Archive for: October 2006

Well, boys and girls, the game’s on in London-North-Centre (where no Librano$ seem to want the job) and in Repentigny and that means having a lot of spare time gobbled up. What it doesn’t mean, however, is that I won’t have any opinions or anything to say. I just won’t have as much time to say it. From now until Nov. 27, I’m going to try to make a daily habit of posting what links I can find on the issue. From the MSM, blogs, or whatever, I’ll toss it out.

This will save me time from regurgitating a lot of stuff that others have already said (and sometimes said better, the bastards) while still being able to make sure that all my own little bones of contention are flung as far and wide as possible. You’ll also notice a little google RSS at the bottom of the right sidebar now.

Granted, most of what I put up is going to be focused more on London than on Repentigny but hey, I don’t live in Repentigny. Get over it. 😛 Here’s what I’ve got for Tuesday, October 24:

The Freeps
Byelection race taking shape
Nothing political in vote timing, PMO assures
City council candidate jumps into federal race in London-North-Centre
Walker faces fight for NDP nomination
Walker in NDP candidacy storm

Conservative Life
Would the real Liberals please stand up?

Globe & Mail
Fortier defends decision not to run in by-election

TO Star
Green Party eyes two seats in House
Fortier’s big chance

Canada.com
Byelections seen as test of Harper’s management

Ottawa Sun
Timing is everything

My Take?

There seems to be a lot of whining, especially from the Hypogrits, about the timing of these byelections. Funny. I don’t remember hearing so much as a peep out of them when the Librano$ were calling elections whenever it looked like the wind was blowing the right way for them (with plenty of time left in their mandate, no less).

By the time you start reading this, I’ll likely be off to the London Conservative nomination meeting tonight. Who am I going to support? Not sure just yet. While I favour Haskett’s socially conservative stance on many of the issues, I just can’t shake the vaguely slick feeling that we’re getting Iggy’d here…

Guess I’ll just have to wait and see what they both have to say on the issues that matter to me. Things like national defense, judicial activism, defense of religious rights, law and order… You know; all that nasty right-wing stuff. Especially law and order. I live in a bad neighbourhood. 🙁

We’ll just have to wait nad see.

Yet another huge unsurprise from the Grit-dominated Senate. “Red Chamber,” indeed. Am I the only one nauseated by the irony in that? I didn’t think so. Moving right along, then: the high and mighty trufflesnufflers in the Upper House raised their snouts from the trough today and oinked out their acumen on how to improve the “deeply flawed” Federal Accountability Act, Bill C-2.

In their never-ending quest to make sure their asses are covered when they get their hands on the public purse again safeguard the Canadian lawmaking process from short-sighted right-wing nutjobs that think Joe Lunchbox should have his uneducated snout in the Sacred Business Of The Government, the high and mighty hogs urged the House to reject Harper’s preposterous policies in favour of their high calibre pig in a poke. Proposed changes included (but weren’t limited to; oh, certainly not):

• remove the Canadian Wheat Board from the reach of the Access to Information Act
• allow Sustainable Development and Technology Canada to “better respect the sensitivity of the information” received from their applicants
• “better protect the privacy” of donors and the contract terms of performers at the National Arts Centre
• change the limit on political donations to $2,000

Yessiree, if the Librano$ have their way about it, this thing will be left with no teeth at all. Time for a little more action on Senate reform, does anybody think?

For those that haven’t already heard, tonight is the nomination meeting for the Conservative Party candidate for the upcoming London-North-Centre byelection. The event is being held at the Polish Combatants’ Hall at 80 Ann Street (just click here if you need a map). Hope to see as many of you as possible there. Get off yer butts, get out and vote! Here is a timetable of events for the evening:

7:00 pm – registration desks open up

7:30 pm – John Stirling – president will open meeting with O Canada

7:35 pm – introductory remarks – Jim Knowles

7:45 pm – speeches – Dianne Haskett (introduction 5 minutes, 15 minutes for the candidate)

8:05 pm – speeches – Tom Weihmayr (introduction 5 minutes, 15 minutes for the candidate)

8:25 pm voting commences

Okay, I’m a little behind the herd here, but still, what is this? I repeat: WHAT… THE HELL… IS THIS!?!? How the HELL is it that some Yank sleazoid sex offender gets dumped in our backyard? Yeah, you read that right. An American teacher gets convicted of having sex with one of his students in New York and, instead of tossing his worthless ass behind bars south of the border (where he God damned well belongs), he gets banished to Canada so he can walk the streets a free man up here. Consider my whatthefuckometer redlined.

The baffling case involves Malcolm Watson, a 35-year-old U.S. citizen who lives in Fort Erie, Ont., with his Canadian wife and three children, but who had been commuting to teach at the Buffalo Seminary, a private all-girls school in the Buffalo area.

Buffalo immigration lawyer Robert Kolken found the sentence, by Cheektowaga Justice Thomas Kolbert, “quite creative.”

When the hell did we become the willing repository for the rest of the world’s perverts? And just how the hell can a convicted sex offender (and American citizen, no less) even be allowed into this country in the first damn place?? I can’t be the only one who’s 37 kinds of pissed off about this. No way, no how.

And have we heard anything from Vic Toews about this? Not a God damned peep. I don’t know about anybody else, but I didn’t vote Conservative to let this kind of bullshit slide.

I have to tell you, it’s not often that I find myself using those two words together like that. The Brits, by and large, tend to be a little more (although no, not completely) immune to spasms of idiotic legislation than those of us in the new world but even they can suffer from a little cerebral flatulence from time to time. This is clearly one such time.

It seems that the British Parliament is contemplating legislation where, in addition to “no” meaning “no,” all of a sudden “yes” can mean “no,” too, if the woman has been drinking. Let’s make something clear here: we aren’t talking about a passed-out woman being violated by some slobbering lout; we’re talking about some birds that go out for a good time, do the deed with all cognizance and enthusiasm, and then just have second thoughts the next morning.

George McAuley, chairman of the UK Men’s Movement, said men may have to resort to obtaining written ‘contracts’ or using their mobile phones to film their partners consenting to sex.

He said: “Radical feminists within the Labour party have made consensual heterosexual sex a dangerous minefield. The changes in legislation will increase the number of innocent men convicted of rape.

“It means men will have to get a consent form signed, dated and countersigned in triplicate before they make love.

“This legislation is deliberately designed to put more men behind bars.”

If I go out with my mates, get blasted and do something idiotic, I’m the one that has to live with it. I can’t just boo-hoo “I was drunk” and get off the hook for responsibility for my own voluntary actions. If I crack some guy in the head with a bottle, drive drunk, take a whiz on a parking meter or whatever, I’m the one on the hook for it, not somebody else. Why the hell wouldn’t women be held to the same standard? Or, as Lydia Loveric over at the Winterpeg Sun puts it:

…a woman who has a bit too much alcohol — of her own volition — and invites a man back to her place for some non-existent coffee and proceeds to squeal “yes” in every way possible can not and must not cry rape afterwards.

Want to be seen as a strong, independent woman? Then you damned well better be ready to live with the choices you make. Just like we have to.

This will surprise no one, I think. It seems that a bunch of antimilitary busybodies have been slinking around trying to undermine any attempt to include military co-op programs in Ontario secondary schools. Yes, these twits live under the very freedom provided and defended by our soldiers but damnit, don’t go teaching their little darlings to be one of those nasty army types. It brings to mind a very fitting line from John Stewart Mill:

The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

But the dogoodniks on the left don’t seem to see it that way:

“We recognize that all nations need to protect their borders, but we don’t feel that has to be taught in the schools,” Marilyn Eves, a retired teacher and Windsor peace activist told me.

Eves said it made no sense that schools teach non-violent conflict resolution but allow students to count basic military training, including how to kill with a rifle, towards their high school diploma.

Well, why the hell not? Has it ever occurred to this spongehead that it is the military prowess of a nation that ensures all other freedoms that we take for granted? The country without an army will, sooner or later, be conquered by the one that has one. And don’t give me any of that “what if they had a war and only one side showed up” bullcrap, either. You want to know what happens when only one side shows up? Here’s what happens:

The side that does show up hunts down the side that doesn’t show up. The men are slaughtered outright. Women (some of them, anyway) are kept around as long as they can be sexually entertaining before they, too, are killed. Children are also put to the sword becasuse the winning side can’t afford to risk letting them grow up with visions of revenge dancing about in their little heads. This has happened numerous time throughout human history. So, why do allegedly intelligent people keep asking such a stupid question? 🙄