Category: Uncategorized

Friday Bullets For Your Mid-November

I am finally getting used to the clocks changing. I suppose I am getting used to the Obama victory and maybe even the Harper one, too. Maybe even getting used to not being half my age now that I think of it. Is autumn the season of acceptance? Do we rage or go quietly into these dark nights and mornings? Quietly I think. Placated by the promise of Christmas buffets to come. Visions of heaping plates with both ham and turkey with, yes please, gravy over both. Finding the brussles sprouts with bacon amongst the covered trays.

  • Sometimes I am amazed by the detail and effort given to high school sports coverage in small town America.
  • Speaking of the near and international, who knew about Galloo? You can now own it.
  • One thing I would buy if I could.
  • Remember when the choice was between green shift and the call to be square and prudent? Given the circumstances being foisted, I am not all that uncomfortable with square and prudent. You? But isn’t selling and leasing back a shell game?
  • Iggy. Let us consider Iggy. The Ig-meister. The Iggy-tron. Is there enough new or even known to make him compelling? He certainly wears the clever clogs but wasn’t the last guy a professor, too?
  • Now we know where the aliens who one day will destroy us live.
  • Jay has had enough. He has invented his own right-of-right party and I have to say I approve. The more splintering schizmists the better. Sure I wouldn’t vote for 66% of it but that is not the point. Conservatives have been duped out of the 1980s Preston Manning vision in the wilderness – even now by Preston Manning as far as I can tell – and they have every right to feel ripped off even if the drive to the right proposed will place them exactly back where Preston sat – nowhere’sville.
  • On a related note, isn’t it somewhat comforting that Chretien had the decency not to create a think tank in his name given how little Manning’s is actually being listened to by the new breed of moderat-o-conservatives?
  • Has Ian got a point?

I offered to make lunch for a meeting tomorrow that had been set for 18-20 but which is looking like 45 now. I am a church lady. I dream of failing to fill sandwich trays. I email myself webpages with sandwich making hints. Then I am going to see Dylan tomorrow night. A very odd day is in the works. I need to find ear plugs.

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Group Project: Separation Of Church And State

Interesting question Ian poses: if a church in the US advocates for a certain political position, should it lose tax exempt status? What are the issues? Would it not be better for churches to stand on their own? Isn’t tax freedom a form of state support? As a somewhat recently reconfirmed church-goer in another country, I really only have observer status but it’s an interesting question.

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Because Not Only Fruitnut Cakes Have Opinions…

Lots of weirdness in the air. The forces of fear. The forces for security. But there is also an undeniable hope afoot – if you are still able to recognize hope – with those who are about to vote for Barak Obama tomorrow as this column by Andrew Sullivan illustrates, especially in this concluding passage:

…there is something about his rise that is also supremely American, a reminder of why so many of us love this country so passionately and are filled with such grief at what has been done to it and in its name. I endorse Barack Obama because I will not give up on America, because I believe in America, and in her constitution and decency and character and strength.

Now, to watch McCain introduce the SNL Political Bash 2008. He needs more TV time. He has to be the best straight man politician going. Him and Steve Martin. That would be a good team. Good like the supporting the constitution good. If, you know, you live in a western democracy.

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Isn’t It Time To Decriminalize Low Level “Smuggling”?

An interesting story in the Toronto Star about how Canadian border guards suspect the new Nexus fast-track ID card is a conduit for smuggling:

The cards, along with so-called Fast cards used by truckers, are issued by both American and Canadian authorities to travellers who are deemed low-risk after screening. But an internal evaluation by the Canada Border Services Agency found that front-line officers have seen too many card-carrying travellers cheating. As a result, they’ve lost faith in the system. “There is a common perception among BSOs (border services officers) that individuals in the trusted traveller programs are not low risk and that they are not more compliant than others,” says the study.

I cross the border a lot because I like to go beer and hoodie shopping, I like to weekend in upstate New York when there is enough money in the piggy bank and I like to go to Maine in the summer to see friends. That means we bring back stuff and we declare everything. But sometimes I have declared 12 beer and been asked to pay $3.57. On other occasions, we have brought back 500 buck worth of beer, a canoe, bags of LLB clothes or sacks of groceries and paid nothing because of the number of people in the car and that we stayed over 48 hours.

Why? There is nothing tied to my time in the US that makes an economic impact in Canada – unless we are a country that imposes tax on me to keep me from traveling. The 48 hour rule actually keeps me in the states longer. And I have a mobility right in the constitution. And I am a free person. Ought I not be able to travel as I wish and ought not border guards be freed up to fight terrorism and not count the number of 6-packs and ham sandwiches in mini-vans? Time to change.

This move might be a start but who the heck goes to duty free stores?

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Group Project: Defending Blogging – Stale Dated Or Free?

This is quite a charming piece. Doc Searle. Remember him? Rob1 (there used to be a Rob2) to the right posted it on Twitter and I thought it was worth asking you about. I, obviously, have something about blogging as I do it daily and have done so for about 12% of my life. But is it actually that zone of freedom that social networks lack? It could be. But it takes a heck of a lot of work, too, not to mention requiring a bit of an obsession.

I compare that to my very recently discovered obsession with Last.fm – finally a collaborative web thing. I have long kicked at the web for being such a loner zone. And you have to admit that even Facebook has that “I’m down here in this pit!” feel to it, right? So do blogs actually reign supreme? Or would only an obsessive blogger think so?

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Without A Bailout, Whither the Corporate Elite?

Wall Street welfare. That’s what I have heard it called – imagine the insensitivity. Just because it is centred upon ensuring those who messed up get to both control the solution and be the sole beneficiaries of the solution. How can people be so cruel. David Brooks in the NYT stokes the flames of jealousy amongst those asked to pay for their betters wrongs:

Liberals and conservatives generally dislike the plan. William Greider of The Nation writes: “If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public — all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims.” He approvingly quotes the conservative economist Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics: “The joyous reception from Congressional Democrats to Paulson’s latest massive bailout proposal smells an awful lot like yet another corporatist love fest between Washington’s one-party government and the Sell Side investment banks.”

How rude.

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