The awfulness of the Ghomeshi trial

Did ALL of the women that Ghomeshi supposedly abused so badly later sleep with him again and send him bikini photos and love letters? Or only the three who have testified so far at his trial?
And here I was thinking that police and prosecutors only bring charges against someone when they think they have a winnable court case. With Ghomeshi, they apparently scurried to court with charges that are proving so far to be ludicrous.  Was their goal not to protect women but actually just to display their contempt for the CBC and for Ghomeshi's egotistic celebrity?
I know things have reached a truly awful state when I find myself agreeing with Margaret Wente: The Ghomeshi trial turns into a fiasco:

Everybody knew a guilty verdict was far from sure. The bar for a criminal conviction is, as it should be, high. But nobody, not even the most experienced court-watchers, could have predicted how this trial would go. It has turned into a fiasco . . . .
I know the dynamics of abuse can be complex. I know that women can both love and fear their abusers. But these women were not battered wives. They were not in relationships with Mr. Ghomeshi. They barely knew him. They had no reason to fear him, and he had no power over them at all – except the power of his charm and celebrity. They could have walked away. They didn’t.
And all that’s left is their word about unpleasant encounters that may or may not rise to the standard of criminal assault.

Get on with it!

This is ridiculous:

Liberal MP Bill Blair wants to make it clear the growth and sale of legal marijuana in Canada will not be a free-for-all.

Bill, its already a free-for-all -- anyone can already get anything they want,any time they want.
So the only question is who will be selling it, the provincial Liquor Board Store or that gang guy on the corner.
And Trudeau could not have picked a worse "point person" to develop a legalization strategy for Canada than Bill Blair -- the guy who couldn't manage his own police force.

I though Conservatives were against government interference?

UPDATE:  A commenter points out that McKenna is a Liberal, not a Conservative -- sorry, I had mis-read a website.  So I have updated my post accordingly, but I didn't withdraw it because I think the overall point is still valid.

Conservative politician Frank McKenna thinks immigrants should be required to live in the Maritimes when they first come to Canada.
Now let me say first that living in the Annapolis Valley in the spring could be pretty nice, really, especially compared to Whitehorse in the winter.
But I always thought it was Conservatives Liberals who believed that governments shouldn't be telling people what to do -- like with owning rifles and selling wheat.
I guess that was then and this is now.
Apparently Nova Scotia and New Brunswick think maybe McKenna has a good idea. And it starts out sounding sort of innocuous really:

He said the federal government should create a special program for Atlantic Canada that would require immigrants to live three to five years in the region before they are granted citizenship... He said forcing a Canadian citizen to live in a particular province would violate their mobility rights under the Constitution, but he said Constitutional scholars believe it would be a reasonable requirement for people seeking citizenship.

But my question is, just how, exactly, do they think this "special program" should be enforced?
Will we have to set up an "immigrant location" board, just like we have a parole board, to keep track of where people are living and whether they have completed their sentence -- um, location term?  Would they have to show up with their families in tow every two weeks or every month to "check in"?  And if they missed a check-in, then would we send out the IMLOs -- immigrant location officers -- who would raid the neighbours to search out where the family had moved to. And there would be "underground railways" to Toronto and Vancouver, so that immigrants could be shuffled around the country.
And then when we find them, we would have to move them back to the Maritimes so they could finish their sentence -- um, "location term".  But likely they couldn't be trusted not to run away again so then would be have to set up special "camps" for them to live in -- you know, with big signs at the entrance about how work will make you free...


Oh dear, we've gone Godwin already.

What a cruel, mean and ignorant thing for Brad Wall to say

“If you really don’t like the prison food, there’s one way to avoid it, and that’s don’t go to prison."

This is what Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall said in response to complaints about poor jail food quality and quantity after the government's decision to contract out prison food to a for-profit company, Compass Group -- which is also in the news today for sexual favours.
Stay classy, Brad!

Retirement dreams

New year resolutions

The Christmas gift anyone can give -- saying "thanks!"

I usually enjoy reading the various advice columnists around the web, and particularly at this time of year, a lot of the columns are about how difficult it is to buy Christmas presents for their ungrateful, greedy relatives and how awful are the gifts they receive in return -- like this one from Captain Awkward #809: Gold, Frankincense, Myrrh, and Judgement and this one from Carolyn Hax I Hate Christmas.
I have come to the conclusion that there is really just one “gift” we can all give to our nearest and dearest this Christmas and it is this: Be visibly pleased and vocally happy with any present that we receive from them; no matter how awful or inappropriate or ill-fitting it is -- just smile and say “how good of you to think of this” or “it's just what I wanted” or “what a clever idea” or even just “thanks so much for thinking of me”.
 Even if its one of Dr. Grumpy's giant shrimp pillows:

Donald Trump, coward

What the cowardly Donald Trump and his idiot supporters are now saying about Muslims is no different than what the Nazis were saying about Jews just 80 years ago.
Even Dick Cheney thinks Trump is going too far, but Trump won't care.  Trump has seized on the deaths of 14 Americans to make this horrible incident into America's version of the Reichstag fire, an excuse for violent and racist rhetoric.  At its core, of course, is his own profound cowardice, a deep-seated fear of anyone who isn't white.
Rachel Maddow thinks Trump is really just trying to get himself disowned by the Republican party.
No, I don't think he is either that smart or that devious.
He's just gone crazy and he wants to take America with him.
UPDATE:  Yes, they went there:

Great line of the day

Iraq War Do-Over: Lance Mannion writes about how the media really really want to cheerlead for another war in the Middle East:

It's not just the neo-cons who want a do-over on Iraq.
By and large, the American press wanted that war as much as the Bush Leaguers did.
The media cheerled for the invasion. They reported the war as a rolling victory even after it was clear it was far from that.
They propped up the Bush Administration. Tried to sell us on the idea that W. was a great leader. And they'v never really admitted any of it.
Let alone apologized.
And rather than admit they were played for fools and suckers and certainly rather than admit they were glad to play along...
...they're itching for another war. Wars sell newspapers and advertising. Covering wars boosts careers.
It makes desk bound editors and pundits feel like heroes.
And this time out, they think, they'll get it right.
Not that they think they didn’t get it right the first time.

And, like with Iraq, the media has no idea at all exactly where the war should be or who exactly it should be fought against or what the goal should be or how to decide who has won.
They just think Obama should somehow fix in six days what Bush spent six years breaking.

Oh Gawd, here comes "Nannygate"!

I expect any minute now some Canadian media will start using the term "Nannygate". The stupid, it burns!

As the Globe and Mail editorial rather grudgingly admitted, nobody expects the Trudeaus to pay for the gardeners or the cleaners or the housekeepers who look after their official residence. But now I guess the media expects us taxpayers to get all huffy about paying for their child care.

So does Canada want to elect politicians who have children? Well, somebody needs to care for those children, and its fine with me if the taxpayers cover the costs while mom and dad are busy doing the public's business.

I had no problem with Alison Redford taking her daughter with her on trips and doubtless the Harper family also hired nannies for child care when their children were young.  So I see no problem with the Trudeaus taking their children with them when they travel, and a nanny too.  Because no, they're not going to just hire babysitters for the evening through the hotel concierge.

Now we have to listen to the Harper Cons whining about Trudeau's child caregivers --  remember, this is the same bunch saw no problem in billing the public for Harper's haircuts.

Breaking News: Canadians are not stupid

It will be amazing news to our news pundits, but Canadians are not stupid knee-jerk war-mongering pearl-clutching conservatives.
After all the news stories of the last week about how the Paris attacks made Canadians question Trudeau's decision on withdrawal from air attacks in Syria, and after all the blithe assertions I heard that Canadians wouldn't have voted for Trudeau if the attacks had happened before the election, today we find out that Trudeau is more popular than ever.
As of Friday, a week after the Paris attacks, Trudeau is the preferred prime minister for 53 per cent of Canadians. This is his highest level ever, and an increase of three percent since before the attacks. He is way ahead of the other party leaders, and the gap is widening. We also found out today that almost three quarters of Canadians think Trudeau is a good leader, while only a third think this highly of the Harper Cons.

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't

I expect Trudeau realizes that all of the people who are criticizing him for moving too fast on the Syrian refugee promise would turn on a dime and howl in betrayal if he announced he was slowing down.
Damn the torpedos, sir -- full speed ahead!

Great line of the day

The Mound of Sound writes about The Moral War and our new wars of the 21st Century:

All I've garnered out of those studies has led me to formulate a precautionary rule. Don't get into wars that you're not willing to win and, even then, not without knowing how you will win, how long that will take, at what cost, how you will know if you've won and if you've lost, and how you will get out. Those preconditions all sound so reasonable and yet, if applied to our military adventures in the Muslim world since the turn of this century, we would have stayed home.
Forget this bullshit about moral wars for it's the most heinous, most barbaric side that sets that morality bar in these new wars. There's no moral consolation prize that doesn't leave mountains of suffering and dead in its wake.

Emphasis mine.
I hope Trudeau withstands the twin pressures he is under now to continue showing off in the middle east with meaningless Canadian air strikes, while simultaneously running away at home by not admitting as many Syrian refugees as he promised.

Forty years ago the Edmund Fitzgerald was wrecked

Doctor Grumpy in the House: November 10, 1975:

Great line of the day

The Mound of Sound writes about today's story on how the Harper Cons "politicized" the civil service:

The mandarins are running for cover. They failed to stand up to Harper. They chose not to defend the public service over which they presided. They allowed themselves to be intimidated into colluding with a corrupt government. They abandoned their responsibility to the nation and the Canadian people and they now, unforgivably and outrageously, depict themselves as victims.

Yeah -- after ten years of "the Harper government" taking over what used to be The Government of Canada, after years of outrageous firings and resignations, after everyone was so sick and tired of Harper that the country threw him out, NOW the deputy ministers decide to complain about politics affecting the civil service? Give me a break.