This week in shadenfruede, hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance

First, conservative propagandist Kory Teneycke finds someone has placed a pistol with a single round on his desk at  voluntarily steps down from Quebecor Media for the good of the team. Thankfully, Rupert Murdoch-wannabe Pierre Karl Peladeau was able to find someone without any obvious political bias to replace Kory. How very fair and balanced of him.
The week got even better when PKP's  Sun chain of "newspapers for people who can't read" found out there's no one "Better than Ezra" at getting them waist-deep in the big muddy of legal quicksand. I should probably start a betting pool on how long it takes for Ezra to complain that this is censorship and just another example of antiSemitism on the part of the radical left.
My personal favorite though, was lifelong professional politician John Baird, a graduate of Queens University (Canada's Yale) who has never had a job outside of politics either at Queens Park or Parliament Hill, blaming the failure of the Conservative government to get rid of the gun registry on "Toronto elites".
Uh, yeah, right, you just keep digging John. You really have to admire the balls of a secular, gay, vegetarian graduate of an elite university who grew up in the Ottawa suburbs and who has never had a real job, trying to make a what he thinks is a populist appeal to the perceived base of his party - angry, rural, religious, uneducated, blue collar, Toronto-hating Preston Manning fans from Alberta. Not that there is anything wrong with being any of those things, but Baird sort of reminds me of Alan Keyes and Ted Haggart.
Not to be outbrassed, Stephen Harper's office this week rapped the knuckles of the Parti Quebecois for criticizing the Montreal Canadiens over their lack of French-Canadian players and claiming the team was a tool of federalism.

"No political party should play wedge politics with the Montreal Canadiens," Dimitri Soudas, Mr. Harper's director of communications, said in an email.

It is only natural that Dimiti Soudas and Stephen Harper would object to anyone else playing wedge politics. After all, no one likes to see their monopoly threatened. Also, I'm curious as to why only the National Toast Post seems to think this story is major news and has had an endless stream of stories about the "controversey", while most other media outlets seem to be treating it as the silly-season one-day story that it is.

Karma's a bitch - Payback edition
Once upon a time, I worked here. I didn't like it much, mostly because the people I worked for were, not to put too fine a point on it, dishonest pricks. Naturally, I was very upset last fall when all these bad things happened to worse people. Imagine how I feel today.

Police to arrest ex-president of Nova over embezzlement
The Yomiuri Shimbun
OSAKA--Osaka prefectural police plan to arrest on Tuesday former President Nozomu Sahashi of the failed language school chain Nova Corp. on suspicion of instructing the firm's accountants to misappropriate the reserve funds of the firm's employees, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Monday.
Regarding "Ochanoma Ryugaku," a system through which Nova students could take lessons from home, the police have learned a large amount of money was sent from Nova to a communications firm owned by Sahashi.
According to sources close to the investigation and others, Sahashi instructed employees in late July to transfer 320 million yen from the reserve fund to Nova's bank account through a Nova Kikaku account he once managed.
Meanwhile, the Osaka Labor Bureau will send papers to prosecutors by the end of the week on Nova and Sahashi, over failing to pay its workers about 105 million yen, equivalent to salaries for about 400 Japanese employees and foreign instructors.

Happy Feet - Penguin Dance - The top video clips of the week are here

Anyone else for champagne?

another one bites the dust
First they came for Tucker Carlson, now John Gibson -- when will it be O'Rielly's turn?

Denied!

A little music for our special friend His Lordship Conrad, Baron Black of Crossharbour

I love the smell of justice in the morning, it smell like...schadenfreude.

New Fish
Let's hope his lardship looks good in stripes. Ex-Canadian and media baron Conrad "Lord Tubby" Black has been sentenced to six and a half years in a low security Florida prison, proving that no one is above the law. Of course, it is the minimum possible sentence he could have received and he will be serving it in a low security prison, where he is more likely to get tennis elbow than be shanked in the yard, so William Zanzinger Conrad Black is being dealt with in the way we have come to expect from the justice system in "class free" America. Thank Jebus he didn't do anything really bad like get a consensual drunken blow job from a fellow teenager or get caught with drugs while brown.
No confirmation yet on when Lady Barbarella Amiel is buying him cartons of cigarettes or soap on a rope for Christmas.

Regrets, he's had a few
I missed this one last week as I was busy blowing out birthday candles before the kitchen caught fire, but apparently Conrad Black regrets giving up his Canadian citizenship.

Black, who might have faced a lighter sentence if he'd been tried in Canada, admitted to Men's Vogue that he wished he hadn't surrendered his Canadian citizenship -- after a public battle of wills with former prime minister Jean Chretien -- to take up a seat in the House of Lords.
"I do regret giving up my Canadian citizenship," he said, "but I always said I would
take it back."

Well, boo-frickin'-hoo yer lordship, I guess the House of Lords kind of regrets it too. I mean, really, when you get turfed from the Conservative side of the House of Lords for being an arrogant, autocratic robber baron and crook maybe its time to rein in the hubris just a smidgen. As for your Canadian citizenship, which you happily tossed aside to become a titled foreign aristocrat, you might be willing to "take it back" but I don't see the line forming to sign the petition to make you an offer.

Black is to be sentenced on Nov. 30. for obstruction of justice and three counts of mail fraud. He faces a maximum of 35 years in federal prison. Start chilling the champagne.

More Schadenfreudilliousness!
Early predictions had His Nibs Conrad Black, Lord Tubby of Fleet Street, being hit with a sentence of not more than three years, despite his conviction on three counts of fraud and one of obstruction of justice. The maximum sentence would be five years for each fraud conviction and 20 years for trying to destroy the evidence stored at his company's Toronto headquarters. A tidy 35 years if he get the maximum and since it's U.S. federal time, Tubby would have to serve 85% of it thanks to decades of conservatives "getting tough on crime and ending our revolving-door prison system."
Word now is that instead of the earlier predicted 1 to 3 years, he could be looking at 10-20 years in the crowbar hotel. How's that Canadian citizenship you renounced looking to you now Lord Pork Chop of New Fish? How you enjoy the creamed chipped beef and lima beans -- remember, if you give them your dessert they may not shank you in the exercise yard just for shits and giggles.
The long story in the Globe and Mail on the plucky-little-billionaire-who-could's effort to show a stiff upper lip and convince the Canadian power elite of his blamelessness ends on a paragraph that is music to my ears:

Prosecutors estimate that even using the $3-million figure, he faces 15 to 20 years in prison. One source familiar with the case had this to say when asked about how much time he can expect: "There is no way Black is going to get less than 10 years."

At least he will be able to get Lady Barbarella that handcrafted vanity licence plate she's always wanted.