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I'm not a REAL political analyst, but I'd say that in labelling opposition to the tarsands development as counter to Canadian unity, which Michael Ignatieff essentially did the other day, he betrays a poor understanding of, well, pretty much everything to do with Albertans and other Canadians - who aren't Canadian Liberal politicians busily stumping on behalf of American oil companies (for some inexplicable reason).
I mean, nothing like assuming Albertans don't share the same concerns as environmentalists world over regarding the environmental devastation development of the tarsands will cause OUR habitat. And so much for any Liberal support in stopping the New Conservative/American Big Oil juggernaut responsible for it.
Someone needs to tip Iggy the Egghead off to the fact that the tarsands are exactly the sort of development Alberta, Canada, the United States - planet Earth - would be better off without. But I guess unity means different things to different politicians - depending on the audience. Here's hopin' he was just talking out of one side of his mouth to a particular audience and doesn't actually think developing the tarsands is a good thing - for anybody, least of all Albertans.
There is no common ground to be found on abortion rights for women. We either have access to publicly funded abortion services - or we don't.
Make of it what you will, but I'm calling myself a Big "F" Feminist now. Why pretend?
Seriously. I don't think those Russian mobster commie drunks are overly respectful of verbal warnings to stay out of other countries' air spaces even when they AREN'T in them, so I say we follow up Peter MacKay's "back off" by nuking 'em.
Two birds, too, because it would show that preachy pencil neck Obama who's the REAL new sheriff in town.
I took the day off work yesterday and, well, one thing led to another and I got to thinking about the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima. And then Nagasaki. And the really lame reason given out as to why it "had" to be done - that the war would continue, otherwise, and people would die.
I mean, is that even trying?
Anyway, I've never seen this in print before, so don't report me to the Internet police if you have, but I wonder if the Islamic Fundamentalists had that double whammy in mind when the brought down one World Trade Centre tower. And then the other one.
I imagine Terrorists! think these things through pretty obsessively and there is a kind of awful symmetry to it - including the lame reason for having done it. As if it was for some kind of good and not just a barbaric way of telling the world, "we can do this because we're THAT crazy".
I know, I know, get back to work, Sooey. No good can come of a day off.
Seriously, what is this fear of not shopping thing our governments have managed to instill in us over the years? I mean, what the hell has shopping done for our economies, anyway? Christ, we shopped 'til we dropped believing it was the best thing since sliced bread and look at the mess we're in now. Really, since no one who's anyone seems to know what they're talking about, what's with the not shutting up?
And buy American? Good grief. Please, tell us how, with a decimated manufacturing sector and a resource sector owned by China, Americans are supposed to buy American, dude. I mean, c'mon. Magical powers are one thing, but buying American is another. Besides, do we really want one billion unemployed Chinese people hanging around with nothing better to do than deciding to jump up and down at the same time and knock planet Earth out of orbit.
Gawd. Think first, then shut up, please.
There's a hilarious Bank of Montreal (BMO) commercial making the rounds on CBC featuring a couple of assholes trying to explain their investment anxieties to a Mexican (I guess) street vendor during their vacation. While I'm sure BMO didn't intend to show up Canadian investors as assholes - it does.
Lesson learned, BMO - thanks.
But the commercial made me think about the economic crisis the world is in and what little difference it would make to 99% of the people living on the planet except that now the 1% with wealth will be anxiously standing on their heads as they frantically try to outlast rising levels of debt.
Life is so unfair to the world's poor, isn't it?
But is there any reason for our governments to make it even more unfair, as they have so far managed to do? I mean, one would think now is the time for governments to nationalize banks and corporations and assert themselves as the governments of democracies they were elected to be.
Unless... is it possible we've been electing governments to cede democratic power to financial mercenaries? Because, well, I'm not a real economist but it appears to me that the blame for the economic crisis we find ourselves in is solely the fault of our democratically elected governments failing to govern our countries and allowing financial mercenaries to do it instead.
So, let's take step one in reclaiming our democracies by refusing to listen to self-appointed experts who would have us believe this economic crisis was caused by people holding mortgages they couldn't afford and, instead, hold our governments' feet to the fire until they start governing.
I guess someone who isn't an anti-Semite can only be accused of being an anti-Semite so many times before it's time to shine a light on one's accusers, which Sid Ryan did so artfully on TVO tonight. Responding to Steve Paikin's accusation (via the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith) that he seemed to have a laser focus on Israel (itself a completely inaccurate portrayal of Sid Ryan's public record on human rights abuses, but the new low road in attacking anyone who speaks up on Israel's human rights abuses against the Palestinian population in Gaza) he responded by pointing out that, in fact, it is the CJC and B'nai Brith, supposed human rights organizations, that seem to have a laser focus on Israel - whenever someone speaks up about Israel's human rights abuses against the Palestinian population in Gaza.
I mean, really. Why the hell aren't the CJC and B'nai Brith speaking up, too, when Israel indiscriminately bombs a trapped civilian population, instead of accusing anyone who does of being an anti-Semite.
Geez Louise. Crazy much, J'accusers?
Signed
Sooey, the anti-Shitheadite.
I just have to ask: Chuck Cadman died of natural causes, riiiiight? I mean, it's all on the up and up, on the record, autopsy done?
Okay. Now that everyone has gone home happy, let me just throw a little poop into the party. Ever notice how the more things change, the more things stay the same - for women in the movies?
I mean, really. We're either the girlfriend, or it's a buddy movie.
The phrase, "there's probably no god, so stop worrying and enjoy your life", has been deemed too offensive to appear in public by Ottawa City Council - the same city council that allowed the owner of a falling down building to tie up the city center for months last year (the building is still there, the sidewalk unusable by pedestrians) while police were paid around the clock to sit in idling cars to keep watch on the whole mess and buses were re-routed to inconvenient locations - AND - the same city council that caused a bus strike and then allowed it to continue for more than two months, in the middle of winter, with negotiations being scheduled weeks apart even while people lost their jobs, homes, minds in the worst economic crisis to have hit Ottawa since forever.
Meanwhile, the Mayor of Ottawa, a New Conservative if ever there was one, is alleged to have bribed another politician to drop out of the mayoralty race in which he won his job, and is scheduled to go on trial in the spring. But, in true New Conservative form he's got lawsuits on the go against the local CanWest newspaper (which should be a no-brainer for success, but it's owned by the Aspers) so it's more like he won the election fair and square nowadays. It's sort of like how the federal New Conservatives managed to get away with bribing Chuck Cadman, lying about it, suing the Liberals for publicly exposing them for lying about it, lying about it again under oath in court but nevertheless managing to win an election called to circumvent democracy (is the number of stupid Canadians going up naturally or through immigration, I wonder) before dropping the lawsuit and rendering the Liberals (for some reason which remains unclear - mostly because nobody's investigating it) impotent on the entire matter.
All very politically correct indeed. Good luck seeking justice in Canada against politicians with pockets deep enough to launch lawsuits, Canadians.
ListeriosisAndOtherOutbreaks
The reality is, senior officials in the government often communicate through post-it notes in order to circumvent access to information laws.
Sigh. All we used to have after "an unfortunate incident" in which the federal government failed to protect Canadians in some way was a paper trail pointing to where officials went wrong in order that those mistakes could be avoided in future.
Now, we don't even have that.
It's a fact. A Canadian fact.
Actually, if you really stop and think about it (and your professional pundits clearly haven't - so allow me) the Ps of A were far more realistically re-enacted in the cancellation of the historical re-enactment than they could ever have been on the fields of pretend battle.
Aha, you say - Sooey cuts to the chase yet again. True enough, Dear Reader, true enough. But credit where credit is due: I got the idea while reading Michael Coren's predictable and derivative of other predictable and derivative columns column lamenting the loss of the supposed non-politically-correct days when British white male Conservative Christian pundits ruled and French white male Separatists drooled.
Maybe.
But after several years of every Tom, Dick and Mary predicting the demise of CanWest, it looks like the Aspers have finally managed to make the soothsayers appear positively soothful. (And here I thought they were just annoyingly predictable in their regular predictions of CanWest's imminent demise.)
So, was it the boldly Anti-anti-Establishment stance of CanWest editorial boards preaching to the socially Conservative converted or just shoddy business practices that took the National Post, to name just one CanWest newspaper, from the glory days of anti-Feminist Mark Steyn to the gory days of anti-Feminist Jonathan Kay.
Well, it's hard to differentiate stupid from stupid, so... who cares?
A while ago, I was talking to a woman who told me that her daughter has been plagued with genital warts ever since being vaccinated against the two strains of HPV that can lead to cervical cancer. She didn't seem crazy or like someone with an axe to grind - she just happened to mention it in a worried tone. We'd been talking about vaccinations because of the recent campaign urging young people born between certain years to get a second mumps vaccination. One thing led to another and she dropped what I thought was kind of a bombshell into the conversation. So I'm posting about it, not without a certain amount of trepidation, either. If you'll recall, the HPV vaccination campaign was quite a steamroller of an event and I suspect no one who is anyone wants to hear anything negative about it now.
I'm late to this whole cancellation of the re-enactment of the Plains of Abraham fiasco, but I've got to say - it's pretty hilarious that all it took was the threat of disruption to scare off the pretend soldiers.
Anyway, I live in Ottawa and having just recently earned the right to apply for jobs that demand a certain level of French reading, writing and speaking ability (and all the best ones do) I just have to ask - who won the Plains of Abraham again?
Seriously, it's too bad those poor Quebec Separatist victims of Anglo oppression aren't around to see the pasty looks of sheer terror on the faces of Anglophones sitting in French language testing rooms steeling themselves for mandatory and completely pointless French language proficiency tests in order to keep their jobs.
Lost in the debate over which members of the public should be allowed to advertise on OC Transpo is the fact that a supposedly public service has somehow become dependent on private advertising (and Catholic school board advertising - see entry below).
Since when and why is the question we should be asking ourselves. Public space should be advertisement free, shouldn't it - or isn't public space then just another billboard?
Yesterday, as I was sitting on the bus, I was assaulted by a Catholic School Board advertisement for St. Nicholas Adult High School, clearly suggesting that young girls have babies so that they could finish high school "in the comfort of their own homes".
I wish I was kidding, but I'm not. There was a picture of a smiling happy young teenaged mom and her baby surrounded by absolute bullshit propaganda about how easy it would be for her to finish high school now that she had a baby. I ask you, how mean is that? Very? Very very? Very very very?
Marianne Wilkinson, Rainer Bloess, and Doug Thompson - sit on your thumbs and rotate.
Retard-O-Vatican
Sex discrimination is destined to continue in the scorching fires of Hell, according to a study approved by the Vatican which suggests that men are most likely to commit lustful sins whereas women are beholden to pride.
The Vatican really needs a woman to help it think these pronouncements through, I'd say.
Seriously, is anybody else tired of CBC telling us how excited we are that Obama is coming to Canada? I mean, if he was going to tell our Prime Minister to blow the tarsands out his Albert Reform Separatist ASS, rip up that piece of shit NAFTA Agreement or force our stupid and incompetent New Conservative government to bring some diplomacy to bear in Afghanistan - maybe. But since he's not - why get excited?
You know, Feminists are subjected to offensive advertising everywhere there is advertising. It's the reason why many of us no longer watch commericial television or listen to commercial radio. It's also why we read fiction on our bus rides to and from work. Advertising is offensive to us because it's sexist, just like the rest of society - thanks to a man-made god whose word is supposed to be the truth.
Luckily, I learned to separate the truth from what men say god says is the truth at my mother's knee.
Is it just me, or does everyon else find it kind of hilarious that a re-enactment of the Plains of Abraham (yawn) was cancelled because of a threat of disruption?
This is the advertisement John Donaldson of OC Transpo decided was offensive:
"There's Probably No God. Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life."
I think I'll have a placard made and wave it around at OC Transpo stops to cheer people up for their dreary OC Transpo commutes (which is about to raise its fares, by the way).
Seriously, you'd never know OC Transpo allows plenty of Pro-Life advertising on its buses to hear the utter bullshit spewing forth in defence of this stupid Godist decision.
Godists ruining life for the reasonable. It's been ever thus, I suppose.
And ever notice, too, how God is always a Godist God? A humourless, homophobic, anti-choice, misogynistic prudecakes opposed to social progress and rational thought?
Why do religious people assume that a belief in an afterlife equates to a greater regard for human life than someone who believes that life here on earth is all there is?
I mean, it's simply not rational or reasonable to think that someone who believes death will end in life everlasting can be trusted with human life more than someone who believes that all we have is each other.
Which leads me to today's question: Why are outspoken atheists the exception in politics?
Subtitled: Taking Credit Where None Is Due
Canada's New Conservative government is off to tell the G7 in Rome (great metaphor guys) that "regulation and oversight" is the key to a sound economy.
You know, it's like joining a marathon for the last mile (after jeering from a car cruising alongside the other competitors for the first 25), sprinting to the finish, raising your arms in victory, and shouting, "I won! I won!"
THEN telling the guy from Kenya that your winning strategy was to train hard in bad weather.
Why do I continue to see advertisements featuring cars that can go up to a hundred billion kilometres per second when we have a speed limit of 100 km/hour even on the TransCanada highway?
There's an Interent storm raging right now that has to do with Kathy Shaidle's appearance on a TVO panel. On one side are a whole big bunch of Progressive Bloggers (i.e. people who think progressive means politically correct and bloggers means political correcters), mostly Liberal insiders/lobbyists, white, male, yaddayaddablahblah. You know - the guys who tend to be on TVO panels when it's not Kathy Shaidle or somesuch non-Progressive Blogger type who posts on the Internet the sorts of things one's Scottish grandmother didn't think to say out loud because if she'd ever thought that one day Muslims would walk amongst us, she'd have spontaneously combusted.
Anyway, I don't much care for mobs, which, I admit, is a word I normally associate with groups with names like "Blogging Tories" and "Pro Lifers" but I can't say I find the reaction by so many Progressive Bloggers to Ms. Shaidle's appearance on TVO, a publicly funded broadcaster (and since when is public opinion reserved for political insiders - oh yeah - since forever and a day in the Great White North) either progressive-like or blogger-like.
Whatever. The important thing, as I understand it from the Progressive Blogger point of view, is that the standard in publicly-funded Canadian television panels - white male political insiders/professional lobbyists with businesses to promote - continue to hold forth, uninterrupted by the likes of one Kathy Shaidle (who, in case you were wondering, Progressive Bloggers do not think is very pretty), on the taxpayers' dime.
Indeed. As you were, everybody. In your living rooms watching your betters promote themselves, their politics, and their careers on public television.
You've got to wonder at the way in which Stephen Harper was able to sue the Liberals into silence on the alleged little matter of bribing a Member of Parliament to vote a certain way once upon an election, until after a more recent election was over, even after seemingly being caught with his pants on fire in court - eh?
And the Liberals sure aren't talking. But there was quite a Chretien/Martin feud on in those days, with a number of Chretienjets running around the country on the loose and unemployed and looking to do some damage to their arch enemies, the Martinsharks. Who knows? Maybe they have a really good reason for wanting the Cadman Caper to fall off the public radar. I mean, it sure looks like Stephen Harper had a lot more to do with this sordid saga than he said he did - while under oath. You'd think the Liberals would want to exploit that seeming reality - no?
Sadly, really really really gay.
There's a push on in the Public School Board to ensure that sexual harassment and discrimination issues (yup, still there) are being addressed in our high schools, particularly those issues which directly impact on homosexual students.
The Catholic School Board is not involved in this initiative, I assume because the cult known as the Catholic Church teaches to children and adult followers alike that homosexuality is a sin and should be punished accordingly.
Unfortunately, the teachers behind this laudable initiative seem to think the expression "that's so gay" speaks to their point about sexual harassment and discrimination as preventing homosexual students from coming out in high school.
Sigh. Honestly, though. I do wish them luck.
The bus strike is over. We saw our first buses since mid-December(?) rumbling down Bank and Elgin Streets yesterday. And in spite of local hate radio hosts (who don't even take the bus) it appeared as if violence would be one less thing drivers would have to worry about in getting back on the streets.
It's Winterlude, too, and a sunny mild Sunday for skating on the canal. I won't likely be out there - again - this year. I'm exhausted from getting to work and home every day this winter and just don't have anything left over for fun. It's a mistake, I'm sure, but so is working, I'm starting to realize.
I'm trying to get a permanent job so I can get a mortgage. I'm the safest bet in the world, but the banks won't lend me a dime. Ottawa in 2009 is a city of contracts, but apparently, the banks haven't caught up to 1999 yet, so there's not much point in arguing with them. One day this spring I'll transfer all my money to a credit union and say goodbye to banks forever and hello to a new set of problems.
But one can't complain too much, unless it's on behalf of the people who lost their jobs during the bus strike - for which City Council is pretty much 100% to blame. I don't believe in public sector strikes, I don't even believe in public sector unions anymore, but no matter what you've heard - this strike could easily have been avoided altogether. It'll be interesting to see if the same radio hosts who demonized the transit strikers and whipped up daily doses of hatred toward them will do the same when the Mayor goes on trial in the spring for allegedly bribing a candidate to drop out of the race.
I say "allegedly" loosely (and probably spelt wrong). For what it's worth, I believe the guy who says Larry O'Brien bribed him to drop out of the mayoral race with the promise of a job which was supposed to come to him via John Baird. It's unlikely he'll be convicted - New Conservatives have a way of fixing these things, I've noticed, so that the guilty go free - if they're New Conservatives - and the rest of us are left shaking our heads at the judgement of others.
The poor and the marginalized in Ottawa had a lot to suck up this past winter. I'm neither and I feel like my life is being mismanaged on every front by forces beyond my control. I've always had my nose to the grindstone in one way or another, so it's an important lesson to learn that a piece of work like, for instance, Larry O'Brien, can suddenly show up at the head of the class to hand out the gold stars. Because working is for chumps, isn't it. That's the message our politicans seem to be sending out. Parliament is difficult? Prorogue it. Caught doing something illegal? Sue your accusers into silence. Want to be mayor? Bribe your competition into dropping out of the race.
Money is cheap, isn't it. And it cheapens people. It cheapens society, too. And yet, I beaver away, wearing myself down to the bone (sadly, I'm not exaggerating) in an effort to insulate myself from economic disaster by making more of the stuff. It's been so ingrained in me that money equals security. And yet, it doesn't. Because most of us will never make enough money to be secure in a society where people with MORE money can bring everything crashing down on all our heads with their bad judgement, grotesque greed and inflated personal ambitions
Yet we're so conditioned to try, try, try again, taught from grade school to keep at it, to get those straight As.
I hope I have time left in my life to learn to give up.
It'll be funny if it turns out in five years that Michael Phelps used marijuana as a gateway drug to heroin.
Obama's really changed the Blogosphere, eh? It's funny to think that a real life happening can actually have an effect on cyber space, but it has. I no longer read any of the Rightwing blogging pundits, American or Canadian, that I used to delight in mocking, not because they've changed, but because everything else has. To mock them would make us both look irrelevant. In fact, none of the political blogs seem relevant these days, left/right or center. Partisanship is suddenly out of step with the times. TIme to heed my own counsel and move on, I guess.
I'm enjoying the refreshing honesty of the woman who has six children and wants 8 more - for no good reason.
Seriously, it's so unusual to hear people tell the truth these days about why they want to have children. All I ever seem to hear is that lie about selflessness.
Sorry, but producing your own children in a world where millions of children go wanting for parents is selfless? Pinch me. I seem to be living in a world where you can utter complete and unadulterated self-serving bullshit and it's accepted by society as Gawd's honest truth.
Keep talkin' crazy lady. I like what I'm hearing. The truth.
Now that I sleep on it, I'm guessing "the defendant has the right to face his accuser in court" is just one of 18th century England's fundamentalist notions of justice that has no real or practical application in a modern court, anyway.
Like wigs on judges. I mean, c'mon - we used to insist that was de rigeur, too.
Well there, I've done a 180 on this one, so clap me in irons. The judge - in whom we invest the absolute right to make decisions about law - has erred.
I have a question about the case of a Muslim woman who wants to be allowed to wear her veil in court to testify against an alleged rapist: Why has this become an issue of women's rights as opposed to the issue of religious freedom that it actually is?
In fact, why does it always become a story about women's rights whenever the veil is raised, so to speak, as a topic of religious freedom vs the laws of the land?
The law trumps religious freedom. Gender is irrelevant.
Sigh. Why are pundits hither and yon talking about the "Conservative" budget and whether it is too Conservative or not Conservative enough? Geez Louise. WAKE UP, YOU IDIOTS! The Conservatives aren't in power. A group of Alberta Reform Separatists and Little Shit Harrisites are running the country now. The Conservative Party of Canada, the CPC, is long gone, as long gone as Brian Mulroney's dice (you know, the ones he rolled to make federal government policy decisions). That towering giant of 21st century Canadian politics, Preston Manning, destroyed the Conservatives - just as he promised he would - with the power of his squeaky voice and mean spirit.
OutDamnSpot!
It'll only make sense if you've actually been following the ravings of one Thomas Flanagan over the years, but he's been known to take credit for getting Stephen Harper to where he is today - up to his cold dead eyeballs in deficits.
I could be mistaken, but he appears to be troubled by his conscience. Who knew he had one?
Whenever I think of Rogers, I wonder where the hell the expression "Corporate Citizen" came from because a corporation is not a citizen and Rogers should be ample proof of that fact.
But anyway, Rogers has some sort of supposed goodwill advertisement on television right now featuring a little girl sitting on a swing in a playground being video-taped by a man, who, the ominous words on the screen advise us - is not her father. Oh. Okay. So it's the local playground paedophile. Gotcha. Then the scroll at the bottom says something about children going missing every day.
Except that they don't. Children in Canada do NOT go missing every day. In fact, it's quite rare that a child goes missing in this country. So rare that it's a really big news story when it happens. It's awful when it happens, but thankfully, it almost never does or we'd have to listen to pundits like Michael Coren go on and on about how it did because of what she was wearing.
So what's with the constant fear-mongering to parents that they mustn't let their children out of their sight for a second lest some lurking paedophile happen by to rape and murder them? And why Rogers? Is this annoying company, famous for its negative billing practices, warning us to keep our children close in hopes that we'll buy one of its over-priced cable/internet/phone packages out of fear, that only if we keep our kids close to home watching television will they be safe? What else could possibly be its point in coming up with such an egregiously false advertising campaign?
Further, does anybody know how to get Rogers to refrain from stuffing my mailbox every frickin' day with its cultlike insistence that I subscribe to its cell phone service? If I wanted a cell phone, Rogers, I'd get one. Except I wouldn't get one from you, even if you were the last phone company on earth. That's because I have two of your other services. I mean, I don't want to hurt your feelings (oh wait, corporations don't have feelings) but you suck. Now leave me alone, please - except when I want technical support.
You are not a citizen. You are a corporation. And you're not fooling anyone.
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