Having a hard time arguing with this

This piece from Now's Enzo de Matteo's been on my mind for several days. Distilled down to a few words, he's urging Toronto's progressive councillors not to make nicey-nicey with the Ford regime, but to dig in and fight and play dirty every step of the way.

Don Cherry is a pussy

Tough guy, hiding behind the guys who actually do the work and firing artillery rounds at people dozens of kilometres away.

Shamelessly stolen from Stageleft

Best.

Christmas.

Video.

Ever.

More flying monkeys, Smithers!

Yeah, well.

Never thought I'd be linking to both the Stun and the Putz approvingly, but there it is.

What are we paying these people for?

Lest anyone suspect this corner of indulging in an unseemly end-zone dance at the apprehension of Toronto Police Constable Babak Andalib-Goortani, let me emphasize: this is barely the start.

Payback's a bitch, isn't it ... Officer ...

Via the Star, news that charges have been laid against one officer – one officer – in the shitkicking administered to Adam Nobody at Queen's Park during the G20 clusterfuck.

The things you find on the intertoobz ...

Hey, a freebie! Or, perhaps, one of those cheap plastic prizes you get in cereal boxes ...

If anyone feels like having a full and frank exchange of views with one of the mouthpieces for the Ottawa cops regarding the Stacy Bonds scandal, he appears to have provided his name and phone number here:

S/Sgt. Michel Marin
Ottawa Police Service
Professional Standards Section
613-236-1222 ext 5830

Haven't tried it myself, but if anyone does, please tell us about it in the comments ...

(H/t Dr. Dawg.)

Charges dropped against one G20 defendant ...

So it seems that Jaroslava Avila's not going to be prosecuted on bullshit "conspiracy" charges.

Yeah, well. While the evidence doesn't yet suggest that the Toronto Crown's office has its head as far up its ass as its Ottawa counterpart, let's not get too excited. It's not as if the Crown has suddenly developed a moral sense or anything.

Remy Beauregard's legacy

I'm not going to go through the whole sordid story here. Much as I'd like to, I haven't been giving it the attention it deserves, but Paul Wells has been doing a fantastic job on it.

A truly great newspaper ...

... doesn't follow the herd.

Another morning, another false equivalency from Metro Morning

It's not even over yet, but first thing this morning, Matt Galloway's got the Venomous Loser^TM on to talk about the official kickoff of the Rob Ford era.

What happens when you stray from orthodoxy

Go read this.

Some real prizes we've got here

As Cliff over at Rusty Idols would say, credit where credit is due. The Star's Rosie DiManno's been on the G20's asshole cops like a mongoose on a snake.

The Blue BS machine

They're at it again this morning. A two-fer, in fact.

What's that, Chief Blair? A standing order?

Toronto's Police Liar-and-Sadistic-Pig-Enabler-in-Chief took time to talk to a reporter today.

Blair needs to go, but that's only the beginning

Yeah, well. What does it tell you when Rosie DiManno, of all people, is writing stuff like this?

Mr. Mukherjee, tear down this wall

Just finished listening to Matt Galloway throwing softballs to Alok Mukherjee on Metro Morning.

Police brutality at the G20: Steve Paikin testifies

It just gets better and better, doesn't it. When it comes to sadistic assholes in police uniforms, the G20 really is the gift that keeps on giving.

The Blue Wall is a threat to public safety

At some point, the whole discourse based on some spurious distinction between brutal sadistic bastards in police uniforms and the so-called "good" cops needs to be tossed out. I'd respectfully submit that we've passed that point.

One word

Graceless.

Cheap shots and Friday morning snark

So Don Cherry's going to introduce Mayor Rob Ford at his first council meeting?

Bill Blair is making Julian Fantino look good

Why, yes – as a matter of fact, that was a monkey flying out of my ass. What's your point?

Careful what you wish for, Julian

So Fantino's the new MP for Vaughan, and word is he's being groomed for a cabinet post right away.

Blatchford smacks Fantino? Cue the schadenfreude chorus

Oh, dear. The queen of unthinking gut reaction says Julian wasn't there for the little guy at Caledonia.

Thwap hits one out of the park

A lot's been written and posted about Stacy Bonds and the vicious cowardly scumbags in Ottawa police uniforms who beat and sexually assaulted her, but thwap's just done a masterful job putting it all into context.

Re Trudeau / Fantino: I hate to be a buzz kill, but...

Justin Trudeau's slap at Julian Fantino over the Charter of Rights would carry just a little more weight if his party hadn't tried to draft Il Dunce as a candidate and weren't enabling the Harperites in their continuing campaign to use the Charter for toilet paper. Not to mention the fact that under Iggy, they vote with the government every time it really matters.

Sorry, Liberal friends. Hypocrisy is hypocrisy, no matter where it's coming from.

Authoritarian whacking material: the Stacy Bonds video

Via JJ and the Dawgster. As JJ puts it, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.



(c) Canwest Ottawa Citizen

I really can't add anything.

Oh no, wait – yes I can. Matt Humphreys, John Ayre and Chris Bentley: today's Little Eichmanns ^TM. Take a bow, guys. You're a credit to the legal profession.

Julian Fantino, in action

Let's review:

Currently, as the Conservative candidate in Vaughan, he refuses to attend an all candidates' meeting. He won't respond to questions about his role in the wiretapping of lawyer Peter Maloney and whether that extended to former police services board chair Susan Eng.

The essential Alex Himelfarb

Is it possible, from a legislative point of view, to declare this man an essential resource, indispensible to the national interest? In a new post on our dysfunctional democratic institutions, he writes:

The new populism we see developing to the South is profoundly undemocratic. Giving up on the possibility of collective progress leads not to democracy making but to institution busting, not to open knowledge sharing and public education, essential to democracy, but to the denigration of knowledge and expertise and surrender to slogans and spin, and, despite the rhetoric, not to greater personal freedom, except for the already rich and powerful.

He's probably a lot kinder to Bob Rae than I'd be, but that's because he's a gentleman.

Big props to pogge for #onpoli

Cross-posted from over here ...

A polite and proper acknowledgement to pogge for setting up this lovely sitting room. For weeks now, I've been somewhat disturbed by the, um, tone of some of the posts in the blogosphere. I won't mention any names, of course, but some folks are descending to, well, gutter language.  

What Stageleft said

So Vern White's reaching out to the community in response to the Stacy Bonds scandal, wanting everyone to know that the Ottawa police take this sort of thing very seriously.

Is the Ottawa Citizen undermining the authority of the court?

Note the wording of the lead sentence here:

Ontario's Special Investigations Unit is probing what a judge has called the unlawful 2008 arrest and strip search of a 27-year-old woman by Ottawa police officers.

Ottawa Crown Attorney's Office? This is your elbow. This is your ass.

Would you like me to go through that again? It's a fairly important distinction, and one you don't seem to have grasped just yet.

Writing in the Ottawa Citizen, law professor David Tanovich asks the obvious question regarding the Crown's decision to prosecute Stacy Bonds: what the fuck were they thinking? On what planet would the public interest have been served by seeking a conviction?

What is the Crown in Ottawa waiting for?

Hello? Paging the Ottawa Crown Attorney's office. That's 613-239-1200.

A court of law has ruled that the Ottawa cops' treatment of Stacy Bonds was a travesty, and cited their "appalling behaviours." That's not a rumour or a bit of hearsay or an incomplete or biased newspaper account. It's a finding of fact by a judge.

Re Stacy Bonds: And another thing

As Alison points out over at Creekside, the record doesn't exactly inspire confidence when it comes to internal probes or police investigating themselves. One of the comments recalls:

Out of 3,400 investigations of police misconduct in Ontario, only 95 resulted in criminal charges, only 16 officers were convicted, and only 3 actually spent any time in jail.

As with Robert Dziekanski, the officers lied even though they knew there was video evidence.

Meaningful police reform? Yeah, good luck with that

Incidents like this latest horrifying chapter in Ottawa just underline the sad truth that's been self-evident all along: there is no effective institutional way of holding bastards like this accountable. These sadistic, cowardly lying pieces of shit do this for the same reason that dogs lick their balls: Because They Can.

What pogge said

Right here.

Maybe I've got this using-the-Charter-for-toilet-paper thing all wrong. A fella can dream ...

This really doesn't have anything to do with Allen Funt, does it

Hi there. I'm cuddly and harmless.

Well, looky here. The cops want to keep the surveillance cameras they brought in for the G20. And the sound cannons.

Saturday night Leaf-fan blues

Off the grid most of the day ... real-life tasks, dinner-party preps, whatever.

So I haven't checked TSN or CBC or the Star or the Globe or anything else (not even the best hockey blog in the known universe) for the results of this evening's tilt between the Leafs and the Canucks.

Why the liars are winning

Couple of days ago, Rick Perlstein published an essay on The Daily Beast that sets out, in succinct and convincing terms, one of the most important reasons that our friends to the south are in such trouble.

I'm not alone in lamenting the debasement and vulgarization of civil discourse and the attendant coarsening of political culture, but Perlstein's got one of the most influential and worrisome dynamics down pat: the far-right crazies, teabaggers and Palinbots lie their asses off, and no one – not the Obama administration, the Democratic establishment, the Villagers nor the "lamestream media" – will call them on it.

Best use of Craigslist ever

Someone in Toronto wants to swap mayors with Calgary. I can't imagine why.

Or maybe it's the other way around. I could be wrong, you know. Who knows what kids get up to on the intertoobz these days?

Live tweets from the CCLA's G20 hearings

Anyone who still thinks the cops are here to serve and protect should follow here ...



And here as well.

Stephen Harper's pathetic Zio-fawning

Over at Let Freedom Rain*, two posts from Jymn note the courageous stand taken by the activists of Young Jewish Proud, in contrast to Steve's craven leg-humping. By now we're all familiar with the pattern: "standing with Israel" inevitably dovetails with pathetic and transparent attempts to equate all criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, making it easier to criminalize it as "hate speech" and thus silence it along with any substantive debate. Anyone think Ezra, that principled Free Speech Warrior, will have a problem with that? What are the odds? If these little Ziobots have their way, the very phrase "Palestinian human rights" will soon be verboten.

Olbermann to return?

Over at Unrepentant Old Hippie, JJ's got the only possible reaction to this news. I'll believe it when I see it, but ...

Oh, what the hey. I'm steal – er, reproducing it here.



Update: Seems KO's not the only MSNBC host to make political contributions.

Care for a chaw, S-Supt. McGuire?

This weekend's Globe chronicles the story of four people caught in the infamous police "kettle" that became one of the central themes emerging from Toronto's G20 clusterfuck.

Maddow, Maher and the trap of false equivalence

Crazy weekend, but Maher's got it bang on. It's long past time to stop pretending that the left and the right, at least in the context of modern American political discourse, are mirror images of one another. If we buy into that, we're fighting on the Evil Ones' turf by letting them frame the debate – and once we let them do it, the fight's over before it's even begun.

Don Davies and Bill Blair spar over the G20

MP Dancin' Don Davies drops the gloves for a go with Billy the Bonecrusher at a public hearing about the G20 clusterfuck.

No name tag? You disgust me, Officer

Thank heaven, though, Bill Blair's on the case.

That'll larn 'em!

Update: Some cynical bastard suggested that the TPA, in a gesture of good will is springing for 5000 new name tags. Problem is, they all say "Bubbles."

Best blogpost of Hallowe'en 2010

Sorry, friends, but this time the prize has to go to our southern brethren at Down With Tyranny.

This is some scary shit.

Jon Stewart at the Rally for Sanity

(h/t Dammit Janet)

Man, it's just one extreme to the oth ...

No. No, I can't complete that thought, because to finish that sentence would be to betray a complete misapprehension of what Stewart seems to be aiming for: namely, a swing away from extremes.