This week's headdesk moments

...and btw, has anyone managed to get a comment from loud and proud anti-elitist populist John "Foghorn of the People" Baird on Stephen Harper's appointment of a Harvard-educated Bay Street banker and former Mulroney aide as the head of the PMO?

Autumn

A little mood music...



...and a special thanks to Theo for the seasonal postcard painting & poem.

Today's "headdesk" moment

Today's headdesk moment comes to us courtesy of The General, who recently came to the attention of some genius at CounterPunch, who apparently is just as conversant with the broader world of the internet and all its conventions as Prince Shannon.  I love The General, though strictly in a gruff, manly,  biblically-approved, hetrosexual way - don't believe a word of what that drunken lying preevert Cletus says!

Oh, and in case you missed it -- Sadly No presents last week's headdesk moment.

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me"

For starters, they are much bigger crybabies. Michael O'Hare delivers the initial scolding and Brad Delong administers the much needed spanking with the paddle of factual reality. This is exactly the kind of thing that Paul Krugman is talking about in this week's column.

This week in shadenfruede, hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance

First, conservative propagandist Kory Teneycke finds someone has placed a pistol with a single round on his desk at  voluntarily steps down from Quebecor Media for the good of the team. Thankfully, Rupert Murdoch-wannabe Pierre Karl Peladeau was able to find someone without any obvious political bias to replace Kory. How very fair and balanced of him.
The week got even better when PKP's  Sun chain of "newspapers for people who can't read" found out there's no one "Better than Ezra" at getting them waist-deep in the big muddy of legal quicksand. I should probably start a betting pool on how long it takes for Ezra to complain that this is censorship and just another example of antiSemitism on the part of the radical left.
My personal favorite though, was lifelong professional politician John Baird, a graduate of Queens University (Canada's Yale) who has never had a job outside of politics either at Queens Park or Parliament Hill, blaming the failure of the Conservative government to get rid of the gun registry on "Toronto elites".
Uh, yeah, right, you just keep digging John. You really have to admire the balls of a secular, gay, vegetarian graduate of an elite university who grew up in the Ottawa suburbs and who has never had a real job, trying to make a what he thinks is a populist appeal to the perceived base of his party - angry, rural, religious, uneducated, blue collar, Toronto-hating Preston Manning fans from Alberta. Not that there is anything wrong with being any of those things, but Baird sort of reminds me of Alan Keyes and Ted Haggart.
Not to be outbrassed, Stephen Harper's office this week rapped the knuckles of the Parti Quebecois for criticizing the Montreal Canadiens over their lack of French-Canadian players and claiming the team was a tool of federalism.

"No political party should play wedge politics with the Montreal Canadiens," Dimitri Soudas, Mr. Harper's director of communications, said in an email.

It is only natural that Dimiti Soudas and Stephen Harper would object to anyone else playing wedge politics. After all, no one likes to see their monopoly threatened. Also, I'm curious as to why only the National Toast Post seems to think this story is major news and has had an endless stream of stories about the "controversey", while most other media outlets seem to be treating it as the silly-season one-day story that it is.

Not the stupidest thing I've ever heard, but close

If this is the biggest complaint the Parti Quebecois has, then I think we can safely start throwing soil on the coffin of the notion of an independent Republic of Quebec. I suppose the PQ also thinks les muffins Anglais are also a Federalist plot. I don't recall the Nordiques coming in for the same criticism, though I think it would be hilarious to see pro sports try to adopt a "locals only" rule for players.

And speaking of FOX News...

A Bit of Fry & Laurie

It would be nice if the staff at FOX News would cut it out, too.

Pretending to be reporters, that is.
The new head of the Ontario Provincial Police says it is against policy for officers to pose as journalists to collect information on suspects, but he won't rule out the tactic.
If I pretended to be a police officer to get information, I'd go to jail and rightfully so - you can't have people running around pretending to be police officers or the real cops would never have any credibility.  But by pretending to be reporters, the police are not just making the jobs of real journalists more difficult, they are putting journalists in considerable danger. As the linked story mentions, an OPP officer posed as a reporter to gather information at a Mohawk rally, a tactic I'm sure seemed brilliant to the OPP at the time. Except that now every single time a reporter shows up at a rally or protest or incident involving  First Nations' people, it is going to be in the back of everyone's mind that the reporter just might be a cop.
Few enough people trust the media as it is (thank a bunch Geraldo Rivera, Maury Povich and Bill O'Reilly) but we are still at least perceived as more or less neutral in confrontations between citizens and police. In fact, reporters can often go places the police can't go safely, simply because they aren't perceived by their subjects as "the enemy" in the way a police officer might be. Thanks to the irresponsible actions of the OPP and other police forces, that may not be the case much longer.
As a young reporter in southwestern Ontario and later in eastern Ontario, I often had contact with motorcycle gang members and various shady characters. Sometimes it was in the course of my job, sometimes it was just because the only bar in town catered to a rough crowd.  I was (and still am) a big white guy with a mustache and shortish hair and tended to be dressed in the "business casual" style typical to reporters at parties or in bars where a shirt with a collar and pants without holes were considered formal wear. Reporters like to ask questions and when I was a rookie I worked so many hours it became my default conversational style to interview virtually everyone I met. As any good narc knows, this is not a good or safe combination around people who live outside the law and have a sincere antipathy toward the police.  I can recall several instances where being able to prove I was reporter and not an undercover police officer probably saved me a couple of serious beatings.
The police probably find it easier to gather information on potentially violent activists by posing as reporters than as activists. The average OPP officer may have trouble infiltrating a First Nations Warrior Society or Islamic radical group due to ethnic or language barriers - but the flip side is that the next time there is an Oka-style standoff or a violent demonstration by the Black Bloc anarchists or White Supremacists or radical chartered accountants demanding better standardization of depreciation rules on capital investments or whomever, the reporters who are there taking pictures and trying to interview people are going to be seen as potentially hostile cops instead of neutral observers.
By posing as members of the fifth estate, the police are pinning a target on real journalists and making it more difficult and more dangerous for reporters to do a job that is essential to a functioning free democracy.

A message from the top

Video by Pale over at ACR with some assistance from fellow Galloping Beaver inkstained wretch Alison of Creekside. Needless to say, I won't be quitting the day job I'm looking for to become a professional voice actor anytime soon.

Aren't there more important things to write about?

Don't the White House press corp have more important things to write about? Like the two wars America is involved in or the ongoing economic disaster or the oil spill in the gulf -- isn't there at least a Sarah Palin tweet to decipher or something?

From the Washington Post:

Republicans question whether President Obama deserves a vacation



Really Republicans? You really want to go there?

Obama has embarked on nine "vacations" since taking office, bringing his total days off to 48. Some of those trips lasted a day and some, like his Christmas holiday in Hawaii, more than a week.

By comparison, Bush had visited his ranch in Crawford, Tex., 14 times at this point in his administration and spent 115 days there.

And file this bit under The First Rule of Holes:

The Republican National Committee has taken to calling Obama "the Clark Griswold president," a mocking reference to the Chevy Chase character in National Lampoon's "Vacation" movies. With unemployment claims climbing again, the GOP was hoping its criticism would have a certain national resonance. 

The Secret Service code name for the Qualye family was "The Griswalds" for what I trust are obvious reasons.

Kanadian Kulture Korner

One of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets re-enacted by one of my favorite rock singers.



I met Al Purdy a couple of times when I was a newspaper editor near his home on the Bay of Quinte. He came in to ask my advice (!!!) after being announced by the receptionist as "there's some older guy out front to see you, he looks kinda seedy." He had been comissioned to write one of those "My Canada" type of pieces for a magazine sponsored by Imperial Oil and wanted my suggestions for some scenic spots around The County to send  the photographer. Needless to say, I was at a loss for copies of his books to have him sign at the time, but rattled off a list of picturesque spots in the area. About a year later, I was called on to introduce him at a local literary festival and we agreed we'd have to have a beer together sometime, but unfortunately for all concerned, the Quinte Hotel burned down, I got fired from the newspaper and moved to Japan, and the celebrated poet passed on before such an meeting could be convened.

I miss my ukulele

We've come a long way baby

35 years ago, this was comedic exaggeration, now it's pretty much par for the course on any cable news program and is restrained compared to the rhetoric on the blogosphere or at Tea Party rallies.

Keystone Kops

Make that the kilo-stoned kops. Via Cathy from Canada we get another example of the boys in blue burnishing their reputation for trustworthiness and honesty.  Guys like these dirtbags must just give good cops conniptions, though apparently not enough so that they are lining up to turn the bad cops in. Personally, I think we need a little more serving and protecting and a lot less brotherhood of the badge.

the eagl...er...the beaver has landed

We've all arrived safe and sound at our new home on and native land at an undisclosed location in Southern Ontario. And most of our twelve pieces of luggage arrived with us, except for that one bag that arrived a day late with external hard drive that holds the family photo archives missing along with a few other odds and ends that I presume fell out while the hard drive was being stolen. Thank Jebus the friendly, honest and not-at-all-corrupt-and-drunk-with-power people at the airline, TSA and Fatherland Security were able to X-ray and open that bag with no supervision or legal liability and just help themselves to whatever they wanted, otherwise I'd have all these hundreds of pictures of my kids as infants to share with my parents and friends, and who needs that hassle, right?

So, now that I'm no longer and expatriate journalist in Tokyo, what the heck am I? For the moment, I guess I'm just another unemployed Canuck appalled by my own government and worried about making  ends meet. I'm living off my savings and my parents for the moment and as painful and shameful and humbling as that is when you are twentysomething, try it in your mid forties if you really want to plumb the depths. As Cthulu is my witness, this will be temporary, even if it involves me wearing a paper hat and saying "would like fries with that?" to get out of this situation sooner rather than later.

Just like a real blogger, I'm actually writing this post in my pyjamas from my parents' basement, where we will be living while I obsessively seek employment in a stagnant job market. Suffice to say my parents and I do not see eye to eye politically. My mother, who should know better, has already chided me for criticizing Stephen Harper, who she thinks is "doing a pretty good job." When we went to check into how to get health care coverage, my father was making noises about all the "losers with the arse out of their pants who have three cell phones" downtown and how if we were from "Jamaica or Pakistan we'd be able to get health care right away" instead of having to wait three months. Blogging will be light for the foreseeable future, frustration, tongue-biting and teeth-grinding will not.
Protestations of light blogging notwithstanding, I will blog at length sometime this week to describe the agony and the ecstasy of my final days in Tokyo, but that is for another day. Right now I have citizenship papers to file for the kids and jobs to apply for and more pressing stuff to do.

No longer an expatriate

Moving day! See you all soon in the Great White North! Sayonara Tokyo!

fatten that calf

I'm going home

the more traditional version



the slightly more contemporary version

homeward bound

A few days at the in-laws and then...