NYT (behind free registration wall);

Some Americans are still taken by the novelty of fake- news broadcasts like “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” But in Canada news parodies sometimes draw larger audiences than the real thing. One, “The Royal Canadian Air Farce,” has been on government-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television for 26 years.
But during the current Canadian federal election campaign, Canada’s television satirists have faced an issue that has never troubled “The Daily Show.” An agreement between Canada’s main television networks and its largest political parties blocks the shows from using film clips from the televised leaders’ debates (although the film is still available to conventional news and current affairs shows).

Bizarre.
But Canadian.

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A crazed Islamofascist with amphetamine courage pounding in his veins loads a taxi with explosives, and hurtles into a clearly marked military convoy and the arms of 72 heavily recycled virgins.
Allah Akbar.
The CBC reports;

Translation:

“Be assured, ye faithful CBC masses, that there is no similarity whatsoever between this misguided and disoriented Taliban, that, but for the tragic coincidence that internationally revered Canadian Peacebringers crossed its path, would have detonated harmlessly in an explosion of chick peas and goat meat – and those brave militants who struggle heroically to evict Bush’s fascist agents of BIG OIL from the Sacred Land Of Saddam.”

After the break, Neil MacDonald’s “Reality Check”.
A reader comments;

I read that the 3 soldiers were taken to a US military hospital in Germany. Thank you America.

I second that.

Circulation at the New York Times continues to plummet.

“Pakistani men with the remains of a missile fired at a house in the Bajur tribal zone near the Afghan border.”
No one knows why.
h/t

It started so innocently. A sunny morning in January made brighter by a little good news from Transport Canada. Canadian highways are much safer than they once were, with another decline in collisions, injuries and fatalities;

Fatalities continued to decrease in 2004, even though there were more drivers and vehicles on the road than ever before. Injuries also decreased by four-and-a-half per cent over 2003.

The report never knew what hit it. In a moment the good news lay dead on the street – cut down by a headline from the Globe & Mail;

Roadway carnage kills thousands, study finds

And in a tragic case of “wrong place, wrong time”, a passing election campaign was seized hostage.

Once politicians finish grappling with gangs and guns, they may want to take a closer look at a much more deadly problem: Car crash deaths outnumber homicides by almost 5 to 1.

With the situation grim, CTV News arrived on the scene to negotiate…

Statistics show that 2,730 Canadians died in traffic accidents in 2004, compared to 622 who were the victims of homicides…

Homicide rates and gun violence aren’t bad… just misunderstood.

[N]umbers reported by the Toronto Star indicate that motorized vehicles killed more people in 2005 than guns in the Greater Toronto Area, despite the attention that gun violence has garnered in recent weeks. According to the Star, 229 people died in traffic accidents in the GTA in 2005, including 59 in Toronto; while 58 people died of gunshot wounds, with 52 in Toronto.

Meanwhile, at Health Canada, cancer and heart disease plotted their next move…

Wretchard;

The Washington Post recently wrote a somewhat disparaging article of bloggers on the battlefield, mentioning Bill Roggio in particular. I hadn’t realized that a blogger [Steven Vincent]– and not a regular Western professional correspondent — was the only foreign journalist to die in Iraq in 2005.

A lonely gatekeeper pines for the good old days, when ordinary citizens knew their place in the political debate;

This can’t be a good thing for lovers of the traditional game of politics. We know how the traditional game works: Politicians make statements, media report statements and solicit reaction from other politicians. Politicians and media are the players. Those who are not players have several ways of making their views known: They can write letters to the editor, they can answer the phone when the pollster rings and they can be the person-in- the-street when news media are conducting person-in-the-street interviews.
[…]
This structure has not always been viewed as fair by all members of the public and some have attempted to make their views known by other means. These include heckling loudly at political gatherings and also standing on street corners and shouting. The blog is an electronic version of the latter.
[…]
“People we will never hear of again, some of them anonymous or pseudonymous, got their vicious little ideas into the paper. If they had written letters to the editor and tried to use a pen name, the letters would not have been printed.”

There used to be a name for those people Charles Gordon refers to in the Ottawa Citizen.
“Subscribers”.
Via Lost Budgie who chirps, “Wait until he discovers that ordinary people in their pyjamas are now putting out “TV Talk Shows” and delivering them via the web…”