It's a strange thing about Justin Trudeau. He may be the most popular Prime Minister in recent Canadian history, and a nice guy. But nobody is hated and demonized by some Canadians as much as he is, and now that hatred is out of control. For what else can explain that some crazy from the Green Party should throw pumpkin seeds at Trudeau.
As you know, when Donald Trump began his campaign for President of the United States I thought he was just a bad joke. And it was just another insane bigot eruption in the so-called Land of the Free. But now that he appears to be closing in on the Republican nomination I'm forced to take him seriously. Now with every day that passes I consider him more crazy and more dangerous.
I try not to watch too much American TV news, because what's happening in this diseased Harperland is crazy enough. And because every time I do watch it these days, it seems another black man is being killed by a white police officer for no sane reason. And when I see someone handcuff a human being after shooting him six times in the back, as the South Carolina police officer Michael Slager did to Walter Scott, makes me almost physically ill...
Because as I've said before, my heroes are healers not killers. And this too could only happen in cruel, crazy, blood soaked Amerika.
At first sight it couldn't be a more depressing sight, or more of a nightmare. Team Mitch McConnell and his ghastly Republican tea baggers, seizing control of Congress, and promising to bring change to America. Which has some progressives in that country wondering whether it's the end of irony. Or the beginning of fascism.
Damn. What a happy coincidence. Last night I was complaining about how the Liberals and the NDP were failing to go after Tim Hudak for his botched million job plan. And for his connections to American right-wing extremists like the sinister Koch brothers, in whose think tanks that plan was hatched. But today the Liberals came through on both fronts. By releasing a video to let people know that Hudak can't count...
I've always thought that capital punishment was one of the things that prevented the United States from being a truly great country. Along with racism, religious bigotry, and the culture of guns and violence. And this only prove my point. Because no nation that executes people, in that manner or any other, can truly call itself civilized. Or claim that its moral values are superior to those of other countries, where the state murders its citizens, like Iran or North Korea. And this is only too clear when you examine where this diseased desire to execute people in the U.S. comes from. And understand that it's a question of history andgeography.
Well yank my doodle dandy. One more good reason why right-wingers should never be allowed anywhere near a democracy. In Canada they've closed down Parliament, in the United States they've closed down the government.
Show how much you hate General Mills for supporting gay marriage.
"We do not believe the proposed constitutional amendment is in the best interests of our employees or our state economy," the company's vice president for global diversity and inclusion, Ken Charles, is quoted by the publication as saying. "We value diversity. We value inclusion."
By turning up outside company headquarters, with a box of cheerios in one hand, and a blowtorch in the other.
It's hard to believe that this is still happening in Canada, even in a city as diverse as Toronto.
It's hard to believe that some crackpots still think that religious rights should prevail over human rights.
Juliet Stewart says her clients, a Seventh-day Adventist husband and wife, told her in no uncertain terms during a screening interview that they would never allow a gay couple to rent their basement apartment.
Hundreds of thousands of people across the country headed to Chick-fil-A restaurants on Wednesday, answering a call from Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, to show support for the fast-food chain after the company’s president drew criticism for his opposition to same-sex marriage.
“At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Mr. Obama said.
It won't make any difference to gay couples in many states like North Carolina.
But in a country as homophobic as the United States it was a courageous gesture.
I've been taking a little heat recently, from some of my gay friends, for not having written anything about Rick Perry's grotesque little video.
But as I explain to those fools, if I wrote a post every time some Christianist bigot in Amerika opened and closed his or her filthy pie hole, I'd never have the time to write about anything else. Or fetch the beer.
Besides what more could I say eh? When his video is already one of the most disliked videos in YouTube history.
Michele Bachmann believes that gays should be able to get married as long as they marry somebody of the opposite sex.
Jane Schmidt, a student at Waverly High School, in Waverly, Iowa, recently asked Michele Bachmann, “Why can’t same-sex couples get married?”
“They can get married,” Bachmann responded, “but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they’re a man.”
Holy pepperoni. I see Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather Pizza, is having a really bad week in his campaign for the White House.
First he got a ringing endorsement from Conrad Black. All the way from the Big House.
As I suggested last week here, there is a chance of excitement. Herman Cain is a self-made African-American, well-educated, keyed to opportunity and not victimhood, a successful fast-food executive and management buy-out financier, and former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
After such a sequence of GOP fade-outs, it would be premature to conclude that the man the office seeks has been found, but a counter-chippy African-American with his background could be a dynamite candidate and an effective president (and could split the African-American vote with the incumbent).
Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain on Monday said he was "falsely accused" of sexual harassment during the 1990s but adamantly denied any inappropriate behaviour.
But his acknowledgment came at the end of a rare day of campaigning in Washington in which he offered several conflicting accounts of the allegations in a Politico report, even as he emphatically denied that he had ever sexually harassed anyone in his life.
Now he's singing for his supper...
And heading for the dog house.
Golly. What a pleasant surprise. I thought I was going to HATE the Republican Presidential race eh? But I'm really LOVING it....
Charles and David Koch are two American billionaires who have contributed more than any others to just about every right-wing cause in the United States. From promoting climate change denial to funding the Tea Party.
They go to extraordinary lengths to keep their shadowy activities secret. But now we finally have one on them on tape comparing the 2012 election as the "Mother of All Wars" and Barack Obama to Saddam Hussein.
CHARLES KOCH: Ya know, usually in a business if there's something unpleasant to do or some guilt that somebody has to take, it's not the CEO, it's some poor guy or girl that had nothin' to do with it. It doesn't work [like that] at Koch Industries. I think it's the principle of market based [inaud]. It's dirty work that needs to be done, they assign it to me. So. [laughter] There you have it. I don't know why I came up with this theory. I must have been crazy.
But we've been talking about --- we have Saddam Hussein, this is the Mother of All Wars we've got in the next 18 months. For the life or death of this country. So, I'm not going to do this to put any pressure on anyone here, mind you. This is not pressure. But if this makes your heart feel glad and you want to be more forthcoming, then so be it.
And in case you think that the so-called Kochtopus is an American problem, there is a Canadian Connection.
And that's why our Cons love them so much. Or do you think that what is happening there isn't happen here?
You know sometimes when I look at our side, I can't help feeling that some of us believe we're in a pillow fight. When in fact we're fighting for the very survival of our way of life. And you don't bring a pillow to a gun fight, as the old saying goes.
Just like you don't play into the hands of the Kochtopus by slamming unions.
Because if the Kochs had their way there would be no union rights. We'd be living in a right-wing jungle.
Mulcair may have his faults but being a brawler isn't one of them. And we need a leader, whoever he or she may be, who takes no prisoners.
Wakey wakey people. Smell the coffee...or the fish. This isn't a pillow fight it's an ideological WAR. The Kochs and the Cons are playing to win and so should we.
Unite the left, cut off the tentacles of the Kochtopus. Defeat the Cons and the right-wing conspiracy by whatever legal means necessary.
And of course, while you're doing it, don't forget to sing this song...
Glory Hallybubbah !!! The Lord has spoken. Just as I prophesied the other day, he has directed his cowboy servant Rick Perry to become God's President. And kick the heathen negro out of the White House.
And all Canadians need to know about him is that he's a religious fanatic, who can't decide whether he wants to be Dubya, Ronald Reagan, or Charlton Heston playing Moses.
[PERRY:] I don’t think our founding fathers when they were putting the term “general welfare” in there were thinking about a federally operated program of pensions nor a federally operated program of health care. What they clearly said was that those were issues that the states need to address. Not the federal government. I stand very clear on that. From my perspective, the states could substantially better operate those programs if that’s what those states decided to do.
Only Stephen Harper could love them.
And that his good friend Mike Bickle wants to be his Secretary of Defence, so that he can declare war on atheists, gay people, and his own personal demons...
That's Mike Bickle from the International House of Prayer.
You know.... the group that is presently embroiled in a nasty legal dispute with the International House of Pancakes.
The good news? By making his announcement yesterday, Perry managed to overshadow the straw poll victory of his fellow Christianist wingnut Michele Bachmann.
Not that she minded eh?
Because her win drove Tim Pawlenty, one of the most moderate of the homophobic Republican candidates, out of the race.
And crowned old Crazy Eyes the Queen of the Teabaggers.
Of course, the terrifying part is that should either Bachmann or Perry win the Presidency, we'll be living next to a crazed, heavily armed theocracy... the United States of Jebeesus.
Which would no doubt send our Con theocrats over the deep end. Stephen Harper would probably grow a bushy beard, and demand that he be known as Great Prophet Leader. And Jason Kenney would demand that he be addressed as the Virgin Kenney. As if that wasn't OBVIOUS.
Great eh?
Who needs scary demons? When we got our Christianist Cons.
He's under attack from the savage right, and the racial dog whistle blowers of the Fox Nation.
The disappointed left is threatening to abandon him.
So I think it's probably a good time to think about what it might be like if he wasn't the good people's President. And remember his many small victories.
The federal health care plan will cover all FDA-approved contraceptive methods, treatment of sexually transmitted infections, cervical cancer screening, breast feeding support, diabetes tests during pregnancy, annual "well woman" visits and counseling for domestic violence.
Federal officials said the new guidelines, which go into effect by 2012, could benefit as many as 34 million women 18 to 64 years old who aren't covered for such services.
Because in an America torn apart by religious bigots and right-wing extremists determined to lynch the first black President, every victory is a big one.
So please join me in celebrating this one.
With the good people from Planned Parenthood...
Woo hoo. Excellent. I HAVE to learn to dance like that.
Not since Dorothy landed her house on the Wicked Witch of the East have so many munchkins been so happy. My 20-something son explained ever so patiently that OBL was his generation’s Hitler and that of course he was happy. Why wasn’t I?
Somewhere, according to one of his five wives, was a man who loved sunflowers, and eating yogurt with honey; who took his children to the beach, and let them sleep under the stars; who enjoyed the BBC World Service and would go hunting with friends each Friday, sometimes mounted, like the Prophet, on a white horse. He liked the comparison. Yet the best thing in his life, he said, was that his jihads had destroyed the myth of all-conquering superpowers.
The difference between pure Muslims and Americans, he said, was that Americans loved life, whereas Muslims loved death. Whether or not he resisted when the Crusaders’ special forces arrived, their bullets could only exalt him.
