At Home in Hespeler

National Post, today:

Kevin O’Leary appeared on Celebrity Jeopardy! Tuesday and further burnished his reputation as one of Canada’s foremost intellectuals… Unfortunately, the Canadian businessman did rather poorly.

National Post/Canada.com 2006: I bombed on Jeopardy, by pretentious writer of important public policy issues for the National Post, John Moore. (John Moore’s bio.)

With the usual apologies to Kate at SDA.

for certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair

bad journalism, National Post jeopardy, john moore, kevin o'leary, National Post

Interesting piece by John Ivison in today’s National Post: Jack Layton apparently has his sights sets on leader of the official opposition.

The task looks Herculean – the Liberals polled an average of 29% in the four polls this month: the NDP just over half that…

It may seem nuts, but I like Layton’s chances, just as I like the Conservatives chances of forming a majority. The truth that’s not being told is, Ignatieff has never been a big player in a high level campaign. He ran one leadership campaign, was way out ahead when it began and blew it: the more Liberals saw him, the less they liked him.

His second leadership campaign he won by backroom manoeuvring, taking the decision making out of the hands of Liberal party members and their inconvenient votes.

You can’t backroom your way through a general election.

Everytime I see Ignatieff, my spidey senses tingle the same little tingle: when the going gets real and tough, this guy will fold like an Ikea chair at an overeater’s anonymous meeting.

Jack Layton is right (yes I wrote that: Dec 15, 2010, mark it on your calendars), Michael Ignatieff is very vulnerable in a campaign. He talks about a campaign on leadership, but what he means is he thinks Ignatieff isn’t up to the job of winning peoples minds and hearts when it counts.

Jack Layton Jack Layton, Michael Ignatieff, National Post, Stephen Harper, Stornoway

Why don’t you build an e-reader that doesn’t crash on shutdown every other day, instead of trying to become the next Facebook.

I own a Kobo. It does one thing, makes books available electronically, using E-ink display technology. One thing: on, off, read. So simple, Microsoft could design it. Yet the Kobo crashes regularly. Very regularly. It’s like designing a calculator that crashes.

When I bought the Kobo in July, I was promised magazines and newspapers were available for it. They weren’t. And they still aren’t in my area. What the hell does that even mean? This is the Internet age, there is no area. The National Post is a Canadian Newspaper. You can either offer an electronic download of it, or you can’t. They can’t.

The Kobo promises ten days, or 10,000 page turns of battery life: I get maybe ten hours, a couple of hundred page turns.  That’s OK though, because when I bought it I was told not to plug it in unless battery was drained, because every time I plug it in, I shorten it’s life span. That’s good, the shorter the life span, the sooner I get an e-reader that works.

And don’t get me started on the price of books. A new book is upwards of $15, yet you don’t even get a file to store for the day when you switch to an e-reader that works. Done with your Kobo? The book is gone into the ether. Fifteen dollars for nothing.

But now, after delivering on none of the promises of their product, they are expanding into social media.

On Thursday, the Toronto-based e-publishing startup will launch Reading Life, a new e-reading iPad application that integrates with the company’s digital bookstore designed to bring social-networking capabilities to the world of electronic books…

Seriously, instead of concentrating on fixing their piece of S*%t product, they are going to try and turn reading into something you do with virtual friends.

If your thinking e-reader this Christmas, they are magical machines that are truly wonderful. But save yourself the frustration and buy something other than Kobo. Their machines are junk, and they are more interested in monetizing their web site than fixing it.

Uncategorized e-ink, e-readers, kobo, National Post, reading life

Ohio is still a great song:

Local boy made good, Peter Shawn Taylor has a good piece on the Kent State massacre in today’s National Star/Post.

history Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Kent State, National Post, Neil Young, Ohio, Peter Shawn Taylor

Rex Murphy occasionally is way off base, such as his clobbering a few weeks ago of Christopher Hitchens, which had the gross effect of sounding like Murphy was not too upset about a bunch of pedophile priests, but dear God!, don’t you speak ill of my Pope.

This week in the National Post he has a go at the Human Rights industry in Canada, and knocks it out of the park:

…By some crude osmosis, or just from the luxuriant carelessness of our pampered lives, we have overturned one of the great concepts of all human law. The concept of human rights, as experience and history inform us, is protection from the state’s power, not oversight, interference and punishment by the state’s power.

The core concept of human rights is the protection of the irreducible safety and dignity of the individual from the massive and arbitrary power of the state. Not, the state wandering in, with its apparatus and procedures, its boards and tribunals into the doings, or speech, of the individual…

Be sure to read the whole thing.

human rights, pimply minions of bureaucracy Human Rights Comissions, Human Rights Tribunals, National Post, Rex Murphy

In the wake of the Ann Coulter fiasco, the most astounding letter appeared on the pages of the National Post Wednesday. From one Denise Cooke-Browne, a former journalist/human rights investigator (i.e. thought police-woman), the writer professes to be all for free speech. With a tone of, “well the proletariat twits will speak so we may as well let them,” she defends free speech as being a) in her favour and b) a fundamental freedom as defined in the Canadian Constitution, in that order.

The rest of the letter falls into the “be that as it may” form of argument. Ann Coulter, Cooke-Browne argues, should be charged for her uttering’s. Hell, she should be charged, in Canada, for what she said in the USA. She is a section 318 thought criminal and immoral as she finds the noose, an exception could be made.

The thing is, free speech isn’t just two little words in isolation which, depending on your inclination towards interpretation, could mean should be available at no cost on the internet. The phrase “free speech” is a contraction of the sentence “all speech will be free of prosecution.” You can’t be in favour of speech being free of prosecution and prosecuting Ann Coulter for her speech. It’s rather like being in favour of free love and thinking it’s OK to stone adulteresses… oh wait…. It’s rather like being a librarian in favour of book burning… no that won’t do…

If you want a peek into the minds of the the insufferable twitsour betters who run the HRC’s in Canada, have a peek at today’s letters page in the National Post, and see what former Newfoundland Human Rights Investigator Denise Cooke-Browne has to say. Frighteningly absurd posturing wrapped up in official condemnation.

free speech, pimply minions of bureaucracy Ann Coulter, Denise Cooke-Browne, National Post

sounds more like a patch honest politicians would wear on their Armani jacket. It is, instead, a rule for an MP sending Parliamentary flyers to someone else’s riding.  It’s wrong, and it should end.

When a bureaucrat designs a "ten percenter" patch.

John Mraz goes over the top,  calling it corruption. It’s not, but it is, as he notes, “the diversion of public resources to politicized ends.” I would not call it corruption more because it’s above board, and of such a small scale. Mraz, a former Liberal campaign manager, also throws a blame grenade at the Conservatives, both here and in the US. Note, for example, fringe Republican Obama birthers are the only ones who are nuts, ignoring Democrats who thought GW Bush was a) the dumbest man ever to learn to knot his own tie b) the criminal mastermind behind 911. In other words Mr. Mraz’s biases get in the way of his thesis.

His thesis, however, is spot on. Ten percenters are wrong. Parliamentarians are using the rule that allows them to send informational material to ridings other than their own, up to a total of ten percent of the constituents in their riding. I have complained before about this policy, but still receive quarterlies from Jack Layton. These things are not informational, they are propaganda. Paper wasted bashing the other party, taking biased surveys, that you can send back at parliamentary expense (i.e. taxpayer expense).

To be sure, I receive the same nonsense from my MP, Conservative Gary Goodyear, but he’s at least my MP. Their is a legitimate argument to be made that an MP needs to communicate with constituents, and needs to offer constituents a forum to let their MP know how they feel on issues. If I find the communiques so offensive, I can always vote for someone else. I can’t, however, choose to vote against Jack Layton MP. So why am I receiving his mailers? And why, far more significantly, am I receiving his mailers at parliamentary expense?

Conservatives and Liberals are not innocent in this, and Gary Goodyear has been the subject of a formal complaint to the speaker on this very subject.

They are all doing it. And they are all wrong. On this, I agree with Mr. Mraz. It’s time to stop the practice of ten percenters.

Politicians acting badly, Silly Politicians 911 truthers, Barack Obama, Canadian Parliament, Conservative Party, Democrats, Gary Goodyear, GW Bush, Jack Layton, John Mraz, Liberal Party, National Post, NDP, Obama Birthers, one percenters, Parliament, Republicans, ten percenters

The National Post is today running an excerpt from my friend Gerry Nicholls’ new book Loyal to the Core.

The NCC’s board of directors instituted a search process shrouded in secrecy. None of us on staff knew even who was interviewing for the position. But in the fall of 1996, when Reform MP Stephen Harper announced he was not seeking re-election, I knew he would get the job…

Ah, hell, read it all, then go buy the book.  I have a personally autographed copy on order, and will review it when they finally arrive in Gerry’s hot little hands and we can arrange lunch.

Gerry Nicholls, National Post Book, Freedom Press, Gerry Nicholls, Loyal to the Core, National Post, NCC, Review, Stephen Harper