At the end of the day, we must realize we will all pay for our cynicism and disengagement. When our politics is ill, as it is now, we delude ourselves if we fail to realize how it affects us in our daily lives. Only people who turn out to vote are taking part in the decision-making. Bad governments don’t happen by accident.
Easy to understand why so many Canadians feel that if it ain't broke why fix it?
Except of course that you'd have to be living in a treehouse not to understand that having a crazed right-wing regime try to change Canada beyond recognition, with the support of less than forty percent of Canadians, is an outrage.
I don't know what shape this movement is going to take in Canada. Whether it will take root in this smug country, or will be smothered by complacency, and the contempt of the right-wing media.
Because in a country where people can seriously debate the merits of violence in hockey, even as players brains turn to jello, anything is possible eh?
But if it gets Canadians off their asses and into the streets it will be worth it. Because in the great darkness of Harperland only massive protests will stop the Cons from destroying this country, and turning it into a prison state.
As the Occupy Wall Street protests continues to grow. And unions join the struggle.
Some old wankers still struggle to explain what it means.
The organizers of Occupy Wall Street are fighting to upend the system. But what gives their movement the potential for power and potency is the masses who just want the system to work the way they were promised it would work. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans are really struggling. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans want a revolution. It’s that 99 percent of Americans sense that the fundamental bargain of our economy -- work hard, play by the rules, get ahead -- has been broken, and they want to see it restored.
But not me eh? I don't want to perform mouth to mouth resuscitation on a rotting corpse. I want to BURY it.
And I know that when a Con whore like Ann Coulter is scratching her smelly balls and calling it "mob rule."
The capitalist pigs are trembling in their boots trotters, and we are heading in the right direction.
However, if somebody STILL needs to understand why it's happening, and where the river of history is leading us, all they need to do is remember this.
It's time to check ourselves, to see if we still have that small part that believes in the values that America promises. Do we still have a shred of our decency intact in the face of debasement? If you do, then now is the time to give that forgotten part a voice. That is what this movement is ultimately about: giving voice to decency and fairness.
And him...
Each of us is of great value to the whole. Do not forget your greatness. Even when the world around you is telling you you are nothing. You have a voice. You want a better life for your children and the people you love. You live in a democracy. You belong, and you deserve a world that is fair and equal. You have a right to take your place and be heard.
And all the others.
Glory, Glory Hallelujah !!!! It's springtime in America !!!!
He waved his daughter like a flag, he used her like a cheap prop. While attacking programs aimed at protecting bullied gay children.
Like a homophobic hog.
He called new immigrants "foreigners." Like some burning racist from Alabama. He vowed to put chain gangs in our peaceful communities, like some Texas teabagger.
He oozed filth out of every pore on his brutish Con face. Never has a Canadian politician crawled so low. Tim Hudak the coward, the racist, the filthy piggy.
The PC leader wanted voters to give him a free ride, casting himself as a taxfighter — but not much of a builder or planner. Most Ontarians didn’t take the bait.
On the campaign trail, Hudak stunned many by stirring up hostility against “foreign workers.” He defended a vile polemic linking sex education to gays and transgenders, a display of desperation that disgusted prominent Tories.
Now it's up to us to make sure we don't defeat ourselves.
On the surface, McGuinty has the momentum. But in a province where barely half of eligible voters turn out, election day remains a wild card and no major party machine can be underestimated.
The campaign is over and the debate of ideas — or lack of them — is behind us. Now, the battle between rival election machines could determine the outcome.
Come on orange ones, come on red ones, come on progressive Ontario. If this Montrealer can bring six of my friends to the polls. Which is like herding cats eh?
So can YOU.
Crush those filthy gutter Cons. Tell the sleazy teabagger Tim Hudak this is Canada not Amerika.
Tell him we are better than that.
Tell him this land is OUR land. And will NEVER be his.
Tattoo the word LOSER on his brutish Con forehead.
But instead are caught on video watching a group of marchers from a balcony.
Laughing and swilling champagne...
As it has others, the video reminds me of the classic scene in Dr Zhivago. When the boobeoisie are gathered at an opulent ball, swilling champagne and rattling their jewels, and the party mood is momentarily broken by the unwelcome sound of hundreds of commie demonstrators outside, singing The Internationale.
A nervous silence descends on the glitzy gathering, until the sleazy lawyer Viktor Komarovsky, played by Rod Steiger, stands up and says: "No doubt they'll sing in tune after the revolution."
The tension is broken. The fat cats laugh and applaud, and the band plays on.
But of course, as we all know, not for very much longer.
Whatever else these protests are achieving, they are drawing a line between THEM and US.
Their protest may be angry but unfocused. They have been ignored by the MSM. Brutalized by the police, and arrested in massive numbers.
But slowly but surely Occupy Wall Street is rediscovering the radical imagination.
We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Most, I found, were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates.
Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?
And who would be surprised if it happened here? Where the fat cats and the union-busting Harper Cons are trying to turn young Canadians into slaves.
The CEOs have decided. The value of young people is lower than the value of people from my generation. You don’t deserve the same salary, even if you are better educated. You don’t deserve the same vacation time or health benefits. And you certainly don’t deserve to have the same kind of secure retirement. It’s just not in the business plan.
With the same predictable result.
When the history is finally written, though, it's likely all of this tumult – beginning with the Arab Spring – will be remembered as the opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire. Thirty years of relentless prioritising of propaganda over substance, and snuffing out anything that might look like a political basis for opposition, might make the prospects for the young protesters look bleak; and it's clear that the rich are determined to seize as large a share of the spoils as remain, tossing a whole generation of young people to the wolves in order to do so. But history is not on their side.
There comes a time when you just have to say it eh? Stephen Harper's Cons are not just crass, brutish and incompetent. They're dangerous.
The hole covered two million square kilometres — about twice the size of Ontario — and allowed high levels of harmful ultraviolet radiation to hit large swaths of northern Canada, Europe and Russia this spring, the 29 scientists say.
The discovery of the “unprecedented” hole comes as the Canadian government is moving to cut its ozone monitoring network.
Environment Canada scientist David Tarasick, whose team played a key role in the report published Sunday in the journal Nature, is not being allowed to discuss the discovery with the media.
They destroyed the census for no sane reason. They're torching the planet. They're ignoring scientists and other experts. And going after invisible criminals.
Organize, unite, take to the streets. Try to limit the damage before the blessed day arrives when we can drive those Con crazies from power.
Before they turn us into some kind of Planet of the Apes.
It was only 11 degrees today. The leaves are still green. But in my neighbourhood the signs are turning orange.
Which normally would be enough to cheer me up. Because orange is the colour of hope eh? But I guess like a lot of progressives I've got a case of the Con Blues, and I'm feeling a bit down.
After seeing what the Harper Cons have been up to since Parliament came back. Smothering debate over a reactionary crime bill. Taking fancy jet flights, and making us pay for them. Flashing golden business cards like pimps.
Because it gives me hope that sooner or later their crimes against democracy and Canada will break the branch the Cons are perched on, and bring them down with a bump. So we can sweep them into the garbage can of history, where they belong.
And then I thought I should try to cheer up progressives, and remind them that resistance may be a duty, but it can also be fun.
As it was before The Great Darkness...
And will be once again.
Golly. I MUST get me one of those Obey Harpdaddy posters, and a pair of those rabbit ears !!!!
Gawd. It's a horrible thought eh? But when I think about the homophobic porker Charles "Bloater" McVety these days, I can't help thinking of the Con teabagger Tim "Hoo Hoo" Hudak.
Because after reading McVety's grotesque ad in the National Post.
I can't help feeling that Hudak's and McVety's messages are eerily similar. And that the timing is rather suspicious.
And then when I see how the right-wingers at The Sun are beating this dirty drum.
Rev. Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College, said he knows exactly what all this means.
“Despite parents rising up against the attempts to indoctrinate and teach children as young as in Grade 3 about their sexual behaviour, and the six genders they can choose from,” he said. “There is obviously an agenda and Wynne is being very honest that if they win, the Liberals will see it as a mandate to bring back their sex curriculum.”
I can't help feeling that somebody is reading from The Con Playbook of Dirty Tricks.
And it reminds me what happened just before the Toronto election that brought the Con hog Rob Ford to power. An anti-gay ad appeared on a Toronto radio station. Remember?
Although everybody condemned it, the flap served to remind voters that Smitherman was gay, to the benefit of Ford. Just like the McVety ad controversy serves to dredge up the old demon homophobia, for the benefit of Hudak.
Hmmm...you don't think anybody has asked Hudak why he is echoing McVety's message? Golly I hope so. Because if I was an NDP or Liberal strategist, I would try to paste Hudak's icy blue lips to McVety's bigot ass.... with Krazy Glue.
Of course maybe it's just a coincidence. Or maybe I'm just paranoid eh? But an old feminist once told me that in dark times paranoia is a higher state of consciousness. And I believe her.
So I think the people of Ontario need to know that not only does Hoo Hoo want to put chain gangs of dangerous criminals in our neighbourhoods. So they can escape and kill or rape children.
Not only is he one of the three Con Stooges of the Apocalypse...
He's also in bed with the bigot McVety. The piggy.
