It Appears to be Petulant Week in Calgary

Perhaps Ralph Klein and Stephen Harper, like me, are just upset that the Flames bombed out of the Stanley Cup playoffs and the hated Oilers are one win away from the finals.

To be clear about this, neither Klein nor Harper is entirely to blame for their respective spats. It does require serious chutzpah to go to the province footing more or less all of the equalization bill and demand even more money, as the have-not premiers are apparently proposing to do. This is especially true if you're either a Nova Scotian or a Newfoundlander. And the national media is being equally silly in its spat with Harper-by and large, no one cares about the journalistic process except journalists.

That said, both of these guys have declared that they're going to take their ball and go home, which is decidedly childish, as well as impossible in Klein's case. As for Harper, I can't say that he's made a great first impression-he strikes me as paranoid, control-freakish and thin-skinned, none of which are good characteristics for a Prime Minister.

The drumbeat gets a little louder

You might have heard that the Iranians, being crazy, are going to make religious minorities wear strips of cloth on their clothes identifying them as non-Muslims. According to the stories, Christians would wear red, Zoroastrians blue, and Jews were to wear yellow badges, a colour with resonances I'm sure I don't have to explain to an audience as intelligent and attractive as yourselves.

Don't believe the hype.

The thing about false stories like this is that once they're out there they colour all future conversations about the country they're made about. As Jim Henley puts it, when-not if-the campaign to bomb Iran NOW NOW NOW gets fully underway, a number of people are going to half remember this fake story and say "Good riddance." That may be so for other, non-fake reasons, but bombing Iran remains an absolutely lunatic idea, and saying so and being heard just got a little louder.

The Return of Jaysblogging

The Jays have sent Josh Towers and Russ Adams to Syracuse.

There's no word yet on who's coming back the other way, so I think that I agree with the comments over at Batter's Box speculating that a deal is forthcoming. Apparently, Adams will be working out at second with the Skychiefs, which might clear the way for the Hill at shortstop, Adams at second defensive configuration I've wanted to see for about eight months now.

As for Towers...well, he's been horrendous this year, and tonight's demotion has the feel of something long anticipated come to pass. I hope he gets it together down in AAA, but I'm not terribly optimistic-his stuff has never been anything better than okay, and if he can't hit his spots he's never going to be anything better than lousy. But we'll see.

In spite of all of this, they're only two back of Boston, and playing pretty well. I remain optimistic-though that would probably be true if they were eight back as well...

We begin again with a callback

Way back when, I added a nifty graphic over there on the left to the sidebar over this recently-moribund blog, in support of breast cancer research. In the post announcing the sweetly pie-in-the-sky challenge accompanying the graphic, I challenged all of you to donate any pink ribbon quarters you get in your change to cancer research, along with an extra quarter to match. Then I forgot all about the challenge for a month and a half, during which I also apparently forgot about this blog.

Well, tonight I got my first pink quarters back, and will consequently be donating at least one whole dollar to the Canadian Cancer Society. Instead of doing this in dribs and drabs every time I get a quarter, I think I'm going to add a running tally on the left there and do it all in one shot when I register for the Run for a Cure in October, but the game's officially on.

Stuff on Iran forthcoming.

We'll be back shortly

Apologies, of course, for the long, long, long hiatus. Coming up: book reviews, political commentary and baseball. In short, the same old song.