Daily News - February 27, 2012

DATELINE: HANGING WITH CHAD ON CANADIAN ELECTION DAY: You remember that whole US / Bush / Florida / Hanging Chad crap twelve years ago? You remember how we all stood around shaking our heads in disgust that what amounted to possible election fraud happened right on our doorstep? So what the fuck do we do now that it is in our country, that it is not ‘possible fraud’ but plain outright criminal fraud, and that it was committed by the party in charge?

Yes, Harper, in typically fashion, found the guy who happened to be at the bottom of the downhill shit express and offered him up as a sacrificial lamb, and has now declared that the issue is solved, that there is no reason to look any further into the matter. How fucking convenient. Yes, the sacrificed lamb was young, and patently stupid, but he did not have the ability to do this fraud alone. This was a crime that spanned, at last count, 39 national ridings, all across the country. It was a fraud that started out during the campaign as people, falsely representing themselves as members of the Liberal, Green and NDP parties, phoned and harassed voters in an attempt to turn them against those parties. They went so far as to phone known Jewish families during Sabbath, in their attempts to garner favor for their own party while lying, pretending to be from one of the other three parties. This alone was unconscionable.

But then came election day. Yes, our sacrificial lamb went to the University of Guelph and tried to steal a ballot box, claiming that the voting station was illegal, but there was no way he orchestrated the calls that went out all throughout the country in yet another attempt to defraud Canadians. These calls, represented as being from Elections Canada, the Liberal Party and the NDP party, told the voter that their polling booth had changed, sent them across town, confused the voting public, all in an attempt to get them to either go to the wrong place or not bother voting at all. Funny thing, but there are none of these calls made to registered Conservative party members and there have been, so far, no indications that these calls were made to any voters in ridings that were undisputable conservative.

To suggest that Harper was unaware of this whole operation is absolutely insulting to the Canadian public. Harper: Mr. Megalomaniac himself? Captain Control-Freak? Master micro-manager extraordinaire? For the love of all that is fucking holy, do not even try that crap. It’s tired, and we are getting really rather sick of the schoolyard bully tactics that the Conservative Party embraces so much. They are nothing more than urban thugs, gang members in Armani suits, but the mentality is the same – do whatever you have to do to maintain power and line your pockets. This country is a democracy. Men died to preserve for all of us the right to vote, and the Harper conservatives have completely desecrated the sacrifice of these men, as well as their own fucking office. We get told that if we don’t agree to unwarranted searches and tracing of our internet communications, we are child pornographers. We get slighted, insulted, abused on a daily fucking basis, and this has to stop. I realize that the other national parties, every fucking one of them, is in leadership disarray right now, but a god damned capuchin monkey with an ‘anything but Harper’ button on could make a better showing for Canada, and would treat the people who pay his fucking salary a hell of a lot better than the dickhead sitting in the big house on Sussex Drive right now. What does it say about a party that KNOWS the only chance they have to obtain or maintain their power is to lie, cheat and steal to get it?

DAILY NEWS -- February 16th, 2012

DATELINE: STANDING BY THE FONT, WANTING TO PUKE IN IT: It has come to the attention of the media today that the parents of Simon Weisenthal, the now well-known Nazi hunter who passed away in 2005 , has been posthumously baptized into the Mormon faith. While Mr. Weisenthal is not here to defend himself, his faith and the respect of his parents, others have stepped up to the plate, demanding that the LDS church stop the practice of posthumous baptisms… for Jewish Holocaust victims. What the hell is that? No, it should be stopped for all of them! I am sorry, but I am not now, and I will never be a Mormon, and I would be right pissed off if some asshole had the unmitigated audacity to ‘save my soul’ by baptizing me into a faith I did not believe in. Yes, the LDS church claims to have the fastest growing church… it’s just that they are getting dead new members, the ones who can’t cause any problems, or argue about it. It is the most egregious activity I have ever heard from, something that should not be happening, but it does, and it has for years, and GOP front runner Mitt Romney has already acknowledged that he has participated in these activities – ergo he thinks it is just fine to ‘force’ a change of faith for anyone who is not in a position to argue about it. My parents were staunchly Catholic; for them to be baptized into another faith after they are gone would be catastrophic. Where the fuck do these people get off thinking it is their ‘right’ to ‘save’ our souls. The LDS claims these baptisms are their genealogical database, that it only takes relatives of its members, but that does not make it right by any means, especially seeing how far down their bloodlines they are prepared to go in search of a soul to save. If someone wanted to be fucking Mormon, they would have joined that church. If they didn't join the church, then leave them the hell alone! No, they should not be allowed to do it. It should be fucking illegal.

DATELINE: PULLING THAT BARGE AND TOTING THAT WHALE – In what has to be the most offensive mockery of the judicial system and of the suffering of truly enslaved people, PETA once again crossed the line in their fanatical attempts to prove a point. They filed a legal challenge that the whales held at SeaWorld were ‘slaves’, not getting paid to work, their constitutional rights being trampled. First, this is a huge insult to the people who actually do work to promote conservation, because this bullshit sets all of their genuine work into the same category of idiots and assholes that seem to be making decisions at PETA. It is, though, the ultimate slap in the face to those who did live as slaves, generations of them, and their offspring who are still trying to lift that yoke from their shoulders. Don’t even get me going about the waste of fucking tax dollars involved for a court to hear this crap, and the wasted money from legitimate donors wanting to help conservation. This was nothing more than a fucking costly and very ill-advised attempt at self-promotion and it is despicable. Whoever came up with it should have their ass shit-canned from PETA right now. Anything less would be totally unacceptable.

DATELINE: LOOKING FOR A CELEB TO DIE SO THEY CAN RACK UP THE RATINGS – I sent my very sincere apologies to the family and friends of Whitney Houston. Her death was a tragedy, without doubt. That said, the performance of the media in the last week has been, to say the least, disgusting. What the hell is the matter with you freaking death-mongering news anchors? Yes, her passing was news on Saturday. Yes, there was definitely a reason to mention the tribute to her at the Grammy’s because her death was so fresh in the minds of everyone, but come on… five days of coverage of her death?? What the hell is that? There is nothing new to say about it, so give her family and her friends some time to grieve in private. Had I passed in a bathtub, I am not so sure I would want the whole world to be talking about it every minute of the day. If my mother died that way, I would not want it to be fodder for news media for DAYS. This is no longer reporting news. How many times do you have to stick a microphone into someone’s face and ask ‘how do you feel now that she is dead?’ What the fuck are you expecting them to say? This is disrespectful… completely and totally disrespectful and classless. It is disrespectful to Ms Houston, to her family, to her friends, to her colleagues, to others who may have passed, to the family of service men and women who have passed, to the homeless person who did not have the good fortune to be discovered to have an astounding voice. Let it go. Show some fucking class.

DATELINE: DEMANDING SMALLER GOVERNMENT BY CREATING MORE GOVERNMENTAL BULLSHIT RED TAPE – Women wanting to have an abortion, for whatever reason, have to submit to a vaginal ultrasound probe if they live in Virginia. In the midst of all the bullshit about Republican demands about the sanctity of marriage (while the concept seems to mean nothing to them personally), while they thump their bible and decry the rights of other religions, while they try to legislate contraception where women are concerned (I don’t see any of them demanding the end of the sale of Viagra though. Hmmm, if sex is to be done only for the religiously-determined procreative purpose, what the hell do men need Viagra for? Or does the penis earn an exemption again in the population control issue? Penis perhaps are not required to be procreational?) So, while I do not agree with partial-birth abortions or with late-term abortions, to create a law that subjects a woman to an invasive medical procedure for NO reason is un-fucking-believable! What about the woman who, because of cultural reasons, is forced by her husband to have an abortion because the baby is the wrong sex? Now she has even more to deal with? An unnecessary chance for a doctor to stick something more up her crotch just for the sake of making her life more difficult? What the hell is wrong with you people? I guess it’s official, based on this new Virginia legislation and the GOP primaries, that the US is now completely determined to strip absolutely anyone of their rights unless they strictly adhere to the tenets of some convenient religious dogma. Way to go. How fucking sad.

DAILY NEWS -- February 7th, 2012

DATELINE: MAKING POPCORN, WATCHING THE SHOW – Isn’t that what everyone is doing? My set is tuned to Syrian TV, and they have this really vivid, gripping horror movie on about the people there, being persecuted, being shot as they walk out their doors, being tortured because, well, who the fuck needs a reason to torture in a movie, right?

For almost a year this has been going on, in a large part fueled by a big old oil-burning engine that gave Al-Assad more power and money than he ever could have dreamed possible. For a year, the people in that country have lived with terrible daily atrocities, while the rest of us sit and watch, chewing our cud, and wondering what oil prices will do tomorrow because of it. Man, do we have a fucked-up set of priorities.

It is a long-held tenet that the global world does not get involved in ‘civil’ wars. There is a reason for that, an understandable one. I have no doubt that no one really would have appreciated the French picking sides in the American civil war, although, come on, we all know that no one stays neutral. Canada never participated in Vietnam, declared the war to be unjust, yet was more than happy to rake in the coin from the sales of munitions, equipment and other supplies, hypocrites that we are.

War is one hell of a funny thing – and not in the ha-ha sense. A long time ago, it was okay, in fact, it was expected that armies fight to conquer territory for their kings, legitimately crowned or otherwise. Their intent was to ‘civilize’ heathens. There was a lot of death in that civilization process, making it one of the most moronic oxymorons of all time. Then came a time when it wasn’t so cool to move your armies onto someone else’s turf. The bar had been raised, the table set; that shit didn’t happen anymore. The other change, though, was that countries had started to elect their leaders, the people playing a part in the game now as well. When the people spoke, government listened – not just their own, but governments of other countries as well, respecting the will of the people who lived in that country to choose their own path, and all was good.

But then came along a man who wooed his people (as disgusting as the word ‘woo’ might be where he was concerned) and got elected by the people of his country, promising economic fortune, telling them what was wrong with their world, who to blame for it, and what to fear. Once in power, the rules changed though. He built armies, he conquered lands that no longer belonged to him. He then went further, pushing the limits, declaring war on a whole continent that he wanted to call his own. At that point, the rest of the world (well, almost… those tricky Yanks said it was none of their business and had no intention of getting involved) said ‘enough’ and we had our second great war, another war to end all wars.

That’s the thing though, isn’t it? It sort of did, at least by the standards of conquering other lands. Kim Il-Sung and Ho Chi Minh both tried, and thankfully, although no one likes to talk about it, they were stopped. It wasn’t just their thrust for power that was stopped though; it was like a final confirmation that it was not okay to invade and conquer another land… and that was as it should be. Therein lies the conundrum, I guess, because if someone goes in to help, that word ‘invade’ is quickly tossed into the air. The soldiers and marines who went into Vietnam were accused of being involved in something they had no right to be involved in, but that’s not true. They were there to help a people who did not have the means to help themselves, and that is NEVER wrong. In both Vietnam and Korea, the people they were helping were people who had the cards stacked against them, with Russian or Chinese forces backing the original invaders.

So now, we sit back, watch Russia and China make a mockery of the international process created by the United Nations. Did anyone really think for one fucking minute that they would have done anything different? Seriously? Russia, under Putin, is one scary-assed place with a war-mongering power-craving megalomaniac at the helm. We are told that it’s a ‘civil’ matter in Syria – none of our concern.
Let me ask you this though. Suppose it was OUR country who had the power-craving megalomaniac calling the shots (insert hysterical laugher here, cause, well, we do have that) and he changed the rules of the game for all of us. Say it was us who were starving, being shot in our streets by our own government, being forced to live destitute, accept torture and brutality on a daily basis. Say it was us who were unable to set foot outside our doors, unable to get food for ourselves… say it was us who were finding our babies bodies mutilated, decaying, wrapped in plastic and dropped on our doorsteps weeks after they had gone missing and been tortured. Would we not be wanting… praying for someone to come and help us? Is that not what being human, a member of the human race, about?

Had Hitler not gone beyond taking back that which was lost in the Treaty of Versailles, if he had been content with just ‘reclaiming’ land and people, but still went on his binge of cleansing society of all Jews, people of color, people of different nationality, people with handicaps, would that have been okay? Would the world just sit and watch? Would we accept that it was his right, in his country, to kill whoever he wanted? I hope not because what a sad fucking excuse for humans we would be. Let me ask one other question – had Germany been blessed with huge reserves of oil, would we have capitulated and let Hitler run amok? Is a barrel of oil really worth a human life in a fair barter system?

The bar has been set, raised on the lives of incredibly generous men and women who stood up to say ‘that’s not right’. This has nothing to do with any religion or custom, but it has everything to do with greed – ours and theirs. We want the oil. We claim it is better to take oil that is paid for by the lives of little children shot dead in the street, than to take oil that comes from sand pits, and somehow justify that it’s okay. No, I am not making a pitch for Canadian oil and how it is processed. I am saying we have alternatives though, and we should put more effort into finding cleaner ways of extracting what we have, and of using what we have responsibly, but it would still be better than what is happening in Syria. Despots have risen to unprecedented authority because of the money handed to them, by us, for a product we are using in excess to pollute the earth. You want to sit there and tell me we don’t have some responsibility to claim for the terrible abuse the people of Syria are facing today? You are fucking right we do, and we have an obligation, as global community of humans, to help them.