Second Gen (2003-2016, 2016- )
OK, I have buckled and am dipping into the barrel o’ prizes. I had to. Who would hold back when faced with the wisdom of this argument from Darcey:
No damn prizes? But some beer on at least and my guys will be in…
I welled up. I got verklempt. Is that not the most elemental Canadian statement ever?
Get in your picks. Here are the rules.
A taunt. All it takes is a taunt. Looking for meaning with a blog that is approaching five years of its troubled existence, a glimmer of hope and purpose shows up in a 27th comment:
Temujin [12:19 AM April 7, 2008]
http://hockey-madness.blogspot.comHow about a special Monday Morning Bullet Points highlighting the Blue Jays sweeping the Red Sox :=)
Did you know the Jays are on pace for a record of 107-55?
Did you know Jeremy Accardo is on pace for 81 saves?
Frank Thomas is on pace for 28 grand slams!Oh, the joys of being a Jays fan. April is always so much better than September.
It is a sad state of affairs but let’s review how odd this spring is:
OK, that last one is not a big surprise even if it is a disappointment. But that pool. I never even got the final stats done last year. It got too complex. And I didn’t watch one playoff game last year as the natural reaction of a lifelong Leafs fan is actually to reject the game in its entirety.
So, just to keep the continuity, I give you the Gen X at 40 NHL hockey pool 2008:
Pick five scorers, one goon, one goalie, eight teams and a dark horse.
- A point for a goal by a scorer.
- A point for an assist by a scorer.
- A point for a penalty minute by a goon. If your goon is kicked out of the playoffs and thereby the pool, you double the penalty minutes he has achieved to that point. The logic here is that the goon is a nut-bar. The later that he freaks and gets tossed for the balance of the playoffs, the more nut-bar like he is, the more he is the essential goon.
- A point for each thousandth save percentage over .900 by your goalie
- 5 points for picking each of the teams in the second, third and fourth rounds.
- 25 bonus points for picking the dark horse – the team with the lowest regular season points to go the farthest in the playoffs. The dark horse must be seeded in the lower half of their conference.
Get your picks in my, err, Friday at 10:00 am. That’ll even give you a few games. Just hockey, just NHL. Anybody in?
It ended up not being that idle. Taxes yesterday. Driver’s license renewal Tuesday. I’m wiped. Must save up energy to pray for Morton tomorrow.
this winter was the 32nd for free agency, and something worth noting occurred. For the first time other than the collusion years of 1985, ’86 and ’87, teams did not race crazily and expensively after free-agent starting pitchers.
I remember my collusion years.
I have to admit, I have been on the internet less this week than most – could it be that there is a connection between the desk and surfing?
While I am dutiful most times, I missed this over at Unkabugs unt Auntie F’s:
It will be important to know, in the coming tight times after twenty years of lavishing ourselves on credit, how to entertain. Music hall matinées will make a comeback, not needing the electricity that other spectacles require. So as you tune up your home mashing and tunning skills, perhaps give a thought to the stringed instrument inventory. Here’s a start.
Last night’s by-elections are enough of a win for both the Grits and Tories that nothing really changes:
Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River in Northern Saskatchewan was expected to be a close race. But it turned heavily toward the Conservatives after early results and Rob Clarke, an aboriginal who is a 17-year veteran of the RCMP, surged ahead of Joan Beatty, the former provincial New Democrat who was hand-picked by Mr. Dion. Bob Rae, meanwhile, sailed to an easy victory in the Liberal stronghold of Toronto Centre. (The NDP candidate finished second, but only three votes ahead of the Green candidate.) And Martha Hall Findlay thumped her rivals in the Toronto riding of Willowdale – a seat that went to the Progressive Conservatives during the Brian Mulroney years.
The Liberal grip on Vancouver-Quadra, a party stronghold for a quarter-century, loosened last night. Former B.C. environment minister Joyce Murray won the seat, but was only about 5 per cent ahead of Deborah Meredith, running for the Conservatives. It was a massive shift from the last federal election in 2006 when Stephen Owen had a 21-per-cent lead over his Tory rival.
The Liberals get at least two new strong voices on its side in the House of Commons but has shown weakness in the west, though the Saskatchewan riding was no one’s to win. It was however, Dion’s to lose and by dropping in his own candidate he may have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
The interesting thing will now be to watch Bob Rae. A gifted debater but he carries the curse of a man of two parties. Yet he faces a man of four across the aisle in the person of the Prime Minister – any history of the recent centre-left in Canada is only really remarkable for its parallel to the less recent history of the centre-right. It still be interesting to see if he is able to shore up some sort of solidity in the shadow cabinet or whether he will add to the factors pointing out the glaring – as in deer in the headlights – inappropriateness of Mr. Dion’s unofficial interim role.
Verdict: no spring election.
Another Friday. They flow by like the days of the week. A week or so from spring and still there’s feet of snow. That’s not exactly helping. Morton’s teetering and the Orange are gone. At least things are going better for me than they are for Eliot Spitzer. WFAN had an interview with his lady-friend’s grade five teacher. This is a weird world sometimes.
Mr. Ponticelli, who described war as “idiotic”, had initially refused an offer of a state funeral made by former President Jacques Chirac, considering it would be an insult to the men who had died without commemoration. He relented after Mr. Cazenave’s death, saying he would accept a simple ceremony “in homage to my comrades”. President Nicolas Sarkozy paid tribute to Mr. Ponticelli and said a national commemoration of all of France’s participants in the war would be held in the coming days.
I had no idea that more than twice as many French soldiers were killed in WWI as there were total Canadian solders.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is following through on his threat to sue the federal Liberals because of accusations, posted on the Liberal party’s website, that he knew of “Conservative bribery.”
The lawsuit — a statement of claim for $2.5 million was filed today in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice — is a response to the “defamatory” statements made by the Liberals, Harper spokesperson Sandra Buckler said. “He’s doing what any other person with integrity would do to defend himself and his family,” she said.
While the claim itself carries some errors that are a bit embarrassing for anyone who got better than a “D” at law school – pleading evidence, are we? – it is what it is. But does the spokesperson for the Office of the Prime Minister represent him in all things? Is this a political court case or a personal one? I’d be a little more comfortable if someone not on the public payroll was his spokesperson on this one.
Update: I may be speaking out of my digestive tract about pleading evidence and the “D” thing as a read of Ontario’s Libel and Slander Act points out this dense bit of text:
In an action for libel or slander, the plaintiff may aver that the words complained of were used in a defamatory sense, specifying the defamatory sense without any prefatory averment to show how the words were used in that sense, and the averment shall be put in issue by the denial of the alleged libel or slander, and, where the words set forth, with or without the alleged meaning, show a cause of action, the statement of claim is sufficient.
I have not a clue but this may be the basis for an exception to the pleading evidence rule. See 1839’s Boydell v. Jones on “prefatory averment”.
Hugh Segal has introduced a motion in the Senate that would invoke the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution to prevent references to the Queen being dropped from the country’s oath of citizenship. The Kingston senator’s motion comes in response to a class-action lawsuit filed by Charles Roach, a Toronto lawyer born in Trinidad who never took a Canadian citizenship because he objects to the monarchy’s connection to slavery and refuses to take the oath.
Yet it is note worthy to record for posterity that I have never quite voiced certain words in certain oaths for reasons of the history of the clan:
The clan supported Charles I in the Civil War, and some of them fought for Charles II at the Battle of Worcester (1651). After the Restoration in 1660, the MacLeods felt a major grievance that Charles II had not been sufficiently grateful for their exertions on his behalf, and they never supported the Stewart kings again. The MacLeods took no part in Claverhouse’s campaign of 1688-89, nor in the first Jacobite rising of 1715.
My feeling on the point is that if we are going to honour historical legacy, we ought to acknowledge the specific one.
That’s enough for this week. When we next meet over bullet points, it will be spring.
Great photos from a steam engine enthusiast’s visit to an open pit coal mine in northern China.
Has there ever been a time when both the Tories and Grits polled below 30%?
Are we almost at that point now?
Doesn’t February cling on this year, demanding one 24 more hours before we get to the month of hope? Well, February is half over as of noon today. I hate February. I really don’t know why particularly as there never were exams or a rush to get a paper out. Never a particular drain on the budget or time. What else could it be?
The Conservative government expects that it will be defeated over the budget in early March, which means Canadians could go to the polls by early April. The government has apparently intensified its election readiness, believing it may fall during a non-confidence vote on March 4, the day of the Liberal amendment to the Tory budget. That could set an election date for as early as April 7. Sources told CTV News that Liberal Leader Stephane Dion has told party members he is ready to pull the election trigger over the budget bill, even though some Liberals are against the idea.
I bet the Liberals lose a few seats…or many…but maybe the Tories do, too. I see no reason for change at this point given we have a centrist government just like the last centrist government. Needless to say, however, we are ordering the lawn signs promoting the GX40 way forward: “Change, Order, Hope and A Record To be Proud Of!!!”
If I were advising the Republican nominee, this is one of the places I’d ask him to plant his flag. I’d ask him to call for a new human capital revolution, so that the U.S. could recapture the spirit of reforms like the Morrill Act of the 19th century, the high school movement of the early 20th century and the G.I. Bill after World War II. Doing that would mean taking on the populists of the left and right, the ones who imagine the problem is globalization and unfair trade when in fact the real problem is that the talents of American workers are not keeping up with technological change.
What? A call to moderation and prudent focused hard work? When did we last hear that sort of stuff? Maybe something is changing. It was nice to see Larry King call Limbaugh an example of “the far right” last night during the McCain interview. The effect of the extreme exceeds any logical sense of their reach other than in their self-promoting vicitimized imagination. Without the looney left and the wacko right (and perhaps the Web 2.0ers, too) what could be done with the world?
Surely that is enough for the day that starts the slide to March that marks the edge of spring.
Has it come to this?
Obama, McCain both win. (Yawn.)
We have to remember that this is not bad given that four years ago, it was George Bush and John Kerry. Both Obama and McCain are the sort of leaders who have put integrity, leadership and vision on the table and are staking their claim to the most powerful job in the world on their ability to put things right. It may even be an election devoid of most of the crap and spin we have seen for years – given that the vending of crap and spin seems to have been one victim of the primaries.
Duller questions still await. Like “can a win in Ohio prolong Clinton’s demise?” Like “will Huckabee join in an unholy alliance with talk radio to place the simmering disloyalty of conservatism above the greater good?” Like, yawn, the VP candidate selection. But what does this all mean? Is this really an urban v. urban race. It appears also to be a center-right v. center-left or even left race. These are both new things to US politics. Interestingly, it may also be a fight between relative radicals, one with substance and one with something that looks like a couple of slogans: hope and change. A product of the 1960’s against an echo of that decade.
And the Votemaster points out that the actual election may not be such an even fight as the process to date might imply:
In a development that should make Republicans nervous, Obama got more votes (619,000) in Virginia than all the Republican candidates combined (485,000). In fact, the combined Democratic vote in Virginia was more than double the combined Republican vote. And this in a state that hasn’t voted Democratic in a Presidential election since 1964 when Lyndon Johnson wiped Barry Goldwater off the map. If the Democratic enthusiasm is running so high in places like Virginia, what’s going to happen in the general election in true swing states like Missouri, Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado?
People are coming out for Obama. I’m not really sure why but, despite that, I was very tempted to nick one of his lawn signs, holdovers from the primary, that I saw down in New York over the weekend. An opportunity to grab a bit of what might be going on.