The photo above shows Tom Osborne and Kathy Dunderdale in ostensibly happier times, on election night in October 2011, when the PCs won their third straight mandate in Newfoundland and Labrador. They actually weren't that close at the time, as both have confirme in the last few days, following Osborne's defection on Thursday to sit as an Independent in the house of assembly.
One of the things we've learned over the last few days is a bit about the communcations strategy inside the provincial government, including the government's move to screen and decide when an MHA can speak publicly on what topic. Osborne cited it as one of the reasons why he's disillusioned with the party to which he had belonged through his adult life.
"Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law." - Hubert Humphrey
(As funny as I find this remark from the former U.S. vice-president, I'm happy to note that my own mother-in-law and I have defied the stereotypical relationship!)
This is video posted today by The Associated Press, involving an incident that's all over the news, of police officers using pepper spray on Occupy demonstrators at University of California, Davis. Regardless of views on the Occupy movement and police response, it's compelling video.
"The view that all actors are undisciplined and self-indulgent is rubbish. If you want to see that kind of behaviour, come to parliament." - Glenda Jackson
The leaders' debate in the provincial election was held tonight. At CBC, we livestreamed the video and added a moderated chatroom alongside. It was a lot of fun; my main role was to chip in with some context of what the leaders were saying. The chat is archived here; feel free to have a look.
Just days after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Charlie Chaplin was already shooting The Great Dictator, which came out in the following year. Chaplin had been troubled by the rise of Hitler through the Thirties, as well as how other nations dealt with him. His film was not only a broad comic swipe at Hitler and fascism, but a moving message in its own right - particularly for the speech that Chaplin's character, a Jew who is mistaken for a madman, gives at the climax of the film.
The speech, in which Chaplin praises technology as a potential force for good but decries "these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts." The speech has been quoted often (it's in this American Rhetoric collection) and has been making the rounds lately, perhaps in the spirit of the 9/11 anniversary.
"Canada has no cultural unity, no linguistic unity, no religious unity, no economic unity, no geographic unity. All it has is unity." - Kenneth E. Boulding
This is interesting: the audio of a debate on the merits (or lack) of the Catholic church between author Stephen Fry and politician Ann Widdecombe, with an animated visual presentation laid over it.
To get a sense of how the animation affects the content, here's the original video, produced in 2009 for the debating series Intelligence Squared. [The animation, by the way, was released in July.]
I've been reading with shock over the last day of the attacks in Norway, apparently by a single man whose extreme right-wing vision for his country led him to bomb a government building and then open fire at a youth camp.
"We are a small country nation, but a proud nation. No one shall bomb us to silence, no one shall shoot us to silence, no one shall scare us out of being Norway."
Well, many of them are funny. David Olive of The Toronto Star rounded up a whack of photos from the campaign trail that are worth a peek, even as all the ballot boxes are put away till next time.
I'll let you in on a little trade secret: I collect pictures of Confederation Building. It's not a fetish; I use them for what we call a topstory image (also known as a headline image) for a story placed on our regional landing page at CBC. We try to add such an image to every story we produce, largely because of the popularity of how our news run is presented on smartphones like the iPhone. [Click here to get a sense of what I mean.]
Confederation Building is a frequently sought subject, because it's the pre-eminent symbol of the Newfoundland and Labrador government, not to mention the home of the legislature. Hence, I'm always looking for a new angle, a different backdrop, and something seasonally appropriate. I snapped this one myself this week.
This is the fourth federal election campaign since I started this blog, which sounds quasi-impressive to those outside Canada and who probably don't know the first of those campaigns was in 2004. Canada has elections about as frequently as some people have oil changes.
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