[One point: the Star favoured the Grits and endorsed the Dips. The overall point remains: the media in this country are massively conservative.]

I’m not really a media person. I type up a column a couple times of week for Sun Media, to be sure, and I appear on the ever-growing network pretty regularly, too. But I wouldn’t consider myself a journalist.

That said, I think I have a pretty good idea how real reporters and editors felt when they heard about that speech by former Canadian Alliance Leader Stockwell Day at the Conservative convention last weekend. In it, Day more or less served notice the Conservative Party now regards the Fourth Estate as its real adversary. Not the New Democratic or Liberal parties.

Journalists.

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I’m at my son’s lacrosse game. (We’re winning.)

Please give me Canucks updates. Please.

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• “Acquire, administer and finance our own ‘non-corporate’ program(s), if not our own media, by sharing, cooperating and pooling our collective resources with our present left-of-centre, noncorporate allies . . . and implement a strategic plan to acquire and share better media coverage” (passed in 2002);

• Elementary schooling for immigrants entirely in their mother tongue, where numbers warrant (reaffirmed in 2004);

• Industrial democracy to ensure “direct worker control” and “joint decision-making” in provincially owned corporations (2004);

• Public auto insurance, lest we forget (pledged in 1996 and reaffirmed in 2004);

• A promise to make its resolutions available “for distribution to the general public” (2004);

• A caution that any NDP government “must follow the established fundamental policies” of the party. Any “significant variance” must first be cleared with the party (2004).

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This morning, I was listening to fans on CBC radio chant “Go Canucks, go!”

It came out as “Coconuts, ho!”

There is probably some deep meaning associated with this, but I’ll be damned if I can figure what that might be.

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For a while, years ago, I was a lawyer for CUPW. Back then, they were a tough, no-nonsense bunch. They took no prisoners.

I have a hard time squaring the CUPW I knew with the CUPW now allegedly on strike in the Summer of 2011.

They’re worried about public opinion, clearly. But is that worry undermining the effectiveness of their strike?

Sure seems like it. What’s your view?

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Na na na na na!

“Went down” is right. The Miami Malpract-ice.

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Weird.

The Green Party leader came by to post a comment on my personal website the other day. I’ve never had a leader of a federal political party do that before. It was really weird.

I mean, I figured — like you do, perhaps — that the leaders of political parties have lots of better things to do with their time than lurk in weblog chat rooms. But there was May, chatting away.

Like I say, weird.

There are three types of folks who hang out in web chat rooms. First, there are the regular commenters I get on websites like mine — Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats, the undecided. The ones I get, I like. They tend to be smarter than me and I often find myself relying upon their analysis when I’m thinking about a political issue.

Second, there is a less-intelligent group who pop by, too. We call them “trolls.”

They use false names and fake e-mail accounts and they regurgitate all kinds of hate and dirt. I don’t ever approve their comments.

Finally, there is a third group whose presence we feel online, but don’t often see: The lurkers. They skulk in the background, but never really offer any comments. They just lurk.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, I assume, is a lurker, which is kind of weird.

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TORONTO, On. – An expert weighed in on the use of prisoner labour, following a proposal from Ontario’s opposition leader to force inmates to work.

If he wins the October election, Conservative leader Tim Hudak said he’ll force provincial inmates to earn their keep – doing things like raking leaves and mowing grass.

Former New York City Corrections Commissioner Martin Horn said… don’t expect [such programs] to provide 100 per cent security.

“There are ways to manage the risks; there are ways to diminish the risk, but there’s no way to eliminate risk. Will some inmates escape? Will some inmates walk away? It’s possible, and anyone who tells you it’s not is lying.”

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Which departing MPP(s) were giants within their respective parties, and treated with respect by their leaders – and which one was cruelly stabbed in the back by his leader, and treated like garbage, simply because he was a progressive, and because he opposed the far-right takeover of the party he’s belonged to for his entire adult life?

Kind of a leading question, I know, but I have a point to make.  Which is this: Tim Hudak will say and do anything to get back into power.

Liberal MPP Sandra Pupatello         PC MPP Norm Sterling                      NDP MPP Peter Kormos

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