• > Oh wow, hey, there’s a new Governor General? I’d just planned on mailing in a News In Briefs today, but the changing of our head of state’s official representative deserves its own full post, no? I’ll get on that sometime.

• > RAISE THE ELECTION THREAT LEVEL! Or at least I would, if I wasn’t at work, and had Photoshop on-hand to edit that graphic you’ve been quizzically eyeing to your right all these months. This comes after the Tories are talking tough about an election after Liberal senators stripped the budget bill of all the juicy red-meat Conservative bits, like selling the AECL, and selling Canada Post. Also, as I link to that Winnipeg Free Press article I’m seeing a fantastic poll question on the right side that you just don’t get from big-city Toronto newspapers: “Should the City of Winnipeg kill gophers?” Your options are Yes, Yes but not with poison, and No. I VOTED YES, fucking gophers.

• > To celebrate Pride Week, Minister to voluntarily get probed: The Canadian equivalent of the American political catchphrase “I did not accept money from Jack Abramoff” is “I did not have contact with Rahim Jaffer in a lobbying capacity.” Rahim Jaffer, known sleazeball who used the tenuous political power of his batshit crazy wife, dirtbag mob connections in stripclub backrooms, and the greased palms of one-time Tory connections in order to scam governments out of mysterious, money-burning “green initiatives”, has – according to pretty well everyone on Parliament Hill – “never talked to me! Sorry, who? Rahi-wha? Never HEARD of the guy!” Well, obviously someone had more than a passing nod at the guy in the hallway, as a number of federal Ministers, most recently RISING SUPERSTAR Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis, are now under an ethics probe for wheelings and dealing with the Jaffster. OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: MapleRag has never taken money from Rahim Jaffer.

• > Liberals down in polls, all hope lost, Liberal Party to disband. In other breaking news, the sun rose this morning, the sky is blue, and Justin Bieber can’t sing.

Happy Cinco De Mayo (Spanish for “a fifth of Mayonnaise”), a Mexican holiday celebrating the, uh… some sort of revolution, or war, or… historical thing… hey look, Coronas are half price at the bar today! Here’s what’s going on in the country of Canada, which joins Mexico as America’s other bookend:

• > Did you hear about the new Conservative dinosaur, Pte-REDACT-yl?: “Canadian Journalists for Free Expression”, a made-up sounding group, has launched their inaugural Free Expression Review - and they’ve given Harper’s Conservatives the fair and balanced grade of “F” when it comes to releasing information. Look, I’m all for exaggeration – I exaggerate about 7.3 billion times per millisecond, no word of a lie – but if the Canadian government gets an “F”, what the fuck does North Korea get, F minus? The catchy “CJfFE” say Harper overuses national defense as an excuse to not divulge information. That’s a good thing, because otherwise we might all find out about the secret plan to █████████  the ███  ███  █████ without ███  ██  ██████ massive ███  ██  ██████  circus ██████  ███  ███  ███  ███ Denmark ███  ██████  ███  plastic bits on the end of shoelaces ██████  ███ [Note: This last sentence censored by federal government officials]

• > Chretien says nothing, columnist somehow says less: Let’s say you’re a columnist for a popular line of parrot-cage lining called “The National Post”, and luckily enough, you get an impromptu sit-down interview with Jean Chretien, one of the most powerful figures in Canadian politics in our lifetime and a man who ruled the country for a decade. Now, let’s say you don’t really give a shit what Jean Chretien has to say, but you’ve got an aching rage deep within your heart for Michael Ignatieff that you need to let out. What would you do? Introduce the topic of meeting Jean Chretien, and then right as the reader is suspecting an interesting, in-depth interview, become increasingly outraged about Michael Ignatieff’s current Liberals. Just start throwing shit out there and see if it sticks. Refer to some imaginary conversation with unnamed “senior party officials” and use it as the basis for your claim that the Liberals, a party that have dominated Canadian politics since 1867, will be reduced to ashes in the near future. Try to reach such a pinnacle of blustery, off-topic rage that your last sentence implies Michael Ignatieff be lynched. Whoa, is that 1000 words already, send that shit to the editor and call it a day!

• > By “beating up a sick puppy”, did you mean “unnecessary” or “easy”?: John Doyle, the Globe’s resident couch-potato who gets paid to watch reality television in his underwear, has been weighing in on the CULTURE WAR brewing on Canadian television sets. What, you didn’t notice there was a CULTURE WAR? You were watching hockey? Well, there’s a CULTURE WAR, and you’re going to sit down and shut up and read all of our articles about it, damnit. The Conservative party are getting in on the CULTURE WAR by picking a fight with those liberal propagandists at the CBC, which is like… well, let’s say we liken the CULTURE WAR to an actual war, such as Star Wars. It would be like if, in the war between the Dark Side and the Rebellion, Darth Vader were picking fights with R2D2. Doyle argues that the CBC, rather than being the super-Liberal propaganda-pieces the Conservatives claim, bend over backwards to be bland, neutral populists. I’m all for any plan that gets “Being Erica” cancelled, though.

• > If you’re from Bay Roberts, Newfoundland, stop reading now: MoneySense came out with their annual ranking of the best places to live in Canada. Go ahead, find out where your craphole city ranked, and then be outraged that you got beat by Oshawa.

• >> And NDP goes Last Call With Carson Daly: Liberals Go Letterman, announces the Globe&Fail! Of course, MapleRag readers (HI MOM) will know that we already predicted this trend ages ago. The Liberals made a “Ten Things I Hate About You” list about Harper, and passed it around class when the teacher wasn’t looking. Their new catchphrase is “culture of deceit”, and Helena “Happy Fucking Birthday” Guergis ranks a mere 5th on their Top 10 of Deceitfulness. Making lists is pretty much the laziest fucking thing anyone can write (see also: Any issue of Rolling Stone/Blender touting “The 10 most [adjective] [noun] EVER!”, or this very mailed-in blog post) so no points to the Liberals for creativity. However, points to Dimitri “Hockey Bet” Soudas for his rebuttal to this list of 10 specific criticisms, and his response, of “DURRR SPON-SER-SHIP SCAN-DULZ”

• >> The birds and the bees did WHAT to each other?: The Sex Ed plan for Ontario schools that everyone went crazy about last week? Yeah, it’s scrapped. As devout Fundamentalist Christians here at MapleRag, we wholeheartedly agree with this decision by McSquinty to cave under the pressure of a few religious wingnuts and fold faster than Superman on laundry day. I mean, how DARE we teach basic concepts of sexual orientation to preteens, then they might stop using “gay” as a catch-all adjective for “undesirable”! (i.e. “This door won’t open, it’s so gay”, “Homophobia’s so gay”, etc.) How DARE we teach 16 year olds how to use contraceptives, regardless of the fact that the average age for losing your virginity in this country is 16 and STD rates are on the rise due to practically non-existent sex education and kids turning to outdated playground misconceptions for advice that could very well get your dumb kid pregnant? I’M AN OUTRAGED CHRISTIAN RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE

• >> Keep your enemies close, and tell your friends to eat shit: Rahim Jaffer shunned and humiliated, starts this brilliant piece of schadenfreude, and it just gets better and better from there. Barely-functional man-child Rahim Jaffer, a disgraced, sweaty coke-snorting unemployed grifter, is currently trying to rat on his new friends (mobsters) to his old friends (Tories) in hearings to see just how much of a horrible, horrible person he is. Results: pretty horrible.

• >> Etc.: Finally, on the MapleRag local beat, we’d like to mention that an entire mall in Waterloo blew up this morning. As a Laurier alum, I can proudly say that if buildings had to blow up somewhere in the world, you could probably pick a lot of worse places. The casualties: Mel’s Diner (fantastic breakfast place for hungover students, will be sorely missed), a candy store caught in the crossfire, and the sleazy bars FUBAR, 140 West and Caesar’s, where creepy Kitchener guys in pink polo shirts would go to grind their crotches on drunk female students and puke Jagerbombs all over each other. Sean Kingston’s prophecy of “fire burnin’ on the dancefloor” has now been realized.

• > CROSBY CROSBY HOCKEY HOCKEY SWITZERLAND GOAL WIN SHOOTOUT CANADA CROSBY CROSBY 87 CROSBY. This is what most Canadians are currently discussing – most of them very drunk – so we’ll stick with that theme for every other bullet point.

• > Both are also carbon-based, and belong to the scientific class of “mammalian”: Hey, remember Ross Rebagliati? He’s that guy who smoked a ton of weed, then won us a gold medal in the 90s, then lost his medal, then got it back because for God’s sake, he’s a snowboarder, you IOC narcs. Anyways, he’s now a Liberal candidate in BC, and as a Godless bong-toking Monarchy-hating hippie, he’s also a favourite punching back of Tories. Also, Tories like making HIGH-LARIOUS puns about how Rebagliati is always high. Anyways, Jane Taber’s pooped out a bunch of words about how Ignatieff and Rebagliati are basically the same person. Irrefutable proof: both spent time outside of Canada, and both are hip with young people. These two vague descriptions could also describe about a million people other than Iggy and Rebaggy (another similarity: hard-to-spell names!). Justin Bieber is another person who has both travelled outside the country and is liked by young people, so we suggest the Liberals run him as a candidate in the riding of Toronto-Twitter.

• > SIDNEY CROSBY EATS SWISS CHEESE FOR BREAKFAST, AND SHITS EXCELLENCE.

• > The rumours of his death are greatly exaggerated: Gordon Lightfoot’s not dead, stop twittering it! Lightfoot now joins the illustrious ranks of other celebrities who were rumoured to be dead, like Margaret Thatcher, William Hung, Steve from Blue’s Clues, Britney Spears and Abe Vigoda. (As an aside, I’d give any organ in my body to be in a room with all of those people at once playing Twister.) Anyways, Lightfoot’s alive, so let’s all go to the bar and get more wrecked than the Edmund Fitzgerald.

• > SIDNEY CROSBY COULD WIN EVERY GOLD MEDAL IN THE OLYMPICS IF HE TRIED, BUT HE DOESN’T BECAUSE HE’S A REALLY NICE GUY. SIDNEY CROSBY COULD WIN THE MEN’S FIGURE SKATING GOLD BY STANDING PERFECTLY STILL AT CENTRE ICE AND STARING AT THE JUDGES UNTIL THEY CAVED IN.

• > Competition tighter than Charles Hamelin’s speedskating suit: Everyone’s pretty much forgotten about this silly “politics” thing recently, what with the much more exciting and attractive people competing in an obscure regional sporting event called the “Olympics”. Anyways, the Grits and Tories are just about statistically tied in the latest polls. The NDP trails with 16.5% of voters, with the Greens and Blocs hovering around 10%.

• > SIDNEY “THE SIDNEY CROSBY” CROSBY SHOOTS LIKE A SNIPER, MOVES LIKE A BALLERINA, LAYS DOWN MORE CHECKS THAN BOBBY FISCHER AND HAS MORE FINISHING MOVES THAN SUB-ZERO IN MORTAL KOMBAT.

• > And then there’s this: we remarked yesterday that Swiss curling skip Mirjam Ott and US Snowboarder Shaun White look pretty much identical. After the jump, WE’VE CREATED PROOF!

• > A purse by any other name: The Globe & Fail have continued their Pulitzer-worthy pursuit of Stockwell Day’s manpurse. In the third (!) such article about Doris’ murse, Jane Taber has bravely nailed down this story using Woodward & Bernstein-style investigative reporting. In the first mention, we learn that the Minister does indeed carry a murse, while in the breathless followup we learn just what he carries in his lady-bag: “a few legal documents, passport, wallet, small change purse, business cards and personalized note cards, mints, hand sanitizer, family photo and latest book I am reading.” (Omitted: lipstick, miniature chihuahua). Finally, in the penultimate story which will ultimately get Taber the Pulitzer, we get to see a picture of this stupid thing. JOURNALISM!

• > Prem. Williams’ Open-Heart Club Band: You’ve all heard about Danny Williams getting his heart tuned up in the States, right? And you’ve already twisted this dude’s cardiac problems into a politicized storyline about the state of Canadian healthcare, right? Good! Then we’re done here.

• > He’ll just PVR the curling, it’s better in fast forward: Obama’s not coming to our fancy little Olympics. We will get Diet Obama in the form of Joe Biden, who’ll ride the Amtrak here from Scranton and commit a bunch of Patented Biden Gaffes(tm), like pretending to be interested in luge. Hey, remember those photos that looked like George Bush was doing all this wacky drunk shit at the Olympics, being all sweaty and red-faced and holding up backwards flags and spanking volleyball players? Hah, what was WITH that guy.

• > Girl Power unseen since Sporty Spice: Harper’s new thing, his legacy, his sole and devoted cause as a head of state, is now Plight Of Women Worldwide. What, you didn’t know that? Come on, how could you not think of Harper as synonymous with the issue of women in developing countries, a topic he’s tackled all of never times. Iggy to Harper: “If you love women’s health so much, why don’t you marry it provide support for safe abortions?” Harper spokesman to Iggy: “Huh? What? HEY LOOK OVER THERE.”