Scott's DiaTribes: Destruction in Goderich

If you missed it from yesterday, Goderich Ontario was struck by a tornado that developed from a thunderstorm coming off of Lake Huron yesterday (Sunday) at around 4 pm EDT. It was a bad one:

Numerous buildings were completely destroyed, with roofs and siding ripped off. An entire residential block had to be evacuated as crews worked to contain a large gas leak. Tragically, one man who was working in the salt mine at the time the storm ripped through was killed..While the investigation in the tornado ravaged community continues, Environment Canada considers the tornado to be rated an F2 or F3 storm on the Fujita Scale with winds […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Who NOT to bully

We’re going to continue where we left off yesterday on the theme of Conservative bullying. Yesterday it was Madame Supreme Court Justice Beverly Mclachlan who made it clear she wasn’t impressed by Conservative cabinet minister Jason Kenney’s attempt to bully the judiciary into being cowed into ruling for Harper’s policies. Today, the Conservatives are figuring out that perhaps trying to threaten and bully a widow isn’t such a great idea.

This lady and her cause against Canada exporting asbestos (which killed her husband) was wallowing in obscurity until the Conservative Party decided to try and bully her into taking down a party logo she was using on her […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Picking and choosing who to try and bully

This happened yesterday, but I’ll still comment on it. You might have seen the story where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court took the unusual step of publicly (albeit indirectly) supporting the rebuke of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney for his suggestion a few months back that judges weren’t being deferential enough to the Conservative government:

“I was certainly — and I think all judges were — very pleased when an issue arose earlier this year when a Minister of the Crown seemed to suggest that some judges were insufficiently solicitous to government policy. We were very, very gratified to see your president writing a powerful public letter to […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Another neck and neck poll in Ontario

More unsettling polling news for the Ontario PC’s and their leader Tim Hudak:

With less than eight weeks to go before Ontarians head to the polls, the race between the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals has tightened, with the Tories five points ahead among decided voters, a new poll suggests. The Nanos Research poll — conducted between August 10 and August 13 for CTV, The Globe and Mail and CP24 — found the Liberals are on an upswing, closing the gap slightly with the Tories. According to the poll, support sits at 42.1 per cent for the Progressive Conservatives, 37.6 per cent for the Liberals, 16.2 per cent for […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Political tidbits

This is stupid. If you don’t like the Mayor of Toronto, you vote against him next municipal election (or his councillors that support him). You don’t utter death threats, or God forbid, act on it.

This is tragic. This is done by people (lower class and mostly youth) who have nothing to lose and nothing to hope for, and worse, don’t particularly fear the consequences. By all means, bring the rioters to justice, but the underlying social issues are going to need to be addressed at some point.

Could it happen here? Probably not, but I bet there are more people feeling bereft of hope over their […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: We’ve seen this movie before..

A day or so ago, Harper came out at the Mayor of Toronto’s private picnic calling for a defeat of the Ontario Liberal government, which was published on Youtube. Some folks are a bit perturbed at Harper’s intervention into provincial politics, but it’s not like he hasn’t done it before. He issued the same call 4 years ago in a more public show of support for then PC leader John Tory, so his partisanship isn’t exactly (or shouldn’t be) surprising. I’d have been shocked if he hadn’t, quite frankly.

I’m more surprised the Youtube video was quickly taken down (still is down the last I had looked earlier this […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: A non-NDP contrarian POV on how much Turmel’s political affiliations will hurt the NDP

I’ve been on vacation this week and viewing the controversy over Nycole Turmel, the NDP interim leader who has a recent BQ past and still supports Action Solidaire today – with some interest, as you might guess. I’ve not been on to comment on it because of being on said vacation. I have some time now though, and here’s my thoughts.

Briefly, I’m not sure this is going to hurt the NDP nationally as much as the media think (particularly the Globe and Mail; they seem to be the ones publicizing the most editorials/op-eds about it):

A) It’s summer – people aren’t paying attention to politics. The impact of […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Happy Civic Holiday… and why Obama did the deal he did.

To all of you in Canada who get this first Monday off, whether it’s called Civic Holiday or whatever, all the best to you. As for politics on this day, attention has turned to our US neighbour’s attempts to get their debt ceiling agreement in place before they default tomorrow. A tentative deal has been reached, which still has to be voted on and passed, but many progressives and liberals – both in the US and here in Canada –  are dismayed at the Democrats and President Obama’s unwillingness to force the Republicans to compromise more in the agreement.  They view it as a sellout of Democratic and progressive/liberal […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Sunmedia’s business model – attack the CBC

A brief observation: Wherever I turn, whether it be Ezra Levant’s raving on in the Sun tabloids, or Brian Lilley on SunTv, or even David Akin on Twitter questioning CBC policy or standards (which I find amusing by the way – since it’s David’s news organization who withdrew from the Ontario Press Council so that any minimum outside supervision of how it conducts its activities would be removed. No nasty oversight for them on press ethics or practices, but let’s bash others for theirs – talk about holier then thou), it’s become clear that the raison d’etre for SunMedia is to attack the CBC – for anything remotely trivial.

[…]

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Scott's DiaTribes: All the best to Jack Layton

It was with some shock that I saw yesterday that Mr. Layton was temporarily stepping down as NDP leader (and leader of the Official Opposition) because of new cancer discovered in his body. The only good news about that is that its apparently an “unrelated” bout of cancer to his prostate cancer, and isn’t a metastasized form of it, but he still has a battle on his hands, and he didn’t look very good in his brief press conference yesterday.

I’m not going to speculate on what this does to the NDP in the Fall as others have done; I’m just going to wish Jack all of my best […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: An observation on the Norway bombings/shootings

As you’ve no doubt heard, a far right extremist gunman who holds anti-immigration, anti-Muslim views decided to vent his wrath on the governing Socialist Party in Norway yesterday, blowing up a government building and then massacring scores of young socialist teenager members  on an island. The death toll is horrific.

I’m waiting for those on the extreme right of the blogosphere/political spectrum to declare Canada should be deporting all Norwegians; you know;  paint the whole nation of Norway with one prejudicial brush as they do with Muslims, and as they did yesterday before the actual facts came out. The rush to presuming it was a) Al-Queda, and b) declaring […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: I guess the ‘almighty dollar’ spoke

Apparently, a majority government has changed the Conservative’s attitudes towards China:

Canada’s relationship with China will be the “centrepiece” of its Asian diplomatic ties, said Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird on Wednesday… Pushed on whether the growing trade relationship with the economic juggernaut is coming at the cost of Canadian values such as human rights, Baird said Canada could have the best of both worlds. “Canadian interests and Canadian values – we’re not going to make a choice between one or the other,” Baird said. “Neither one is more important than the other.”

It’s a different stance than Prime Minister Stephen Harper took in 2006, following an apparent snub […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: ‘It is SO hot out’. ‘How hot out is it?’

We’re in the middle of a Canadian wide heat-wave here (with the exception of the east and west coasts); one of the more extensive ones we’ve had in a while.

I thought it might be fun to do one of those “It is so hot out” threads. The obvious one people can come up with is “you can fry an egg on the sidewalk” (and you probably will be able to on Thursday in SW Ontario – forecast highs are 36-38 deg Celsius, before the humidity), but I’d like to see other examples people can come up with.

IF you’re really creative, try giving the answer in a […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Counting your chickens before they hatch

Prime Minister Harper is obviously feeling very good about himself right now. He (and Canada) hosted an immensely successful Kate and Will tour (which thankfully came a couple of months into his mandate, not immediately before an election, else he might have rode it to a bigger majority). Now, we see that he has declared the “end of Liberalism” and the claim that Canadians are turning more Conservative and that “Conservative values are Canadian values” etc, and that they needed to woo Quebec, because the honeymoon with the NDP would soon be over and of course, they’re the only party who could do that.

Some of this was probably […]

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