Does it really surprise anyone that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is preparing an attack on ordinary Canadians' retirement security when even the advice of the government's own experts affirms there's no evidence such change is required?

Does it really surprise anyone that's he's doing it now, just when he'd persuaded us he was a really fine, avuncular, sweater-wearing fellow, possibly holding a pussy cat, who said absolutely nothing about this topic during his recent election campaign?

Seriously, people, this is the neo-Con modus operandi -- when the opportunity presents itself, manufacture a "crisis" and move swiftly to "resolve" it while the opposition is still silently bug-eyed with astonishment and trying to remember where the facts were filed.

The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) was joined by its allies at a Raise the Rates rally at Nathan Phillips Square on Friday at noon -- on the day that cuts to the Ontario Special Diet program were set to take effect.

You can view a photo spread of the march here -- taken by (me) Krystalline Kraus.

Canadians watching the Democrat debacle south of the Medicine Line may have been struck by a smoky whiff of something unpleasant but faintly familiar hanging over the wreckage of the House of Representatives last night.

Could it have been a faint miasma of Bob Rae Syndrome, a sometimes fatal condition that strikes progressive politicians, causing them to abandon their loyal supporters to suck up to their implacable foes?

The results of this condition really should be included in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, due out in 2013, not long after the next American presidential election.

Now that we've got Halloween out of the way, let's think about something really scary!

The Toronto Star informed us recently: "Massive storm moving towards Toronto." I'll say!

Granted, I haven't lived in Toronto for more than 20 years, but the election of Rob Ford as mayor looks to me like an unmitigated disaster for one of my favourite Canadian cities. The immediate question is: What's the appropriate response for progressive people and politicians, supporters of public transit, those of us who are dubious about car culture in big cities, those of us who believe in the value of public service jobs?

On Monday, my hour-long public transit commute turned into a three-hour tour due to a blackout.

I work in the west end of Toronto and live in the east. While my public transit voyage isn't brisk, it usually moves along without incident and I have a lot of time to read. When I arrived at Kipling station on late Monday afternoon, I saw black smoke billowing out of the hydro substation, which sits like a tangled mess of wires and steel about half-a-click away from the subway station.

Gerald Caplan recently mused about why Conservatives are opposed to early childhood education (ECE) (The Globe and Mail, October 30).

Conservatives, living up to the tenets of their ideology, fear change and buttress the status quo. They re-imagine school as a scene out of Leave it to Beaver. Students sitting quietly at their desks, questioning authority is verboten and could result in corporal punishment, home for lunch where apron-wearing Mom has peanut butter on Wonder Bread washed down with milk, then back to school where kids learn common sense things like reading, writing, arithmetic and how god created the world.