June 25, 2008

This place is dead anyway

I'm not going to shut down this blog or anything. It's not doing anyone any harm that I know of. But just so my last few remaining customers know, I'm blogging regularly over at Maclean's now about topics beyond just Megapundit. Poverty statistics, for example, and Andre Agassi and Dalton McGuinty. Which means unless I want to curse a blue streak about something, you'll probably see even less of me around here than before. If that's possible. Thank you for your continued patronage.

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May 28, 2008

In happier news...

... this is ASTONISHING hockey.

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Fact: Toronto sucks

There is very little I could possibly say about this that it doesn't say itself.

Toronto's plan to cook up more diverse street food won't be happening this summer as promised, though it was still being touted on the city's website yesterday.

In what looks like a red-tape mess, the latest idea calls for 13 street vendors, mostly downtown, to start selling their non-hot-dog snacks next spring.

It would be part of a pilot project lasting five long years so that vendors who invest in specialized carts can recoup their costs.
...
Last summer, when Health Minister George Smitherman amended provincial law to allow for a wider variety of foods to be sold on the street, Toronto decided to hold off on opening up the menu until a firm plan was in place.

Initially, the city thought of borrowing $700,000 to buy 35 carts that it would lease out at $450 a month, as a way to keep control and block "cart conglomerates" from emerging.

Given the optics of a cash-poor city spending money on that project, Mayor David Miller shut down the proposal.

The latest idea – dubbed Toronto à la Cart – would get going next April with 13 vendors.

Most pilots last only two years, not five, officials concede, but they promise an evaluation after a year that could result in changes or expansion.

Or the city "could terminate it earlier, if it was a fiasco," said the city's economic partnership adviser, George Wheeler.

The proposal, to be debated at executive committee next Tuesday, would involve leasing or buying carts from Brantford-based Crown Verity, the sole bidder on a tender the city put out this spring. Its partner, Equilease, a leasing brokerage company, would find financing for vendors if needed.

Interested vendors would be required to purchase or lease specific carts from Crown Verity. A non-refrigerated cart would cost $26,100; one with refrigeration runs $32,300.

Lease rates over five years would be $7,056 and $8,796 per year, respectively, at a minimum interest rate of 12.5 per cent. That rate would be available to candidates with food business experience and above-average credit. Others would face a higher rate, negotiated case by case.

Vendors would be selected based on their business plan and the type, diversity and quality of the food, its nutritional content and use of local food where appropriate.

An expert panel will sample the items to be sold and select the winning vendors. They include John Higgins of George Brown College's hospitality program and Marney Levitt of Whole Foods.

That is utterly breathtaking. Everything is wrong with this situation, and it's more than a new mayor could fix. Toronto, like Nepal, needs to effect wholesale democratic reform, starting with drastically shrinking its government to the point that nobody has the time to even try to manage things that inherently manage themselves. Licence the vendors, lease out the locations and deploy enough health inspectors to keep everyone safe--that's it; that's all. Jesus effing Christ!

Posted by Chris Selley at 10:13 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

May 26, 2008

The mayor of crazy

Part of me is beginning to wonder if David Miller isn't deliberately sabotaging his ostensibly nationwide anti-handgun campaign:

"After John O'Keefe's tragic killing, I don't think there's any defence for sports shooters any more," Miller said.

"It's a hobby that creates danger to others. Guns are stolen routinely from so-called legal owners. It's time that we got those guns out of Toronto."
...
"It's about a value. Do we as a society value safety, or do we value a hobby that creates danger? And nobody can deny that that hobby directly results in people being shot and killed on the streets of our city. Those are the facts. And they're provable again and again and again."

Directly, mind you. That part where someone decides to steal the gun, and either he or some other person decides to shoot someone with it, is just a footnote. Sport shooters, among them Olympic athletes, are directly culpable in the murder of innocent pedestrians. This is the world David Miller lives in. And it goes some way towards explaining the decision-making that goes on in this city.

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May 16, 2008

Offside. And just... weird.

My reaction to Lorne Gunter's inexplicable musings on what more Robert Dziekanski's mother might have done to locate her son behind the big, gormless wall of Vancouver airport security, is over at the Maclean's joint.

(Also, currently on your newsstands, a very important article on lobster guts.)

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May 14, 2008

Now hear this

As per previous standing orders, Pierre Poilievre shall be shunned and ignored whenever possible, unless it is to mock him, and under no circumstances shall his opinion on anything be treated as anything other than worthless. Henceforth, however, when circumstances demand his existence be acknowledged, he shall be referred to as "Canada’s highest-ranking student politician."

Posted by Chris Selley at 10:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 13, 2008

Shake hands with the weasel

I don't think Roméo Dallaire helped Omar Khadr much today, but I'm sure he meant to. Jason Kenney has no such excuse.

Kady O'Malley's account of the exchange between Dallaire and Kenney at the Subcommittee on International Human Rights today:

Jason Kenney quotes Dallaire as having said that the US is “no better than the other guy,” AKA the terrorists, and Dallaire is only too happy to reaffirm that any country that infringes civil and human rights and the rule of law is no better than that which doesn’t recognize them.

Kenney is now asking whether, by terrorists, Dallaire means people who behead women, and who “kidnap people with Downs’ Syndrome” and who believe Israel should be destroyed, and—wait, what does this have to do with Omar Khadr? Dallaire tells him, point blank, you’re either with the law, or against it. You’re a child soldier, or you’re not. If Kenney wants to use extreme examples, fine, but if you go against those principles, you are going down “the same road.”

Or, as Kenney so eloquently put it to reporters later, Dallaire was arguing "that the fact that Canada has not made an extraordinary political effort to repatriate Omar Khadr is the moral equivalent to using adolescents with Down's Syndrome to blow up kids in a pet market."

You know, it shouldn't matter that the bombers in question weren't adolescents, and didn't have Down's Syndrome. The topic of the day was Khadr, the child soldier, and the "extraordinary political effort" folks like Dallaire are asking the government to undertake on his behalf, just like every other western nation did on behalf of its citizens at Guantanamo. (Clearly "extraordinary" switched meanings with its exact opposite at some point without my noticing.) So part of me said, don't worry about Kenney's latest feat of jackassery, especially since the press gallery already seemed to be peppering MPs with five questions about Dallaire and whether he should be "censured" for every one they asked about Khadr. In fairness, when reporters did try to haul Kenney back to earth, this is what happened:

Question: But isn't his point that our moral standing is somewhat lessened by the whole Khadr case?

Hon. Jason Kenney: I think his point is dead wrong.

But it does matter, because it shows what Khadr is up against. Dallaire believes "… that the fact that Canada has not made an extraordinary political effort to repatriate Omar Khadr is the moral equivalent to using adolescents with Down's Syndrome to blow up kids in a pet market," says Kenney. I mean, just look at that. This file is essentially being managed by one of Kate McMillan's less edifying comment threads.

Does Kenney really imagine that John Howard enjoyed the repatriation of David Hicks? That righteous Aussies were marching on Canberra in his defence, clutching copies of the constitution in one hand and ice cold cans of Victoria Bitter in the other? I am not naïve enough to believe that the westerners once imprisoned at Guantanamo were brought home purely because their governments believed in doing what was right. Quite apart from everything else, they were doing George W. Bush a favour. But Canada would be all by itself on this even if Khadr hadn't been 15 motherloving years old when he was captured in Afghanistan.

It doesn't matter what Dallaire said; it doesn't matter if he gets censured, though the idea that he would fear the wrath of Stéphane Dion is good for a wry chuckle at least; and it doesn't really matter what happens to Omar Khadr, though I'm obviously sympathetic to his plight. What matters is the malignant tumor Khadr's situation continues to expose in the Canadian psyche (for lack of a better word). "'Child soldier' Khadr needs protection, Dallaire says" (Globe and Mail)--that's a headline. "Dallaire compares U.S. actions to those of terrorists" (Toronto Star)--that's utterly beside the point. Not unlike Canada itself in its weaker moments.

(Note: This post has been edited so it makes more sense than it originally did. I think so, anyway.)

Posted by Chris Selley at 11:37 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

May 11, 2008

Greg Millen—worse than useless

Derian Hatcher makes a perfectly good defensive play on Evgeni Malkin. Gets right in his face, stops him cold. Ludicrous penalty call (assuming CBC viewers were shown the actual infraction) ensues. Faced with replay of perfectly good defensive play, CBC analyst/fabulist Greg Millen adopts patented "Can't do that in the new NHL!" smug-man voice and declares it a dead-obvious holding penalty. Which it isn't, and not just in the way I have already argued. It is in fact a hooking penalty—perhaps one of the craziest hooking penalties ever called in the history of this fine sport, again assuming CBC actually showed us the real infraction, but never mind that. Both the CBC's graphic and the PA announcer at Mellonville Arena (as I like to call it) helpfully inform Millen of this fact—the fact that it is a hooking penalty, not a holding penalty. No matter. Three minutes later, the replay runs again, and it's still a hold in Millen's unbearably smug little universe. Never mind the fact that it wasn't. It was a hook. And it wasn't one of those either.

Posted by Chris Selley at 09:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

May 03, 2008

Les glorieux quand même

Things the hockey commentariat would be saying right now about the Montreal Canadiens if they weren't the Montreal Canadiens, and especially if they were the Toronto Maple Leafs:

• No team that really values winning would party in the streets after a first-round playoff victory.
• No team that really values winning would get a standing ovation from its fans for bowing out of the playoffs one game short of a second-round sweep.
• The Habs should have drafted one of Anze Kopitar or Marc Staal instead of Carey Price, who'll probably be pumping gas in five years.
• Trading Cristobal Huet was an incredibly suspect move in the first place: why would a team that ostensibly had designs on the Stanley Cup deliberately downgrade in goal, not even get a human being in return, and strengthen an Eastern Conference opponent in the process? But with Price's collapse against Philadelphia, the move attained the status of catastrophe.
• The Habs' Stanley Cup drought is currently the 13th longest in the NHL. Wait, that doesn't sound damning enough, so let's make it among teams that have actually won at least one Cup. Ergo, the Habs' Stanley Cup drought is currently the ninth longest in the NHL.

(That said, I hasten to add that I prefer the media's deference to the Habs as an abiding national treasure to their treatment of the Leafs as an abiding national cold sore, since the former at least recognizes that NHL hockey, for all the passion it quite rightly arouses, is a game.)

Posted by Chris Selley at 10:21 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

May 01, 2008

Tell me what you think of me

Comments are now open on Megapundit—and all the other, lesser blogs for that matter—over at Macleans.ca.

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