test blog #10

Winnipeggers: A certain Prime Minister, sans sweater vest, but avec Fisher Price hair, will be in your fair city for several events tomorrow. At 11:30 a.m., Stephen Harper will deliver brief remarks at the groundbreaking ceremony of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (The Forks). At 2:45 pm he will participate in a business round-table (Delta Hotel, 350 St. Mary Ave). Just in case you want to say hi!

Yesterday a fire swept through the Durham Humane Society in Oshawa, Ontario, killing (depending on which report is accurate) as many as 200 animals. Most of the animals that died - at least 140 - were cats, along with a few dogs and many smaller animals like hamsters and guinea pigs. Rescue workers managed to save nine dogs and two cats. The most tragic aspect is how avoidable this was. If everyone was responsible about spaying and neutering their animals - and if free or low-cost neutering was readily available - there would be no over-crowded animal shelters in the first place. My heart goes out to the shelter workers, who must be traumatized and bereft. I have always been terrified of my animals being trapped in a fire, especially when we lived in an apartment building, where residents may not be as careful about fire as I am. I can scarcely imagine how people cope with a loss of this magnitude. Truly, my heart goes out to the whole community of Oshawa. They're suffering from m...

Last week, I told you that war resister Cliff Cornell has received a deportation date of December 24. Yes, it's true, the grinchy government will remove this peaceful, productive resident of Canada on Christmas Eve, so he can spend Christmas day in a U.S. military prison. Yesterday, the campaign issued a press release about Cliff, and we got good response from the mainstream media. The War Resisters Support Campaign says Citizenship and Immigration Canada has told a U.S. deserter living in Nanaimo, B.C., that he must leave Canada by Dec. 24 or face removal by force. Cliff Cornell, originally from Arkansas, arrived in Canada in January, 2005. He currently works as an assistant manager of a retail store near Nanaimo. Mr. Cornell's deportation order comes after similar orders for war resisters Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman and his family, Patrick Hart and his family, Matt Lowell and Dean Walcott. The group says in a release that another, Kim Rivera, will receive a decision on Jan. ...

Redsock guest post - L. Something is missing from this news story. I wonder what it could be... Time Running Out for Obama to Curb Global Warming The urgency of problems related to global warming are increasing at a rapid pace and will no doubt prove to be a matter of urgency for President-elect Barack Obama . WASHINGTON -- When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid. Since Clinton 's inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton 's second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it. ... The average global temperature in 2008 is likely to wind up slightly under 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit, about a tenth of a degree cooler than last year. When Clinton was inaugurated, 57....

Yesterday the Globe and Mail ran an editorial titled "A Disgrace to Journalism". It began: The journalist who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush is being hailed as a hero by some Iraqis, but he is a disgrace to his profession and should be fired by his employer. The fact that he has not been dismissed, and is instead being treated as a martyr by the television company he works for, says a great deal about its standards of journalism. It goes on to say that "to its shame," Al Baghdadia, Al-Zaidi's employer, is defending him, and "to their shame," organizations like Reporters Without Borders did not "condemn the attempted assault". While this is not surprising, I find it no less wrong-headed and maddening. As we see all too often in our society, order and decorum are what matter most. When millions of people take to the streets to protest an immoral war, what matters is whether or not the protesters were peaceful and how many pe...

If the storm doesn't kill me the government will I've got to get that out of my head It's a new day today and the coffee is strong I've finally got some rest So a man's put to task and challenges I was taught to hold my head high Collect what is mine, Make the best of what today has Houston is filled with promise Laredo is a beautiful place Galveston sings like that song that I loved Its meaning has not been erased And so there are claims forgiven And so there are things that are gone Houston is filled with promise Laredo is a beautiful place Galveston sings like that song that I loved Its meaning has not been erased And some things, they fall to the wayside Their memory is yet to be still Belief has not failed me And so I am put to the test " Houston ," Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills We just finished watching "When The Levees Broke," Spike Lee's documentary about the destruction of New Orleans and its people after the failure of the ...

Money is tight in our home right now, and we've got plenty of company there, I know. Since the first Toronto law firm I worked for dissolved, I've never got my income back to where it was. I'm grateful we're both employed in seemingly secure jobs (although security may be an illusion), and considering how many people are suffering all around us, I can't complain - and I don't. But we do need to stay within a budget, and there's not a lot of wiggle room. Lately I've been poring over our bills to see what I might be able to cut out. One non-essential is the level of cable TV we get. The main reason we have cable - 99% of why we need it - is to watch out-of-town baseball games from April to the end of October. So for the months in between, while we're subscribing to Zip , why also pay for this level of digital cable? Except for baseball, we watch almost no TV. Movies are on DVD; no cable needed for that. And CBC is on basic cable anyway. The only thing ...