I guess we can retire Champaign Socialist in favor of Cocaine Socialist.

If I had a million dollars,
I'd buy me some blow.
If I had a million dollars,
And some fangirls to ... (etc)

I am never ever going to vote for John Tory, nor as far as I can tell are any of my conservative neighbors, friends or family. While John Tory is leader we are not going to donate money to your party. If John Tory leads the party during the next election, we are not going to allow you to put Progressive Conservative signs on our front lawns.

And the next time that fool opens his mouth about the LCBO, perhaps it should be discuss privatization rather than plastic bags.

As I understand it, Obama and I have a lot in common: we both spent twenty years of our lives sleeping through church.

American's knowledge of religion shallow?

Stephen Prothero, author of the recently published Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- And Doesn't, agrees that the Good Samaritan story is germane to the immigration debate because it is all about how Jesus said we should treat strangers.

"First of all, how many Americans actually know the Good Samaritan story? I'm not sure many do," said Prof. Prothero, chairman of Boston University's religion department. "Second, should we be basing policy on biblical passages? If we're going to, how can we have any reasonable conversation if we don't know the story?"

My brother made a lengthy reply (that's the only kind he does, I'm afraid) to my post on Catholic education rights in Ontario. Youcan go read it in it's entirety, I shan't quibble on legal points, that's for sure. However, he misreads my intentionre: protection of Catholic rights.

I'm not overly fearful for Catholic rights in Ontario, Canada, or elsewhere nearby. What I do like is all the weird stuff inour system: funny wigs, QCs, "God" in the constitution, a free pig and two comely lasses of virtue true for the police chiefs, the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, etc.. It's good to givethe Svends, Jacks and Justins frequent reminders -- preferably up the side of the head -- that none-of Mike Pearson, FidelCastro or Tommy Douglas were Fathers of Confederation.

I prefer cities laid out like St.John's to that of Toronto also.

I just read on Gateway Pundit that the media had fallen for another "insurgents slaughter many"-type story, likely fed to them by an AQI propagandist / stringer. I was currious about what CBC had said about this story but when I click on the link .... Curious. Probably just a server error.

Robert on Latimer:

My own view is that the Court arrived at the right decision when it held that Mr. Latimer's conviction and sentence had to be upheld. In Canada we have not even come to a societal consensus on the issue of assisting a person of full mind commit suicide (see the Sue Rodriguez case). The issues around a parental killing of child who is disabled and unable to communicate her wishes on an informed basis are hopelessly more thorny. The fact of the matter is that it is impossible to genuinely appreciate the true significance of the genuinely held belief "I must kill her because I can not bear to watch her suffer any more" -- who is truly being shown mercy when that sentiment is acted upon? Is it mercy for the suffering child or is it mercy for the suffering caregiver? Moreover, there is a strong sense of ownership over a child that is being asserted in such cases -- "This is my child so I can decide whether she lives or dies."

This, however, does not make the Parole Board's decision right. Our society has sent a clear message about Mr. Latimer: he murdered his daughter contrary to the law and was given the full sentence mandated by the law. Now he is going through the process that every criminal in Canada is entitled to go through to ease their re-introduction to society.

Wow, I'll let others worry more about the "one laptop per terrorist supporter" issues and say, WTF? They city's spending almost $11,000,000 / year to give computers and high-speed Internet to 3000 families? That's about $3500 / family! Who are they buying these things from, Dash Domi? Why not just give half to the schools and half to the local libraries to put computers for everyone?

Now, this sounds more like a "social justice" program -- i.e. Bucks for Buzz and his Boys -- than it does a meaningful attempt to help anyone, but I've got a better deal for the city and the disadvantaged: outsource it to me and I'll save the city lots of money and double the number of disadvantaged kids getting computers.

• For $22.95 / month I can get Rogers Ultralight Internet.
• For $450 I can get Dell Inspiron 531 with plenty of everything and a 17" LCD Monitor

The logistics are fairly simple. Dell will ship directly to their apartment and I'll handle the Rogers billing from here. I'll assume I can get Rogers and Dell to eat GST & PST given the size of the order we're making, plus the potential for a tax write off for everyone. Rogers and Dell will also handle tech support directly, which is a reasonable part of becoming computer literate. The city will provide the names and addresses who to ship to. I'll need 5 people at say $50,000 / each to handle paperwork and logistics. One person will be dedicated to Googling names to weed out friends-of-terrorists. Let's also posit that I'll maintain another 6000 Internet accounts for people who have already got their computers.

So here's the budget:

• Internet connection: $1.65 million (6000 @ 22.95/month * 12 months)
• Legacy internet: $1.65 million (6000 @ 22.95/month * 12 months)
• Computers: $2.7 million (6000 @ $450 / each)
• Employees: $250,000 (5 @ $50,000)
• Offices: $150,000
  
• Subtotal: $6.4 million
• Management fee: 1.28 million (20%)
  
• Grand total: $7.68 million
• Savings to City of Toronto: $3.08 million

That'll buy Dave Miller a lot of food carts. I'm available on my cell during normal working hours.

I had the unfortunate experience of having the Toronto Star in my house this morning. Ahem:

First, the Conservatives cancelled the child-care agreements the Liberals had signed with the provinces. Next, they gutted the Kelowna Accord, the $5.1 billion federal-provincial agreement to tackle aboriginal poverty. Now they're scrapping another piece of Liberal handiwork.

Effective March 31, 2008, the Canadian Health Network will cease to exist.

Wow. Two programs that never actually existed in any meaningful sense, and one program that no one has ever heard of. Who do they think they are, the government?

Michelle Mann:

The public funding for Catholic schools issue has been simmering away on Ontario's backburner for a while, with Newfoundland and Quebec already having faced it down in the 1990s (and Manitoba too, but in 1890).

Note that I can't speak to what Quebec did, but Newfoundland didn't have a Catholic school issue, it had a no-non-religious school issue.

And yet, the only party that has it right is the Greens, whose leader, Frank de Jong, supports moving to one publicly-funded school system.

[Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty] defends this position with the Constitution Act, 1867, which in section 93 enshrines Catholic school rights in place before Confederation, a concession made to get the deal.

Nonetheless, the province's exclusive jurisdiction over education means that act can be amended bilaterally through agreement with the federal government as provided for in section 43 of the Constitution Act, 1982, and already executed by Quebec.

"We got what we wanted from the Micks, now it's time screw 'em"

The equality rights argument has some teeth, despite a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 1996 that Ontario's refusal to fund other denominational schools was not a breach of freedom of religion or equality rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I.e. it equality rights argument has no teeth, as far as the law of the land goes.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee felt differently in both 1999 and again in 2005, censuring Canada for violating equality rights by virtue of religious discrimination in the Ontario school system.

Oh, well there you go -- a functionary appointed by the Chinese dictatorship was told not to agree with Ontarians having a parallel Catholic education system, I guess we'll have to ditch it.

Of course, equality is more than just a legal concept; one might be forgiven for having trouble understanding how in our current society public funding of only Catholic schools is fair and just.

I'll freely grant it's not particularly fair. Neither is a four-way stop, but I don't seethe with the injustice that some guy driving the opposite direction can cruise through the intersection in a few seconds because no one else was driving his direction. More seriously and to the point, no particular harm is being done to non-Catholics, a point which I shall return to in a moment.

Take for example, Catholic school boards across the province debating whether to ban Ontario's new HPV vaccination program on the basis it promotes promiscuity. All Grade 8 girls in the province will have free access to a vaccine that can prevent the HPV types responsible for 70 per cent of cervical cancer cases.

It is one thing to require parental consent, but to refuse girls access to this provincially mandated health program based on religious values in a publicly funded school obviously contravenes a decision made by our secular government. It is also possibly contrary to the equality rights of these young women.

She means "girls", of course. But this gets to the core of the issue: Catholics agreed to an Ontario under the condition that Catholics could educate and raise Catholic children in a manner consistent with Catholicism. The need for the deal then and now is obvious: Catholicism [1] is uniquely despised amongst religions by politically powerful (non-Catholic) organizations. Mann reinforces the point: she believes it a compelling reason for Ontario to strip Catholics of their education rights is that she is disgusted by Catholic values.

That money, along with the elimination of the duplication of resources for Catholic schools, could be directed to funding for autistic students, accessible post-secondary education and revitalizing a flailing public education system.

So could redirecting the money being wasted [2] on HPV vaccinations or CBC writers. This argument might make sense if there were half-filled schools and only one non-Catholic school board; as it stands, it's nonsense.

Of course, such a question is less about resources than about how we view accommodation and the secular state in our multicultural and religiously diverse society; all the more reason for a referendum enabling a government to act with less political fallout.

Michelle Mann is a Toronto-based consultant and freelance writer, specializing in social justice, human rights and Aboriginal issues.

Can you imagine the veins exploding in Mann's eyeballs if it was suggested we strip aboriginal title via "political will" or a referendum.

[1] note that I said Catholicism, not Catholics.
[2] there, I said it. I am speaking from purely a cost-benefit and risk management point of view -- it doesn't make sense to doing this yet.

(Snowy Owl Habitat, repurposed for amusement purposes only, courtesy of Trinity-Anne)

This is amusing (from Reason Magazine):

Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrig­erator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had suf­ficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.

Of course, the living conditions of the average poor American should not be taken as representing all the poor. There is actually a wide range in living conditions among the poor. For example, a third of poor households have both cellular and landline telephones. A third also have telephone answering machines. At the other extreme, however, approxi­mately one-tenth have no phone at all [i.e. about 1% of the population - dpj]. Similarly, while the majority of poor households do not expe­rience significant material problems, roughly 30 percent [i.e. about 4% - dpj] do experience at least one problem such as overcrowding, temporary hunger, or difficulty get­ting medical care.

And from the original source:

The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

... most poor children today are, in fact, supernour­ished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II.

This would be a phenomenal time for the US to withdraw it's 37,000 troops from Korea, save a few bucks and incidentally let South Korea grow the fuck up a little. Yahoo News:

Taliban militants agreed Tuesday to release 19 South Korean church volunteers held hostage for six weeks after Seoul reaffirmed a pledge to withdraw its troops by year's end and prevent Christian missionaries from working in Afghanistan.

I think Black got a bad deal from a court system that is in serious need of revisiting its roots (my arguments are here).  I don't think it's the greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of the universe, or anything like that, but I'm a little bit sad for him and most suspicions I've had about the reporting profession have been confirmed.

Anyhoo, Steve at ESR, Zolf and others saying the Canada should give Black back his citizenship. Sorry and respectfully dudes, I disagree. I've long been a proponent that citizenship should "mean something", and that being true, dropping that citizenship likewise should mean something. No matter how vindictively that sorry little prick Chretien acted, Black made his own bed.

Some lawyer guy with a suspicious last name:

I was immensely cheered yesterday to see that the Conservatives have made no meaningful headway in the polls.

This is a remarkable feat of political incompetence. The Conservatives face a fractured opposition led by a leader whose English is shaky and is still gaining his feet as a national leader. While Monsieur Dion may in time prove himself as a competent (or who knows, even imspirational) leader that time has not yet arrived. Moreover, Stephen Harper has a hotel sized buffet of issues from which to chose around which he could rally the troops, mobilize his core and shift the necessary number of votes in the margin. On top of that, the Liberals are trebly burdened with a sizable debt (both at the party and individual leader levels), a non-functional fundraising apparatus and new fund raising limitations imposed as a farewell legacy gift from Jean Chretin. Why has Harper therefore failed to build a steamroller of support that will carrry him to the next election?

I for think that the answer has to lie in his failure to communicate and then stand behind any vision. While Paul Martin was wilting under the heat of Gomery and Harper was rolling toward victory, I for one was living in dread of the victory of the Conservatives. I expected a range of actions on matters near and dear to my heart -- be it social issues like same sex marriage or constitutional issues like limiting federal power in favour of the provinces or creating a triple-E senate -- that would fundamentally alter the political, legal or social structure of Canada creating a meaner, more conservative, less functional and less cohesive nation.

I'm fairly certain I won't be voting for the CPC in the next election, though my reasons will be different from Robert's, his "remarkable feat..." bit pretty well sums it up.

As a parting shot though, I'll have to note the triviality of the items which fills him (and his peers, no doubt) with dread, which could roughly be summed up as "rolling the clock back to the nightmare years of 1998".

David Miller's right hand transit boy Adam Giambrone is threatening to smash up his trains and go home because the ungrateful slobs in Toronto don't know what's good for them, quit their whinging and take their tax medicine. The source of all this angst and teeth gnashing is something to do with a 350 million some-odd dollar "shortfall" in the latest and greatest 7.8 billion budget, which the clever kids at city hall were going make up a series of taxes and fees aimed at maximizing the pain on non-Mayor Quimby voters.

Why does Toronto need a 7.8 billion dollar budget, given that city basically stopped growing in the last decade? God only knows -- here's a little Excel chart I whipped up showing the Toronto operating budgets, constant dollar adjustments (assuming 2% inflation) and a per-pop breakdown where I could do it:

Since amalgamation, our budget has gone up a billion and change with no substantial population growth.

BTW, Mike Harris has been gone from power since 2002, so you can stop blaming him for downloading. It's been implicitly endorsed by his successors, neither named Mike or Harris.

Sources:

• Toronto Budgets
• Toronto population information, noting Toronto's anemic growth

Update -- here's everything you need to know about how to run a city the progressive way:

Canada sure get a constitution or something, with guaranteed rights and freedoms. You know, rather than one that says you can talk about stuff unless the government doesn't like it and it isn't popular with elites.

Planet Gore:

I must protest as unfair the headline writer's recasting of the sentiments as "global warming, 'just hysteria'?". In truth, global warming is much, much more. It is a ready excuse for whatever afflicts or impedes you, an opportunity for the media to outdo past lows, a wonderful vehicle comfortably seating every exiled adherent of last century's failed "inevitability", and a very lucrative pony for rent-seeking business to ride to riches for making nothing. And it made a bunch of government weathermen briefly into rock stars no longer needing to beg for their annual appropriation of (taxpayer) debt-financed lucre, but whose area of interest actually now picks our pockets for the same amount we send, I submit, far more soberly, to the National Cancer Institute every year.

Barack Obama (via Kathy and a cast of thousands):

In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died—an entire town destroyed," the Democratic presidential candidate said in a speech to 500 people packed into a sweltering Richmond art studio for a fundraiser.

But Boosh is still #1 Hitler!