Second Gen (2003-2016, 2016- )
Why can’t we make a cheaper simpler and secure tool like the US is planning:
Ms. Harty said a planned introduction of a passport card – “that card will be wallet-sized and about half the price” – should ease the problem for Americans who cross into Canada for work or on day visits. The passport card will be available only to U.S. citizens. In Canada, the Harper government has no plans to offer an equivalent card.
No, we have a less-secure, as-expensive, bulky plan. Excellent.
Yesterday Jay wrote the following about his own comment:
David, my bad…
If the CPC wants to advertise on Pam Anderson’s left nipple it’s cool with me. (But it was a fun rant nonetheless.)
My immediate reaction was that he would never have written that if we had been talking about a union rather than a political party of the right. This raises an interesting point that is one of the fuzziest in the world of political blogging. When organizations with power that demand your loyalty and coerce your funds and represent your opinion are the organizations you favour, it is OK. But when it is an opposing position, it is Satanic. Yet the function of the coercion is essentially the same whether it is a trade union, a political party, a religious community or a sports team. Chris actually illustrated the point well in relation to peanut butter.
So that being true, why do we hold on to our given set of ideals so closely if we know the failings of all ideals? Why not admit that we live from individual anecdote to anecdote as the lamb lives from one blade of grass to the next?
I don’t agree with the NYT’s headline “Things Going Right for Red Sox, but for All the Wrong Reasons“. Over the weekend Manny hit, Wakefield stilled the spin of his knuckleball, Pedroia and Youkilis are turning out to be home grown gold. Sadly, the Yankees have found their form but they fell back a game for the first time in weeks nonetheless. The Sox’s last two opponents of interleague play, the Braves and the Padres, are far tougher than those the Yanks face, the Rockies and the Giants, so it will be an important week to have a large amount of supportive angst milling in the gut.
It appears Ottawa is awash with straws these days as there are any number of neato ideas with which one can grasp so as to make one feel better about oneself, such as this:
“It’s getting harder and harder to reach people through the regular media. Fewer people are watching the network news … fewer people are reading the newspapers,” the Immigration Minister said. “So we have to find new advertising outlets to reach them, to get our message through. And the people who follow NASCAR are our kind of people. They’re hard-working families, they’re taxpayers who play by the rules. And those are the people that we’re targeting.” Conservative insiders have been saying for several months that the party strategy is to go after the large number of Canadians who consider themselves middle class.
Brilliant. Sponsor a race car, convince me you have the stuff it takes to run a majority. Next idea?
The dopey anti-journalist message is gold as well.
What indeed? I am chaperoning a trip fo grade three kids to the zoo. I thought my life would be chaperoning exempt. The zoo is 200 km or more to the east which means there is five hours in a bus involved. Not a yellow bus, God be praised, but I am told a comfy one. I am still bringing ear plugs. But I am not bringing mace or anything like that so I am being a proper parent.
For your reading and commenting pleasure today, while I endure the screams of eight year olds as I am encased with them in a small steel cage on wheels hurtling down the highway, please visit the Flea where you can see Ms. Hilton defended and accused, ignored for what she is and praised for what she is not – sometimes all by the same person. A sense of fashion collides with a grasp of the law – but no one has lost an eye yet.
Why does the internet connection fail during lightning? Will the new shingles hold? Will anyone get out of bed and cross town for the presentation?
I have something of a spot for the Phillies as, in the old days of the Expos and the NL East and national media that was not so Toronto-centric as to singlehandedly kill off a team, it was once possible to watch them. But they are one of those teams, like the Cubs, known more for their failings than anything:
Defeat has been as spectacular and excruciating as it has been regular. On May 1, 1883, the team lost its inaugural game; by the end of that miserable season, a pitcher named John Coleman had lost 48 times. From 1938 through 1942, the Phillies lost at least 103 games each year. The franchise has set awful records for futility — with a collective earned run average of 6.71 in 1930 and 23 consecutive defeats in 1961. And, of course, 1964 brought one of baseball’s most infamous collapses, when the Phillies held a 6 ½-game lead in the National League with 12 games to play and blew the pennant after losing 10 in a row.
Good story in the NYT about the losing-est team in sports history who, in large part because of Mike, won the World Series when I was in grade 12 leaving me forever with a skewed understanding of their legacy.
It is a very instructive day in the news if you are interested in constitutional law. Yesterday, the US courts confirmed the primacy of the person and the bar on making things up:
The appeals court yesterday ordered the trial judge in the case to issue a writ of habeas corpus directing the secretary of defense to release Mr. Marri from military custody “within a reasonable period of time to be set by the district court.” The government can, Judge Motz wrote, transfer Mr. Marri to civilian authorities to face criminal charges, initiate deportation proceedings against him, hold him as a material witness in connection with a grand jury proceeding or detain him for a limited time under a provision of the U.S.A. Patriot Act. But the military cannot hold him, Judge Motz wrote. “The president cannot eliminate,” she wrote, “constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention.”
These sorts of things are difficult cases and we have a natural gut reaction that bad people ought to be treated badly, differently. The trouble is the job of determining who and how has to be done on a principles and public basis or there is a veering towards a genial sort of authoritarianism where others take care of things you do not know about in ways that you do not understand. They become your betters, too, as a result.
Jay and I have been discussing the Atlantic Accord and likely both been making errors all over the place but none as silly as the ones likely being made in the political forum these days:
“I am concerned about this allegation we’ve broken the [Atlantic] accords…We have done no such thing. It’s a contract. We don’t break contracts. We respect contracts. Normally, I expect, if someone says you’ve broken a contract, they are going to follow that up by going to court to make you abide by the contract. But I don’t see that happening…We can’t let that allegation stay out there forever. At some point we will consult tribunals ourselves, if that’s necessary, to get a ruling on our respect for the contracts.” The political dare was met with scorn by Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams and Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald, who said they will not be drawn into legal battles that would only deflect their criticisms of the recent federal budget…
Stephen Scott, a professor of constitutional law at McGill University in Montreal, said the Atlantic Accord is a political arrangement, not a contract, so a lawsuit could not be used to force the federal government to uphold its provisions. But, he said, the premiers could go to their own provincial appeals courts to get orders declaring how the agreement should be interpreted.
So you have the leader of the country daring other leaders into a court case over a legal principle that probably does not exist. Classy or troubling?
But to what political end? Where is a seat one with this approach? Maybe rural Alberta, itself the beneficiaries of the greatest non-reimbursable Federal windfall in Canadian history, will now vote 75% Conservative instead of 70%. But what is a Conservative government without seats in Atlantic Canada? Unless, it takes Ontario – nothing. Is there now a practical resignation to the reality of minority government?
Having roofed before, as with laying large amounts of sod, I do not do it any more. As you might be aware, I am what is known as not handy half by choice. It is not because I am lazy or fabulously wealthy but when (not if) I made a mistake I would likely leave it and then would hate that mistake for decades as I looked at the house. I know this is what I am like and I freely admit it. I console myself with other strengths, like my sense of indignity at bad BBQ and a passing understanding of a large range of athletic endeavors.
Plus it is very tippy up there. I am quite sure of that.