Enter early and often!

The Toronto Library Worker's Union is sponsoring a contest to show how much people love the library after braying philistine Doug "Tweedledum" Ford suggested close a bunch of them or even selling them off to the private sector because he wasn't sure who this Margaret Atwood person was and anyways the money would be better spent on luring a new NFL franchise to town or some such crap. The first prize in the contest is "quality time" with Margaret Atwood or Michael Ondaatje or one of several other authors.
Now, the Toronto Star tells us that a conservative group has started a similar contest. Entrants have to write an essay or make a video explaining why lower taxes would be good for Toronto. First prize is a lunch date with Doug Ford or Sun typist and failed political candidate Sue Ann Levy. While a quick look at the Mayor's brother tells you that he knows his food, I'm not sure if hot wings and barley sammiches at the Etobicoke Hooters will be to everyone's taste. Mind you, I suppose it would be a step up from whatever Sue Ann managed to catch and kill on the way to work that morning. (if you think I'm linking to either of these dingbats, forget it. I'd sooner canoodle with Crusty Blatchford.)  The contest is here.
I would encourage all of you to enter. I'm going to suggest to them lower taxes would be better for Toronto because then there wouldn't be enough money for the government to spend on baton charges against crowds singing O Canada or sending police to harrass and jail people for peacefully protesting or kettling and arresting people who happen to live near where a peaceful demonstration took place. Not only that but lower taxes in Toronto would also mean less money to provide services and shelters for homeless people, so the government could just take the cheaper option of giving them busfare from downtown out to North York and Etobicoke to panhandle where the people with money live. These suggestions may not win me that first prize lunch , but you never know.
I'm guessing second prize is two lunch dates.
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The Re-education Camps Can't Come Soon Enough

Have a look at this bit by Cenk and the Young Turks on Neil Boortz and "human debris" and tell me that the world wouldn't be a better place if the loudmouth asshole wing of the conservative movement just sat down and shut up, even if just for a week or two. No one should be surprised that Boortz would say such stupid offensive shit. He has a long, long history of saying stupid, offensive shit. But I am surprised anyone would want to advertise on his program or carry his program on their transmitter.

Civil Cold War turning hot?

The recent shooting in a Tennessee Unitarian-Universalist Church is a tragic event and as distasteful as it is to use a tragedy to make a political point, there is no escaping the facts in this case:

Knoxville Police Department Officer Steve Still requested the search warrant after interviewing Adkisson. who was subdued by several church members after firing three rounds from a 12-gauge shotgun into the congregation.

Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."

Adkisson told Still that "he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."...Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The
O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

It was a politically driven murder, in that the man who committed the crime specifically targeted the church and its congregation because of their politics. I wonder why.


"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
-Ann Coulter, August 26, 2002

"I'd hang every lawyer that went down to Guantanamo"
-Michael Savage, June 19, 2008

"In this recurring nightmare of a presidency, we have a national debate about whether he "did it," even though all sentient people know he did. Otherwise there would be debates only about whether to impeach or assassinate. "
-Ann Coulter, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, 1998

The definitive list is here (Special thanks to David Neiwert, who has been shining a light on this kind of rhetoric for years)

I'm not saying that everyone who reads a book by Sean Hannity is a potential mass murderer or that watching Bill O'Reilly leads ignorant alcoholics to try to gun down liberals any more than video games cause school shootings. What I am saying is that the constant eliminationist rhetoric of the right does push some people in that direction. I'm not advocating censorship, I'm advocating responsible speech. I love passionate invective as much as the next guy, but when you start seriously advocating killing people on a radio broadcast or a television show, you've crossed a very serious threshold and ought to be held responsible in a court of law.