Yes, it is; and damned fast, too. As if averaging more than one a month wasn’t bad enough, there has been yet another shooting in downtown London. For those keeping count, that makes four in three months now. That’s not for all of London, either. Nosiree, that’s just for the core area and so doesn’t include the guy that was shot on McNay street a month or so ago.

I’ve heard some people trying to take the easy road, just saying that the problem is pretty much restricted to a “certain kind” of bar or club. Translation: those clubs that play hip-hop and assorted techno crap with the bass turned up to the point where it registers on seismographs for miles around and attract the early-twentysomething crowd. Well, you can put that idea to rest. While I don’t go there myself (I prefer a more blue-collar kind of joint 😉 ), the pub where the latest incident occurred is actually kind of snooty; the sort of place where seldom is heard a “yo, yo, wazzup” and you can find enough neckties on the patrons to make a giraffe a turtleneck.
As you can imagine, the fingers are being pointed in all the usual directions with the predictable suggestions being made:

An early-morning shooting in a posh downtown bar left one man in hospital yesterday and the bar owner calling for a “zero-tolerance” approach to the core’s escalating gunplay.

“London should adopt a zero-tolerance policy for its own survival,” said John Scott-Pearse, owner of Robinson Hall. “That (approach) worked in New York City and it will work here.”

I agree. We do need a zero-tolerence policy when it comes to these assholes that think it’s all jolly to send lead flying around on our streets. Don’t go looking at the cops to fix this, though. No, I’m not blaming them. The cops are already doing their job: respond to calls, follow the leads and nab the bad guys.

The problem crops up when the cops manage to track down and bag one of these creeps, only to have some idiot judge fire him right back out the revolving jailhouse door again. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at the case of Ahmed Moalin-Mohamed (who I’ve ranted about plenty), the guy that shot four — count ’em: FOUR — people on Thanksgiving weekend, only to get sprung from the pokey by a jackass Justice of the Peace named Jack Carroll.

And before you go yapping that that’s the exception: don’t bother.  It isn’t the exception, it’s the norm.  From drug dealers to shooters to pedophiles and even child killers, they all puke up their sob stories and stroll away, frequently vanishing, no doubt laughing their arses off at the impotence of the courts.

We don’t need more cops; what we need are new judges.

This doesn’t happen to me much. Usually, my first impression of a thing, whatever it may be, is pretty accurate and changing my mind isn’t something that I find myself having to do very often. Some people (okay, okay; most people…) will call that stubbornness but I prefer to think of it as just paying attention to what the hell’s going on in the first place. It usually works out quite well for me. Not always, mind you; but usually.

Sometimes though, I end up doing an about-face. Like today, when I started reading the Freeps this morning and found this:

Police say kin shares fault

Thu, January 11, 2007
By KELLY PEDRO, FREE PRESS REPORTER

The parents of a woman violently gunned down by her former boyfriend are partly responsible for her death, London police contend.

In just-filed court documents, a lawyer representing the force alleges Tom and Kim Bol didn’t report contact between their daughter Vanessa and her ex-boyfriend, Emerson Dominguez, when the parents knew he was not supposed to contact her.

The “WHAT THE F***?!?!?” that came flying unbidden out of my piehole was probably heard in Lambeth. The first instinct was, as you’ve likely guessed, pretty obvious and something that I think just about any parent in the world will be able to relate to…

What the hell is wrong with the cops? Have they lost their God damned minds? Just who the hell was the shithead that came up with this lamebrained idea in the first place? Even if it’s true and the parents were somewhat at fault, these people lost a daughter, for Christ’s sakes; they’ve suffered enough. LEAVE THEM ALONE!

Pretty standard stuff, right? Yeah, I thought so, too. But then I kept reading and lo and behold, there was a little detail about the whole affair that, with all the time that has passed, I had managed to forget all about: following Vanessa Bol’s tragic death at the hands of Emerson Dominguez in November of 2003, it didn’t take long for the lawyers to start circling the carcass. After all, it isn’t for nothing that so many in this world consider lawyers to be one step down the food chain from plankton. Dominguez is currently serving a life sentence for second-degree murder, with no chance of parole for 20 years (theoretically, at least; with our revolving-door justice system, you can never tell… but that’s another rant). Vanessa died on the third of November and the Bol family decided to sue the London cops a little over six months later:

In July 2004, the Bol family filed a civil suit against London police for nearly $1.4 million, claiming officers failed to protect their 17-year-old daughter.

[…]

The civil suit names London’s police services board, retired chief Brian Collins and two London police officers.

An amended statement of defence says the Bols “did not report Dominguez’s contact with Vanessa Bol to other persons or agencies of authority who might have intervened to protect Vanessa Bol.”

[…]

The statement says the Bols did not report threats or assaults by Dominguez against Bol.

So there you have it. Puts the issue in a slightly different perspective, doesn’t it? No doubt about it, there’s a turd in this punchbowl someplace. The questions is: which side is right and which side are being utter assholes and pulling some pretty lowdown crap?

On the one hand, if the allegations are true, it takes some kind of God damned gall to try to and cash in — to the tune of over a million bucks — on your own misdeeds by pinning the blame on someone else. We rely on police to serve and protect the public from scum like Dominguez but it’s a two way street; cops rely on us to tell them when we know that bad people are doing bad things. These folks ain’t psychics, ya know. If the Bols really did know about Dominguez stalking and even assaulting their daughter and they did nothing at all about it… then I say lower the boom on ’em. Bring the hammer down and make an example out of them for others that would try and grab for such a loathesome Munchausen lottery jackpot. On the other hand, though…

If these allegations are false, this represents stooping about as low as you can get. This would be the ultimate in kicking someone when they’re down, the cheapest of cheap shots, and something that we should damn well expect — indeed, demand — that those who are trusted to hold authority in our society place themselves far above. If this is some bullshit stunt, heads should roll for it.

The problem is that we don’t know which story is the truth and which is bullshit. So there it is, big as life and twice as problematic. And here I am, in territory about as unfamilliar as it gets for me… on the fence.

And I don’t like it.

When I see stuff like this, my nature practically demands that I take one side or the other and be quick about it. But make sure it’s the right side. I wish I knew enough to make that decision but I don’t. So here I sit, in the mushy middle, wanting to speak up for somebody but not sure who, and haunted by the words of Mark Twain:

“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Easier said than done.

Why the hell is this even a story to begin with? 🙄 Decima Research has cacked up a little hairball and is now trumpeting that “most Canadians want a Democrat president,” as if it’s any of our God damned business. The pollsters blather on that we Canucks would rather have a jackass than an elephant by a margin of four to one.

Republican preferences were particularly low in Atlantic Canada, among women, retirees and francophones, with support ranging from five to eight per cent.

The Democratic option found favour, relative to Republicans, in every region of the country – including Alberta – and among self-identified Conservative voters.

Albertans in the Decima poll preferred a Democratic president in 2008 by a margin of 43-21. People who voted Conservative in the last election were only slightly less enthusiastic, choosing the Democratic option over a Republican by a 41-24 split.

Well, golly gumbucks, four out of five; ain’t we an opinionated li’l bunch all of a sudden? Try this one on for size:

FIVE out of five Canadians don’t GET to vote in American federal elections, shitforbrains!

And just where the hell do we get off trying to think that we can tell the Yanks how their country should be run? If they tried a stunt like that, we would finally see some true all-party unity in this country: everybody would go apeshit about it.

Ah, but polls and headlines are interesting, spinny, little things, aren’t they? What you won’t hear hooted in the headlines is this: almost half (42%) of everyone that they asked replied that it was none of their damned business who was the next POTUS.

But you won’t find any headlines shouting “42% of Canucks Choose to Mind Their Own Business,” will you? Nope, you won’t. I wonder why that could be, eh? Could it be because the media in this country — more so than even in the US — is rabidly leftist and bent upon overinflating any slight hint of moonbattery that it can find in our collective consciousness in the hopes that, if they tell us often enough how far to the loopy Left we are, we’ll start to believe it? Let’s face it, anybody with two brain cells to rub together knows damn well that the MSM in this country, from the TO (red) Star to the Ministry Of What You Should Think, is saturated with lib-left malcontents with more “hidden agendas” than Harper was ever even accused of having. This is just another example.

Who the hell was is that said that polls are most productively used by dogs? 😕

Um, okay; anybody have any idea just what the heck this James Bond bullcrap might be all about? I guess truth really is stranger than fiction but come on now, boys and girls; this is loopy even by my standards. While I can admit that loonies and toonies bug the hell outta me, I never thought of bugging one myself. It seems, though, that someone else out there doesn’t quite have my level of restraint:

They say money talks, and a new report suggests Canadian currency is indeed chatting, at least electronically, on behalf of shadowy spies.

Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defence.

“…and for God’s sakes, 007, do try not to break this one.”

Now I’ve heard everything. While the Yanks are keeping a tight lip on the details — not surprisingly, most of them are classified — of the little gizmos, it’s kind of hard to see what use they could be in an uncontrolled environment. I mean, come on now. The range on those things can’t be more than a few hundred metres, at most, and besides that, Chris Mathers (a security consultant and former undercover RCMP officer) manages to point out one doozy of a drawback, if you’re planning to track somebody with one of these things:

“From a technology perspective, it makes no sense,” he said. “To me it’s very strange.”

Then there’s the obvious problem: what if the coin holder plunks the device into a pop machine?

“You give the guy something with a transmitter that he’s going to spend — I mean, he might have it for an hour,” Mathers said with a chuckle.

Well, I guess it’ll be one helluva well-observed pop machine then, won’t it? 🙄

Following the tragic death of Trooper Mark Wilson in Afghanistan in October of last year, one sports artist (a friend of Wilson’s family) was hit hard and decided that something should be done to show appreciation for the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform. Well, David Arrigo up and did just that in his own, very Canadian, way. Patrick Maloney had the story in today’s Freeps, which is reproduced in its entirety below:

Goalie mask soldier tribute

Mon, January 8, 2007
By PATRICK MALONEY, FREE PRESS REPORTER

Trooper Mark Wilson’s death in Afghanistan has inspired a special piece of art that’s being passed among elite NHL players and may become part of the upcoming all-star game.

Sports artist David Arrigo, a friend of one of Wilson’s relatives, was hit hard by the October death of the London soldier and inspired to design a military-themed goalie mask.

“It just sort of pushed me — this is going to be my addition to thanking the soldiers,” said Arrigo, who has done work for years for the NHL, NFL and other pro sports leagues.

“(But) I didn’t want this piece to be about any one person — it’s more about all the soldiers in Afghanistan.”

The detailed mask design, Arrigo explained, has two distinct sides: The right is called “the mission,” and features images of an Afghani girl reading and a Canadian soldier. The left side, called “the memory,” includes a bagpiper and a soldier pinning a poppy on a wreath.

What could have been a quiet tribute, however, is getting much more attention thanks to the contacts Arrigo and Wilson’s cousin, NHL photographer Dave Sandford, have throughout pro hockey.

The pair are in discussions with at least one goalie to wear the mask in Dallas on Jan. 24 during the all-star skills competition or in the all-star game.

They have also photographed the mask with hockey celebrities such as Don Cherry, who mentioned the project during Coach’s Corner on Hockey Night In Canada. Sandford was to photograph Pittsburgh star Sidney Crosby with it.

Those photos will eventually be posted at nhl.com and on Arrigo’s own website, darrigoart.com. Arrigo’s mask will then be auctioned off on the NHL’s website with the money raised going to the families of fallen troops.

“I’m looking to put a call out to corporate Canada,” Arrigo said. “If they’re not going to bid on the mask, (they could) create some other programs of awareness.”

NHL officials in the U.S. were so impressed, they have asked Arrigo to make a mask with an American theme.

Wilson, 39, was killed in an October roadside bomb attack while serving in Afghanistan. As London’s first combat casualty of the mission, his death rocked the city and sparked an outpouring of support for the family.

The attention the mask is generating is further proof that support continues, his cousin Sandford said.

“They’re not forgetting this,” said Sandford. “While everybody may not agree with why they’re there (in Afghanistan), the fact . . . is they’re there. You have to support them.

“Whether it’s in the form of a little yellow ribbon or a goalie mask, it’s one of those things that keeps (it) in the forefront.”

…That’s how the Edmonton Sun’s Mindelle Jacobs summed it up in her latest column, and I think the description is bang-on. As for me, I decided that I would bide my time and give some consideration to this whole issue — or, as a friend of mine put it, “sit back, have a beer and cool your jets for a bit” — before writing about it.

By now, everybody and their dog knows about the latest in the long line of Stupid Judge Tricks to come out of the Ontario Court of Appeal. For either of you that haven’t heard yet, here it is: thanks to three social-engineering, can’t-resist-screwing-with-it, legislating-from-the-bench, judicial-robe-wearin’ shitskulls in TO (Chief Justice Roy McMurtry, Justice Marc Rosenberg and Justice Jean-Marc Labrosse), a five-year-old London boy now has one dad … and two moms. All three legally and equally his parents in the eyes of the law.

Uncharted waters, indeed.

Homosexuality lobbyists and advocacy groups, naturally, were practically dancing in the streets at the news. Other groups however, perhaps remembering history’s lessons about monkeying with society, were not amused at all. Me? I think this is a recipe for disaster.

And before any dickheads out there even think about lobbing some of that “keeping up with the times” bullshit at me: don’t even try it. You want to know what I think of that kind of bullshit logic? Do you? Just click on the pic on the left here and tell me what you think you see. Want to know what I see? I see about ten thousand socialists, all of them keeping up with the times. That’s what I think of the “you should change with the times” argument, so shove it up your ass. Just because a thing can be done does not automatically mean that it should be done and most of the monkeying with our society that I see going on in the last few years definitely should not be done if for no other reasons than that a) no one has bothered to seriously consider the long term effects of such tinkering with the very foundations of our civilisation and b) they serve no good purpose whatsoever other than catering to the self-centered “it’s all about me” types who stand to gain from these changes with no regard at all for the possible impacts on others.

You think child custody cases are an emotional meatgrinder for kids now? Wait till you see what happens when some poor kid, or kids, find themselves as the rope in a tug-o-war between 6 moms and 4 dads. What do you think will happen then? And don’t tell me that such a thing will never happen. Every bit of judicial idiocy in this country over the past 30-35 years — and its cultural backlash — has been predicted by socially conservative “fearmongering Chicken Littles” just like me and we’ve been right every God damned time!

So please piss off, shove that red herring up your ass and answer the God damned question: WHAT WILL HAPPEN THEN? Do you think these sociological busybodies even give a damn? Don’t count on it. All they give a shit about is whatever gives them a warm fuzzy feeling right now and to hell with anything else.

Maybe I’m wrong — and I hope I am — and this kid will grow up to be a perfectly happy, productive member of society with his head screwed on nice and straight. But what if I’m not wrong? What if, as a result of this little grand experiment, this kid ends up completely screwed up? As Jacobs put it:

But there are two troubling aspects to this ruling. First, the court of appeal wielded the inherent common-law power of judges to reinterpret the law.

This may be necessary in exceptional circumstances but in this case, surely our lawmakers are best suited to rewriting the law.

Secondly, the future consequences of such a profound redefinition of parenthood are unknown.

Unknown is one hell of an understatement. But hey, what’s the future welfare, mental health, etc of a bunch of snot-nosed brats worth when we’re busy casting off the tyranny of thousands of years of basic truth? Obviously not much. Some people, however, do give a shit:

The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada has called for a royal commission on the future of the family. Considering the furious pace of social and reproductive change in recent years, it’s a wise idea.

“It’s time to hit the pause button – especially as courts redefine basic terms like parenting – to analyze what the long-term outcomes of family-related policies are,” says Dave Quist, executive director of the institute.

“Any gap in existing legislation should not be filled solely by one court. Rather, it needs to be debated in the appropriate public forum – our legislatures and parliament,” he adds.

On a whole host of social issues with potentially far-reaching implications, however, our courts have been stepping in where our legislators fear to tread.

This may be to the tactical advantage of politicians – who can then blame the judiciary for uprooting traditional norms – but it’s a terrible way to set social policy.

You’re damned right it is. To voice your objection to this reckless endangerment to the future wellbeing of an entire generation of Canadian children, call or write your local Member of Parliament.