Archive for: October 2006

I’ve been following the Great Grit Grand Poohbah Of The Porkbarrel Pageant lately. Okay, you caught me; no I haven’t. While I must admit that the thought of watching the Librano$ turning on each other like a pack of starving dogs does hold a certain lurid attraction for me, I really can’t bring myself to give a damn about it. BUT, I do know who I want to win…

Special thanks to the Ottawa Sun’s Greg Weston for reminding me of all the reasons why I think Bob Rae should win the leadership race and lead the Grits in the next federal election:

1. Bob Rae made history as a man who gets things done. It took 40 years for mainly Conservative governments in Ontario to accumulate $20 billion in debt building the province’s schools, hospitals, highways and hydro dams. It took Bob’s NDP administration only four years to run up another $40 billion in red ink with little of enduring value to show for it at the end.
2. Bob Rae is a visionary in health care. It was his NDP government that implemented the ingenious plan to cut medicare costs by reducing the number of doctors graduating from medical schools. Today, his legacy endures with a physician shortage that saves taxpayers a fortune by not having to treat millions of sick Canadians who can’t find a family doctor.
3. Bob Rae is a champion of the Canadian leisure industries. For the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930s, there were fewer people employed in Ontario industries when Rae left office than when he arrived.
4. Bob Rae boldly stands up for Big Business and isn’t afraid to stick it to the Little Guy, those whining small businesses that always have it easy. In the five years before Rae came to office, about 85% of all the net new jobs created in Ontario were in companies with fewer than 100 employees. Even in the 1980s recession when big companies shed more than 100,000 jobs, small businesses in the province grew by almost twice that number.But not under Bob’s watch — a few major industries got huge bailouts, while all those mom-and-pop operations got ravaged, losing more than 100,000 jobs in the four years of NDP rule.
5. Bob Rae understands what it means to be a taxpayer — when economic times get tough, the tough get taxed, thereby ensuring the economy slows to the point where everyone gets screwed equally — although some more equally than others. For instance, by the time the NDP left office, Ontario professionals and entrepreneurs earning more than $67,000 a year had the highest marginal tax rate in North America, and were ungratefully running for the border in droves.
6. Bob Rae is a politician who never forgets his promises. The NDP pledged to introduce public auto insurance that would save car owners a fortune in premiums. Four years later, the Dippers were still promising socialist collision coverage even as they were being driven out of office.
7. Bob Rae is perhaps the only great Canadian leader of the last century to have a day named in his honour — Rae Days. Just over a decade ago, the man who would now be the next federal Liberal leader and perhaps Canada’s next prime minister looked out upon the economic landscape he had created and saw that it was ravaged by record debt, record deficits and record job losses, and he knew exactly what needed to be done.He hired 100,000 more public servants, gave them all a big raise, and ordered them to stay home and not get paid.

Can you say “Harper Majority,” boys and girls? 😉

I don’t even know where the hell to start with this one. There’s dumb and then there’s dumb. I mean, there’s the kind of dumb that makes you lock your keys in your car and then there’s the kind of dumb that would make Forrest Gump go “momma warned me about folks as stupid as you.” This is definitely in the latter category. This is so far from smart, it couldn’t get a ticket to smart if it cost a nickle to go to China.

Aw, screw it. Just read and see for yourselves; I’m not even going to waste time on something as assinine as this. Never argue with an idiot; they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

So “unsupervised chasing games” are now a thing of the past on the playground at the Willett School in Attleboro – no tag, no dodgeball, no touch football. The school is one of a growing number nationwide to ban the traditional games that have defined recess for generations of kids out of concern for their safety.

Not that we want to give anyone any ideas, but as long as these school officials are so worried about safety shouldn’t they think about ripping out swingsets, monkey bars, and climbing structures? Don’t they pose an equal (or greater) threat of a broken arm or a pinched finger? Or (the real fear, maybe) litigation?

Maybe the best way to protect the kids during recess is if they sit quietly at their desks with their hands folded every day. Sure sounds fun, doesn’t it?!

-The Boston Hearald

Well, this sucks.  Ever since I can remember, kids at halloween have been carrying around those ubiquitous UNICEF boxes while they tirck or treat, gathering up the nation’s spare change to go towards helping the United Nations Children’s Fund.  Heck, I even remember doing it myself.  Kids I knew used to compete and brag about who could bring in the heaviest box.  Looks like that’s coming to an end now; and for some of the stupidest reasons, too:

There are several reasons why UNICEF has ended Halloween box collection.

In many cases, children did not understand how the funds were spent and there were safety concerns about kids carrying money.

Burgess said a big problem with the collection was rolling the coins.

Oh, yeah.  Those are perfectly good reasons to turf something that’s helped Canadian kids raise over $90,000,000 so far.  Yet another perfectly good tradition down the tubes.

Sacked?

As most likely know by now, maverick Tory MP Garth Turner has been suspended from the caucus today and, surprise surprise, the blogosphere is all over it like a cheap suit:

Garth non grata… Turner gets suspended from Tory caucus
Garth Turner
Garth Gets The Boot
Garth Turner has been suspended!
Garth Turner Booted?
Garth suspended!
Garth Turner Gets the Boot

That should be enough reading on the subject to keep ya busy for a while. 😀

BOO!

Well, kids, the political game of musical chairs in London just keeps on keepin’ on these days, doesn’t it? First, it was Joey Bananas leaving Ottawa to come back and run for mayor in London, creating a socialist vacuum in the area that threatened to suck in everything from Martha Hall Findlay to Bob Rae. Now, former mayor Dianne Haskett has announced that she’s going to be making a run at the Tory nomination for London North Centre. I guess she figured that, since Joe was after her old job, she could return the favour.

Haskett might be the best bet the Tories are going to find around here, too. A solid social conservative (remember the stink raised when she refused to proclaim a gay pride proclamation in 1995 because of her religious beliefs?), Haskett has an equally solid reputation in the London area as someone that will stick to her guns, even if they’re pointed at her. She also has a solid reputation for winning; in the 1997 mayoral race, she beat the competition by a margin of 2 to 1.

“I have a sense that in my future I’m meant to continue in political leadership and that this period of time, presumably about five years, is a hiatus period. I feel led to a life in the future which I feel will include political leadership in the federal arena.” — Haskett Oct. 19, 2000, as her family leaves for Washington D.C. area.

Here’s tilting my chapeau to the Winterpeg Sun’s Laurie Mustard for bringing this up in his column today. We all need a good chuckle every now and then, and this definitely qualifies. Now, don’t get me wrong; there is nothing funny about traffic accidents. There is nothing funny about carelessness, either, but sometimes circumstances conspire to make you laugh about them anyway. This is one such:

TOLEDO, Ohio, Oct. 13 (UPI) — An Ohio state patrol report blames a red bra for causing a rollover accident last month that injured two Toledo, Ohio, men.

The newly released report says James Campbell told troopers when he swerved to avoid the flying bra on northbound I-75, his 2006 Dodge Neon flipped over several times in the grass median, The Toledo Blade reports.

Troopers said the bra came from a car driven by a 17-year-old girl from Bowling Green, Ohio. A passenger in the car — another 17-year-old girl — admitted to police it was her bra that flew out the window and caused the accident.

Now, I could babble on and on about where this is going, but I think I’ll just leave that to Laurie, who pretty much somes up what most of us (most of us guys, anyway; come on, admit it) are thinking in the first place:

This begs the question, how BIG … must this bra have been … to force this guy to swerve to avoid it?

Fascinating. The imagination soars. Over to you.

Says it all, doesn’t it?