Category: Rights

Okay, there’s been a lot of chatter all of a sudden in the comments about just what I do and don’t delete on this site. It seems that just because I’ve admitted that I had to dump a few comments, some folks have taken it into their melons that this is a place where censorship lives.

It ain’t.

If you have something that you think is worth saying, by all means post it. Just don’t expect me (or anyone else here, for that matter) to agree with it. And do expect to be taken to task if somebody else gets pissed enough about what you have on your mind. It’s that simple. Some folks seem a little worried, though. Folks like Paul…

I will be disappointed if my comment is deleted as I’ve tried to stay positive about this whole thing, but even you all have to admit something more than the freaking OPP is needed in all of this.

And Lee Rock…

I am kinda sad that those other comments were deleted. […] and if my comment is deleted….well then that is just sad…this is a free country, with freedom of speech remember??? I liked hearing what other’s had to say, even tho they were a bit angry and upset…they were voicing their opinions and that is what Canada is all about….FREEDOM!!

First off, Lee is right. Voicing opinions is a big damned part of what Canada is all about. Uunless, of course, you voice a politically incorrect one, in which case you might find yourself battered from pillar to post through our “human rights” system, like Scott Brockie was. No need to worry about that here, though; I actually believe in giving air to those who agree with me AND those who don’t. It’s part of my belief in that whole messy democracy thing. Yeah, it’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but I live with it. So no, I’m not in the habit of killing comments just because they happen to piss me off.

There are, however, two things that need to be kept in mind:

1. This is a public site and I actually do try to keep it at least half-assed family-friendly. Yes, I have a bit of a trashmouth but even I try to draw a line. Kids come to this site too and there’s some stuff that kids just plain don’t need to hear or read. So, to that end: Ray, if you don’t learn to put a filter on the sewer under your nose, I WILL ban your sorry ass. You’ve been stopping by here for a while but you’re getting to be like a dog that just won’t take to housebreaking and I’m getting sick and tired of cleaning up your crap. Other people get hot under the collar too, but they don’t put out the kind of shit that you have.
2. This is a public forum for ideas, NOT a recruiting post for a God damned lynch mob. Anybody else tries a stunt like that, your IP goes straight to the cops. Period. Shooting some murderous prick in self-defense is one thing but hunting the bastard down and stringing him up without a trial is NOT something that I’m going to put up with. No more warnings.

Alright, folks, now that that bit of unpleasantness has been dealt with, I thought it would be a nice thing to put in a little something to boost the spirits of the folks back in my old Huron stompin’ grounds. If it won’t play in your browser for some reason, just click here and download it. A li’l Hank Jr never hurt nobody, right?

Enjoy, and remember: country folks can survive. (more…)

No matter how you slice it, this is more good than bad. Yes, Avi Lewis is downright embarrassing in his blatant idiocy in comparing “fundamentalist Christianity” and the USA with countries that have the boot of Sharia law on their necks but hey, I got used to being embarrassed by the Ministry Of What You Should Think a looooong time ago…

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is, in all probability, more qualified to speak on the topic of Islam and Islamofascism than any other woman in the Western world. It’s absolutely wonderful watching her occasionally rolling her eyes while Lewis gets more and more flustered as she methodically picks his idiocy to its bones with a calm and grace that is all too often lacking in public discourse on this subject (and yes, I know I’m guilty of going off half-cocked myself, every couple of minutes now and then).

I think the best probably has to be her blunt statement, “there is no Islamophobia, it’s a myth.” Check out the vid for yourself (you can download it here, if you have trouble viewing it in your browser)… (more…)

Okay, the hangover’s worn off and I’m ready to get back to presenting my opinions like a cranky caged ape flinging poop at a gaggle of rubberneckers.

I have no idea exactly how it happened, but here’s how it went:

I got into it with one of those playdoh-skulled peaceniks on Friday night. You know the type; the ones that never met anything military that wouldn’t make ’em open a fudge factory in their Stanfields. This particular twerp was going on and on about how we shouldn’t be Fighting Dubya’s War For Oil© and oppressing the nice terrorists in Afghanistan and all the other usual bullshit. He was also űberpissed about how we were making our soldiers go and fight a war they wanted no part in.

That’s where my bullshitometer redlined. I pulled the emergency brake on his little chatter choochoo and gave him the bad news that service in Afghanistan is purely voluntary for CAF personnel. In other words, if you don’t ask, you don’t go. Of course, he tried to argue that with me (a doomed effort if ever there was one) but when that failed, he fell back on wondering “what kind of person volunteers for something like that.”

And that’s when it happened.

I had a profundity; right there in the middle of the pub. I imagine they’ve probably cleaned it up by now (it was one of those kinds of places) but it still happened, nonetheless…

“What kind of person does that?” I asked, still shaking off the incredulity. “Lemme ask ya something, bozo: do you own a dog?”
“Um, yeah,” he answered, wondering where the hell I was going with that.
“Has your dog ever gotten sick?”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” This bonehead clearly had no idea what was coming.
“Just answer the damn question: has your dog ever gotten sick?”
“Well, yeah; once or twice.”
“Did you hake him to the vet?”
“Of course.”
“So you took your sick dog to the vet?”
“Yes, I took my sick f#%!ing dog to the f#%!ing vet, what the hell’s your point?” He was probably wondering if we were having the same conversation by now.
“So you treat your dog better than the Taliban treated women?”
“WHAT?!?!?” Where’s a camera when you need one? 🙄
“If your dog gets sick, you take it to the vet. Under the Taliban, if a woman gets sick, she can’t be examined by a male doctor, only by a woman doctor. But ther aren’t any women doctors, are there? Because women aren’t allowed to have jobs. And even if they could get jobs, they aren’t allowed to go to school. So that woman sits in the house — because she isn’t allowed to leave or she risks getting the shit beat out of her in the streets by the local “guardians of virtue” — with the disease or whatever it is working its way through her, and she either lives or she dies. Period. That’s it. And you can’t get your pissant little brain around the idea that some people might volunteer to do their part to put an end to something like that??”

After that, he quickly retreated back to burbling about colonialism, oil and Dubya until I popped him in the smeller and he went away. Not my proudest moment, perhaps, but one that I won’t be ashamed to share with my son one day when he’s older. (And before some knob out there starts accusing me of “advocating violence” or some other such bullshit, remember that I put a cute little kitten graphic to the right, so that makes it all okay )

Because I know, in my bones, something that waffling little snot will spend the rest of his life trying to avoid knowing: Without men like me, men like him are an evolutionary dead end.

Some of you might find this post a little befuddling, especially in light of my opinions on the Farmer Bob Varmint Gun Registryâ„¢ and other idiocies that the anti-gun wackos puke up from time to time. The fact of the matter is that, contrary to what some of my friends and coworkers might tell you, I actually do believe in having some gun control under the law.

No, I haven’t changed my mind. Registration is still useless but licensing makes sense. Registration only kicks in after you have a gun. It’s a licensing that keeps guns out of the hands of the wrong people in the first place, or at least makes it harder for them to get one.

A lot of states in the US have the right idea: if you have a felony conviction, you can’t get a gun. Waiting times make sense, too. Seriously now, just what the hell can be going on in your day that you need a gun right now?? Smells fishy to me.

But just having a licensing regimen isn’t enough; it has to be done right. Which makes the story on the front page of today’s Freeps all that much more disturbing:

ST. THOMAS — Factory worker Nelson Merritt has struggled for years with mental health problems and drug dependency.

He has an anxiety and bi-polar disorder. He’s been depressed and had suicidal thoughts.

And when he emptied the clip of his Glock 9 mm handgun into Bobby Thorpe Jr., shooting him 10 times, Merritt was the licensed owner of three handguns, two rifles and two shotguns.

I’m going to resist the temptation to go on a complete rant about how this is yet another murder that the Long Gun Registry failed to do anything about. The real question here is: how the hell did someone with a long history of drug abuse and mental illness get a PAL for not one but THREE, COUNT ‘EM: THREE RESTRICTED WEAPONS!?!? 😯 If that doesn’t redline your WTF-o-meter, nothing will.

I’ve said it before and, you guessed it, I’m saying it again: the problem isn’t guns, the problem is PEOPLE. You want to curb gun crime? First, you have a licensing system that is based on common sense (if you have trouble figuring out what that is, just go to your local sportsman’s or hunters’ & anglers’ association and ask around) instead of moonbattery. Second you need to really punish gun crime. As in: use a gun, do ten years BEHIND BARS and make it REAL TIME. That means:

• No TV
• No radio
• No gym
• No yard
• No Club Fed
• No smokes
• No methodone or other such bullshit
• And no Goddamn trailer where your ol’ lady can come in and grease your pole on the weekends.

You don’t stop gun crime by hassling law-abiding people. You do it by demanding responsible access and by going after the troublemakers — with a damned big stick.

I’d like to start off today by thanking both Artur Pawlowski and the Calgary Sun’s Licia Corbella for their help in putting this post together; I couldn’t have done it without ’em. I managed to speak briefly with Mr. Pawlowski from his home in Calgary and I have to tell you, he’s one of the nicest folks I’ve talked to in quite a while.

You might recall from two of my previous posts that Art is the guy who was arrested and jailed in Calgary back in August of last year for reading the Bible and praying in a public park.

Let me say that again: Arrested. And jailed. For praying. In Canada.

I Am Not Making This Upâ„¢.

I said yesterday that I was going to try to find the video footage of Art’s arrest, so I figured “who better to ask than… well, Art?” So, after getting ahold of a number for him, I gave him a call. While he didn’t have the footage in a digital format himself, he was able to direct me to the page for Paul Arthur’s show, Insight, at www.miraclechannel.ca (which you can check out yourself here) where I was able to download one of the shows that features a clip from the footage that Art’s brother shot the day he got busted. It’s a fairly long vid (about an hour) and the footage from the arrest only runs from 8:38 to 9:32 but on the whole, the whole vid is worth watching (you can download it to your hard drive here, if you like)…
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Dang, but this one took quite a while to come around, didn’t it? Some of you might remember me piping up waaayy back last August about a guy out in Cowtown by the name of Artur Pawlowski, after he got the cuffed-and-stuffed treatment from the Calgary cops for the unpardonable crime of… wait for it… reading the Bible in public.

No, I’m not making that up.

Now, before you go asking and bleating “how do we know he wasn’t accosting people,” bear this in mind:

On August 16, Artur Pawlowski was arrested for sharing the Gospel with tarot card readers at the Fringe Festival in Calgary. Pawlowski told these practisers of “sorcery” that the Bible condemns these practices. Organizers of the festival asked him not to talk to the vendors and he agreed. But when he stayed in the park praying and reading the Bible, the organizers called police. The police arrested Pawlowski for obstruction and he was taken in a police car in handcuffs. He was also charged with trespassing and causing a disturbance. Amazingly, Pawlowski’s brother videotaped the entire sequence of events.

Well, it has come around now and it looks like the video was rather… ahem… uncomplimentary. Both to the cops who busted Pawlowski and to the credibility of those who complained about him in the first place:

It was clear Pawlowski, his friends and family were jubilant criminal charges of obstruction of justice, resisting arrest and refusing to assist a public/peace officer had been wiped off the docket.

But the people who should be most relieved are the police officers who arrested him last Aug. 16 on 17th Ave. S.W. for reading from the Bible aloud near the Fringe Festival.

Had this case gone to trial, the judge would have seen evidence — a video taken by a Pawlowski supporter — that would have thrown the officers’ reputations into total disrepute.

Case toally dismissed. And before anybody even bothers asking, yes I am going to try and get a copy of that video. Stay tuned.