Tag: Non-partisan blog posts

Did I Ever Mention How I Dislike Pat Binns?

For those of you who rightfully have no idea who Pat Binns is, you can relax now as he is once again someone with a bunch of bad ideas who is now without the power to implement any of those bad ideas. Ruk – who we popped in on at Dublin NH on the way here – made sure it was done right.  And I am happy to say that the new premier, Mr. Robert Ghiz, has also done right and taken on his responsibilites to the Canadians who live in PEI a little more seriously than Mr. Binns could ever imagine doing:

In the CBC Radio interview Monday night, the province’s next premier was also asked whether he would stand by his pledge to end the perennial practice of replacing Tory-leaning contract workers on the provincial payroll, in order to replace them with Liberals. “The days of firing people are over,” he said firmly. “The [Canadian] Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been clear on this.”

Whatever my part was in laying the ground for that statement [Warning: the first link is a .pdf!!] – me now over four years removed from living in those parts – I am pretty pleased to have been able to play that part. I am also pleased for the folk who had the courage to say they got shafted and stood up for their rights in the case. It will be interesting to see how a government that respects the Constitution will change the lives of the Canadians who live in PEI.

I am also pleased for Cynthia Dunsford, blogger and our sometime comment maker hereabouts who won her riding as well as for Craig and all the others who consistently worked or bitched about the last lot when working against them or speaking out could compromise your career in a place where a political leader can and did use influence in a way that might shock because it damn well should have shocked. And good for us all, I suppose, not having a bunch of yahoos who might justify things with arguments like “you wouldn’t understand” or “it’s an Island-made solution” as tax dollars were poured into another dead-end, untendered, unaccountable scheme. Sadly, now and until the end of their mandate in a few days, the exiting Tories will now have their self-appointed task of destroying the record through a couple of weeks of shreading and burning so that years from now someone will right a book proclaiming what a great bunch they were and there will be nothing left to refute the claim.

Oh well, in any event, I’ll be whistling a happier tune as we drive up northwest through New Hampshire, Vermont and New York’s north country on our way home.

Eating In Portland

In case you are wondering we are doing OK but you would be if you had Beal’s Ice Cream (hard ice cream specialists), Red’s Dairy Freeze (soft serve specialists), Maine Diner on the way here (lobster roll and chowder), Gritty McDuff’s (lamb burder and cask ale), 3 Dollar Dewey’s (fish sandwich but shockingly no smoked fish chowder), baseball game hot dogs (plain please), Beale Street BBQ (bulk ribs…say that again…bulk ribs), Scratch Baking Co. (blondies and peabean coffee) and a trip to Hannaford for a side of salmon and enough scallops to stuff seven for under thirty-eight bucks.  Scratch Baking was a bit of a surprise.  Even though it is a few blocks away, I had it in my head it was pricey.  Not so.  Blondies for $1.75.  And fine beer and wine, too.  Achoffe IPA and a half Cantillon for $6.99.  Nutty.  But seeing as owner Bob co-founded Magic Hat Brewing of Burlington, VT it makes sense.  Portland is the new Burlington, you know.

Three Signed Balls

So we are out early at the ball park to get a good seat behind home.  We are all covered in red to fit in with the minor league Red Sox crowd.   The kids say they want to get the balls signed.  I had three that I had bought for 500 Up and the kids wanted to bring them just in case and away I go, off on a fool’s errand, thinking that I would get some old guy selling programs to sign when a nice lady in a staff shirt tells me to stand over there.  “Over there” is a little pen with guys with big cameras and other guys with binders of memorabilia.   So we stand and we wait and after a few minutes the kids start to complain.  A lesson in patience or a lesson in dashed dreams.  I know not which but either is good for a kid in grade three.  Then a Reading player comes over, a memorabilia guy shouts Michael, he signs and turns and his back says “Garciaparra” – Michael, not Nomar however.  The kids aren’t satisfied.  They don’t want no stinking Reading players autograph.  So we wait.  Nothing.  Then a guy walks out.  A kid.  A tall skinny kid with 11 on his back.  He lifts a finger and then walks away.   “Awwww” the kids say.  I hear “awwww” again and a huff for good measure.   But then Mr. 11 comes back, signs a memorabilia thing for a memorabilia guy and I hear myself say from the back “can these three kids get their balls signed?” and he says sure and a path opens to the front.  Three red dressed kids are scooted forward and he signs each one with a neat and natty signature but I can’t read the name and he walks away in one direction and the kids and I go in another.  

Back in the stands, we show the balls and say who is number 11?   Apparently Clay Buchholz was Boston’s Minor League Player of the Year in 2006 and he beat Roger Clemens in his last start.   More ball cases now needed.

Is China Monitoring Dullards?

Maybe it is just a state plan to keep an eye on the yakky dullards amongst the citizenry:

New rules by a Chinese government-backed Internet group maintain strict controls over the country’s bloggers, requiring them to register with their real names and identification cards. The guidelines from the Internet Society of China (http://www.isc.org.cn), a group made up of China’s major Internet companies, contradict state media reports this week claiming that China was considering loosening registration requirements for bloggers to allow anonymous online journaling.

Well, fat chance of that. Given what might be called “unhealthy content” by a blutocrat working in a dictatorship one can only presume that the search to squash it is really just a great make work project. Which may make it more honest: in dictatorships, people are paid to idly read the web while in the free world people are paid while they idly read the web.

Facebook Thoughts

Now that I am obsessed with Facebook and expect the feeling to continue for the next sixteen days or so, it gets hard to actually read news and, you know, blog. Blogs have readers and hits but I have friends at Facebook – including that guy who insists we took a course together in New Jersey last summer. But you can understand entirely why sensible employers are cracking down as it is an utter time suck with little or no real productive use. Not the greatest co-worker though there is that picture of the guy you did not keep up with from the time he ate pickled eggs and took off his pants.

Apparently Facebook may have a death wish, however, as it wants to reinvent itself:

Facebook Inc. has bucked the Silicon Valley acquisition trend, remaining independent of larger technology companies. Now the social-networking start-up is seeking ways to reach the big leagues on its own. On Thursday, the Palo Alto, Calif., company will announce a new strategy to let other companies provide their services on special pages within its popular Web site. These companies will be able to link into Facebook users’ networks of online friends, according to people familiar with the matter.

Translation? You are about to be spammed. Yik…it’s going to get on my favorite t-shirt and everything. But with a really useful interface, an explosion of activity recently as well as talk of billions and billions of revenue from the stock market who can blame the 22 year old geek who created the thing. Show him the money.

Oh, well. Like most things it will be fun for a while then work then moved on from and then an embarrassment then forgotten then remembered then finally forgotten and one guy in his mid-forties with wads of cash will tell his pals at the yacht club again about how he made a killing when he was 22. Unless he doesn’t take the cash.

Group Project: Giambi’s Slip or Blurt

Last night, listening to the ever excellent Tony Paige on WFAN at 3 am, I was listening to callers list any number of reasons to support or decry what Jason Giambi said last week and what should be done about it. It struck me that we’ve been though quite distinct waves of sports and drugs over the last few decades, according to that most important personal characteristic – my foggy memory:

  • 1970s: when I was a kid in school, steroids were what East German swimmers and other Soviet athletes took. We didn’t know their names and could never think of them as heroes as they were cheaters plain and simple. They bad, we good even when we lost to them.
  • 1980s: Somewhere in here Sports Illustrated does a huge article on how high school and college kids in sport are using steroids regularly. In 1988, Ben Johnson certainly let the world know that it athletes from the west used steroids. Sports illustrated posted comparison photos of changes to his shoulder mass. Saturday Night Live did comparison photos to US women sprinters upper lips.
  • 1990s: Lyle Alzado admits doing steroids before the NFL player dies. The early ’90s baseball strike leads amazingly (and quite unexpectedly to everyone everywhere…like…you know…pixie magic dust had settled on the game) to the late 1990 home run boom by all these big guys.
  • The new millennium: Jose Canseco proves you do not have to be clever to be an author and everyone almost admits that people they knew when they were young knew people who did steriods. Barry Bonds approaches Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record. Giabmi now says all of baseball should apologize.

So, it is pretty clear that we’ve known about steroid use for a long time and anyone who thinks Mark McGuire’s surprised look means anything is nuts. But why do we care? We like people being able to do amazing things and steroids let them do that even if it later on robs them of their health – after all it’s a free country, right? If we now celebrate the baseball players who came out of the late 1990s, should we not allow the Soviet-era swimmers back into the pantheon, too? And how different is it from Michael Vick hosting dog fighting, anyway? Where do ethics fit in in all of this? And whose ethics? Do we take apart baseball because we want it pure even though we loved the home runs when everyone knew the players were on the drugs? Isn’t it just entertainment and we are all consenting adults?

Group project rules apply.

A Tiny Bit Of Hope For The Yankees

You know it must be bad when the good news for the Yankees is that they avoided a sweep. The real news for them, however, is that they discovered that they discovered they have a pitcher called Tyler Clippard, a 22-year-old right-hander throwing down in triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. He was on fire and even hit a bunt and double in his own cause. Funny seeing someone with bad acne playing baseball – something you see in soccer or hockey all the time given how quickly kids are promoted.

But they now have to get back to reality and play the Sox for the next three evenings. It will be interesting to see if Johnny Damon can turn making yesterday’s catch at the wall (as opposed to Saturday night when he just helped it on its way over the wall) and that bloop single into the start of turning his year around. So far on the Coco v. Damon trade, the Soxs are looking very clever. Both have underperformed expectations but Coco has done it for far less – and has maintained his position as a positive force on the team though his attitude and effort. Coco has also added to his average in the last month, outbatting Damon .261 to .250 during that stretch.

D’oh!….Howdja Like My Tie?


Howdja Like The Tie…I’ll Be Here All This Week…Thank you…You’ve Been Great…
…Have You Ever Heard The One About The Commons Committee…

No wonder it’s all gone goofy on Parliament Hill. It’s the Prime Minister’s brilliant plan:

The handbook, obtained by National Post columnist Don Martin, reportedly advises chairs on how to promote the government’s agenda, select witnesses friendly to the Conservative party and coach them to give favourable testimony. It also reportedly instructs them on how to filibuster and otherwise disrupt committee proceedings and, if all else fails, how to shut committees down entirely.

Please note: leaked by the National Post, the closest thing to a conservative paper outside of Alberta. Please also note folks like poster boy Andrew Coyne and independent non-posterly yet more right than me guy Jay Currie and a whack of others natural ethical conservatives of many stripes are not surprised but are appalled. The guys are nuts…yet they are also reinventing the concept of two-bit.

To review: this party came out of the Reform movement to improve democracy in Canada.