johnzo

Intercepted calls show members of the Trump campaign had repeated contact with Russian intelligence before the election, officials said Holy crap. That first sentence is journalist porn. And 19% of the state Russian energy company was just sold to an unnamed purchaser .. and Trump still refuses to show his tax returns (this is custom in the USA, but is not law, and it's about vetting the Presidential finances to make sure that they won't be beholden to outside or financial interests) and the US IC is yelling at anyone who will listen that the Putin regime deliberately interfered in the election. Interesting times.

Would love to see Matt Walter in Blue. I was impressed with how little dropoff there was in the Stamps running game when he spelled Cornish a couple years ago. (course, it's hard to judge talent from time in Calgary what with Huff's golden touch and all)

KBF, where are you? As for democracy failing, we've all had a lesson in American division of powers in the past few days ... Trump people clowning up the White House and being checked by the courts ... the private media holding their feet to the fire and aggressively soliciting leaks from insiders .. and some senators -- ruthless alpha-male Republicans who have been in Washington forever, guys like Roy Blunt .. are rumbling about Senator investigations into Russian penetration of the White House. You can kind of see the founding fathers' design at work -- divide up power between enough ambitious assholes and they'll hold each other accountable. It will be interesting to see if GOP-on-GOP violence continues or escalates. Their discipline has been remarkable since the Gingrich / Clinton era.

Truth. I certainly got lots of stuff that makes my knee jerk. I have to say that I'm appreciating the political conversations on MBB. Everyone online is retreating into their own echo chambers. Having a place where diverse viewpoints can talk in a largely civil manner helps me challenge and clarify my thoughts on lots of different issues. (maybe it seems uncivil here at times, but compared to other places, this place is like the Swiss parliament.)

My memory of Canadian crime reporting is that typically the ethnicity of the accused is not reported, unless the cops are requesting help looking for a suspect. For instance, these recent CBC stories about sex assault charges make no mention of ethnicity. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/navy-lieutenant-kingston-ontario-sexual-assault-1.3956078 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/hamilton-doctor-charged-with-3-more-counts-of-sexual-assault-1.3968607 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/historical-sexual-assault-christian-school-1.3938888 They do identify the accused in terms of their jobs and background, though, so on those grounds identifying the accused as a refugee doesn't really seem to be that unusual. Interesting that the first cases I found when googling for "charged with sexual assault" are all about people in positions of trust and/or authority. Doctors, military officers, pastors. I guess that's the threshold for reporting these things: is the accused prominent enough?

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2016001/article/14642/tbl/tbl05-eng.htm There are about 25,000 sexual assaults of all levels in Canada annually. The vast majority of them receive no media coverage. It's only notorious cases like Ghomeshi that really make a media splash.

Okay. Let me get more specific then, and respectfully suggest then that if TUP wants to get factual about Islam and Muslims and their attitudes in Canada, "billionbibles.com" might not be the best source to cite, seeing as how it's a site that's explicitly about converting Muslims to Christianity. Their page on Halal meat is pretty hysterical -- one shouldn't eat Halal meat because it is slaughtered in the name of Allah and to eat it is idolatry. And their "Allah, the moon god" tick is weird and stupid. Presumably, they also refer to Christmas as "Christmas, the rebranded Saturnalia." The other unattributed cite that TUP uses is from Margaret Wente, who seems legit and who writes about sympathetic subjects. Personally, I am much less concerned about the expansion of Sharia law in Canada than I am about the fact that a young white man was radicalized into murder-spree terrorism, and that is probably the source of my frustration here.

It is very sad that in a thread that's about a massacre of Muslims, we are busy judging Muslims.

Nice summary, DoD.

The thing I want to know is, how did this kid get radicalized? And what should we do to prevent other kids from being similarly radicalized?

Hundreds of Muslim visa-holders detained at US airports, including 13 here in Seattle. Lots of airport protests, New York federal judge declares an injunction against the enforcement of some parts of the anti-Muslim executive order. My wife's out protesting right now, but told me not to come as I'm a green card holder and my legal ability to stay in this country can be revoked without a heck of a lot of due process. That's immigration law for you. **** is getting real. I just signed up for a monthly donation to the ACLU. People were earlier talking about the lies of Donald Trump, how ridiculous they are etc. The most interesting thing I've read about that is that these things are not meant to be true .. they are things that need to be believed in order to set the stage for the next move. The 3-5MM illegal votes is a great example of this. It's laughable, there's no proof, and if HRC picked up five million illegal votes the exit polls would have shown it. It looks like an ego thing for Trump, him raging about losing the popular vote, but my money is that his people are laying the rhetorical groundwork for more voter suppression. Lots more voter suppression. They could take the Texas model nationwide -- in Texas right now, you can be arrested for running a voter registration operation. Listen for people repeating that "3-5 million illegal votes" number, trying to make it take root.

There was a story on slam.ca about Toronto not being in a hurry to hire a general manager ... yikes.

How good is that line when it's healthy? They were missing two canadian starters for a bunch of last year, that'd be tough sledding for any team. (Except for Calgary, because apparently Hufnagel has a special lawn where starting-calibre CFL players grow like dandelions.)

Reinbold has been a good STC, hasn't he? I think the Duron Carter signing makes sense in one light. The guy is like Milt* in that he'll get his thousand yards and his TDs no matter who is throwing the ball. Carter could be a fantastic security blanket for a baby QB. All he needs to do to succeed is be a good teammate and not say things that make his baby QB punch him. * of course he is unlike Milt in just about every other way.

EXCLUSIVE FIRST GLIMPSE FROM INSIDE THE NEW MOSAIC STADIUM AS IT IS READIED FOR GAME DAY:

If we were having this conversation in 2008 we'd be talking about how the Bush years destroyed the Republican party -- it's a very similar dynamic to 2016. American politics, for the past couple of decades or so, have been extremely cyclical. That said, it was Republican dominance in state governments in 2010 that allowed them to gerrymander the hell out of the House and cement their decade of dominance there. If Democrats had more state game, the House would be in play. That's the important thing for the next four years -- make the Dems more competitive in the minors, make the federal House look more like the popular vote, and then start the sepinas. As an example of gerrymandering: Pennsylvania has some seriously funky looking congressional districts. Here's a map of how the southeast part of the state is carved up. Check out districts 7 and 16. Especially 7, it's the green area splotched at random through the southern half of the region. In 2012, Dems won the popular vote 50-48 but only won 7/19 seats. In 2016, the Dems had even bigger problems, they lost the popular congressional vote and got completely skunked, winning only 5/19. So yeah, like KBF says, much work needs to be done on the Dem side.

That doesn't sound like a fake number. The Democrats have been eating it lately. A lot of their problems in the House are due to gerrymandering ... Republican state governments have arranged congressional districts along ridiculous partisan lines. But if the Democrats weren't getting trounced at the state level, the GOP wouldn't have that opportunity, so yeah, you're right. Lots of work to do.

Is Jones gonna be VP / GM / HC / DC again this year? Are we sure that Chris Jones isn't Mike Kelly in a Chris Jones mask? (though Kelly was not the VPFO in 2009, and he had the sense to bring in a dedicated OC during the season) Makes me think about a recent article about Blake Wheeler, he said that one of his jobs as Jets captain was to rein in players who were trying to do too much... maybe the Roughrider brass needs to bring in Blake Wheeler to help Jones get his mind right.

KBF, you're right in one way ... this is all fresh and new and we'll see if this energy level is sustainable. People get distracted and complacent, especially lefties. Follow-through is not a strong suit here (and I say this as someone who's pretty left-wing.) And even if there's a lot of enthusiasm, sometimes that isn't enough. This country re-elected Bush in 2004 despite very vigorous opposition by the left. First election I ever volunteered for. Lucky, life as a Bomber fan has conditioned me to heartbreak. In another way, you're wrong -- the US elects the entire Congress and a third of the Senate every two years. Next federal election is next year in 2018. Plus there are regular state and local elections, which in a lot of ways are even more important than the federal elections. There is a ****-ton of democracy down here! What I'm saying is, it won't take three whole years to see if that energy can be harvested to useful political purpose.

From your lips to God's ears, man, but alas the US Constitution says we got four more years of this, barring death, resignation, or impeachment (and then we get Pence, who is a tool as well, just a different kind) Huge women's marches and rallies all across the world today .... at least 150K in Seattle ... hopefully that energy will rejuvenate the opposition down here.

What's a good over/under for the number of different Rider quarterbacks who start games in 2017? 3 sounds about right to me.

Durant throws Jones under the bus. http://leaderpost.com/sports/football/cfl/saskatchewan-roughriders/darian-durant-comes-out-firing-after-signing-with-montreal Money quote: Alienating the one guy who is absolutely critical to your team's turnaround? That is some top calibre people skills right there.

"Eight year olds, Dude."

Nice, Floyd. Take that burn to the doctor because it is sick.

Lulay's a Grey Cup winner who's probably got some game left and he's on a contract that lets the Lions pay Jennings like a starter. Doesn't seem like a guy Wally would part with, although Wally is known for being a little ahead of the curve on cutting veterans.