and whorehouses. Who better?

Don't make me laugh

Once again following along with the Harper Con agenda, the Globe and Mail is "reporting" that Trudeau's spending promises are "under more scrutiny":

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is coming under mounting pressure to spell out just how his campaign spending promises would add up.

Yeah, sure.
The Liberals announced their spending and budget plans weeks ago; if the media hasn't scrutinized them until now (too busy focusing the election on Muslims like Harper wanted them to) then this isn't Justin's fault.
The only pressure that Justin is coming under right now is from the panicked Harper Cons, who are throwing money away trying to halt Liberal momentum.

Predictions

Sorry for the lack of posts -- we have been away.

But I notice that news outlets are now reporting the Liberals are within reach of forming the next government. So maybe for a change my mid-September prediction that Trudeau was beginning to pull away from the crowd will turn out to be correct.
Today's Nanos tracking poll confirms the Liberal's upward trend:

The current Nanos nightly tracking shows the Liberals at 35.1% support nationally followed by the Conservatives at 29.0%, the NDP at 25.0%, and the Greens at 5.1%.

The Harper Cons have done themselves no favours in this election with their niquab-baiting. When even Conrad Black turns against you (even considering how he must feel about the Liberals) you're doing it wrong:

This government has scraped the barrel in symbolic pandering: building new prisons and hiring new hosts of correctional officers as the crime rate declines, dispensing with elemental safeguards to due process in Bill C-51, claiming the right to expel and revoke the citizenship of dual citizens found guilty of terrorist offences, all in the name of enhanced public security, and now conducting the concluding phase of a general election campaign on an issue of no relevance involving a trivial number of people.

And Tabatha Southey's brilliant bear-in-a-bar analogy raises the question we now have to ask about the Harper Cons -- who is next?

Trudeau breaking away in the home stretch

The election campaign is starting around the clubhouse turn, heading for the tape.

Mulcair is getting bogged down by trying to out-Con the Harper Cons -- to the despair of NDP supporters.

And Harper has spent way too much time in his prettified, stage-managed photo ops.  The Harper Cons have drifted into a state of such boring irrelevancy that even the Aussie wunderkind will be unable to get their voters out.

I think it is Justin Trudeau who is beginning to break away. His ideas are the ones that are getting talked about --  Trudeau emerges as leader with new economic vision for Canada - The Globe and Mail -- and his bold infrastructure plan is supported by Canadians.

Here are some Trudeau lines from the debate:

Trudeau to Mulcair "Mr. Mulcair, who's talking about child care, the fact is that a young family with a two-year-old doesn't need child care eight years from now when their kid is in Grade 5. They need it right away, but Mr. Mulcair is not making a choice that's going to allow to invest in his promises. They're puffs of smoke."



Trudeau to Harper on the need for public transit: “What Canadians can’t afford is to continue to be stuck in traffic every morning because there’s no reliable transit because the federal government hasn’t stepped up as a partner. You’ve been stuck in a motorcade for the past 10 years.”

Trudeau on refugees: People cross oceans to come to Canada, only to have Harper take away their health care, Trudeau said, and security concerns should not be an excuse to close Canada's doors.
"Mr. Harper plays (to) fears all the time," Trudeau replied.
"Fears of others, fears of different communities. We have a prime minister who prefers to pander to fears. That's not right, sir."
Trudeau continued the attack while speaking to reporters following the debate, taking issue with Harper who differentiated between "new, existing and old-stock Canadians."
"The fact that he referred to something called old-stock Canadians demonstrates that yet again, he is choosing to divide Canadians against another," Trudeau said. "(He's) undermining new Canadians' legitimacy. For the Liberal party, for me a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian and it will always stay that way."

The Harper Cons set up our refugee system to fail

It's now clear that the Harper Cons set up our refugee system to fail.
They can pretend to have compassion but they don't have to actually admit any of those pesky refugees to Canada. Win-win.
Because three years ago they changed the rules to make it all the refugee's own fault that they can't get in -- now, they can say that the refugees just didn't have their paperwork done right and so what can we do? /shrug/
Compare and contrast: in 1979, the Canadian government bent over backward to fast-track desperate refugees:

Mike Molloy was the Canadian government official who oversaw the airlifting of the Vietnamese boat people and removed bureaucratic obstacles. “The motto out there was not ‘do the thing right,’ it was ‘do the right thing,’” the 71-year-old, who lives in Ottawa, said in an interview.
...“When the government said, ‘Go,’ the civil servants knew we had clear instructions.” Many of the refugees were on remote islands in southeast Asia. Mr. Molloy sent over teams totalling between 20 to 25 people to process the applications. They worked fast and in rough conditions – no bathroom facilities, rats crawling over them as they slept.
“Typically, you had about 12 minutes per case. You had to figure out who they were, and make a guess about whether they were capable of landing on their feet.” A written explanation of why an applicant was expected to succeed in Canada and a description of the family composition constituted the entire visa, he said. “That’s it. There was no intermediary paperwork.” Only medical papers and a security clearance were needed before final acceptance – usually no more than eight weeks after the interview.
“When the sun went down, they would light oil lamps and they would continue until they couldn’t keep their eyes open,” Mr. Molloy said. A small team at the Anambas Islands off the coast of Malaysia interviewed families amounting to 1,200 people in four and a half days, and when they began to pack their bags, they realized thousands of people had gathered. “The refugees stood up and gave them a standing ovation.”
He said another difference from today is that the Canadians tried to keep extended families together. “If there was an old granny, she’s an asset. Brothers and sisters, bring them along. We know from experience that when refugees arrive, if their family is intact, they have a better chance of establishing more efficiently.”
Mr. Molloy said he had “fantastic” assignments in a career that included being ambassador to Jordan, but the highlight was the Vietnamese-refugee project. “We never lose with refugees. Refugees arrive with no place to go but up.”

The Harper Cons don't agree.  The Conservative base don't like all those poor people cluttering up the country. Better we should be admitting more teenagers to work at MacDonalds and protect business from having to raise Canadian wages.
So the Harper Cons deliberately set up our refugee system to fail:

The refugee groups say they have repeatedly called on Immigration Minister Chris Alexander and the government to exempt Syrians from the rule — which says the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) or another country must first designate a person as a refugee before immigration officials will consider letting them be privately sponsored to come to Canada....Then-immigration minister Jason Kenney implemented the new rule in October 2012 as part of a broader Conservative government overhaul of Canada’s refugee system....Briefing notes obtained by the Citizen say the change was intended to protect against fraud, but also to deal with a large backlog of applications from private sponsors while speeding up applications. “It is anticipated that this regulatory change will reduce G5 submissions by 70 per cent,” reads one memo to Kenney.

The goal wasn't to help people, it was just to reduce the number of applications.  The results has been to slow-track our refugee system

The government pledged in 2013 and in January of this year to take in a total of 11,300 Syrian refugees, and Mr. Harper promised during the election campaign to bring in another 10,000 from Syria and Iraq over four years. But just 2,347 have been resettled in the past three years, and the current process has so many bureaucratic stumbling blocks that refugee advocates doubt the target will be reached.

And the Harper Cons can blame the refugees for not completing the paperwork correctly, so its their fault not ours.
I tell you, it used to be a lot easier to be proud of Canada.

Great line of the day

From Sun Media parliamentary bureau chief David Akin, on Facebook, as quoted in a Sandy Garossino tweet

Great line of the day

From the Mound of Sound, writing about the Duffy trial revelations: The Disaffected Lib: Now It Makes Sense. It Was Magic.:

Claiming Novak didn't open an email is about as convincing as telling the teacher the dog ate your homework.

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.