I’m disappointed that I didn’t come up with this.

It’s hard to get any sort of job when you don’t have a phone. “Leave a message with the homeless shelter” probably isn’t something most employers enjoy hearing.

The most recent Conservative Party post, in its entirety:

The Liberals, Bloc Québécois and NDP came together today at the Canadian Heritage Committee just as they did when they tried to seize power through their undemocratic Coalition.

They voted AGAINST a Conservative motion to require CBC executives to explain themselves for using Frank Graves, a Liberal-supporting and self-described “progressive” as the network’s “neutral” pollster on party politics. By voting against this motion, they are endorsing Graves’ call for a “Culture War”.

Graves’ “Culture War” is designed to divide Canadians – East against West, young against old, urban Canada against rural Canada. It’s also ideologically consistent with the world view of the Liberals, Bloc Québécois and NDP.

At the next election, Canadians will have a clear choice between a strong Conservative Government, or a reckless Coalition that will aggressively wage a divisive “Culture War” to divide our country.

First, no matter what I’m against any political involvement in the CBC. I’d be happy to support a constitutional amendment ensuring their separate existence and guaranteed funding.

Having said that, I’m not exactly clear on how when three parties representing a majority of the country come together on an issue, that’s somehow “undemocratic.” I also don’t understand how something being “ideologically consistent with the world view of the Liberals, Bloc Québécois and NDP” is wrong. Because it excludes a single party?

Here’s the basic logic as I understand it (and I’m pretty sure I do). If YOU want it (no matter how many of you want it), it’s undemocratic. If WE want it (no matter how many of you don’t want it), it’s democratic.

It’s tempting to think that Canadian Conservatives are importing that sort of thinking from their batshit insane bretheren to the south, but I have a feeling it’s just a distinguishing feature of the right-wing mind.

Well, not quite, but still.

While a presumably off-the-cuff suggestion, given Canada’s favourable international standing and its financial sector’s general lack of collapse, this is probably a very real possibility. Better to appoint a non-European without any specific ties to any EU countries, although Governor of the Bank of Canada probably isn’t a position where you just give two weeks notice and delete your firefox history.

Also, I’m not clear on European attitudes towards the IMF. I assume “good for others but not for us,” but when you’re
fucked, sometimes attitudes can change.

You have to resign. You have to say “Sorry, I was drunk when I wrote that, I’m not actually a horrible person, I apologize to anyone I’ve hurt, I have had stresses in my life and will spend some time trying to recalibrate with my family. I am retarded. Oh shit, I shouldn’t have used that word, I’d better go.” shed tear

Dan Gardner writes, “The essential problem advocates of the bilingualism-on-the-bench bill have is that the court functions just fine. It is internationally admired. It is respected at home. If the presence of unilingual Anglophones is a practical problem — not merely a symbolic one — it doesn’t show in the court’s decisions. And in the end, the decisions are all that matters.”

I’m not making a point here about whether Supreme Court judges should be bilingual or not. I’m just saying the above statement is patently ridiculous. If we banned [insert ethnic group here] from [insert profession here], that particular [insert occupation here] wouldn’t suffer at all. But it would still be racist. It would still be wrong.

What is this, grade four? Who writes this stuff is one thing, but who publishes this crap? What the fuck?

“Who mistook this crap for genius?”

In BC a poll was taken showing support for increasing early childhood spending.

Polls will always show people saying they want more stuff. They just don’t want to pay for it.

There isn’t one, there won’t be one, any statement to the contrary is lying, according to Jerusalem’s mayor.

“‘There’s no freeze,’ Barkat told a group of reporters at a Washington restaurant Tuesday night. ‘There is building going on. There will be more building going on.’”

Well that settles that.

I’m nowhere close to an expert on Israel-Palestinian affairs. I’d describe my knowledge as “close to zero.” But thanks to the existence of the web, here’s my thought on the whole thing. It will never get solved in isolation. If it gets solved, it will be part of a solution for a much larger regional problem, and “solved” will probably mean tens of thousands of deaths. It will be solved as part of or in the aftermath of a regional if not world war probably having something to do with Iran.

There. It’s on record. Quote me in thirty years.

Discussing the perpetually growing US deficit, Ezra Klein says “But at the end of the day, our deficit problem is likely to get worse slowly, and then get much worse all of a sudden. And it’s the consequences of that ‘all of a sudden’ that are likely to spur action, as the decisions are too hard for politicians to actually take responsibility for.”

He says some other good stuff too, in the post, which is worth reading.

And it’s not a deficit-fighting issue, it’s an any-large-problem issue.

This is the way I feel about climate change. If it can’t be solved at the last minute, we can’t solve it.

Isn’t this how we all learned to do it in grade six?

So the government owes Parliament the Afghan detainee documents, or at least a discussion on how to provide them. It doesn’t sound like this will go to the Supreme Court. It’s not especially interesting that Harper wouldn’t take this to the Supreme Court, but it would have been interesting to see whether the opposition parties would have taken it there had Milliken decided differently.

Sharpen your reading glasses.

Well, not really.

I’d completely forgotten about the sinking of a South Korean naval ship until reminded.

I remember seeing a headline along the lines of “South Korean ship sunk,” and thinking “Holy fuck, I’d better remember to read about that,” and then forgot.

When someone says that a North Korean torpedo “was the most likely cause,” that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s any evidence suggesting that, it just means who the fuck else would have done it.

North Korea says it had nothing to do with it. I think that possibility is actually a little more disconcerting.

Assuming it’s North Korea, I guess this could be the US’s best chance in a while at fighting some more traditional large scale warfare with a moderately clear goal, which would probably end up somehow looking good, as wars go. It would also put the right wing’s “oppose everything” platform to an interesting test.

Sorry about that. I was thinking they’d have to choose between “Obama’s weak on terror” and “Obama’s not weak on terror.” Of course they wouldn’t.

I enjoy this.

The Star reports:

The average resale price of a home rose by 19.3 per cent in 2009 to $337,410, despite higher unemployment and the start of economic recovery, said Edward Jones.

“The relative strength of Canadian housing prices in the face of the recent economic recession suggests caution,” said the report by analysts Kate Warne and Craig Fehr.

Things do feel very bubbly in places. The ratio of purchase price to annual rent looks to me to be around 20-25 in Toronto, and should definitely be no higher than 20, probably more like 15.

I wonder whether this is due to the limits on rent increases in residential rental properties generally below normal housing appreciation. There’s no sense renting a house that you can only raise rates on each year at half the rate the house is growing in value. Plus there’s the tax exemption on the sale of a primary residence. Essentially home ownership is subsidized for no real reason.

But still, assuming those subsidies are safe, a 20% decline seems reasonable, at a minimum. “Last Friday, prominent Bay St. economist David Rosenberg predicted a 20 per cent decline in average Canadian house prices.” Of course that doesn’t have to be all at once. Prices could simply fail to rise for a decade.

I’d like to see a price/square foot:people/square kilometer kind of figure, historically, adjusted for inflation. If someone knows where I might find such a thing.

“The Conservative government has declared that it will not support foreign-aid projects that include abortion.”

So says this article.

It also says this:

The declaration came as a surprise, since the Conservative government has so far tried to avoid taking any categorical stand on abortion in its new, foreign-aid focus on maternal health. Repeatedly, for months now, ministers have insisted that the government doesn’t want to reopen a debate that has been hugely divisive in Canada.

Which surprise comes as a surprise to me, since I thought the whole thing was that Harper’s government hasn’t been super scary so long as you don’t look different.

If you’re keeping tabs of who the federal government hasn’t worked too hard to help, these are a couple good summaries:

James Loney: Canada came to rescue me. Why not Arar, Khadr, Mohamud?

Stranded, abandoned, abroad

AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM FOREIGN AFFAIRS CANADA: ALL CANADIAN CITIZENS TRAVELING ABROAD WHO WISH TO AT SOME POINT RETURN TO CANADA ARE ADVISED NOT TO SOUND TOO MUSLIM-Y (BEING NAMED “MOHAMED” OR ANY VARIANT IS TO BE AVOIDED INVARIABLY) OR TO VISIT A COUNTRY THAT MAY ARREST YOU WILLY-NILLY.

Apparently Bush’s memoir is due out later this year.

Assuming approximately 1/4 lies, 1/4 half truths, 1/4 hard to say, and 1/4 truths, at least some of those recollections (i.e. about half of that last ingredient) may do unfortunate things, like reminding rich white people that 9/11 actually happened under Bush’s tenure.

I realize how terrible my titles are so far as indicating much about the content of the post. I can’t help it for some reason.

I thought The Star (and reporting generally) had stopped the whole “Police are looking for two black men, about 20 years old, 5-feet-8 and 140 pounds” thing.

I never read anything saying they’d stopped, but it seemed they’d stopped. Now it seems they’ve started again. Whether there was a break or not, since I feel there was, it strikes me now how horribly racist this is. There’s just no use to reporting that information. Nobody will read that and say “Hey, you know what, yesterday I saw two black men of average height and weight and age” and know it’s the right two black men.

In the post I just put up I suggested that Toronto Hydro has far superior customer service as compared specifically to Enbridge.

In the same article I mentioned there, Rossi suggests that “since energy rates are provincially regulated, consumers don’t have to worry that privatizing the utility will lead to a rate increase.”

I think the customer service aspect should be part of the conversation. Rogers is terrible (I know), Bell is terrible (I know), Telus is terrible (I’ve heard), everybody’s terrible, but at least you can say “Fuck it, I’m going to your competitor.” Yes, it’s an oligopoly and still blows, but it’s something. If someone’s going to be given a monopoly on something, it shouldn’t just be their pricing that’s regulated, but their customer service. Require certain measurable goals to be met.

Also, with revenues of $2.5 billion, and profits of $42.8 million, Toronto Hydro would be a very large private company. Presumably even bigger if the sale goes over well with the public and similar proposals start spreading in municipalities around the GTA, then leading to mergers (if allowed). The point being, this would go from being part of the government, to a very large private company with a very significant incentive to start putting its resources towards political gain, to adjust the rules governing it.

Everything has a price, so without specifics it’s hard to really come down on either side of do/don’t sell Toronto Hydro, but in a purely selfish respect I happen to think Smitherman is right here:

Front-runner George Smitherman, former deputy premier to Dalton McGuinty, and a former Ontario energy and infrastructure minister, told the audience that the city must hold on to ownership of Toronto Hydro. It’s about the way they are treated as customers, he told them.

“They’ve seen what happens when we lose control of public assets like we did with Highway 407,” he elaborated in a brief interview after the debate.

I regularly deal with both Enbridge and Toronto Hydro. Toronto Hydro is usually (not always) surprisingly good to deal with. Surprising compared to Enbridge, which always manages to disappoint no matter how low my expectations get. I’ve had the exact same issue with both companies (wrong meters being applied to wrong people) be resolved in two different ways:

1. “Ok, we’ll make those adjustments and send over revised billing” (which was then sent over).

2. “Ok, we’ll have to launch an investigation, which typically takes about six months” (which then took slightly less than six months for a letter to arrive with a conclusion, with no supporting documentation, and no return of several voicemails requesting any backup/documentation for the result.”

You can guess which was which.

Via Digby, apparently some SEC employees have been downloading porn.

Specifically, “the SEC’s inspector general conducted 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years.” That doesn’t seem like that many. The same article cites a study determining that “16 percent of men with Internet access at work admit to looking at online porn while at the office.” Six people per year is probably far less than 16%.

According to Digby’s recounting of the memo, “A senior attorney at the SEC’s Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office.” I’m guessing that’s just a misinterpretation. I think he probably spent eight hours a day looking at or downloading pornography. You know, come into work, see what new porn is available, and download it in the background while working. It’s not the correct use of company resources, and it’s especially problematic in the context of organization tasked with regulating the financial sector, but it’s not like if this guy hadn’t downloaded porn the crisis would have unfolded differently.

Hopefully a big deal doesn’t get made out of this. The problem isn’t that six employees per year at the SEC spend some time looking at porn. The problem is that the number of employees were cut under the Bush administration, and that, well, everything else. Blowing up a minor porn issue isn’t meant to strengthen the SEC, it’s meant as an excuse to further dismantle it.

So apparently the US Supreme Court doesn’t know much about technology. That shouldn’t be surprising when the average age of a Supreme Court Justice is 70.

That said, I wouldn’t necessarily advocate for younger judges in any position that’s an unelected lifetime appointment. Better to have an out.

As recommended, I watched the PBS documentary online.

Information sure did travel slower back then.

Also Booth came off to me as a sort of Ziggy Sobotka with a tweaked religious bent.