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The famous New York City punk outpost CBGB & OMFUG, where Ramones, Patti Smith, Television, Talking Heads and many others cut their teeth and sullied its notoriously disgusting bathroom, closed in 2006. But now it will get a second life, nearly a decade later as … an airport restaurant.

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Quote:

“…the federal Liberals have agreed to remove a section of law that allows parents to spank their kids without fear of prosecution.

Groups that oppose corporal punishment of children have spent many years urging successive governments in Ottawa to repeal Section 43 of the Criminal Code that permits parents and teachers to use reasonable force to correct the behaviour of youngsters in their care.”

This is a watercooler story: notwithstanding anything else that average folks are supposed to be talking about, this is a story they will be talking about.

The police and the Crown always have discretion to determine what charges should be laid, when, and against whom. In the past, they seemingly have had the tools to deal with this issue – see here and here.

So, will this change result in some of your neighbours – some of your family members, or even you – being hauled before a judge? Or will folks be okay with it? Or will no one notice the change at all?

Interesting times. Someone is going to get spanked, to be sure, but not the acting-up five-year-old anymore.

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From @iyad_elbaghdadi: “This iconic picture will live in history. When a women escaped ISIS territory and was able to wear color again.“

I love this.  This is my favourite photograph of the year, I think. Take that, you ISIS pricks: joy.

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Here’s a Brit-born writer living in Toronto:

“Harper embodied the qualities you’d look for in a bookkeeper or accountant: he didn’t seem to have much personality to get in the way of the dull tedium of governing the country. That’s the source of the Trudeau costernation. Conservatives fond of Harper aren’t so much offended by Trudeau’s earnest popularity as they are mystified by it: they can’t imagine why anyone would want to take a photograph with the person they chose to run their country. The warmth and geniality Trudeau project so effortlessly are not, at least to the incurious or unimaginative, easily reconciled with the demands of the Prime Minister’s office.”

Some great writing, therein, and I’m pissed off he anticipated my next Hill Times column, which reads in part:

“So too Justin Trudeau, who the camera loves and – to his critics – loves the camera right back. Trudeau knows, perhaps, that leaders are measured by the impressions they create, not the policies they promulgate.  

 There’s a risk in all of this, naturally. If, six months from now, Trudeau is indeed branded as Prime Minister Selfie – if his administration is simply regarded as a four-year-long photo op, punctuated only by state dinners and the occasional foreign trip – he’ll be in trouble. He needs to be more than the callow and shallow caricature his opponents suggest he is.”

Conservatives forget they had their own image-conscious deity, however: Ronald Reagan. 

And he was popular for a long, long time, as I recall. And lots of conservatives would’ve lined up for selfies with him, too.

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Write an innocent post offering Christmas wishes, while simultaneously poking fun at agnostics and atheists, and what do you get? This is what you get.

He’s 17.

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Ran those fun little polls yesterday on 2015’s Best Politician, Best Political Advisor, and Best Political Strategy. Check out the results for the several hundred who voted, below. It wasn’t even close.

Here’s what you said as of this hour:

• Best politician: Stephen Harper – 342 votes over 241 for Justin Trudeau
• Best political advisor: whoever advises Brad Wall – 314 votes over 173 for Trudeau’s principal secretary
• Best political strategy: never, ever using social media – 301 votes over 179 the Grits’ “real change” mantra

[polldaddy poll=9236751][polldaddy poll=9236757][polldaddy poll=9236767]

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And while I am on the topic, the world’s worst journalist – TWWSNBN – still holds that title. Sending out one of your bosses to harangue me won’t help, big guy. It’ll just persuade me to keep doing it for the next, say, twenty years or so.

Somewhere, a couple guys are laughing.

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…goes to this Rosie DiManno gem in today’s Star. In it, DiManno commences by castigating comments, and looks completely ridiculous by the end. A short-form DiManno, herewith:

• I don’t care about comments, but here’s a whole column about comments
• I don’t like the invective commenters spew, so here’s some invective of my own
• I don’t care who the commenters are, but I sort of researched them enough to know every single one of their names
• The Sun did it to us

It’s a competitive category, but I think we have a winner for the Most Dishonest Column of the Month Award, folks!

 

 

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