Dumb

Of all of the dumb prosecutions we've seen over the last several years, from Martha Stewart to John Edwards, the attempt to demonize baseball players and cyclists as big-time criminal drug abusers has to rank as the dumbest.
At last Roger Clemens has been found not guilty on all counts, for the second time, joining Barry Bonds (mostly) and Lance Armstrong (hopefully).
Meanwhile, of course, professional football players just keep on getting a little stronger every day...  but shshsss!  Let's not talk about that.
Scott Lemieux sums it up

If only Clemens has tortured someone on behalf of the federal government or committed a massive bank fraud — he could have saved a lot of money in legal expenses…

Two-tier health care is here

The Harper Cons have taken the first steps toward dismantling medicare for everyone by classifying refugees as "second-tier" people who aren't going to get the same kind of health care everyone else can get.
And if they get away with it, what's to stop them from doing it again?
How about immigrants next, and then families of immigrants, because they haven't paid enough taxes yet. Then for people who are unemployed, because they're not paying enough taxes. Then for people who are employed, because they can buy their own health insurance. They'll always be able to find another "good" reason to cut people off medicare.
One thing we always have to remember is this: politicians HATE medicare -- they hate having to spend so much money without having any control over it, without being able to cut any ribbons or send out any press releases. They hate that Canadians take it for granted, and we aren't grateful to government anymore for it, we just complain about it to the politicians.

An absolute crock

Twenty people connected to David Del Mastro, Dean's cousin, or to his electrical business in Mississauga, are such political activists that they each gave Dean Del Mastro a thousand dollars in the 2008 election campaign:

He said it was reasonable to believe that his employees volunteered to each give $1,000 to a candidate running for election in a riding three hours away.
“Why wouldn’t they?” he asked.

And if you believe that, I've got this bridge I could sell you...

It's actually a class war

DougJ at Baloon Juice says the fighting about politics is actually about class:

I used to think that the purpose of neoconservatism was to give some intellectual cover to the right, and that it gained power in the United States because the right gained power. I think I was wrong. Neoconservatism is attractive to elites because it flatters them and tells them they are superior. It’s the perfect ideology for an overclass filled with mediocre minds, fat wallets, and delicate fee-fees.
I also used to think “both sides do it” was just a way of empowering the right and trashing the left. Now, I think it’s just an easy way for the establishment to dismiss all criticism of itself. Hand out a double technical and everyone will have to shut up for a while.

The list keeps getting longer

There's going to be a whole lot of stuff to revoke once the New Democrat Liberal party gets elected -- now we can add this "Canada doesn't want any wretched refuse" immigration bill to the list.

A national embarrassment

The Harper Cons think the role of the police is to protect their delicate fee-fees?

Along with terrorism and organized crime, “embarrassment to the Canadian government” was considered one of the threats facing security forces at the G8 and G20 summit meetings in Ontario 2010, according to newly released military records.

It was the way police acted that turned out to be the national embarrassment.
That, and the millions the Cons wasted.

Fist pump

Yes! Female pilot tosses passenger off flight for making sexist remarks:

A Brazilian airline says one of its female pilots tossed a passenger off a flight because he was making sexist comments about women flying planes.
Trip Airlines says in a Tuesday statement the pilot ejected the man before takeoff as he made loud, sexist comments upon learning the pilot was a woman. . . .
Trip says it won't tolerate disparaging remarks made about any of the 1,400 women working for the airline.

Tough

Ever since we got a flatscreen, I have enjoyed watching tennis because I can finally see the ball.
What a game it was tonight at the French Open. If you ever want to really understand the phrase "when the going gets tough, the tough get going" it was on display in this amazing match between Djokovic and Tsonga.
Tsonga was the crowd favorite and he almost won - four times in the fourth set he was at match point. But Djokovic kept battling back and when Tsonga couldn't finish it then, everybody knew the fifth set would belong to Djokovic.

Going to the dark side

In spirit, I am in solidarity with the website blackout -- but I don't know how to change my website colours, and if I did figure it out, then I likely wouldn't know how to change them back, so consider this to be my way of joining the protest against the omnibus budget bill:

Rally against 'Black Mark Budget'

Over 30 cities set to rally against 'Black Mark Budget' this Saturday

Outrage fatigue

Ever since the grotesque budget bill came down, we've been going through the Stages of Outrage -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
Every time I read another story about the Harper Con's budget bill -- AKA The End Of Canada As We Know It -- I get more and more upset about what they think they're doing, what gives them the right, how dare they...
Well, I guess they think they were elected to dismantle everything that any of the Conservative voters ever complained about, and they're going to do it just as fast as they can, as far under the radar as they can get, without consulting anyone or even telling anyone what they're doing, and they think they have the right because 40 per cent of Canadians voted for them.  So they're changing Old Age Security and employment Insurance, breaking federal unions, silencing agencies and charities that say or do things they don't like, throwing out 300,000 immigration applications, and emasculating environmental assessment, while also giving government ministers (read: the Prime Minister's Office) the authority to do all sorts of things in secret that used to be done openly, like decide whether charities can issue tax receipts, or determine who gets to enter the country.
The latest news is that the budget bill also abolishes the requirement that federal contractors pay "fair wages" -- ie, equivalent to what unionized trades would receive.  So we can also wave goodbye to the construction trade unions.
I have reached Outrage Fatigue zombie level six.
The good news is, our parliamentarians are getting more polite -- now that's real progress, isn't it?

Collective bullying

I don't know why any unionized, federally-regulated employer would bother to negotiate in good faith with their unions anymore -- if anybody goes on strike, the Harper Conservatives just legislate them back to work, to "protect the economy."  Well, somehow the economy managed to survive before these guys came along.  Now, not so much...



source

The funniest story you will read this week

Doctor Grumpy in the House: Memories...
Takeaway line: "You have to wonder what he's like in bed!"

Prom shots

Check out The Best Of Prom 2012 -- here's the one that would be truly unforgettable:

What they don't understand about EI

Here's what the Harper Conservatives don't understand about many EI frequent flyers:
It's not the workers that EI is subsidizing.
Its the industry they work in.
Activities like commercial fishing, vegetable and fruit growers, small-scale manufacturing, mining -- they all have grown to depend on EI to keep an experienced workforce nearby and available throughout the year.  The industry doesn't have to try to pay these workers during annual down-times, because EI will.
Here's what some of these employers are saying about the new EI rules:

. . . farmers are not looking forward to being the staging ground for Ottawa’s new social experiment, they say. They worry that years spent moulding unwilling neighbours into farmers — more a coaching gig than a business model — will put them in the red and even shut them down.
. . .  One Valley workforce available in the summer is winter lobster boat crew members who work in the Bay of Fundy. . . . About 95 per cent of the association’s roughly 520 members use EI seasonally, Hudson said. The spread between the seasons is too long for them to live off savings, and there are about seven weeks of work needed each off-season to prepare boats and equipment for the next year.
. . . Webster [fruit grower] started using seasonal migrant labour in 2010 and brought in 16 Mexican workers last year. . . . Webster, whose core employees go on EI for about four months of the year, said he’s afraid his business will pay the biggest price in next year’s dry run.

UPDATE: This also raises the larger question -- do the Harper Conservatives actually understand the Canadian economy they are trying to manage? There's a lot of talk about "not picking winners and losers" and "standing on our own feet" but the Canadian economy, in many sectors, is never going to be competitive on an international scale -- nobody here can beat the California growers, with their two or three vegetable crops a year and their easy access to thousands of migrant workers. Nobody here can beat the Florida and Louisiana fishing industries, with the whole gulf coast to harvest all year long. Nobody here can beat the mega-farms of the American mid-west, with plenty of transport options to large ports that are open year-round. The Liberals understood this -- they instituted all sorts of under-the-radar measures which subsidized our smaller-scale and less competitive Canadian industrial and agricultural producers.
Who then turned around and voted Conservative because they were successful businessmen who didn't need any gol-durned government handouts, no siree bob!  
Canada under the Harper Cons will be a bleaker and ultimately less productive place.