308, still getting it wrong

Remember 308.com?  They were the ones who, repeatedly and without qualification, declared that Wildrose would win a huge majority in Alberta.

Now, they’re making similarly bold predictions about Ontario, here.

Why is this bullshit still happening? One, because some (not all) reporters are lazy, and they couldn’t be bothered to cease doing what they have always done.

Two, because many (not all) pollsters, like the media, have made a series of bad decisions over the years that are now coming back to haunt them.  They’re getting things wrong, as in Alberta, all the time.

Caveat emptor.


June 10: we get letters

Im 77 yrs old brought up and born at Bathurst & Queen area  we had lots of colored people living in the area,if i called a person a NIGGER my mother would give me a good swat, but i never did call them that name. It seems everyone of you bleeding hearts defend other races all the time. But what about the COLORED scum calling WHITES HONKIES, Is that oka. I wonder about you people.When are you going to defend the White people?We are at the back of the bus now.Id like to hear your answer thank you Pat Driscoll.


In today’s Sun (early): what the end of s. 13 will mean

Kike.

Don’t like that? Too bad.

Nigger. Faggot. Paki. Chink.

Don’t like those, either? Again, too bad.

As of last week, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government made it a lot easier for you to be called any of those things — or any number of other racist, hateful epithets — when they killed a key part of the Canadian Human Rights Act. That part, Section 13, prohibited the communication of hate via the telephone or the Internet.

The section came into being in the ’70s because some neo-Nazi groups were using hate lines to communicate some pretty awful stuff.

More than a decade later, the Supreme Court told a litigious white supremacist the section was constitutional and a reasonable limit on his free speech rights. A decade after that, with the haters spending a lot more time on the Internet than on telephones, Parliament decided to expand the section to cover online attacks.

Then, just this week, a nobody Conservative MP was successful in getting Section 13 killed, making use of the Harper regime’s favoured sleight-of-hand, a private member’s bill. Section 13 was dead.


Iggy staffer on Rae: predictable results, worthwhile reading

Here.

It’s wonderfully written (what is “brine” in this context, anyway?) by the Liberal Party’s leading gold-plated, jet-setting Tweeter.  He’s a total pain in the ass, he behaved very badly during the Grits’ Vikileaks self-immolation, but I very much like how he writes.

His lack of enthusiasm for Rae needs to be seen through the prism of who he is: former Iggy staffer, somewhat embittered, who remained in the bunker with the future/former Harvard professor to the grim end, etc. etc.  But worth a read, nonetheless.