Mother Nature poops on Bruce, again...

There we were, thinking we'd beat winter. The meadows were more brown than white, and the weather forecasts were promising.

Then, this.

Woke up this morning, looked out the bedroom window, and everything was white. It snowed last night, and it's been snowing all day long. By golly, I think the kids might be enjoying another "snow day" on Monday, if this keeps up.

That would be snow day number sixteen for this winter, if my count is anywhere near accurate.

That'll create quite the conundrum for the school board. Not that they actually give a shit, but they're quite concerned about giving the appearance that they do.

According to the latest "sunshine list," the plagiarist in charge of the local school board pulled down a cool $230,000+ last year. That's some sweet coin for a moron who can't figure out where one idea ends and another begins, especially when she's plagiarising.

Plagiarism aside, the school board rallies to the banner of "credit integrity" whenever they get cornered on the fact that winter weather can cause students to lose almost 20% of their classroom time. Nevermind the fact that they routinely issue high school diplomas to eighteen and nineteen and twenty year old kids who need a calculator to do grade three arithmetic and have grade four literacy skills, if that.

They actually put forward an initiative to "end the culture of snow days" a few years back.

Ya, like they're gonna control the weather?

Fortunately for the students in this school district, snow days are called by the down-to-earth folks who run the school buses, and not by the morons who run the school board.

Elizabeth Renzetti delivers tutorial in shoddy journalism

Fifty years ago, when Nancy Pelosi was already clawing  her way into the upper reaches of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Party was known as the party of civil rights. By 2016, it was instead known as the party of Wall Street, and Nancy Pelosi is now the most powerful woman in America.

That's why it's hard to square her actual history of connivance with money and power with the portrait painted in Renzetti's editorial in today's Globe and Mail, where Pelosi is rendered an icon of progressivism.

Renzetti seems aware of the cognitive dissonance echoing through her article. The "progressive members of her own party (i.e. the DSA contingent) think she's part of the old guard..."

That's because she most assuredly is a member of the old guard! Who could think otherwise?

Yet, "they fall into line behind her when she demands it." She is "terrifying to her opponents, both Republicans and rebellious members of her own party" (i.e. the DSA contingent).

The most interesting question in US politics at the moment is how long will it take for the true progressives to either mute their progressivism, or get terrorized out of the party. My hunch is that the old guard will effectively muzzle them... forget the wealth tax, forget public health care, forget free post-secondary education; focus instead on symbolic gestures like clapping back at Trump!

That's "resistance," Pelosi style!

Renzetti also gets a shot at a book review this week, giving us the low-down on former NYT executive editor Jill Abramson's tell-all, "Merchants of Truth."

Alas, the biggest story around this title for the past week has been a plagiarism scandal! Seems the esteemed NYT alum who penned "Merchants of Truth" especially likes lifting the work of students at Toronto's own Ryerson Journalism School!

That's the kind of dishonesty that empowers those who want to paint the journalism profession with the "fake news" label. The fact that Renzetti can pen a two thousand word book review without so much as a single line acknowledging the plagiarism controversy strikes me as a little... dishonest.

Plagiarism or not?

Here's a story that appeared in an Abu Dhabi newspaper and online in March 2012;

The Syrian schoolboys who sparked a revolution.

Here's a story from the Globe and Mail from December 2016;

The graffiti kids who sparked the Syrian war.

I briefly noted the similarities in a blog post at the time, Propornot, and then forgot about it.

Today on the back page of the front section of my Globe and Mail I noticed a full page congratulatory message from the Globe to itself. That story won Story of the Year from the Foreign Press Association! Here's what Globe editor-in-chief David Walmsley has to say; "This global win is a recognition of what happens when you ask a simple question - how did the Syrian war begin? - and allow a journalist to follow the thread through all its twists and turns."

Hmm...

So how did the Syrian war begin?

Answering that question would entail a close look at events in Daraa in February and March of 2011. About ten thousand of the twelve thousand words in the Globe story are given over to historical background, what's happened to the protagonists since, and editorializing about who the good guys and the bad guys might be.

 Insofar as the story is about the nuts and bolts of how the Syrian war actually began, the Globe's story is virtually identical to the story published in Abu Dhabi almost five years before.

What I find more than a little precious is that Mark Mackinnon, the writer of the Globe story, claims he spent six months getting to the bottom of the events of February and March, when all he had to do was read the Abu Dhabi story, which takes five minutes or less to find online.

Like I said; hmm...