For a Monday

Because Monday is the stepping stone to the next week-end.



The province of Quebec, with its dwindling native-born birthrate and excess of transfer payments, has proven yet again how utterly incapable it is of handling over-indulged "students":







If I were affected by the radical action of these fat cats, I would form a group of people who were likewise affected and sue. Apparently, the students and the unions that back them have the time and money to make amends:

As the largest group representing striking students rejected the government's latest offer, QMI Agency learned that the organization is receiving money from outside Quebec. 

At least two Ontario branches of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) voted in April to give the Quebec student association, ASSE, a total of $30,000. 

ASSE is the main group in the larger student federation called CLASSE, which represents roughly half of the 170,000 students on strike in Quebec. 

CLASSE announced Sunday morning on Twitter that it unanimously rejected Quebec Premier Jean Charest's latest tuition offer, which he made on Friday. 

Nancy MacBain, staff representative for CUPE local 3906, which represents teaching employees at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., confirmed to QMI Agency on Sunday that the local recently voted to give $10,000. 

Wayne Dealy, chair of the CUPE union representing education workers at the University of Toronto, told QMI Agency that his local gave $20,000.

(Merci)



On the American election front: Palin plays kingmaker, Obama is faaaaaaaaaabulous and Romney has more sway with women voters than Obama (RE: faaaaaaaaaabulous):

Just days after Palin’s endorsement, which gave the Fischer campaign the statewide name identification it craved, Fischer surged in the polls, taking votes from Bruning and Stenberg, and is now within the margin of error before Tuesday’s primary.  Palin’s endorsement seems to have coalesced the anti-establishment and anti-Bruning forces around Fischer. 

**

One in four registered voters say they are less likely to vote for President Obama in November because he expressed support same-sex marriage, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll.

**

I expect the media to be in a surly mood tonight. After months of manufactured "GOP War on Women" silliness, a new CBS/NYT poll (!) finds Romney leading Obama 46-44% among woman voters. Mind you, that isn't GOP woman or even independent women, but ALL women voters. 

More importantly, today's poll finds a notable shift among women in just the last month. In April, Obama was leading Romney by 6% among women. No other group saw an 8 point shift in their support. 

Turns out women's top concern is the same as men's: The Economy. All the contrived outrage about contraceptives and women's health can't mask the fact that 73% of voters listed either the economy or the federal deficit as their number on issue. 

Looks like its going to be a long, hot summer for Team Obama.

But... but... the Republican war on women....


... is a figment of the Democratic imagination.




One way to cut costs is to rid the school board of inherently racist literature:

The Toronto District School Board may close some cafeterias, raise the costs of continuing education and hike permit fees for after-hours use of its facilities to make up for a $58 million budget shortfall, a board spokeswoman says.

The board will be releasing a list of recommended cuts this afternoon to let parents know what is on the chopping block before trustees debate the issue at an emergency board meeting on June 13, she said.


The TDSB is facing a $110 million budget shortfall for 2012-2013. Previously announced cuts, including slashing 200 secondary school teaching jobs, have already reduced that gap to $58 million.

Because he's Rex Murphy:

Everybody acting like affirmative action hires are something to be ashamed of and denied, something rudely pushed aside as unthinkable, is baffling. In every other context, affirmative action and its attendant policies and protocols are looked upon as the secular world’s highest forms of public virtue. Companies and institutions boast about their so-called equity policies and minority placements. Does not every university, in every hire, on every bulletin board, and in every online notice — spell out every so proudly that applications from minorities and special groups will be given “special” attention, or are specifically urged to hire. Does this not right historical wrongs? Is this not part of enriching the educational experience?

And yet, any suggestion that a particular individual may have benefitted from these wonders of our modern age is treated as a slap in the face to said individual. How can a policy be a triumph in enactment but an insult in execution?

I think it’s because, at the highest levels of the educational system, even those who ostensibly support the policy know it’s hollow and false, or at least that it has outgrown what tenuous utility or point it might once have had. Even the systems that use affirmative action, the employers who trot it out so ostentatiously, and the politicians who continue to maintain it, know also that it constitutes a form of inequity in itself.

Perhaps, finally, people are waking up to the idea of how pernicious it is to see individuals — in all their scattered, singular, unrepeatable, distinct and uniquely shaped lives — only through the lens of some static racial or historical construct. We steal from the glory of individuals as individuals when we broker their careers or their lives through this blunt and reductive category of group identity.

What do the professional identity grievance mongers have to offer the world but the incessant indignation? Perhaps not occupational or intellectual merit. Certainly not ethical merit.


And now, some animal photobombs. Enjoy.