Once Again With the Crazy

I really wish I lived in whichever reality Mayor Larry O'Brien has chosen to create for himself. After convincing himself and council that having a lawyer telling them "For the love of god and all that is holy shut the fuck up about this or you could get sued!" is a open consultation with Council and the public, he's somehow interpreted that as a resounding endorsement to continue unimpeded. He's also claiming to have resounding support from the public, you know, except for anyone interviewed for any media or asked about it in general.

And your bus fees will be going up to $5.25. Merry Christmas and happy zero percent.*

This is a tough situation, yes, it's unprecedented but do the right thing for once and step aside until it's cleared up. The citizens that elected you want you to step aside, try doing right by them for once. And Councillors need to be shaken awake on this as well and not defer responsibility to representing the citizens that elected them back to the citizenry itself. There is a massive void of people I have any respect for in local politics at the moment, I'm basically disgusted by the lot of them and will now use them as examples to any children I know of what they don't want to turn into when they become adults. Self-importance, Self-delusions an plain old selfishness are not qualities we require in elected officials.

The only thing I feel bad about for the Mayor is that this Kilray guy is a special brand of nutjob all his own. Then again, the OPP wouldn't lay charges if there wasn't any questions of innocence. Me, I'm totally innocent of bribery charges and I know this because I've never ever had to go to court to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I never tried to bribe anyone. It's a simple system really. So, yeah, he deserves the benefit of the doubt, especially when looking at the accusor, but c'mon, there was enough evidence present to cast that innocence into doubt in the first place.

*Offer not valid in Ottawa city limits.

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I'm not going to write much on this, but...

Here's hoping that the charges against Larry O'Brien stick. And that Ottawa gets a mayor that, you know, doesn't "break" the "law" (allegedly - innocent until proven guilty) to get into City Hall.

This member of the public says STEP DOWN! Well, I'd say that regardless of the charges, but this should be a last straw for Mayor O'Brien's reign of beigery.

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Soon Reading This Will Be Illegal

I was just getting my morning dose of awesome and interesting from Boing Boing when I came across Corey Doctrow’s post about Canada’s new proposed DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). The proposal to be tabled by Jim Prentice is essentially one of the worst abuses of consumer rights ever proposed. Not only will it make it illegal to move media from one device to another, it would make it illegal to watch/listen to your movies or music on another device if the company that made the original goes out of business. There is a no exceptions portion to the anti-circumvention clause.

So get ready to become a criminal if you attempt to parody, time-shift, or try any other modern fair usage. It also makes it illegal for you to circumvent any anti-copy aspects in any device you own, such as a Windows Vista PC, game console, or cable box. You would not be permitted to modify these items without consent from the manufacturer, who is most always US based.

So while you can record a show to watch later at the moment, under the new DMCA you would lose that right. In essence the next time an immigrant gets killed with a taser and you catch it on your camera phone you would violate the proposed DMCA when it is transferred or copied. Or, say you’re a teacher who wants to make photocopies of a passage from a book for your students? Sorry, that too would violate this act.

By adding little digital policemen to devices you will lose your current rights as a Canadian to American business and lobbyists. I’m amazed at how Canada’s New Government™ is very much America’s Whipping Boy.

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Le Sigh

I came across this gem of an article today after my wife pointed out what happened yesterday, I believe. Only in Quebec will one of the greatest hockey players and genuinely respected athletes be criticised for not knowing French. Saku Koivu already speaks Finnish, Swedish and English, which is more than pretty much every Canadian (and Quebecer) who stuggles with two languages, if not one.

This is the guy who the Montreal Canadiens franchise is built upon, is the Captain of the team, who beat non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and has been selected by the Olympic Athletes to represent them on the Athlete's Commission of the IOC. Maybe the Parti Quebecois needs to jump on that religious schools bandwagon or just build a large Berlinesque wall around the province to really get in touch with voters.

Saku, you'd be welcome in Ottawa. In fact, I'll trade Redden for you.

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This little light of mine...

While the real newsmen are as happy as pigs in shit that Dion’s party totally fucked up the Quebec by-elections (so they can just change a few sentences in their mound of reprinted “Dion is totally screwed” articles), I feel it is my job as a so-fake-I-don’t-even-pretend-to-be-a-newsman to shine my flashlight into the oft-ignored underbelly of the by-elections. Of course I mean how the Green Party really is falling into obscurity. Sure they got a new leader, got rid of most of their troublesome staff and tend to be asking for a lot more money these days (apparently to get shudders that go with the new house in New Glasgow aka their election “hope chest”) but they have momentum right?

I mean they finally have all the ingredients to actually become the political force they remind us they are/want to be. They have a leader that people: actually know, listen to, and gets press. They have federal funding and a big upsurge in members (at least they should) as well as success in the last round of by-elections (except that they forgot to register that candidate in Quebec – oops). This should be something they eat up and manage to use to their advantage, especially when there is such a major shift in the political landscape. By-elections are where small parties make their breakthrough, so why didn’t it happen here with the Greens?

In fact they’ve reversed their trend as of the last election. All ridings went down in vote percentage except Saint Hyacinth-Bagot. Sure it slipped 0.1% but that’s pretty negligible. Outremont had the Greens at 2.2% from 4.8% and Roberval-Lac Saint-Jean had the Greens at 1.7% from 4.3%. Alarming trends, if I was involved in planning on having a Green Party around after the next federal election.

This doesn’t seem like a party building on its momentum. It should be able to use the base federal funding to drive in enough new members and contributions to send the party out of a consistent last place. I’m sure up until this point the party has just been coming up with many horrifically complex systems to make sure the associations get some of the federal funding rather than go out into the community to fundraise, raise awareness, and attract members and ever better candidates – you know, politics? I know most outsiders looking in are wondering why the party can’t seem to capitalize on its apparent growth and momentum and I guess maybe I know too much and not enough at the same time. Although I’m pretty sure anything I guess and exaggerate isn’t too far from the truth because I’ve seen them operate and tried to fix it for a few years. It’s like trying to teach a cat to play to banjo. After a certain point you just have to admit it was stupid to even try because it simply won’t happen, no matter how stubborn you are.

The candidates will blame the party, the party will blame the associations, they’ll all complain about lack of money, nobody will actually do anything worthy of getting a vote or improving their situation and we’ll see how things turn out in the next election. I think these by-elections are a good litmus test for where the party will end up. I mean things certainly can’t be going well when you’ve got all the ingredients for more success and you’re doing worse.

There was a lot of optimism, in some cases renewed optimism, in the Greens when their leader finished second in the London by-election. Where was she for these by-elections? It makes me wonder how committed she is to the party’s success compared to her own? Why hasn’t the party been able to simply get its shit together and be able to challenge for seats, when people are tuned into the message? It makes me wonder how utterly incompetent you have to be to not be able to come up with an appealing platform to voters who want environmental change?

I guess it is just easier to blame first-past the post for your own failings than actually work hard at becoming appealing to the voters.

It will be interesting to see if the Green Party survives after the next federal election.

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Try not to despair

Okay, I admit it, I started to despair last night. I knew something was wrong when Don Cherry, of all people, made sense. He said this is the worst the Senators have ever played in this year’s playoffs and they only lost by one goal. And they’re on their way home.

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If I was Emery or Volchenkov I’d be tearing my teammates a new one. Emery was fired up last night and put on a spectacular show. We were wondering where Eaves was and I think maybe Bryan Murray let Emery punch him up a bit to work out his frustration and it aggravated that concussion. Seriously, after last night’s performance if Emery needs to beat someone up as his pre-game ritual, I’ll get him a hobo. Heck I could probably run a contest for willing fans at this point.

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And has everyone seen these three Young Liberals ads yet? They’re quite clever compared to the Conservative attempt at clever. Not that I really like one party more than the other, and they’re still just *this* close to actually being relevant to anyone but Young Liberals or Conservatives.

Mocking those Macintosh-PC ads is done. That shark was jumped, landed on enough times, knocked out, bred with hyper-intelligent dolphins, and turned into slurry. Also, I hate that smug Mac guy. He’s not cool, he’s an arrogant little wiener of a character who makes me never consider buying a Mac. You see too many people in my neighbourhood thinking their powerbooks make them as cool as that young whippersnapper on that commercial while they drink overpriced coffee and hog tables throughout The Glebe. Also, you couldn’t play Civ IV on Macs until quite recently.

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