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How's this for convoluted logic?
It's virtually impossible for an incumbent municipal politician in Ontario to be defeated, unless he is found guilty of a criminal offence, a la L. Cliff Gyles, so.... let's extend their terms of office for an extra year.
For some reason that only he, and a lot of municipal politicians and school trustees may be able to appreciate, Premier Dalton McGuinty thinks that municipal politicians need longer terms of office.
He's proposed that the term for which we elect those politicians be extended from three years to four, beginning in the term of office for which we go to the polls Nov. 13.
If anyone had bothered to ask the public, the popular sentiment would have been to reduce the term of office, not to lengthen it.
Once upon a time, municipal terms were just one year. When Mississauga became a City in 1974, there was an initial three-year term. Then, there were two-year terms in 1976, 1978 and 1980. That probably was too short to be effective and three years became the norm again in 1982. That seems to have worked very well since.
So why the need for change?
"It's a matter of respect," said the Premier. "We have fixed four-year terms at the provincial level and federal terms can run a maximum of five years. It's also a matter of efficiency. Three years is too short. A four-year term is the ideal period of time for a council to forge an agenda, implement it and then seek the people's judgment."
What a load of McGuinty.
Municipal politicians don't generally run on a specific platform, like provincial and federal parties do, or even put forward anything anyone would recognize as an agenda. It's a lot more like, "Here I am again. Things are going well. Re-elect me for more good government."
To their credit, not all municipal politicians are automatically accepting what is obviously in their own interest. Ottawa Councillor Alex Cullen said four-year terms weaken public accountability.
"Extending terms just means someone could inflict damage for a longer period of time before they have to face the reality check of an election. I'm not a fan, and I think voters should look at this closely."
If four years is better for implementing a long-term vision and building a city, why should we stop there? Just imagine how much a mayor and council could do with a six or seven-year term? It's a specious argument.
If we want to improve voter turnouts that have generally been in the 20-25 per cent range for the past several elections in Mississauga, doesn't it make sense to hold elections closer together, rather than farther apart?
Then again, elections are sort of formulaic here anyway, unless someone has retired or they're adding new seats, as is happening this year.
I don't think people really care about how long the terms are, as long as they're getting that good government that so many talk about, and so few deliver.
Let me ask a hypothetical question: If voters in Mississauga were asked if we should suspend the municipal electoral process entirely until a certain short, indestructible, wizened troll-like Smurf is no longer on the municipal scene, would it pass?
Yeah, I think so too.
Makes you think about democracy in an entirely different way, doesn't it?

Terry McElligott was walking down the hall of a radio station in Montreal many years ago when the operations manager stopped him and explained that the station was looking for an on-air jazz jockey.
"What do you know about jazz?" the manager asked.
"Everything," was the reply from the ambitious young McElligott, who was dying for a chance to get on-air any way he could.
In fact, McElligott knew nothing about the music. He spent the next couple of hours in the library, frantically preparing to fake it later that day.
"Sometimes you just have to sink or swim," laughed the 55-year-old this week as he recalled his start in radio. McElligott, has lived in the Cawthra Rd.-Bloor St. area since 1980 and has worked for a bunch of radio stations. He's only been fired from two jobs at CHFI and EZ Rock. That's something to be proud of in his business.
He was on air at The Edge in Brampton on its first day. He remembers Frank Zappa dropping in for an interview "with a 27-foot tall body guard."
If he'd ever wondered about the impact of the medium, the Montreal native found out that day. By the time the unannounced interview was over, there was a huge throng outside the station waiting for the Mother of Invention.
While he has fond memories of some of those he's worked with, David Pritchard, Reiner Schwarz and Jay Jackson in particular, McElligott says, "radio is a nasty business filled with narrow-minded people."
That's why he was out of the business for 13 years, teaching broadcasting at Humber College and Centennial and studying web design.
When he heard from friend Bryan Snelson that Canada's first full-time jazz station was being launched, he applied immediately.
"After the CEO looked at my resumé, he asked why he'd never heard of me. When I told him I hadn't worked in 13 years, I thought he was going to throw me out of his office."
"You must really want to do this," the CEO said.
"It's not every day you get a chance to rebuild a radio station or do anything as daring as doing a 24-hour jazz station," he says.
Five years later, McElligott is thoroughly ensconsed in the 10 a.m.-2 p.m. slot on JAZZ.FM91. He also runs the website and is having the time of his life.
As a jazz listener, McElligott hates the didactic slant of so many DJs who feel it's their duty to educate the listener on their take on the music.
"They think jazz is a minefield they have to guide you through," snorts McElligott.
He's quite willing to let the music speak for itself and let the listener be the judge. With his fascination for the Internet, McElligott frequently points listeners to artist's websites and other points of departure.
"Jazz is an art form that lives on the web now," he says. "It does that because radio hasn't supported it."
With some notable exceptions, thank goodness, like JAZZFM, Wally Dawson and Colin Smith on CKLN and Colin Bray on CIUT.
Some 35 years after he espoused total knowledge of the music, McElligott really is an expert jazz fan. He loves the search that jazz entails, the desire to push the limits and find new means of expression.
"Jazz fans never lose that curiosity," he says.
The Mississaugan is happy to be part of a radio station that depends on the community for ongoing support and stands for the music, not the bottom line.
"Ross (Porter, the new CEO and former host of CBC's Jazz After Hours) has a vision for the place," says McElligott. "He plans to make it a cornerstone of the jazz community."
With pillars like McElligott, construction is well underway.

Karsh and Cavouk.
Sounds like a Middle Eastern law firm, doesn't it?
Those are, of course, the names of photographers who need no introduction.
This morning, Cavouk, aka Onnig Cavoukian, the third generation of famous photographers in his family, was at Mississauga's Yee Hong Centre to meet with a couple of "new" old friends.
Before its annual fundraising Dragon Ball in January, Yee Hong commissioned the famous Armenian-Canadian photographer to create a Memory Gallery of some of its clients, to put a human face on the long-term care facility.
Cavouk took pictures of several Yee Hong clients with their families. The children of the seniors then provided a little write-up about their parents' lives. The gallery of 17 large portraits will move among the four Yee Hong locations.
"This was a labour of love," said Cavouk, who has taken photos of the famous from around the world..from Leonid Brezhnev to Lee Iacocca to Charles Aznavour to Yehudi Menuhin to the Queen.
"I'm a better person because I met them," he said of Emil and Elena Kerr, who have been married for 66 years. He was also speaking of José 'Pepito' Librojo, 90, who used to be quite a photographer himself.
Emil and Pepito are two firecrackers who live the Mississauga facility on Mavis Rd. They both serve on the home's resident advisory council and have more energy than you can imagine.
"You're going to be famous," Cavouk says as Kerr gets his picture taken.
"Maybe for an hour," responds Kerr.
They may not be famous, but these seniors are important to Cavouk and it shows in his pictures. As he examines his snapshots of the seniors and their families, he says, "there's a lot of love there, a lot of hope."
He talks with each subject for some time before he ever takes off a lens cover.
"For me to capture someone's essence, I have to become vulnerable in their eyes. So we talk for a while about ourselves. I have to become vulnerable in your eyes for you to let go," he says. "Once I have that trust, it's a piece of cake."
Cavouk, whose sister Ann is Ontario's Privacy Commissioner and whose brother is the entertainer known as Raffi, has very fond memories of most of his subjects.
Talking to the Queen Mother was like talking to his own grandmother. The Queen, however, was much more formal.
He remembers particularly a portrait of Senator Hubert Humphrey, then a U.S. Presidential candidate. That's because the base for a U.S. flag that was in the picture broke during the shoot and he had to kneel behind the chair, out of sight, holding it while his father took the picture.
About 20 years ago, he snapped Oscar Peterson and got the best seat in the house at a concert as a result. Peterson was leaving the country so Cavouk agreed to deliver a portrait to his sister at an Ontario Place concert. As thanks, Peterson's sister insisted he stay for the concert, which was sold out. As a result, Cavouk got a chair beside the piano, the best seat in the house.
"I went round and round for an hour-and-a-half," on the revolving stage, he laughed.
One of his Yee Hong subjects insists on a hug every time Cavouk comes back.
"It's the friendship I like and the connections you make with people," he says. "That's worth more than the money."

Who says there's no interest in school board races?
There certainly seems to be early interest in the public school races where there's no incumbent.
Take Ward 6, for instance, where word has obviously gotten out that Warren Kennedy is not running again.
Kennedy, who spent six years on the board and had the refreshingly rare habit of questioning the status quo, isn't seeking re-election. He bought a house in New Toronto. He may well run for trustee there, taking on veteran Bruce Davis.
There are already three candidates in the race to succeed him, including Doug Bonesteel of Streetsville, the Sheridan Institute teacher who ran a solid second to Kennedy last time, picking up 2,084 votes to the incumbent's 3,769.
After he beat Bonesteel last time, Kennedy lavished praise on his opponent, saying he was just as qualified as the winner.
By the way, the third entrant in that 2003 race, Olive Rose Steele who owns a Toronto employment agency, is registered to run for councillor in Ward 6 this time. Which raises the question: would you want to be the filling in a Carolyn/Starr sandwich?
I know, I know: Parrish the thought.
Don't be too surprised if Steele decides to run for trustee again at some point before Nov. 13.
One of the candidates hoping to replace Kennedy is Lesley Wilton, a 46-year-old mother of six who will send her youngest off to school in September. She hopes to go from sitting on Plum Tree Park's school council to sitting on the board. She has kids in French immersion.
Asked about why she's not running in Ward 9, where she lives, Wilton said her kids in immersion will eventually go to Hazel McCallion school, which is in Ward 6. The fact Kennedy wasn't running, and there will likely be a raft of people running to replace current Ward 9 Trustee Sue McFadden must have made her decision to run in Ward 6 a lot easier.
The third candidate is Shafqat Ali, 39, who lives in the Shalimar development on Dundas St. W. and volunteers to run kids' basketball and volleyball after-hours programs at The Woodlands.
The owner of a driving school, Ali said helping young people is "my passion."
There are also three people, Christopher Collier, Maria Glidden and Shannon Pecore registered as trustee hopefuls in Ward 9, where McFadden is vacating the seat to try to move up to the new seat as Ward 10 councillor.
And, as expected, Committee of Adjustment member and Streetsville BIA Vice-President Craig Lawrence who owns a jewelry store, has joined the Ward 10 council race, bringing the candidate count to a nice round 10. Ten-for-10 has a nice ring, doesn't it. It won't last long. There'll be more.
Also look for more people to put their names forward now that the Peel District School Board has recommended that the trustee distribution remain the same as it was for the last election.
Chair Janet McDougald said that other scenarios were considered, but none of them provided much relief. There's still quite a discrepancy in the number of public school supporters.
Ward 2 will be the smallest, with 33,000 public school electors while Wards 6 and 11 will have 71,000.
Up until now, would-be candidates weren't sure how the board was going to handle the addition of two new wards. The number of trustees remains seven, but the number of wards goes to 11.
The existing Ward 6 is being divided into Ward 6 and Ward 11 and the new trustee will represent both those wards. The same holds for the new representative in the northwest corner of the City who will represent Ward 9 and Ward 10, which currently comprise Ward 9.
So we've added two new wards (10 and 11) but the boundaries for trustees, who represented the former Wards 6 and 9, remain the same.
If you're not confused yet, you haven't been paying attention.

Rumour: Former Ward 4 Councillor Larry Taylor is organizing a group of candidates to run for council in all 11 wards in November's municipal election under the NDP banner.
Juicy eh? Something that could actually add some real sizzle to the campaign.
That's the story that's floating around City Hall as the safest incumbent councillors in the world begin to fret about what string of cataclysmic events could possibly lead to them being unseated. ("Paranoia strikes deep... into your life it will creep.")
The rumour has a nice ring to it, but, it's dead wrong.
At least, that is, according to one Larry Taylor who was a force on City council for a dozen years until Frank Dale (with the help of a powerful ally with lots of big fish on her wall) unseated him.
"So they're worried about me, eh?" says Taylor, who has been selling real estate in Mississauga since his political demise. "I love it," he laughs.
Even if he were developing a left-wing cell in Mississauga, Taylor said, he'd never have anyone run under the NDP banner.
"I've always believed that municipal campaigns should be non-partisan."
We definitely don't need party politics at the municipal level. One of the beauties of Hazelville and most other cities in Ontario (except Toronto) is that councillors are free to exercise their judgment and use their own common sense, rather than consult the party platform to determine what they think. May be it ever remain thus.
"I did organize the NDP campaigns in all five ridings," in the recent federal election, said Taylor, who was an unsuccessful candidate himself in 2004 in Mississauga West-Brampton.
The latest rumour may have started because he's organizing what he calls leadership training sessions to teach people interested in being future candidates how to raise money, how to run a campaign and, maybe eventually, how to win a seat in Mississauga. The NDP has never won in the City although the late, great Reverend David Busby came tantalizingly close in Mississauga North in 1985.
"I'm an organizer," said Taylor, who's never really lost his yen for the game. "This is my opportunity to use my unique skills and knowledge. Training is something that, for some reason, has been abandoned by progressive individuals."
The idea is to develop a deeper and better pool of candidates for the party in future.
A deeper and better pool of candidates, in all parties, is something Canadians could use at every level of government.

Green electricity has arrived in Mississauga.
Bullfrog Power, a company that started up just last September and has been rolling out its services slowly across Ontario since, has made an agreement with Enersource Corporation to allow Mississaugans to choose power that comes from renewable sources.
The Toronto company bills itself as, "Ontario's first 100 per cent green electricity retailer" since it provides power from wind turbines and low-impact hydro sites in northern Ontario.
"What we're hearing from our customers is that they want 100 per cent renewable power," says Jo Coombe, the firm's vice-president of marketing.
Bullfrog has been leaping in popularity for a simple reason: it makes the process of going green incredibly easy. All it really takes is a visit to its website, www.bullfrogpower.com or a telephone call to wean oneself off nuclear or coal-powered juice.
There's no change of equipment at your house or business because the company feeds green power into the overall grid and you continue to be supplied from that grid. It's really just an accounting transfer.
The premium you pay to be environmentally righteous, about $1 a day or $300-$400 a year, is not cheap. However, it doesn't just cover the cost of green power now. It funds it for the future, too. Bullfrog takes a portion of that premium and uses it to invest projects such as the wind farms in the Bruce Peninsula that are now its main suppliers.
"For people who are concerned about the sustainability of the environment, this is something very practical they can do," says Coombe, whose company is providing power to both the International Home Show coming up at the International Centre and the Cottage Life show in April. "It's a choice to make a better environment and many people see it as an investment in the future."
People like Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip, former Toronto Mayor and federal Cabinet Minister David Crombie, Stephen Page of the Barenaked Ladies and novelist Margaret Atwood are backing the Bullfrog.
Numerous environmental organizations have also signed up and many corporations large and small. Large as in RBC Financial Group and small as in Meadowlarke Stables, Mississauga's one remaining teaching stable in the far northwest corner of the city.
"We hear over and over that our customers are choosing us because they want to do something meaningful with their electricity dollars," says Coombe.
And what about that catchy name?
Bullfrog was chosen for three reasons: "The name said green without using it. Changes in frogs are one of the first signals of climate change. The bullfrog is a small animal with a very large voice."
Maybe this Bullfrog can signal a change in the climate of the discussion on Ontario's power future, which has taken a disturbing turn towards the nuclear.

In The Moment.
Perfect name for a jazz CD, don't you think?
It personifies spontaneity and improvisation. Now it also stands for quality and class.
In The Moment is the name of a CD released last year by Mississauga jazz bassist Pat Collins. It's a beauty that contains searching, honest music filled with harmonic shifts and a thing that seems to have gone out of style in too many sub-genres of jazz, melody.
The CD is so good that it's just been nominated as best album of the year for the National Jazz Awards (www.nationaljazzawards.com).
Collins, who has lived in Mississauga for about 15 years, is also nominated as bassist of the year.
Maybe the reason that this music is so compelling is that it's been welling up in Collins for so very long. The full-time faculty member at Mohawk College (labour disputes aside) has played on about 50 albums by his count and has performed with the likes of Diana Krall, Dizzy Gillespie, Tal Farlow, Joe Henderson, Shirley Eikhard, Oliver Jones, Jimmy Cobb, Lee Konitz, Peter Appleyard, Rob McConnell etc. In other words, lots of players of the first rank.
He's the regular bassist of choice for Denzal Sinclaire, whom Collins calls, "the best singer in the world."
In an interview at his Levi Creek home, Collins said that writing started coming naturally to him when he stopped trying to force it.
"I was trying to write something I wasn't necessarily hearing. I tried to be true to myself and things have worked out better since then," he said.
Of course, having saxophonist Mike Murley, drummer Barry Elmes and guitarist Reg Schwager in the band doesn't hurt the product. The nine tunes he penned for the CD came out differently than he envisioned, but he's more than pleased with the results.
There are numerous influences on Collins' playing, including, rather surprisingly, a guitar player.
"Ed Bickert really influenced the way I play," said Collins. "Everything he plays is musical. The amazing thing about Ed (who's no longer playing unfortunately) is that in every solo, he would surprise you with something. He would always pull something different on you and that's what improvising is all about."
Among his bass heroes are the late Ray Brown, with whom Collins got to spend time and play golf a couple of times.
"It's neat when you get to meet your heroes and they turn out to be nice people," he said.
One of his idols is Paul Chambers, the bassist who died far too early after seminal work with Miles Davis and John Coltrane. The two share initials as well as a passion for the instrument.
"If you were to take his solos and play them on another instrument, they would still sound great," said Collins. "He transcended the bass in terms of melodic concept. He shaped the way bass players have played for the last 60 years."
Collins laughs when he's asked about the tremendous stable of jazz bassists in Toronto, including his fellow Mississaugan Kieran Overs, the man he once replaced in Moe Koffman's orchestra.
"There are too many good ones," he said. "We all know each other and we all get along really well, and we all play differently. I love going out and hearing the other guys play."
Of course, you can't talk to a Mississauga jazz guy and not ask about Oscar.
It turns out that, growing up in B.C. with the great saxophonist Phil Dwyer (they've known each other since they were 4), the pair were fascinated with Peterson.
"We would put on Oscar records, get excited about them and try to figure out what was going on," said Collins.
In 1997, a long way from Mississauga where they were both living, Collins got his chance to play with the good doctor. Oscar needed a bassist on short notice for a concert in Chicago and someone at York University, where Peterson was once chancellor, recommended Collins.
"That's the most nervous I've ever been in my life," recalls the bassist," whose wife Sherri heads the music department at the Cawthra Park School of the Arts. "My knees were literally shaking at the beginning of that concert. But I was fine after playing the first few bars."
Peterson "was a complete gentleman" who sent flowers to Sherri, who was pregnant at the time and then sent a gift of baby clothes when the couple's son Matthew was born. There are songs on the album for Matthew, who suggested his Dad write a song called Trigalory and for son Daniel, 7. His song is called Siwash, because he's into whales.
One of the problems for jazz musicians is the shrinking opportunities to play, as clubs like the Top of the Senator meet their demise.
So give yourself a treat and go see Collins and his quartet play Monday, March 27 at the Montreal Bistro beginning at 9 p.m.

They're gone.
The lamest couple on television since Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver.
The most annoying couple on the tube since Nick and Jessica.
The most dysfunctional pair on TV since Archie and Edith Bunker.
Yeah, I'm talking about the Canadian Tire couple. In case you missed it, a new ad campaign is coming and the CT couple are history.
Finito. Kaput. Gone to the big battery yard in the sky.
Speaking of battery acid, my tummy feels better already.
What is it that was so completely and utterly irritating about them anyway?
Whatever it was, it was potent. I mean, how can you revile an apparently benign pair of suburban duffuses (or is it duffusae?) who spend all their time doing home repairs, fixing the car, or inventing special gadgets you've never heard of in case of breakdown on the every-weekend camping trip?
Probably because, not since the Plaster Casters, has there been such a complete, blind, unthinking devotion to tools.
Perhaps what was so irritating was the fact that the latest gizmo available from Crappy Tire had such a transforming effect on the husband.
He was obviously a true believer in the latest widget-wonker that had been produced, whatever it was. He'd get that glazed fundamentalist true-believer look. Not only could he just not wait to try it but he had to burst into his neighbour's garage to show him the latest. ("He can't be a man, 'cause he doesn't use, the same ratchet set as me.")
If this guy lived in your neighbourhood, you wouldn't venture outdoors until you were sure he was gone, much like the neighbours of Mrs. Bucket (pronounced Bouquet) on Keeping Up Appearances.
There was something more-than-faintly fascist about the Canadian Tire couple, something unsettlingly out of whack. Did you notice how they never mentioned whether any of the products had been tested on the family pets in the making of the commercials?
At the end of those ads, you almost expected the mister, with his phony innocent smile and his all-plaid personality, to look into the camera and say: "You 'vill go to Canadian Tire. You 'vill buy this tool. And you 'vill collect Canadian Tire money."
Do you suppose that Mastercraft Tools were fashioned for devotees of the master race?
First the Scottish bully pushing Alexander Keith is pulled and now the Canadian Tire couple.
Wouldn't it be perfect if they were together forever in a continuous loop ad-rerun: the bully spending all day berating some unsuspecting nincompoop for spilling his beer and then Mrs. and Mrs C. Tire rushing in to tell us how their latest product removes beer stains and is perfect for buffing the car?

I walked into the Toronto Convention Centre Saturday morning to be greeted by the glorious scent of spring.
The smell of hyacinths was overwhelming, and overwhelmingly welcome.
Canada Blooms is the huge spring flower show that features everything you might want to experience in gardening. Plus scads of free line-ups.
Even though we arrived right at the 10 a.m. opening, the wait to see some of the more coveted display gardens was so long that it wasn't worth the effort.
I wanted to pick up an "El Desperado" day lily from Arcadian Daylilies but a woman at the booth told me they were long gone. You have to come during the week when it opens if you want most of the "hot" products. Gardening, alas, like everything else these days, is the subject of rampant fadism. Everyone has to have the very latest cultivar.
Frankly, it's hard to tell the difference between Amber Waves, Peach Flambé, Marmalade or the latest variant on the orange-pink-brown tinged coral bell that hits the market. But that doesn't seem to matter.
Having said that, the best booth at the show was the Ontario Landscape Architects' Association site which featured a bunch of introductions (new perennial favourites you could say). Their catalogue, which normally goes to dealers, is worth the price of admission alone.
Most of the display gardens suffered from overwhelming sameness. Too many architects in the planning picture and not enough gardeners.
If you missed Canada Blooms, there's another chance to preview spring this weekend in our own backyard. The Successful Gardening Show rolls into The International Centre Thursday for the weekend. Lots of great ideas, with more of a bent towards environmental sustainability, especially along "Green Street."

It was worth the wait. Jane Bunnett was so sick Jan. 28 after being in bed for 10 days that she had to cancel her gig with her band Spirits of Havana in the Relaxed series at the Living Arts Centre.
"There was no possibility of playing. I tried but I couldn't blow a note," Bunnett remembered with laughter Friday night after she and her six-piece band more than made up for the disappointment of the earlier cancellation.
Before a sold-out crowd of just over 250, Bunnett and her crackerjack band had themselves a ball, even if their attempts to get the audience moving to the effervescent Afro-Cuban rhythms of the music fell a county or two short of success.
We, in the staid suburbs, don't do the mambo, don't ya know.
"Yeah, you guys are kind of laid back," Bunnett said later. "But the audience was very polite and responsive and it was fun."
Bunnett was excellent as expected, mostly on soprano, but the unexpected delight of the evening was the debut performance of Pablowski Rosales, a young Cuban who was making his first appearance with Jane's band. He is already a master of the tres guitar, which he soloed on several times, wringing a sweet but swinging sound out of the instrument that gets its name from the three courses of double or triple strings it employs.
This concert had a nice rolling, relaxed feel to it, much like the music. People wandered on and off the stage and everybody really enjoyed the others' playing.
How nice it was to see Port Credit's Kieran Overs in his own bassyard.
"I hate the term world-class because it's such a tacky phrase," said Bunnett post-concert. "But Kieran is world-class. He's just a great player."
Overs was that middle-aged white guy who just couldn't stop smiling as he traded vibes with the other young Cuban gunslingers in the rhythm section: David Virelles on piano, Jalidan Castro on congas and Frank Durand on drums.
P.S. I'm on vacation for the rest of the week.

"World Still Reeling over U.S. Ouster" reads the headline.
Wow, did I miss something? Are the Americans leaving one of the various nations around the world they've liberated/occupied on our behalf?
Well, no.
It turns out that the world is reeling over the America ouster from the World Baseball Classic, according to the headline on the Globe and Mail's Saturday sports front.
Let the hand-wringing begin.
How come the highest-paid and best-juiced baseball players in the world are sitting on the sidelines while Japan's Ichiro Suzuki and Akinori Otsuka are the only major-leaguers who will play in tonight's final?
Now you see why the Bush-leaguer who occupies the White House and used to own the Texas Rangers didn't want those pesky Cubans entering the tournament in the first place. Now the no-name Havana Reds are playing Japan in the final.
Nothing good could come of this tournament for the Yankees. If they won, they are supposed to and if they lost, it was a disaster.
Sounds familiar doesn't it? Kind of like Canada and Olympic hockey and the moaning and groaning that accompanies every non-gold medal effort.
Of course, a short tournament in which there is a brief preliminary round and, of necessity, a convoluted tie-breaking scheme doesn't necessarily mean the best team wins.
It does mean loads of excitement, however, because everything is at stake just about every time out. In baseball or hockey, a hot pitcher or a hot goalie, can change everything.
There's a pile of jingoistic codswallop that passes for commentary in the media of any country involved in international competition. Look at the Americans beating themselves up over this tournament and then think of the so-called "national debates on the future of our game" that earlier Olympic losses in hockey have engendered.
The world, as we know it, will not end the day that country X beats country Y in a sport that country Y invented.
The fact is that it's a good thing when upstart nations from the other side of the globe start beating us at our own games. It's especially lots of fun when it happens to the overconfident, self-appointed policemen of the world.
The only thing that can save this tournament as far as the Americans are concerned would be the mass defection of the Cuban team after tonight's game.
Then they would all be available to be hired as consultants advising the White House on how to restore the "national pastime" to its former glory.

Every municipality should have its own urban legend.
Urban legends are those false, but compelling stories that get told over and over again. They simply aren't true. They sound just close enough to reality to be possible, so it's easy to fall for them.
You've probably heard a few: the baby alligator flushed down the toilet who grows up to live in the sewer; the lost boa constrictor that turns up in your toilet; and, the poodle in the microwave (you don't want to know.)
Well Mississauga has its own version, which surfaces a few months before every municipal election.
It goes like this: Sure Hazel McCallion has registered to run again in the municipal election, but it's just a front.
At the last second before nominations close, her carefully-chosen successor will put his or her name in for the race. Then, in the two-day cooling period that follows, Hazel will withdraw her name and Joe Successor will win in a walk.
For several previous elections, it was Ron Starr who was supposed to waltz into office under this scenario.
This time around, there's a new twist to the proposition. You see, Hazel is being considered as the next Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario by Premier Dalton McGuinty (That's one way to get her out of your hair). She'll step down at the last second because of that offer.
Yes, it does appear that Mayor Medallion is inordinately attached to her chain of office, but do you really think the shinier objects she would wear as Lieutenant-Governor would make her give up the blood sport of politics without a fight?
I don't think so.
By the way, if by any strange chance McCallion does actually replace James Bartleman and become the next vice-regal for Ontario, you read it here first.

She was the skinny, tiny bundle of energy who stole the nation's heart when she won the national figure skating championship in Thunder Bay in 1979 at the impossibly young age of 11.
Tracey Wainman was slender, smiley and sensational on the jumps she needed to become the youngest person ever to win the women's senior championship. She received her Mississauga Female Athlete of the Year Award from Dave Williams in a presentation that seemed to feature one big Tiger honouring a little one.
Full of pep and seemingly unaware of even the possibility of failure, Wainman was embraced by a nation nuts about figure skating and anxious to see her succeed.
She skated in a special gala in London, England with Olympic champions and at Madison Square Gardens in New York. She was the the toast of the skating world for a couple of glorious years.
Well, as we all know now, the seemingly boundless potential that Wainman displayed when she first burst on the scene was never fully realized.
Confidence problems surfaced at the 1981 Worlds and the young Mississaugan regressed to the point where she seemed afraid to try any jumps some nights. Frustrated and sapped, she quit at age 16 in 1984, the year when she was originally expected to challenge for Olympic Gold.
A brief, brave comeback at age 18 netted her another Canadian title in 1986 but as a more mature skater Wainman could never seem to recapture the magic in the public's eyes. She faded slowly from sight.
So, whatever happened to Tracey Wainman? The answer lies in a very good piece on the now 38-year-old Richmond Hill resident in the current Toronto Life magazine by Hugh Graham.
The warts-and-all treatment, titled Ice Storm, reveals a mature Wainman with much more perspective now on her sudden fame and the difficulties it caused.
She coaches very successfully and has shared her life for the past 13 years with Gregor Filipowski, a name you may remember from the Calgary Olympics. While the world was focussed on the Battle of the Brians for the gold medal, Filipowski was the surprise winner of the bronze for Poland.
The journeyman skater's unbridled joy as he leaped around the arena after surprising himself and the world is one of the treasured moments of those Games.
It's somehow fitting that Wainman, the skinny overachieving waif we remember for her million-watt smile and Filipowski, whose achievements seemed to stretch far beyond his talent, got together. Can you imagine the supper table conversation that must go on at their house about how to deal with the fragile psyches of young skaters?
Also featured in Toronto Life is another article, by petty criminal Andre Morrison (as told to David Hayes) that gives a chillingly different portrait of a Mississaugan who was singled out at a young age. Morrison, who grew up in Malton, was sent to jail at age 13.
He talks about living in a paper box on the roof of Westwood Secondary School, which he would have attended if he'd gotten that far, and sleeping in hallways in Malton apartment buildings.
A cautionary tale of an entirely different kind than Wainman's.

Cassandra Shaw, a Grade 5 student at St. Edmund School in Applewood Acres, has taken her mission to educate the world on the importance of water very, very seriously.
Just ask her mother.
When Shaw and the other members of the small but dedicated Eco-Kids club at St. Edmund started studying the water issue two years ago, the 10-year-old was shocked at how much is wasted in households. The students did studies at their own homes.
Shaw's mother got a rude surprise from her newly converted conservationist daughter one day. Mrs. Shaw turned on the water for her shower and let it run for about five minutes while she waited to get in.
"I turned it off," Shaw said with a triumphant grin yesterday after she and the six other Eco-Kids helped launch The Peel Water Story.
"One time she put the dishwasher on with just a few things in there," said Shaw. "I told her not to do that again. She hasn't."
Shaw and her school mates were part of a pilot program with the their teacher Grainne Maddison, to perfect the tools for The Peel Water Story before they were put into action.
The collaboration among Peel Region and the Dufferin Peel and Peel District School Boards has created a resource, consisting of a CD-Rom, a detailed book and a web site (www.peelwaterstory.ca), that will make science come alive for students ... not just in concept, but in the reality of where they live and breathe every day.
Gary Mascola, one of two elementary teachers on the original committee that looked at developing the program in 2002, said that while teachers can use the resources to teach the strands of the provincial curriculum for their particular grade levels, "curriculum doesn't drive this. This is about the watershed as an ecosystem. This story drives itself."
The history of Peel can be seen as the history of water, through establishment of mills, cholera outbreaks, and all the way to extension of the big pipes that allowed the development of modern-day Mississauga.
One of the things the Eco-Kids did in their quest to learn more about water was to tour the Lorne Park Water Treatment Plant.
"It was amazing," said 12-year-old Monique Morgan. She was impressed with the huge treatment ponds, the skimmers that take gunk out of the water, to use her technical term. She was especially taken aback by seeing the dead fish and the boot that was removed from what will eventually be the water we all drink.
The Eco-Kids came back to their own school, did a water audit, found out they can save the equivalent of 800,000 two-litre pop bottles worth of water if they get low-flow toilets and other equipment installed and are setting out to raise money to do just that.
And they can't wait to tell the rest of the school what they found.
How's that for education in action?

It was baptism by fire for newly-minted Mississauga-Erindale MP Omar Alghabra when he sat too close to Mayor Hazel McCallion, the sun around whom all Mississauga politicians must orbit.
The new Liberal MP, who is still getting his feet wet after his Jan. 23 election, probably figured he was out of the line of fire Friday morning when he attended the Mississauga Board of Trade breakfast briefing on the Ontario budget handed down the day before.
There is no refuge in Hazelville.
In comment period, McCallion, who was sitting two seats away from the MP, rose to her feet to complain that it's time the feds recognized their responsibility to spread some of the largesse from their surpluses to the bottom feeders at the municipal level.
"I never see our MPs out to these meetings," said McCallion, who admitted later that she had seen Alghabra come in. (Aren't you just dying to hear the mayor mangle his name the first time she has to introduce him?)
"Hey Omar, where's your name tag," yelled Mississauga West MPP Bob Delaney to the rookie.
The MPPs were all beaming at the site of Alghabra enduring the rookie hazeling that is inevitable for any politician here. They've all been through it themselves.
As any good politician would, Alghabra took the opening the mayor offered and ran with it. He introduced himself and talked about how he wanted to bring new ideas and energy to job, including "being the voice of Mississauga to Parliament. I realize the onus is on me to do that."
The real voice of Mississauga had already spoken, of course, but Alghabra earned Brownie points for doing and saying the right thing. He even managed to look comfortable in the line of fire.
He's already got the verbal art of deflecting the blow down pat.
"I didn't think it was directed at me," said the target of the mayor's comments after the meeting. "I accepted it for what it was," he added graciously. "Madame Mayor is an excellent role model to all public servants."
He said it with a big smile on his face. The kind of smile you used to see in the schoolyard when a new kid had just ducked an overhead right from the big tough guy in Grade 8.

Who's that sexy lady who will be lounging around the key street corner of our city centre for the foreseeable future?
Of course, that's no lady, that's the Marilyn Monroe of architectural contests at least if you believe what you read this morning in the Toronto press.
It's quite amazing, and pleasing, to see all the buzz that the Absolute Residential Design Competition has garnered for the city.
On Tuesday, it was announced that the most striking of many striking entries in the global contest sponsored by Fernbrook Homes and Citizen Developments had won, the sinuous, slightly twisted proposal by Yansong Ma of MAD.
"We didn't want to do a sexy building, but the public thinks it's sexy," said Ma at the press conference where the event was held at the CN Tower in Toronto.
Who is he kidding? This 50-storey building is turbo-charged sexy but not in a tacky artificial Pamela Andersen, or Marilyn kind of way. More like early pouting Bardot, or even better, Jean Seberg, sleek and slightly troubled.
Of course, anything out of the turgid rectangular glass box mode that seems to dominate all high rise congregations would have been acceptable.
But this design was clearly the front-runner to send the message that the City and contest originators wanted to send: our downtown is open for business and we're no longer mired in the mundane.
"I'm proud that the City has the confidence to go ahead and do something original," said McCallion, who joked that she would now have to settle for second place in the local sexy lady competition. (Gives new meaning to the phrase The Empress Has No Clothes, doesn't it?)
Before the winner was announced yesterday, McCallion told a breakfast meeting of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Peel that she hoped Marilyn Monroe would win. Those sexy dames always stick together.
One thing that's quite clear about this whole exercise is that the Toronto architectural community has its nose thoroughly out of joint because Mississauga has been the location for the first open international competition in the GTA in the last 40 years, and not you-know-who.
How else do you account for a blurb in Toronto Life Magazine titled Best Development in a Suburban Wasteland that ends like this: "Mock the soccer-mom suburb all you want but it's wealthy, diverse and increasingly urbane, and it's creeping up on its smug big-city neighbours to the east."
So if you want to see urbane, Toronto, just go west, man. Just go west.

Bert Oldershaw often used to joke that he owed his Olympic career as one of Canada's most decorated paddlers, ironically, to the sport of football and Canadian Football League Hall-of-Famer Annis Stukus.
Two days after Oldershaw died suddenly at age 84, his son Dean recalled that paddling wasn't the only sport at which his dad excelled.
"He was an excellent football player and he played for Balmy Beach a couple of years after they won the Grey Cup," said Oldershaw, an Oakville resident who, nevertheless, vows that, "I'm still a Port Credit boy regardless of where I'm living."
His dad was playing defence for Balmy Beach when "Stuke," who played 12 different positions in his long CFL career, ran over him.
"Stukus' cleat went through my dad's shoe and he lost the middle knuckle on his second toe because it was so badly smashed," said Dean. "And that's what really got him into canoeing."
It's hard to know what brought Oldershaw more glory - his stellar Olympic career in which he reached canoeing finals in three consecutive Games in 1948, '52 and '56 — or his stellar work founding and building the Mississauga Canoe Club and sending new generations of paddlers on to Olympic glory.
Of course, his own sons Dean and Reed and Scott, were among that lineage.
Things weren't looking so bright at the end of Oldershaw's Olympic days when Hurricane Hazel wiped out the Toronto Island Canoe Club in 1954 and then, two years later, the government expropriated the property on Centre Island where Bert had been raised and learned to paddle.
"He got in the motor boat and went all along the waterfront, east and west, looking for property," recalled Dean. He ended up buying the former Timothy Eaton Estate just west of Port Credit. He had the 15-acre property subdivided and the family lived on Balboa Dr. from 1956 to around 1980.
It ended up being a magnet for the paddling fraternity, of course. That's what happens when you convert your swimming pool into a paddle pool where everyone can practice.
Oldershaw founded the canoe club at the mouth of the Credit and was its first coach. He was "adamant" the club be named for the Mississaugas. When it came time for the public to choose between the names of Mississauga and Sheridan when the new town was created in 1968, he lobbied hard for Mississauga, to match the canoe club moniker.
His father always felt a strong affinity for native Canadians and the culture that created canoeing and gave the world the sport he loved best, said Dean.
"He always used to say Canada is the only country that has a sport named after it," said Dean, 59. "Of course, the sport of canoeing is divided into kayak and Canadian canoe. He'd always say 'C1, C2, C4: It's not canoe, it's Canadian.'"
Undoubtedly as a result of his childhood on the Toronto Islands, Oldershaw also had a passion for lighthouses. Before he died he'd been working on restoring the Burlington Canal lighthouse and the keeper's cottage.
Asked how he'll remember his father best, Dean Oldershaw pauses for a moment.
"As a loving father, of course," he says, "but also as a promoter and a hustler, right to the end. In the last year, he'd been trying to get canoeing going at the Six Nations Reserve," said Dean.
His sons will spread their father's ashes at several of the places he loved the best, including on the Toronto islands where it all started and on Burlington Beach where he had his cottage.
Naturally, the vestiges of Oldershaw will also float again on the waters of the Credit.
"That river was always dear to him," his son said.