Sun News;

Union members are closer to uncovering how their dues are spent after legislation passed Wednesday night that would force labour bosses to disclose their salaries and bonuses and how much is steered to political activities.
[…]
“It will be thrown down by the courts. I have no doubt about that. And it’s just red meat for the Reform party base. It’s pure demagoguery,” said NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair.
“It’s inapplicable. It will never work. It’s going to be a bureaucratic nightmare and this from a government that says it’s against red tape.”

Related: Serenity now!

Money, money everywhere…

In general, there has been a misallocation of resources by the people who write the checks and hold the purse-strings in Republican politics. Nothing illustrates the disconnect between money and brains in the GOP than a fact highlighted by Jimmie Bise: Charlie Crist raised $4.3 million in a single three-month period of 2009.
The more I think about that, the angrier I get. Who were these more-money-than-brains people who wrote those checks for Crist? Did they just take the word of John Cornyn and Jim Greer that Crist was the man to beat in the Florida GOP Senate primary?
A fool and his money are soon parted, and there are times when the Republican Party resembles nothing so much as a scam for separating rich fools from their money.
For $4.3 million, you could have paid 86 bloggers $50,000 a year.

Related: “Five Bloggers I’d Like To See On FOX News”

Via Legal Insurrection.

Financial Post:

The IMF plan comes as Australia and Canada have shown more signs of stability in the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis than the world’s biggest developed economies. While the U.S., to the U.K. to Japan have been coping with increasing debt loads, deficits in Canada and Australia are forecast to be below 5% of gross domestic product in 2012 and are expected to shrink.
“It really helps to cement the stability of these currencies,” Ravi Bharadwaj, a market analyst in Washington at Western Union Business Solutions, a unit of Western Union Co., said in a telephone interview.

(h/t Kevin B.)

The story begins…

…on an evening in January in 1994 in a little town called Preeceville, Saskatchewan. Garry Breitkreuz (pronounced Bright-Krites) was then a new member of Canada’s Parliament. He had been elected in October of 1993. Preeceville has about 1,000 residents. Garry was excited. This would be his first town-hall meeting. The topic was about a new gun-control bill, C-68, brought in by the then Liberal Government. It included the creation of a long-gun registry. “I’ll never forget that first meeting,” says Garry. “Even though it was 39 degrees below zero outside the place was packed and the people heated.”
Now it should be noted that Garry was hardly a gun-rights activist. Not yet anyway. Sure, he grew up in a rural Saskatchewan home and had a .30-30-caliber rifle he used to hunt deer with. “But when it came to the gun issue,” says Garry, “I was very naïve.”
Naïve indeed. Garry started the meeting off by saying to the crowd that “this long-gun registry seems to make sense. Maybe it’ll catch a few criminals….” He barely got started in this manner when his constituents made it clear they didn’t agree.

The article was first published in February, but it’s still worth the read. (h/t Ron)

RT @mprandyhoback: Just announced! As of Oct. 31st (with the exception of QC) all long-gun registry data has been destroyed.

— Stephen Taylor (@stephen_taylor) November 1, 2012

Interviewer: You’re a criminal.
Black: No, I’m not.
Interviewer: Yes you are, you’ve been convicted. You’re a criminal.
Black: No. You’re a gullible fool. You’re a priggish, gullible British fool.

h/t R Black

Battle Honour, “DETROIT”:
56th Field Artillery Regiment (RCA), Brantford, Ont.;
The Essex and Kent Scottish, Windsor, Ont.;
The Lincoln and Welland Regiment, St. Catharines, Ont.;
The Queen’s York Rangers (1st American Regiment) (RCAC), Toronto, Ont.;
The Royal Canadian Regiment, Petawawa, Ont.;
The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (Wentworth Regiment), Hamilton, Ont.;
The Royal Newfoundland Regiment
And Today in Quebec: Update DEFENCE OF CANADA – 1812-1815 – DÉFENSE DU CANADA
The Royal Newfoundland Regiment;
The Queen’s York Rangers;
The Royal Canadian Regiment;
The Canadian Grenadier Guards;
The Royal 22nd Regiment.
Thank you to all our vets and enjoy the Mess today.

….would you like a really good talking point to further conservative politics? – PSAC.
Today’s Sun News Network Poll:

Following PSAC’s public announcement of support for the PQ, Ottawa MP Pierre Poilievre says he will push for legislation to allow workers to opt out of paying union dues. Would you support such legislation?

Who would have thought the Public Service Alliance of Canada was a part of the vast right-wing conspiracy.

The author of America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered In the Obamacrats) with Ed Driscoll – “a video featuring David earned him 549 likes’ — and over five thousand dislikes from YouTube’ viewers.”

Former Marine detained for Facebook posts.
(h/t Occam)

From the wildly objective Columbia Journalism Review…

Occasional advertising boycotts of Rush Limbaugh’s program notwithstanding, political talk radio has been wildly successful in recent years—in terms of both revenue and ratings. Of course, political talk radio generally means conservative political talk radio, especially since the demise of the liberal Air America network in 2010. The most popular political talkers, like Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, are all conservative. So you might be inclined to think that political talk radio’s recent success reflects increasingly conservative values among the general public.

But noooooooo!!!

Oh, the humanity!

Fiscal restraint is rippling through Canada’s national statistical agency, prompting it to start slicing surveys and warn staff of cost cuts and impending layoffs in what it calls a “year of sacrifice” at the organization.
Not only is Statistics Canada facing reductions from the federal budget of about 8 per cent, it is also grappling with an “unprecedented” drop in revenue from other government departments that fund surveys, its chief statistician says.

h/t Maz2

Arby’s hates conservatives.

…. SDA gets results!

Draft regulations requiring ammunition be locked away will be struck down, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said Thursday, an announcement that has gun owners breathing a sigh of relief.
“My understanding is that those regulations, in respect of the storage of ammunition, will not proceed as proposed,” he said.

Send him a thank you note.

Don’t retreat. Reload.

What can explain liberals’ widespread failure to anticipate the Court’s wariness of the mandate? Research conducted by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests one possible answer: Liberals just aren’t as good as conservatives and libertarians at understanding how their opponents think. Haidt helped conduct research that asked respondents to fill out questionnaires about political narratives—first responding based on their own beliefs, but then responding as if trying to mimic the beliefs of their political opponents. “The results,” he writes in the May issue of Reason, “were clear and consistent.” Moderates and conservatives were the most able to think like their liberal political opponents. “Liberals,” he reports, “were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as ‘very liberal.’”

Program Reminder: The bout begins shortly on Sun News Network.
Update: Watching the pre-game show, I must say that Ezra’s colour commentary is surprisingly even handed.