Willy Loman

Yeah I'll join in on this one. Who is this man? Watch the video again, he is either the politest anarchist I've ever seen, stepping back when the tall dude in the white shirt asks him to stop tipping the car over or a cop that was told not to get into any provocations with the citizenry. I mean it wouldn't look good to assault a citizen that was trying to actually uphold the law. Besides the guy's jeans look brand new and check out the other guy with the scarf and Walmart hat on backwards that stepped in to help him try to turn over the car. He also poliely stepped back when asked to by the tall dude, in fact too far back. Not even a fuck you. The part that bothers me most about this video, is the asshole's grin. not the grin of someone who thinks they have stuck it to the man, but a grin that reeks of hey I fooled you hippie protestors. The guy is either a redneck asshole or a redneck asshole cop. If you know who he is, call crime stoppers or better yet ...

And every time we remember this or think of this we should all remember this satisfied grin

I hate being so old and complacent, but Harper's G20 onslaught on the city I was born and raised in and the attack on our fucking personal liberties is making it a great night for ripping through ProBlogs. Boris at the Beaver summed it all up for me , but I'm voting for everyone tonight. The front page will be changing constantly this weekend. I'm a follower of Pogge's Friday is blues night, but all week I can't get these two songs out of my head. Here's Neil performing a month ago... and Stephen Stills from a couple years back. Huck Farper.

I like the theme of the new C.R.U.S.H. ad, that will be running in the Globe on Saturday. I keep expecting full colour stylized graphics with lots of empty space, but I'm more used to working in product marketing where the picture is used to catch your eye and tell half the story, In this case it is going in a newspaper and the words tell the story, so B/W works. Besides larger more colourful ads cost more money and as we all know by being riddled with Harper's PMO ads, repetition is the key to getting the message out and that costs money. I contributed to their first ad, but have sloughed off since then. They actually send you statements to your Face Book account of where the money was spent and they spend every dime on the ads. It is probably time for me to find some more cash to help this group.  I can probably spare a little. Maybe you can too . Oh about the Haiku... For some strange reason the Drunk with Power line made me think of poetry and I have ...

The earth rumbled 5 minutes ago through Toronto and Mississauga... There will be articles somewhere soon. No damage reported in our office except to the PhotoShop file I was cropping... Just checkin in Willy

Since everything in the Harper government is about marketing Harper, his vision and his stewardship of the new Canadian brand, I find the announcement today from Harper’s governor of the central bank, Mark Carney and the other members of the governing council quite interesting. In short, Carney has come out and said that our recovery, you know the best one in the whole wide world, according to Harper and his PMO is still vulnerable. In fact, Carney all but admits that they cannot determine whether they are going to increase interest rates as earlier predicted or not. Which would lead me to believe that the forecast for future economic numbers are not quite as rosy as originally thought. I really hope the PMO, you know the department in Harper’s government that makes all the decisions, let’s Flaherty, Paradis and Kenny know about this. They were supposedly dispatched to New York, Europe and China yesterday, to boast about our economic recovery and tell the world that our economy is...

According to this CTV article Canadians are OK with the billion dollar G8/G20 summits. Unless of course you read the article. Of those polled who heard something about the cost of hosting the summits, 61 per cent said they were too expensive to be worth it. Learn  more here from CTV , although you might as well just make things up, like they seem to be doing.

They do not care if it rains or freezes at the Solid Rock Church in Ohio, because they have a 60 foot plastic Jesus, sitting on the driveway of their church.  At least until last night when lightning struck the wire framed, styrofoam and plastic covered sculpture and as you can see there isn’t much left.  I guess God thought it was tacky also. From the Telegraph here .

Montreal Simon who apparently no longer lives in Montreal, but instead now dwells in the summit-ized, soon to be battle zone, but don’t worry secured, extremely secured and as we all now know, expensively secured, downtown Toronto, has another humorous post about what a wiener Harper is , well maybe more of a sausage than a wiener, or maybe a hot dog, but in any case it got me thinking about the poor or possibly middle class, but most assuredly hard working hot dog street vendors who are being removed from Toronto’s streets for the duration of the summit, which is removing them from what is most likely the largest market for street sold hot dogs in Canada and of course I then thought about the importance of street sold food to international politics and the important role that the beaver tale played when Obama first visited Ottawa back in 2009 , generating articles across the country and in a way showing that the common man and woman for that matter, in case the Dammit crowd  or JJ...

Sticking to the hockey analogy used by Michael Ignatieff, in this Globe & Mail article about reaching a deal with the conservatives on the release of the Afghan documents, it looks to me like all of the political parties are playing a different game. Here is an old ffib on that point (it's an expandable page, make it wider) . Reference: The Globe & Mail, here . Update: Typos fixed, I think.

The combined costs of the G8 and G20 meetings are now being speculated to reach $2 billion, (see Buckdog here ) which sort of overshadows the Muskoka like fake lake, we first heard about yesterday. Apparently the not so fiscally minded, not so open or open minded for that matter and the now not so smart conservative government has been spending summit funds on restoring paddle wheel boats, installing space age patio lighting, creating natural living walls, and building facilities hundreds of kilometres away from either summit. Security is important, but with the RCMP, who are in charge of security, announcing today that the total budget for security personnel, mounties, police, armed forces, private security, undercover, and surveillance, including overtime, travel and accommodation will be coming in at around $330 million, you would have to start to wonder, what the remaining $700 million to the now speculated $1.7 billion is being used for. Sounds like Harper and his conservativ...

Here is Harper's latest MEP, let's call it the Canada Day MEP. Instead of being in Ottawa to bid her last “Happy Birthday Canada” wishes, Jean will mark Canada Day half a world – and several time zones—away at Expo 2010 in Shanghai. Via a press release issued by his office Monday, Harper’s office said Jean will travel at his request and at “the invitation of” the government of China. Governor General Jean’s stay in China will be a unique opportunity to highlight the dynamic people-to-people connections between China and Canada, Harper’s announcement stated. Of course what was left out of Harper's press release is that the Queen will be in Ottawa for Canada Day and of course with GG Michelle Jean out of the picture, visiting factories in China, yes seriously visiting factories, Harper will stand in for the GG, right there next to the Queen for all the Canada Day photo ops. My guess is that Harper was pissed about playing second fiddle to the GG at the Olympics ear...

By now you have probably read about the Harper governments plan to build a lake in downtown Toronto resembling the Muskokas to house the G8 media while the G8 conference is taking place in the real Muskoka, 200 Km away. It is going to cost us millions, because Tony Clement (you know the MP that does Japanese TV ads for his constituents) this time, promised his constituents, the folks who live in Muskoka and make their living in the tourist industry that they would get international, olympian sized, PR from all the foreign press and since the press can't go there (security reasons, I assume that they probably should of told Tony about earlier), he is bringing Muskoka to the media by building a lake in Toronto. But stop, Tony, I have a plan, in fact two that can save us all millions. Now the first one is a tad, tricky so pay attention. Since the same media will be covering both the G8 and the G20 meetings, while the G8 in Muskoka is going on let the media stay in hotels in Tor...

9 lb. Max was born last night, so I am a grandad for the fourth and apparently last time. Got to go in a birthing suite at least until all the action started. They do not have expectant father and grandfather rooms anymore and you not only have to leave the hospital to have a smoke, you have to leave the hospital property, so I ended up spending half my time on the street smoking with emergency patients, on crutches and sitting in wheel chairs that I assumed they left there for old expectant grandfathers. But all are fine and my daughter is beautiful and guess what Max looks like his grandad, except for the moustache, beard and sunglasses.