YOU WANTED THE BEST AND YOU GOT IT!

The hottest band in the world ... KISS!

Edit: So, Whitworth wants context. Forget it. Just appreciate the beauty, the majesty, the awesomeness ...

Belgium Beer Badness

So, proposed layoffs have sparked full-on employee blockades at various Anheuser-Busch InBev plants and, well, to make a long story short, beer stockpiles are critically low. (Reuters/Time)

Silly, silly, silly employees. So unreasonable. So what if brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev wants to cut 800 jobs after posting a $1.5 billion third-quarter profit? That's capitalism, sweetheart. It's not supposed to have a responsibility to the real, human kind of people.

Now let's share a band-together-and-hate-unions moment--it's the Saskatchewan way! Right? We support union-bashing legislation here, remember? Good, just checking.

Wicked, wicked unions! They're trying to take your beer away!

How Bad Are The Conservatives?

Murray Dobbin dredges the public record for Conservative fanaticism and pulls forth the festering, lunatic beliefs of Stockwell Day:

Where would Day be on the prorogation issue? In 1995 he mused publicly about canceling the fall sitting of the legislature because "The longer we're in here, the temptation is too great to come up with more laws and more regulation." Back when he was running the Bentley school, Day claimed that democratic governments "...represent the ultimate deification of man, which is the very essence of humanism and totally alien to God's word."

This bunch of Conservatives are deluded and delusional. They cling to medieval religious beliefs, are mean spirited and anti-democracy and are utterly unfit to govern. They must be turfed. (Rabble)

Death Race 2010

In the last nine days there's been ten pedestrian fatalities in the greater Toronto area. (Toronto Star)

Six In The Morning

1 OBAMA CLOBBERS WALL STREET WITH NEW RULES Huh. Sounds like someone's a little bitchy about yesterday's bullshit in Massachusetts. Good. It's about time. (Guardian)

2 SATAN DEADLOCKED WITH CYNICISM The Liberals, the party of moral cancer, are just about tied in the polls with Stephen Harper's Conservatives, the party of ultimate evil. Hooray? (CBC)

3 REST IN PEACE Canadian writer Paul Quarrington has died of lung cancer at the age of 56. His famous book was Whale Music, about a fictional rock and roller. (Globe And Mail)

4 NEW GM FOR THE RIDERS? Are we really hiring someone from...Winnipeg? Ewww. (Regular readers will recall I'm a recovered Winnipegger.)

5 THE MIDDLE-CLASS TERRORIST SITCH Haroon Siddiqui lays it out. Shorty version: understand the problem, engage the Muslim community, don't live in the fantasy world that says Western foreign policy and Islamic anger aren't connected. Good read, go read it. (Toronto Star)

6 AUSCHWITZ SIGN RETURNED It's in rough shape, but it's back. (Kraow Post)

Pick of the Day: Woodrow Lloyd Lecture

Transforming Power: New Paths to Social and Political Change. Pretty provocative title, eh? Because obviously new paths are needed if progressives hope to regain ground lost to the reactionary right in recent decades and begin to push forward again. I mean, let's face it, the last 30 or so years have been pretty bleak. Stephen Harper as head of the National Citizen's Coalition, I can live with. But Stephen Harper as prime minister of a majority Conservative government in Ottawa, no thanks.

This man, and his ideological counterparts elsewhere in Canada and around the world, must be stopped. But how? Sure, there's been the occasional victory. But there's been way more setbacks. Outgunned as it is financially, the Left needs to be as smart and focussed with its resources as it can to defeat the Radical Right.

Speaking at this lecture, which is named after former Saskatchewan premier and long-time NDP cabinet stalwart Woodrow Lloyd, is Judy Rebick. Currently the CAW Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University, Rebick has roots in social activism dating back to the '70s, and is a co-founder of the activist website rabble.ca.

Further to her talk tonight, which is at Campion College's Riffel Auditorium at the University of Regina at 7:30 p.m., here's one last tidbit to chew on from the press release: "Globalization and mass communication technology are revolutionizing our understanding of power and producing profound new ideas about social and political life."

You want an example? You're reading it. A year and a half ago, prairie dog didn't have a blog. Now we do. As many individuals and organizations have discovered, maintaining a good blog is hard work. We've done an okay job, I think, and it offers us another outlet to be critically engaged with all the debates and struggles that are currently going on. But it was only a few months ago, if you can believe it, that we joined Facebook. And Twitter too. And we're still developing a website. What other paths to reach people are out there? Stuff like that is probably part of what Rebick will talk about.

And if you're looking for a place to chat after and have a wobbly pop, Chad Kichula & the Bystanders are at McNally's Tavern. Ironic, eh? "The Bystanders" part of the band's name, I mean.