The Sun's effect on our national conversation is obvious, but what about the Globe?

It's a straightforward question: what are people talking about? What's capturing their attention and imaginations? Public conversation. Nothing gives you a better sense of a community or a society than gauging what people are talking about. (24/7 on Kim Kardashian? That's got to tell you something.)

It's been one of this little corner's favourite hobby horses for as long as I can remember. Public discourse. National conversation. Provincial. Municipal. Whatever. You want civic ambition, you need to look at the quality of the conversations people are having. (I'm focusing on civic ambition because in a recent piece, the Globe's ideologically reliable urban-affairs curmudgeon Marcus Gee was complaining about the lack thereof. More on that in a minute. )

Detroit hate rally, via Arizona News ...

Detroit prayer rally draws protests - Arizona News from USA Today:

'via Blog this'

Ignorant hateful superstition? Check.

Racism? Check.

Religious intolerance? Check.

Homophobia? Misogyny? Fundamentalist fetus fetishism? Yep. All there.

Sandbags along the border, people. The Sewer of Stupid^TM is backing up again ...

Related posts:

• Thoughts for Remembrance Day, and Matt Taibbi figures out the Occupy movement
• America overheats: The Sewer of Stupid is about to overflow | #USpoli
• About those attacks on Planned Parenthood ...

Thoughts for Remembrance Day, and Matt Taibbi figures out the Occupy movement

It's a big man who can start a national column with an admission that he got it wrong.

This little corner's been relatively silent on the whole Occupy thing, but now that it's gotten the Masters of the Universe sufficiently rattled, they're cranking up the apparatus of repression. At encampments everywhere, the cops are moving in.

Mayor Stupid makes @KeithOlbermann's list ... AGAIN (h/t @OccupyTO)

Must be Halloween or something.

I have no words.

Update: the clip in all its glory.

@TOMayorFord puts Toronto on @KeithOlbermann 's map

Oh look. Mayor Stupid's gotten some international recognition!



Worse than Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck.

When? When will this nightmare end?

Related posts:

• So Mayor Stupid takes one in the nads on the waterfront ...
• Oh, look: everything Team Ford touches turns to crap. Don't look so surprised
• @cityslikr on Team Ford's bullshit, and our complicity therein

The door's this way, Chief Blair

So it seems Bill Blair isn't getting with Team Ford's austerity program.

Instead of being a good boy and implementing the 10-per-cent reduction the mayor's team is demanding of city managers, he's looking for a budgetary increase. Not a lot, mind, but the surrounding drama, already at a slow boil, has been cranked up even farther, and now there's speculation that his job's on the line.

@LornePW keeps the police accountability file up to date

Big tip of the porkpie to Lorne over at Politics and its Discontents.

There are times when the sheer inertia and toxic, paranoid self-pity at the core of dysfunctional cop culture makes you want to just give up. Fortunately, Lorne's got the energy and determination to get past those times.