We have nurtured an old curmudgeon. He or she has been with us for a long time. However, we have never had so many of them at the same time. Carol Goar writes in this morning’s Toronto Star: Across jurisdictions, political leaders seem to have forgotten their authority comes from
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Your Daily Nazi: If Anyone Is Still Looking For CanCon In The "Nazi Leaks" Docs
While the original site is down, it is being mirrored here. I haven’t had a chance to go through it yet myself. Maybe over the weekend. There are apparently a few people close to Free Dominion in it. Latest from CBC here.
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: The DWR Friday Musical Interlude – More BSG
The BSG Motif week continues, with the 6/8 Shape of things to come last week, Allegro in 4/4 this week. Bear McCreary works his magic for us again. Love the syncopation in this piece. Filed under: Music Tagged: Allegro, Bear McCreary, BSG, Friday Musical Interlude
Continue readinggay persons of color: Video fail: Gay Chicken – SteamRoomStories.com
This video, Gay Chicken, one of the webisodes of Steam Room Stories, makes me want to put a bag over my head in shame for being of the same species as the other human beings who produced this piece of junk. Seriously. What’s the message here? Comedy? Portraying men as
Continue readingwmtc: help me get rid of zip
When we lived in NYC, I was hugely into Netflix. The selection and convenience were terrific, and for frequent movie watching, the flat monthly fee was a great value. After moving to Canada, we joined Zip… and thus began the saga. Zip (now owned by media giant Rogers) has a
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Budget Cuts Could Worsen Rising Unemployment
It was not a happy new year for Canadian job seekers. Statistics Canada reported today that unemployment rose for a fourth consecutive month in January. Overall employment remained flat as Canada’s population and labour force grew at a normal pace, leaving more workers without jobs. The good news in today’s
Continue readingPample the Moose: Remembering My Dad, Bryan Hayday
Today would have been my Dad’s 60th birthday. We had been planning to hold a huge celebration, because making it to sixty years old was going to be a really big deal. His father (Ron), my Grandpa, had died at age 54, and his younger brother, my Uncle Wayne, had
Continue reading350 or bust: On The Line: Conversations Along The Pipeline Route
Talk about timely! On The Line is a eco-documentary that follows the two filmmakers, Frank Wolf and Todd McGowan, on a 2,400 kilometre self-propelled journey by foot, bike, raft, and kayak as they walk the route through Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, that the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline would follow,
Continue readingMorton's Musings: When it is appropriate to assign counsel for an individual who is party to an appeal in a criminal matter
R. v. Hoskins, 2012 BCCA 51 considers when it is appropriate to assign counsel for an individual who is party to an appeal in a criminal matter. The test is two-fold: the part must be both indigent and the position of the individual of some merit and unlikely to be
Continue readingExcited Delirium: Excited Delirium Chapter 68: Get Garamond
Chapter 68 of Excited Delirium, where our heroes hatch a plan for getting Garamond.
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Is The OAS/GIS Program Unaffordable?
No. Of course not. Even if the government waves around scary large increases in nominal dollar terms. As has been widely reported, the most recent OAS actuarial report shows that total program expenditures will rise from $38.8 billion in 2011 to $107.9 billion in 2030. However, the dollar figure reflects,
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Job Market Continues to Weaken
Canada’s job market continued to weaken in January as employment rose by a meagre 2,300 jobs, much less than the growth in the number of workers in the labour force. As a result, the national unemployment rate rose from 7.5% to 7.6%. The unemployment rate has been steadily climbing from
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Yes, the fraudulent collaboration between the Harper Cons and Sun TV should offer nothing but reason for suspicion about both portions of the right-wing noise machine – and Dr. Dawg, Heather Mallick, Simon Houpt and the Star have all had plenty to say.
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Gruending On CIDA: Canada’s New Foreign Policy = Helping Canuck Mining Companies
Another fine piece from the author of Pulpit and Politics: CIDA will soon abandon a number of its long-standing development partners among Canadian NGOs, including a number of church-based organizations. Reliable sources say that a number of those groups will see their funding ended or curtailed this year. CIDA is
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Get politics out of fishery: report #nlpoli
A strange as it may seem after years of evidence that political interference in fisheries management has caused nothing but grief, there are still people – all politicians – who think the answer is yet more political interference. Expect all of them to be out in force responding to this
Continue readingFake Ministerial Accountability
SunTV has been caught staging a fake citizenship oath-retaking ceremony using mostly bureaucrats from Citizenship and Immigration as their oath-takers. Seriously. Because they’re totally not the official media arm of The Party. For his part, Kenney said it was “poorly handled,” and then sent a departmental comms staffer to SunTV to apologise.
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Talking tough with empty words and an empty head
Is there anything more laughable than a politician trained in nothing providing direction to executives of the province’s $14-billion dollar monopoly insurer. Speaking to ICBC, British Columbia’s chief law officer “delivered a firm reminder that there has been a public backlash to recent revelations about compensation for Crown executives.” In
Continue readingeaves.ca: Requests for Endorsements: My Application to Attend The Open Government Partnership
Dear friends, Below (first in english then in a rough french translation – my spoken is much better than my written so I’ve relied on Google translate) is my application letter to attend the April 16-18 Annual Open Government Partnership meeting in Brasilia as a Civil Society Representative. The first
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Jason Kenney and the Fox News North Gang
Sometimes you have to focus on the big picture. Sometimes you have to see the forest for the trees. Or just smell the manure. But here are the facts as I see them: (1) Jason Kenney, a grotesque member of the sinister Harper gang commands civil servants to organize an
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