Exit Stage Left

For once, there seems to be absolutely no consensus amongst comment-ocracy. Which in and of itself is noteworthy. Did Jim Prentice leave because he was stifled? Or was it to better position himself for a run at the leadership of the CPC? Amongst reports of cabinet squabbling, was he leaving a listing, possibly sinking, ship?

It couldn't have been easy for Jimmy, holding an orphan portfolio in a government as disinclined to even acknowledge 'the environment' as Thatcher was 'society'. And doing so while representing an affluent Calgary riding populated with those whose considerable wealth derives from the messy extraction of fossil goop out of the earth surely made for some awkward cocktail party conversation.

Much has been also made of his 'Last Red Tory Standing' status, as well. And the implication that this bearer of the old PC standard leaves a gaping hole in the Harper bench. First, this assumes he was a good minister. He wasn't. He was awful. An embarrassment, actually. Not that it was entirely his fault: Any minister in this government seemingly exists solely to mouth the words of the leader. Second, it assumes there is any bench strength in the Harper cabinet whatsoever. There's not. And even if there were it wouldn't matter. This is Harper, after all.

Not enough has been asked, however, of how this transition occurred. Has a sitting minister ever abruptly left the front bench to take the upper echelons in our existing financial services oligopoly? Plenty of ex-pols enter afterwards: McKenna, say. But the jump from cabinet straight into corporate stratosphere is troubling. Regardless of the assurances offered by Prentice or his spokespeople about the ethics commish and all, there is an olfactory unpleasantness emanating from the general direction of this 'sudden departure'.

Update: Time Wounds All Heels

Months later, as this orphaned post is revisited, the healing balm of time has settled on the sprinkle of illucid prose offered earlier. The Cons have a majority. The ship was obviously not in depth charge mode.

It's still troubling that the parade of ex-pols make their way to the burnished boardrooms of Big Everything. Mike Harris steals oxygen at a law firm. Tony Clement and John Baird will likely pad the filthy lucre of their pensions with hob-nobs and crustless sandwiches on the 44th floor somewhere. And PM Harper himself will...well...who knows,.,but the sooner the better, amiright?

Still Prentice has proved to be capable of using his esteemed position(s) to vaguely tilt against the windmills of our current Responsible Resource Development® regime with a seemingly committed plea to 'play fair' when it comes to wholesale bitumen extraction and it's hurried siphoning to Asian markets. So, attaboy, Jimbo.

Kill The Messenger.

So, by now everybodyImeaneverybody is familiar with Kai Nagata's fork in the eye of Television News Programming and the sausage factory from which it's ground. And, probably, the seemingly surprised-by-the-response follow-up, too. It's obviously achieved a lot more notice than the average "Take this job and...", Dear Bosshole letter. And the attendant volleys back have been numerous and varied. Sometimes kind of snide. Comments on the actual blog post have been, mostly, full of admiration and high-fiving boo-yaas of self-identification.

In the latter camp, one could arguably include...the press. Nagata's self-described "Howard Beale Moment" has been mentioned, if not wholly and approvingly quoted, by redoubts as disparate as David Akin, Susan Delacourt, The Tyee, Rob Silver in the Globe and so on and on. And on...the radio!

So, people find some resonance in Nagata's toodle-oo.

And they should. Television News is just another ratings whore. It has neither the will nor the precious time between commercials to present stories in any kind of a critical context. Everything's heading to Tonawanda it's all fire all the time. Plus, oh, oh, wasn't that the Prince? And the Princess? OMFG! Hey, it surely brings in eyeballs. And eyeballs bring in advertisers.

The full-on banality of the royal dumps emanating from the parasitic remnants of feudalism recently touring our fair lands was a Ratings Winnah! for the CBC who took a lead in the pom-pomming.

On the one hand, it's hard not to superficially sympathize with where Jessica Hume is coming from. On the other, it's unsurprising that the first time many encountered Mr. Nagata's piece was when it was published in whole on rabble.ca. The problem with Hume is she conflates the tirade against television news with journalism in general. Fail. The problem with rabble is that it was published without any kind of criticism or context whatsoever. Which is kind of what Mr. Nagata seemed to wish for in his own stumped Big TeeVee Career.

Niceties of Grammar

Columnist Paul Wells, writing at Macleans.ca observes an interesting little tidbit in the PMs recent yawp of chest-thumping triumphalism in Calgary:

"If, in 50 more years, we wish our descendants to celebrate Canada’s 200th anniversary, then we must be all we can be in the world today, and we must shoulder a bigger load, in a world that will require it of us.”

See that? There's an 'if' there at the start of the sentence. As opposed to, oh, maybe just after the first comma. Which would have made celebration conditional, not the country. Perhaps there might've been incorporated some sentence construction using the ever so promising and hopeful ' when'.

Now, some might put this little bit 'if-off' as just an oversight on the part of the speechwriter. If so, then the speechwriter ought to be sh!t-canned for supplanting the optimistic 'when' (i.e, leadership) for - the point of Well's post - the conditional 'if' (a shrug).

Lest this observation be pooh-poohed as so much pedantic nitpicking (here, as opposed to Wells) it's worthwhile to recall that, apparently, we are to believe *nothing* gets by this guy, So, Wells' question is totally germane and ought be pursued. Because, on the basis of this grammatical nicety, one gets the impression that Harper doesn't a) plan for the 'millennial changes shaking our times', or b) give a sh!t.

Neither is the stuff of greatness. And coming from the guy who articulated thusly...

"Whether Canada ends up as one national government or two national governments or several national governments, or some other kind of arrangement is, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion."

...it's a cause to wonder, at the very least, what is this guy thinking?

Driving While Conservative.

A $500 fine. That's the penalty in Ontario for driving at almost twice the speed limit, over the legal blood/alcohol limit while in possession of cocaine. Well, at least it is if you're former Conservative M.P. Rahim Jaffer.

The circumstances and substances that resulted in Mr. Jaffer's arrest and detention were well reported. As were the charges. He somehow bargained those down to a plea of careless driving. Why the crown dropped (or agreed to do so) the more serious charges of drug possession and DUI we'll likely never know. Even the judge said he caught a break.

That the judge made that clear is reason enough to wonder if Mr. Jaffer was not the beneficiary of unduly favourable treatment. To be fair, he is a gainfully-employed, non-aggressive, non-drug-trafficking, first-offender. However, would anyone of similar circumstances have fared as well as Jaffer? If so, great. If not, did Mr. Jaffer benefit merely from a judge's discretion?

That last bit is important. Because it is that very discretion that could go bye-bye if mandatory sentencing and tougher drug legislation currently tabled by the minority government pass without amendment. Unfortunately, the Jaffer business makes existing legislation look like it doesn't apply to 'them'. Further, it makes the trumpeting and dog-whistling about their proposed criminal legislation seem incredibly hypocritical. The Conservatives look to be tough on crime. Except of course when one o' their own is the subject of charges.

The Jaffer business raises legitimate questions. One need not be a rabid partisan to ask them. However, dismissing them is another matter entirely. Justice may have been served, but it was not seen to be done.

Update

Despite recent revelations that Mr. Jaffer sought deep info on Canadian Satellite thing-a-ma-jiggys, it seems all that tough-on-crime-ness still only goes so far:

http://albertadiary.ca/2010/03/canadians-deserve-explanation-of-why.html

Success!

True Patriot Fondness

Well, it worked, didn't it? Something like 15 words inserted into the Throne Speech got the nation not talking about the, er, Throne Speech. Not to mention the whimsical 3-month suspension of our parliament.

The subject of those 15 words was, of course, the National Anthem. And the swapping out of the words "In all our son's command" for "Thou dost must needs a merkin". Or something. But, as of Friday afternoon, the issue is dead. No changes to our hallowed patriot dirge. Where the anthem is concerned, we stand on guard. "The people have spoken". The government wasted no time asserting that they had heard the vox populi.

Interestingly, some of the most vociferous in opposing said changes were the government benches. Though it sounded as if they were barking in - possibly - hastily scripted outrage. And when the reversal was fully, completely done, others twittered in admiration.

So we have a dead news cycle for 48 hours and nobody is talking about the budget - an adobe castle built on sand in an earthquake zone - or the infantile, symbol laden throne speech.

The whole thing was a brilliant, calculated set-up. A distraction to get the wide-eyed populace blabbing about something, anything, other than the indefensible emptiness, gimmicks and hollow rhetoric that marked the sitting minority government's reluctant return to the parliament they seem to loathe.

That they floated it after the waxen, miraculously-coiffed Prime Minister of our one-man democracy was seen mouthing the existing, hallowed lyrics countless times over the course of Swaggerfest - er, the Winter Olympics - is the height of irony. Recalibrating, indeed.

This, of course was followed by the unseemly presentation by our finance minister - a former car crash and slip n' fall (Personal Injury) kinda litigator - of a grab bag of fantasy arithmetic that borders on innumeracy at best, bald-faced and disingenuous optimism at worst.

Meanwhile, the justice minister - who in Canada is also in charge of policing himself - seems to have taken a one-way ticket out of reality. He has punted other worrisome bothers into the able hands of an esteemed and able ex-jurist. Not that he's going to make a ruling or anything. It is, after all, a review. Justice Iacobucci will render an opinion that has all the legal force of a ton of feathers in the wind. If the government does not favour it, they'll likely kick the nettlesome issue of parliamentary supremacy into the Supreme Court. A very troublesome development that would be. But at least it will get them through the next election (Unless, in light of recent reports, that contempt motion is tabled).

In the background, the ample Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is caught red-handed in an act of what one can only assume is self-loathing and projection. Huzzah! History is now revised! Any reference to the hard-won rights of gays has been effectively scrubbed from a citizenship guide. A guide for the new, presumably homophobic, Canadians whose hearts he hopes to win. When confronted by the prying press, he flees, skittering out on his tiny trotters.

And, of course, there was that incident involving the Minister of State for the Status of Women in the shit-hole she calls PEI. Shoes were thrown. Fits were hissied. Hapless airline staff harangued. You'd think she was forced to go through one of John Baird's Strip-o-Matic full body scanners.

All of this, while the ideological purification of Rights and Democracy proceeds apace with the appointment to the helm of an erstwhile party hack. As Elvis Costello once wrote, "I used to be disgusted, but now I'm just amused."

This truly may appear like the gang that can't shoot straight unless the target is their own feet. The anthem thing was, well, the motives are perhaps entirely obscure. However, it is not beyond the realm of the plausible that it was floated as a too-clever-by-half distraction aimed squarely aimed at the 'jes' folks' jawing crullers at Timmies.

It was - almost - a cunning coax to look not at the substance of this government's performance or lack thereof, but at the shiny thing over there. Oooh, it sparkles.

Ah, chess!

The Google Ruling

Recent events raise a number of troubling questions for the future of web freedom in general and social media in particular.

The background: In September of 2006, a truly disturbing piece of video was posted on Google Italy. It showed a group of boys tormenting a another boy. The victim had Down's Syndrome. It stayed up for two months and went on to become the most viewed clip in Italy.

As a result, three Google executives were convicted this week of breaking privacy laws. This is a bad thing. In fact, one British M.P. went so far as to say it represents the "biggest threat to Internet freedom we have seen." Google concurs and will appeal.

Let's be clear. Google is not above the law. The question is, what exactly is Google, and where does the responsibility lie? Why punish the railroad tracks for the act of the villain who tied the maiden down?

The ruling brings up a number of questions: Is Google just providing rails for content and is, therefore, 'infrastructure'? Or is it no different from any other service provider and therefore bearing the responsibilities of such an entity? What does this mean for YouTube? Whose responsibility is the content which is uploaded to Google, or other video sites? The producer/uploader, or host? And, if this ruling stands and is precedential in other jurisdictions, what might result?

One scenario may well be that all content will need to be pre-screened. Who will do that? Do we really want the Google Ministry of Content going over every 'dog on a skateboard' video in order to find and censor - even if reluctantly - the one or two repulsive things that sick individuals feel worthy of inflicting upon the web?

The most populist creative outpost the world has ever known will be neutered.

And what about Facebook? Six Pixels notes that it recently overtook Yahoo as thesecond most popular website in the U.S. Will that amazing achievement be accompanied by more rigorous scrutiny of content as a result of the Italian ruling? And what kind of content?

Recently, we in Canada saw the rapid growth of a citizen-engagement, protest-oriented Facebook group. And despite administrators' best efforts to 'keep it nice', some of the content posted by members is over the top in its vitriol. Could such a situation raise the ire of state authorities such that pressure was brought to beear on Facebook itself?

Probably not. Yet, still, should the Italian conviction obtained against Google stand, it may have broad and severe implications for the way we access - and contribute to - the vast body of content on the web.

And we thought the efforts against Net Neutrality were bad.

The Ballot Question

As of right now, should an "election that nobody wants" become a reality, the 'ballot question', ought to be:

"Do you want a leader/government who asks the tough questions and looks to the future? Or one that evades tough questions and runs and hides from their past?"

It's a telling question for the leaders of both federal parties in Canada.