The fallout from Mayor Effingford’s little fracas with Marg Delahunty/Mary Walsh just keeps getting better. Olbermann tweets:
HAHAHAHA! One of the Worst Persons in the World 2 days in a row??
Hizzoner better get his shit together: he’s rapidly spiraling into “Lonesome Rhodes Beck” and “Billo The Clown” territory. (Of course, to Mayor Effingford that would probably be a feature, not a bug.)
(Watch “Worst Persons” here, at Countdown on Current TV.)
SHRIEEEEEEEEEK!!!:
That was a shriek of ecstasy and joy, by the way. Omigod…
Ford is going to make the classic much loved 1965 Ford Mustang Convertible available again to the buying public. There is one little hitch… you provide the engine, transmission, interior, electronics, brakes, suspension, and trim. Ford just gives you the body.
That ’65 body isn’t much different from the sweet little ’66 I owned — and drove daily — for 15 years, until some savage asshole’s left turn wrote it off. (I bought it back from ICBC for $300 and made over $1500 parting it out, but with every part I sold went a little piece of my broken heart.) Best car I ever drove, and I’d buy another one in a hot second. The thought of having one Brand New, even if I had to build it and paint it… AIIIIEEEEEEE!!!! Quick, the smelling salts. I grow faint…
(I know, the song’s about a Chev, but I still used to drive around with it playing on the tape deck, singing away, replacing “Chevy” with “Mustang”)
HAHAHAHAHA! Mayor Rob Fucking Ford made Olbermann’s Worst Person In The World last night. (The part about Ford is at approximately 2:20.)
Why am I laughing? Toronto is my home fucking town, I should probably be fucking mortified.
UPDATE: Edited to add link and remove Wrong video. WRONG.
No, make that the Month. Maybe even the Year. Or possibly the decade, since the photos you’re about to feast your eyes on are from last year.
Here’s a taste: this is a couple of law firm employees at their firm’s Hallowe’en party last year. They’re “dressed up” as homeowners who’ve been foreclosed on, something the firm facilitates in the employ of the Big Banks:
Hardee-har-har.
On Friday, the law firm of Steven J. Baum threw a Halloween party. The firm, which is located near Buffalo, is what is commonly referred to as a “foreclosure mill” firm, meaning it represents banks and mortgage servicers as they attempt to foreclose on homeowners and evict them from their homes. Steven J. Baum is, in fact, the largest such firm in New York; it represents virtually all the giant mortgage lenders, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
The party is the firm’s big annual bash. Employees wear Halloween costumes to the office, where they party until around noon, and then return to work, still in costume. I can’t tell you how people dressed for this year’s party, but I can tell you about last year’s.
That’s because a former employee of Steven J. Baum recently sent me snapshots of last year’s party. In an e-mail, she said that she wanted me to see them because they showed an appalling lack of compassion toward the homeowners — invariably poor and down on their luck — that the Baum firm had brought foreclosure proceedings against.
Read the rest and look at the other photos of these partying pigfuckers and have your mind blown. There is something Seriously Wrong with these people.
And this is why I support Occupy Wall Street despite my admitted ambivalence about our version of the same in Canada. This wouldn’t happen in Canada: largely because we had no foreclosure crisis for these slimy scum-ridden weasels to mock, but also because Canadians don’t seem to be infected with this kind of mindless, soulless malevolence. Not even the worst of us.
Recognize this guy?
Sure you do: it’s the Headless Zazzle T-Shirt Guy, this time sporting an elegant “Occupy Wall Street”-inspired T-shirt, yours for the low low price of $14.95 (plus sales tax, shipping & handling).
Also available in long-sleeve, hoodies, tank tops and tote bags. (But no dog shirts — yet.) I took care of the beer stein, since beer is (or should be) the Official Alcoholic Beverage of the 99% .
Only $20.95 (plus T S&H)!
In the proud tradition of the free market, competitors like Cafe Press and others are also flogging Brand #OWS, and earlier this week a couple from Long Island applied to trademark “Occupy Wall Street”. Will the ubiquitous hashtag # soon be accompanied by a ™ and a ®?
People Before Profits! (Except the profits from my Occupy Wall Street crap!)
Holy Remington…
The CPC’s promise to “scrap the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry” — in exactly those words, the better to optimize the propaganda value — has been central to their platform for about as long as the registry has existed. But I honestly didn’t think they’d ever do it, majority or not. It’s served them well in so many ways, particularly given the kind of divisive, “us and them” politics they like to play. Since Harpie isn’t known for keeping his word, I fully expected the long-gun registry pledge to end up with all the others on his battered compost heap of breached commitments and broken promises.
But I was Wrong. Yesterday, the “Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act” was finally tabled. (Heh – I’m surprised they didn’t call it the “Ending the Wasteful & Ineffective Long-Gun Registry Act”, a phrase which, though I fully agree with it, they’ve been parroting for so long that by now they must know how to burp it.) So, woohoo! 32 flavours of woohoo!: this is maybe the only issue where Harper and I are sympatico.
The Act would dismantle the registry and supposedly shred all the personal information that’s been collected over the years. Supposedly. But who really believes that a government — any government, of any stripe — would willingly demolish a treasure trove of personal information that it has on some of its citizens? Not me. Registry supporters fretting about the destruction of the information should relax: it will most likely just be moved to a new home far beneath the verdant lawns of Parliament Hill, stashed away in some dank and musty, foul-smelling corner of the Harpenbunker, as a team of sweaty CPC geeks tries to figure out what use the government can make of it.
The Act is expected to zoom into law fairly quickly but it hasn’t yet, and anything can happen. Harper isn’t above engaging in elaborate political theatre for the benefit of his base, so I’ll save the happy dance and the other 31 flavours of woohoo! for the day C-19 becomes law.
… some screechy, screaming conservative Catholic like Our Lady of the Fetuses or Father Tubesock tries to make the case that conservatives like them are all about “liberty” and “the free market”, point them towards this little item:
The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. [...]
It called for the establishment of “a supranational authority” with worldwide scope and “universal jurisdiction” to guide economic policies and decisions.
Great Caesar’s Ghost! New World Order! The Illuminati!
But colour me unsurprised. Look where Pope Benny stands on the Political Compass:
A lefty!? Just goes to show what a difference a little Authoritarianism makes.
Sadly, there’s an issue that is tearing Occupy Wall Street asunder and may end its presence in Zuccotti Park tomorrow, and it’s this:
Drums. According to a feverish call for help that went out today at N+1mag.com, rogue drummers are causing trouble at OWS:
A trusted friend and respected activist sent the following notes, explaining that the Occupy movement may be about to lose Zuccotti Park and that a much larger presence is needed starting tonight.
OWS is over after Tuesday:
Friends, mediation with the drummers has been called off. It has gone on for more than 2 weeks and it has reached a dead end. The drummers formed a working group called Pulse and agreed to 2 hrs/day at times during the mediation, and more recently that changed to 4 hrs/day. It’s my feeling that we may have a fighting chance with the community board if we could indeed limit drumming and loud instrumentation to 12-2 PM and 4-6 PM, however that isn’t what’s happening.
Last night the drumming was near continuous until 10:30 PM at night. Today it began again at 11 AM. The drummers are fighting among themselves, there is no cohesive group. There is one assemblage called Pulse that organized most of the drummers into a group and went to GA for formal recognition and with a proposal.
Drums.
The drummers who are on site today are the drummers who have self-organized into an OWS working group they’re calling Pulse. They have been involved in mediation. They are not willing to limit drumming to 2 hours, but they are willing to do 12–2 PM and 4–6 PM daily. It is our hope that that will count for something with the community board.
In the meantime, there are other drummers who refuse to acknowledge OWS or the GA as a body they are interested in, and these drummers show up on site when they fell like it and drum when they feel like it. Over the weekend, it was for 10 or 11 hours straight, until late night.
My only comment is that this will be the first post I’ve done about OWS that also gets filed in the “brain damage” category. I hope there are no more.
UPDATE: Aha. Turns out the root of the problem isn’t brain damage at all, but as usual, Evil Capitalism:
The drummers claim that the finance working group even levied a percussion tax of sorts, taking up to half of the $150-300 a day that the drum circle was receiving in tips. “Now they have over $500,000 from all sorts of places,” said Engelerdt. “We’re like, what’s going on here? They’re like the banks we’re protesting.”
Protesting the avarice that blew up the economy is an idea I can get behind, especially if the middle class, who’s been getting hammered worse than anyone the last few years, sees fit to get involved. As ambivalent as I’ve felt about the protests in Canada, I’ve always felt that south of the border they had a truly legitimate beef, and their protest movement was a good idea. But if anything can make a good idea crash and burn, it’s petty bullshit like this.
In the relentless race to discredit Occupy Wall Street, wingnuts have finally drawn their ultimate weapon. That’s right…
About 60 members from the Council on American-Islamic Relations – New York held a prayer service amid the anti-banking demonstration, with the prayer leader calling out, “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the most powerful of all”) and the female members wearing head coverings and sitting behind the men.
No, not that game. I mean an actual Game, in this case, CNBC’s trading contest, “Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge”. The Challenge has run up against some challenges, and trading has been suspended for a week following the discovery of a technical glitch that some wily contestants were exploiting to their benefit.
Surprise surprise: someone’s cheating.
CNBC.com’s editor, Allen Wastler said in a blog post;
“Trading in CNBC‘s Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge was suspended as of close of trading today at 4:00 p.m. ET for one week.
“It came to our attention that there was a technical glitch in the current trading system, which a handful of players found and exploited to jump to the top of the leaderboard. [...]
And the beat goes on, as once again, art imitates life…
One more badass middle-eastern dictator dragged out of the ever-popular Hiding Spot for Badass Middle-Eastern Dictators, a hole in the desert:
Muammar Gaddafi was killed by Libyan fighters he once scorned as “rats,” cornered, beaten and then shot in the head after his chaotic capture by fighters who overran his last redoubt on Thursday in his hometown of Sirte.
Two months after Western-backed rebels ended 42 years of eccentric, often bloody, one-man rule by capturing the capital Tripoli, his death and the fall of the final bastion ended a nervous hiatus for the new interim government, which is now set to declare formal “liberation” with a timetable for elections.
Is it Wrong that my first thought at hearing this news was “Long Oil!!!“? Heh.
Gaddafi was a tyrant and a monster, the very definition of a strong-man middle-eastern dictator: he won’t be missed. Except maybe in one respect… I, at least, will miss his entertaining fashion sense.
For all his volatility, in one respect Gadaffi was flawlessly reliable: he could always be counted on to stand out in a crowd. 
Flashy & Weird was his thing and he worked at it, you could tell. And 
he did it well, even standing off heavy competition in the Weird Eyewear and Weird Hair Divisions from North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. Gadaffi dressed for excess, and he was good at it.
But in the end his sartorial splendour may well have been his undoing. Would the rebels have found him so quickly if he’d dressed like this?
UPDATE!
When contemplating the Colonel’s weird and wonderful fashion sense, who can forget the ultimate accessory, his elegant team of female bodyguards (and thanks to K’Shoshana in the comments for reminding me). Behold, the Colonel with his Amazon Guard, (aka “The Gadaffi Girls”):
He may have been a bloodthirsty tyrant, but when it came to crafting an Image the guy had savoir faire.
Everyone Else: Who’s there?
Fetus Fetishists: We Want the Debate!
Everyone Else: I said, Who’s there?
Fetus Fetishists: We Want the Debate!!
Everyone Else: Hello?? Bueller??
Fetus Fetishists: We Want the Debate!!!
Everyone Else: I thought I heard something out there… must have been the cat, passing wind… damn, I’m not going out there for awhile. Toxic Cat Farts…ugh…
*********************
Like an endless knock-knock joke with no punchline, it’s not easy for a fetus fetishist to get any attention these days. It seems that no sooner to do they start flapping their gums at top speed about their favourite subject than everyone else’s eyes glaze over, eardrums explode and bodies hit the floor, comatose. Disinterest — on a massive scale.
Now they’ve launched a campaign to “Re-open The Debate“… “The Debate” that was closed over 23 years ago. The debate that they, a tiny minority, nonetheless incessantly jabber and shriek and bitch and bleat and tear their hair over, in an escalating collective nervous breakdown that sounds less like vocalization than the brainless static of dumb white noise punctuated by monotonous feral grunts.
From what they call a “press release”:
A group within the educational pro-life movement is about to throw down the gauntlet on what the group claims is the current censorship and hostility toward any attempt to debate abortion.
Right out of the gate, the C-word — “censorship” — proving they have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the word “censorship” means. Fetus Fetishists, being small-n nazis at heart, seem to genuinely believe that not only do they have the right to mouth off, but they also have the right to an audience, the audience of their choosing (ie. women on their way into a clinic), and if their feverish rants fail to draw the audience they want, it’s “censorship”. It never occurs to them that nobody’s being stopped from hearing what they have to say; it’s just that most people aren’t all that interested in the goofy dogmatic swill they dish up non-stop, and hearing it just makes their eyes glaze over, their eardrums explode…
This group, known as the We Want the Debate Campaign, will challenge anyone who wishes to defend abortion to an open, transparent and fair debate in front of the people of Ontario. Over the next four months, the campaign will conduct a series of activities to highlight current contradictions and misconceptions that warp the public’s view of abortion. They will expose a systematic distortion by the overwhelming majority of the media of the facts of abortion. They will also denounce the Federal Government’s disregard of the wishes of most Canadians to allow a discussion on the future of abortion in our country.
A senseless challenge: abortion doesn’t need defending, except from them. It’s a safe guess that the people of Ontario, and Canada for that matter, are no more interested in rehashing a decades-old debate over a gynecological procedure than they are in discussing what kind of prostate treatment should be available to men. Most of us rightly feel that these things are between doctor and patient, and the idea of “debating” such personal issues in a public venue is tacky, weird and very bad form to say the least.
On the lighter side, the graphic on their website is inadvertently hilarious…
…because that’s what most people hear when anti-choicers rail on and on about abortion: a bunch of blank lines, blablablablablablabla, dumb white noise, yaddayaddayadda. And the eyes glaze over, and the eardrums explode, and the bodies hit the floor…
Look out!! He’s got a…
…HAMMER!!!:
Two men were apprehended by security officers around 4 p.m. at Commerce Court near King and Bay streets. One of them allegedly had a hammer concealed on him, said Const. Tony Vella with the Toronto Police.
Vella said it is not clear if the two men were part of the Occupy Toronto protest, and charges for carrying a concealed weapon are pending against the person who was reportedly carrying the hammer.
I didn’t know downtown Toronto was a Hammer-Free Zone. And by the way, how did the cops know about that hammer? They check the Life-Saving Hammer Registry?
In all seriousness. I don’t know how long the Occupy Toronto protesters intend to stay down there, but if it’s more than a few days this little episode might be a portent of the kind of amped-up-on-Red-Bull-and-Wakeups aggression they can expect from the Law.
A hammer? Really??
Harpie speaks! about the “Occupy” protests taking place in Canada today!
Or maybe not so much — Mr.H doesn’t seem very interested in discussing the “Occupy” phenomenon. If he thinks the protests are all about how the economy went off a cliff in the wake of 2008′s Exploding Shit House Of Dumbness & Greed, he’s got a point: other than what a doctor might call “sympathetic pain”, Canada didn’t endure the enormous gaping economic head wound that was suffered south of the border. Somehow we managed to neatly sidestep the flaming bag of pecuniary dogshit the Banksters left at America’s front door before ringing the bell and running off with all the money 3 years ago.
Other than as an act of solidarity with Wall Street protesters, I admit to being somewhat puzzled by the protests in Canada myself. But maybe Canada’s protests are about more than the Financial Crisis and how its ugly ripples somehow stopped just short of the Corridors of Corporate Power where they originated in the first place. Maybe our protests are better understood distilled to their most basic form as the sounding of an alarm, like the ominous warning given by Fight Club‘s Tyler Durden:
Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not… fuck with us.
And if that’s what our protests are about, little wonder Harpie is less than enthusiastic about commenting on them.
Instant Karma gonna get you
Gonna knock you right in the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon you’re gonna be dead…
What in the world you thinking of?
Laughing in the face of love
What on Earth you tryna do?
It’s up to you, yeah, you:
A Kansas disciplinary panel said Thursday that former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline should be indefinitely suspended from practicing law in the state because of the “dishonest and selfish” way he pursued abortion clinics.
The recommendation of the attorney disciplinary board culminates a turbulent six-year period in which Kline — as attorney general and later Johnson County district attorney — presided over investigations of the late George Tiller’s abortion clinic in Wichita and Planned Parenthood in Overland Park.
Now that’s a nice sight to see on a sunny Friday. Phill Kline, the fetus fetishizing ex-Kansas A-G who relentlessly pursued Dr. George Tiller for years and for naught, is finally getting his comeuppance. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy: apart from Scott Roeder, no one person has more of Dr. Tiller’s blood on his hands than Phill (yes, he really spells it with 2 L’s) Kline.
It isn’t hyperbole to say Kline was obsessed with Tiller. His entire term as Kansas A-G was devoted to a legal harassment crusade against the doctor. For 6 years Kline, in and out of office, routinely dragged Tiller into court on goofy trumped-up charges that were either cleared or dismissed. Now just imagine the brain-damaged Scott Roeder observing all this, his fragile mind spiraling into ever more savage fury as he watches the courts vindicate the doctor time and again, in case after case. Until finally he decides to mete out his own kind of justice.
So, good: ass righteously kicked by karma, Phill (2 L’s, seriously) is finally being put out to pasture where he can’t bother anyone. The closest he’ll get to abusing (I hesitate to call what Kline did “practicing”) law is his professorship at Falwell’s respected *cough* “Liberty School of Law”. That’s the dollop of whipped cream on the schadenfreude cake.
And we all shine on…
The future isn’t looking too bright for the controversial Long Gun Registry, currently whiling away its final weeks on Bad Legislation Death Row, smoking rollies and using the ashes to scratch “LOVE/HATE” tattoos into its knuckles as it waits for a CPC government Termination Technician to put it to sleep:
The long gun registry is slated to be removed from legislation shortly, thus ending a contentious and hugely expensive program that has divided rural and urban voters since its inception in 1991. The registry currently consumes more than $66 million in tax each year.
So goes the spin, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
I suspect that right this very moment, in a boardroom in the secret Harpenbunker far below the manicured lawns of Parliament Hill, a team of sweaty CPC geeks is brainstorming furiously about how to make this issue go away without anyone noticing. Maybe start a war or something… invade Buffalo? North Tonawanda? (Home of Irv Weinstein’s “Eyewitness News”, as children of the 60s who grew up in Toronto will fondly recall… Eyewitness News! The Goriest News!!) But I’m off on another tangent. Beam me down, Scotty.
Call me cynical, but the idea that the Conservatives would ditch legislation that works as well for them as the Long Gun Registry is hard to imagine, even for someone whose imagination occasionally runs to things like breathing mountains and fur on the fridge. The Registry multi-tasks like nothing else, simultaneously acting as red meat for the base, fundraising tool, wedge issue and Orwellian stomper of civil liberties… the Veg-a-matic of Firearms legislation. It slices! It dices! It gives police the power of warrantless search & seizure! The Harpster has proven by his own drunken-sailor spending that he doesn’t really care about the money it sucks up, so other than the fact that it’s a Liberal Party initiative, what’s not for him to like about it? Deep down, it must really chap his ass to have to make good on his promise to scrap it.
But the irony doesn’t stop there.
On the other side of the political aisle, many complain bitterly (and rightly so) about CPCgovInc’s “Tough on Crime” bills, particularly the sleazy warrantless “internet spying” programs they’ve got in the hopper. But wait (there’s more): the same people who resent the state keeping a rheumy eye on their internet activities not only don’t mind but are quite enthusiastic about it kicking my door in and seizing my private property for no good reason. Huh? How does that work??
BOOM! BOOM! The Long Gun Registry, bringing the full-metal irony with both barrels.
Why so bitter?:
Voting Conservative is “Gutter Morality!??” Tsk.
So you got a little spanking on Election Day… okay, you were beaten like a gong. No, make that ‘beaten like a Cinco de Mayo pinata’. But look on the bright side: one less vote would have put you in the ’beaten like a crack baby in foster care’ category.
(Almost 400 people voted for this whackadoo… think about it. They walk among us. Fortunately in extremely tiny numbers!)
Blackberry users aren’t the only ones having trouble, at least today.
Apple’s servers gave up the ghost today when millions of iPhone users tried to update their phones with the new IOS 5 software:
Users on Apple’s help forums have begun reporting that they’re not able to activate iOS 5, noting that Apple’s activation servers are beginning to go down. Users are left with a 3200 error code, and unable to finish the activation. This isn’t a good situation by any means leaving users, in some cases, with almost bricked devices until Apple can get things back up to speed. [...]
Wonderful! The Human Race is making Progress.
Nothing to do with technology, but rather, encouraging advances in the War On Human Dumbness.
Ten years ago if 2 major communications companies had crashed one after another, everyone would be out buying duct tape and plastic sheeting and getting smallpox vaccinations and running around in circles with their hair on fire.
Progress! Marches on!!
Can't say I disagree...
For every action, there’s an equal reaction — within + or -3%. I suppose that would be an apt characterization of “We Are The 53%”, a Tumblr site started by a conservative blogger as a counterbalance to Occupation Wall Street’s “We Are The 99%“.
“We Are The 99%” tells individual stories of Wall Street protest supporters who consider themselves well and truly fucked by a system that seems vastly biased towards the insanely wealthy “1%”, while there’s nothing on their own increasingly-obscured-by-shitloads-of-debt horizons but the drudgery of low-paying dumbass McJobs and underwater mortgages. Some of their stories are sad indeed; reading through the site, I got the panicky feeling of watching the sinking Titanic being bailed out with teaspoons.
“53%” is a number originating with that dicey but oft-quoted statistic about how 47% of Americans pay no taxes. Presumably its use in this new context is meant to divide the “99%” between those who work and contribute to society and those who… don’t. It’s a bit disingenuous, since many of those “occupying” Wall Street are protesting working for wages that have stagnanted or shrunk for decades while the cost of living spirals. They’re protesting “a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago”:
Reading through the 53%’s stories, I found myself in frequent agreement with their feisty, independent attitudes and found some of their stories inspiring, but I couldn’t help feeling that they aren’t so different from the 99%. They have the same mortgages underwater, the same 3 dipshit jobs being worked to make ends barely meet, the same mountains of debt. The difference is, after they explain how fucked they are, they tell everyone else to stop whining.
If “the 53%” that pays its own way and contributes to society resents carrying the perceived burden of “the 47%” on its collective back, it seems logical that this would include corporate entities that put the arm on them after blowing up the economy with their own incompetence and malfeasance. My takeaway from “We Are the 53%” was that if anyone should be on Wall Street with pitchforks and torches, it’s them.
You can run but you can't hide...
Oh, those damn *cough/eyeroll/puke* scheduling conflicts:
The students of Barnard College were expecting to hear from Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, as part of a lecture series titled “Power Talks.”
But over the weekend, Mr. Blankfein informed the college that he was canceling his appearance, originally planned for Wednesday night, because of a scheduling conflict.
Riiiiiiight, “scheduling conflict”. Funny how those “scheduling conflicts” always seem to come up when people who’ve been pushed to the absolute limit and last straw of their endurance for bullshit finally hit the streets demanding you cease and desist doing the kind of “God’s Work” that sucks billions out of the economy and deposits it in the wallets of you and your buddies, throws thousands out of their homes and leaves millions more unemployed or with their nest eggs shattered, looking forward to “Freedom 85″.
Whew. That’s what I’d call a run-on sentence, fitting for a run-away chiseler like Blankfein.
Whatever you think of the “Occupy Wall Street” protest — and I admit to being somewhat ambivalent about certain aspects of it myself — it seems to be having a bit of an impact.
Laid low with some kind of vicious viral crud for the last 2 weeks, I missed this story. But I think it’s worth commenting on, if only because one teeny-weeny year ago there was so much gnashing of teeth over the possibility that the thuggish Steveoid Government would immediately jackboot von Finckenstein’s ass out of the Big Chair at the CRTC and replace him with a brainless Harper-fellating rubber-stamper who’d facilitate full-metal, 24/7 Hate! from conservative science project Sun TV, affectionately known as “Fox News North”.
Now that time is finally looming in the not-too-distant future… minus the jackboots and thuggery, with barely a whimper, not a bang, von Finckenstein’s tenure as CRTC Chair looks to be coming to the end that so many feared. Despite his reported wish to stay on, the government has let it be known that they’re in no mood to put up with independent thinking and are in the process of finding a replacement for The Fink, who won’t be re-appointed — no CRTC chair for you! NEXT!!:
Konrad von Finckenstein’s contentious term as chairman of the federal broadcast and telecom regulator is coming to an end, after five years characterized by clashes with the Tory government and a series of landmark decisions about the future of the industries it oversees.
Mr. von Finckenstein had been seeking an extension to his term as head of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, according to people with knowledge of the matter. In an internal memo sent early Tuesday afternoon, Mr. von Finckenstein informed his staff that the government will soon be evaluating candidates to take over his job.
“Contentious term”? Some would offer this translation: von Finckenstein refused to grant Sun TV the license it wanted, instead granting it the license it actually qualified for.
Actually, the government’s decision probably has a lot less to do with Sun TV than it does with von Finckenstein’s independence, something considered a bug, not a feature, by the Harper Conservatives. In spite of being appointed by Harper, they’ve clashed on a few different issues, and to a government in which Obedience is Everything, going out of lockstep on anything is reason enough to get shuffled out the door.
But we’ll see. Von Finckenstein’s term ends in January, just 3 months from now. Before that we’ll know who will succeed him (Luc Lavoie?!), and shortly thereafter, how (or if) it affects our cable TV packages and that goofy little channel up the dial.
Not that it really matters, and this time around I’m obviously not the only one who isn’t too frantic about it. Could it be because by now everyone’s seen the actual Sun TV product and realizes it’ll be a Jumbo Snooze-a-Rama no matter where it sits on the dial?
Master of his (News) Domain
Looks pretty personal, doesn't it? That lady with the latex gloves: the Government.
When people like Michele Bachmann (R-Batshit) jabber inanely about “small government”, what they mean is government so small it can crawl up your vagina and do an ultrasound of the contents of your womb:
Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) proposed a bill on Thursday that would force women in the early stages of pregnancy to have a physically invasive and medically unnecessary ultrasound procedure before they can legally consent to having an abortion.
One couldn’t be blamed for asking why. It can’t be because women are too stupid to know what pregnancy means: obviously they’re cognizant of everything it means, physically and to their lives personally, or they wouldn’t have made the decision to terminate. But even having made the right choice on an intellectual level, some women find themselves on shaky emotional ground over this most personal of decisions. The odious misogynist creeps who call themselves “pro-lifers” long ago figured out that this was a vulnerability just waiting to be exploited, and that’s what forced ultrasounds are meant to do. With so many states in the US casually legislating forced ultrasound, you have to wonder about the road they’re on and where the next turnoff might lead.
There’s an awful lot of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching about a largely mythical problem known as “coerced abortion“; welcome to coerced childbirth. For real. Not even by a partner or parent but by the state.
Sorry Michele, but it doesn’t get any Bigger Government than that.
Religious right crackpot Charles McVety has been a busy little bible-banger lately, and as usual it’s all about S E X , raising the question:
Does this guy EVER get any?
(Whoops, sorry if that conjured up any unpleasant visuals. Next time I’ll use a trigger warning.)
Chuck’s latest Adventure in Sexland was an ad that everyone’s seen by now: a full page of feverish, won’t-someone-think-of-the-children hysteria objecting to public school kids being taught why they shouldn’t beat up and torment other kids who are “different”. The ad is a nauseating amalgam of bigotry and self righteous slop that would give most normal people the dry heaves, especially since it appeared not long after bullying claimed its latest victim. Most media decline to publish this kind of swill, their vetting procedures rejecting it before it can assault any human eyes. But at the NatPo, McVety’s ad slid through while the morning circlejerk was in progress and all eyes were shut tight, shouts of ecstasy echoing down the hallways to Production and Circulation… some even whisper in awe about the faint, euphoric grunts that could be heard as far away as Advertising Sales…
Well, I can’t think of any other reason for this goofy thing getting published, can you?
Outrage ensued and the NP issued an apology:
The National Post has procedures in place for vetting the content of advertising, especially advocacy advertising. The procedures are intended to ensure that such ads meet a standard of tone and respect that is consistent with furthering constructive dialogue about important public policy issues.
In this case, those procedures were not followed. An ad that should not have run in its proposed form was allowed to run.
This ad will not run in the National Post again.
…and fucked it up royally…
[...] and in its singling out of groups of people who have made choices about their sexuality with which the group disagrees.
Whoops! Another quick outraged boot to the NatPo’s nads, and that became:
[...] people with whose sexuality the group disagrees.
And I can finally say, Good On The NatPo for an apology well-done, if protracted, and after all, not one they were obliged to make. They’ve even launched an investigation to find out how it all happened (although it might be easier just to re-schedule the circlejerk for later in the day, after all ads have been safely vetted).
EXTRA EXTRA! What are we to make of this? SATIRE: the “tell” is that it sounds sane and rational.
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/silver/tny_ag_en_usoz_2.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_usoz_2.gif)
Recent Comments