RIP, Doug. Last communicated with him in an email exchange – about rock’n’roll, not politics. That tells me he had his priorities straight. My condolences to his family and many friends.
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Independent MLAs, Candidates Shake Up BC Politics
Throughout the past term, BC’s three sitting Independent MLAs – Bob Simpson from Cariboo North, Vicki Huntington from Delta South, and Abbotsford South’s John van Dongen – have proven the pundits wrong, injecting new energy and ideas into a Legislature ordinarily dominated by caucus discipline. All three incumbent Independents are
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: organized labour is the only potential political force with enough critical mass & enough organizational capability to get things moving.
Here’s my take on the May Day CUPE Sponsored Workshops in Ottawa on Saturday, the 27th of April: It was an interesting affair for its lamentations and the myriad problems it laid forth with little emerging by way of tactics, however, and certainly no overall strategy. Unions can’t even wrestle concentrated concern from
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Who Cut Duffy Slack and Why?
A more than curious omission in just one of the Senate standing committee reports on Senators Mac Harb, Patrick Brazeau and Mike Duffy and their housing expense claims. What distinguishes these three? Well, Harb and Brazeau claimed expenses for residences that were actually within the provinces they were appointed to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Armine Yalnizyan makes the case as to why wealth equates to far too much power in Canada: The problem is not that the wealthy are too powerful. The problem is that, with rare exception, as their power has increased, it has not been
Continue readingBene Diction Blogs On: The playbook was left open
By Rick Hiebert. All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission Seeing as though this was on the front page of the National Post this week, one could say that the secret is out. Over the past few years, pro-life politicians have adopted an incremental approach to eventually stopping abortion. John Ivison
Continue readingBene Diction Blogs On: The playbook was left open
By Rick Hiebert. All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission Seeing as though this was on the front page of the National Post this week, one could say that the secret is out. Over the past few years, pro-life politicians have adopted an incremental approach to eventually stopping abortion. John Ivison
Continue readingLeDaro: Guy Merchie: Mysteries of Life
Something to ponder over the weekend: DIVINITY Who or What runs the Universe?Is there a plan behind the daisy, the hummingbird,The whale, the world?Who conceived the eye back in the primeval darknessOf early evolution?Who designed the fish’s air bladder in the ancient deepAs if foreseeing its future as a breathing
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The World We Are Destroying
My friend LeDaro often posts videos that depict the world around us, poignant reminders of what we are so blithely destroying through our heedless consumerism and governments that know the price of everything but the value of nothing. In this, the slavish promotion of the tarsands by the Harper regime
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: May 11:
The toll of dead women in the collapse of a clothing factory in Bangladesh has now reached a thousand. The corporations who bought their clothing are, of course, shocked. Gee. They didn’t know these women were working in deathtraps for $38 a month. Sure. Those same corporations moved their work
Continue readingBlunt Objects Blog: Introducing my Summer Project – Canadian Psephos
As we head into Summer 2013, I’ve been looking for something to do. This is mostly because, barring a provincial election here in Ontario, I suspect we’ll see a slow season politically. Sure, there may be a cabinet shuffle or something, but I wanted a grander project to work on
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Bill Maher Gets Taken to the Mat on Islamophobia
On Bill Maher’s RealTime show last night, journalist Glenn Greenwald stood up to Maher on Muslims, Islam, and American foreign policy. It’s a long clip. Greenwald’s retort comes in around the 7-minute mark.
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Monbiot – You Can’t Win on Climate Change Without First Vanquishing Plutocracy
Guardian enviro-scribe, George Monbiot, took the arrival of a recrod, 400 ppm concentration of atmospheric CO2 to deliver a few thoughts on our losing battle against climate change and what really stands in the way of our hope for progress. “The data go back 800,000 years: that’s the age of
Continue readingWarren Kinsella: Adrian Dix is going to win
I don’t have any skin the BC ’2013 game. I’ve got friends in both war rooms, and I think they’ve all run impressive campaigns. Adrian Dix was assisted by the fact that he’s no Glen Clark-style Dipper: he’s a centrist New Democrat, more like Roy Romanow than his former boss.
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Creepy White Guys – Male Privilege on Display
The first step to understanding privilege is recognizing the various forms and flavours it comes in. If you happen to be Asian and female, well, the fun(?) doubles as you get to deal with not only the misogyny, but the racism as well. Woo-haa! (Go to the tumblr Creepy White
Continue readingFacing Autism in New Brunswick: Conor Is Home From the Hospital!
Above Conor, and Mom, in the bottom pic, on the way home. Conor’s Mom stayed at the hospital with him 24/7, for 2 weeks Dad spelled her off at times and the nursing students also sat with Conor and gave Mom some breaks once he was moved from the Intensive
Continue readingWarren Kinsella: Nerdling question
I got the new BlackBerry Z10. It’s alright, I guess. Problem: unlike on the reliable old 9900, I can’t figure out how to share Web links on the Z10 directly to WordPress. Any charter members of Team Propellerhead care to help out? This puppy’s got me stumped.
Continue readingNot an Official Green Party Canada Site: BC Liberals Advertising for the Greens in Victoria!
Vote Green! Brought to you by the BC Liberals I was tooling around on Facebook this morning, and some of my Green Party of BC FaceBook friends were talking about this full-page advertisement for Jane Sterk and the BC Greens in the Times Colony. You know, one of the most
Continue readingThe Liberal Scarf: What’s another 20 mil of your tax dollars, anyway?
After years of using your tax dollars for partisan self promotion, the Conservatives want $20 million more of your tax dollars to keep the ball rolling. Every time you see a taxpayer funded ad while watching the playoffs, that’s $95,000 of your tax dollars. That same amount could create 32
Continue readingThe Liberal Scarf: What’s another 20 mil of your tax dollars, anyway?
After years of using your tax dollars for partisan self promotion, the Conservatives want $20 million more of your tax dollars to keep the ball rolling. Every time you see a taxpayer funded ad while watching the playoffs, that’s $95,000 of your tax dollars. That same amount could create 32
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