Golly. I don't think I'm going to have to consult my horoscope to find out where I'm going to be, and what I'm going to be doing on Saturday the 21st of January. Because I already know.
And why am I so excited I'm marching around my house beating my drum already? Because I believe this ugly lockout will be a turning point in Canadian history, and will mark the beginning of the real resistance to the Harper regime.
When I was a young boy living in a Scottish village that didn't have a movie theatre, one of my teachers used to thrill me and the other kids, by hauling out an ancient projector and playing an educational movie.
And many of those movies were made by the National Film Board of Canada. I can't remember what they were about, except that it was always a magical moment. So I've been a fan of the NFB ever since.
In the mid-nineties I was horrified when the Liberals slashed its budget by about thirty percent. Every year its budget gets smaller and smaller. And I shudder to think what the Cons might do to it now that they have a majority.
Because it's a Canadian treasure.
As more evidence of that I offer up one of its latest little gems. It's called Wild Life. It tells the story of a young Englishman who sets out for Alberta in 1909, hoping to become a successful rancher.
Only to find out it was harder than he thought....
Yup. Please don't let the Cons destroy the NFB, like they are planning to destroy the CBC.
He's always been a nerdly chickenhawk. Posing as a Great Warrior Leader, inflating and deflating like a blimp, depending on the prevailing political winds.
He's never seen a war he didn't like, from the one in 1812 to the one in Libya, and now Stephen Harper is frantically flapping his stubby wings again, trying to pump up a war against Iran.
Which is particularly alarming, since tensions in the region are escalating, and the more political leaders talk about war the more likely it becomes.
Well there he was today, posing in front of another carefully composed human backdrop, shrugging off the latest grim economic news.
Choosing instead to go after environmental groups and native people opposed to the construction of a pipeline.
While ignoring the many lobbyists from Big Oil who tell him what to do, and the many locked out workers in this country that are being ground into the dirt by big American companies.
And choosing the timing of his newser with military precision, check the time on the picture, in order to avoid having to answer questions about these latest porky appointments.
Oh no. I knew Ezra Levant's obsession with Chiquita Banana would end badly. First he lost control of his senses, now he's lost control of his bowelsmouth.
Winding up a 10-minute denunciation of the banana company’s decision to boycott oil from Alberta’s tarsands deposits, Levant signed off his Dec. 22 broadcast thusly: “Hey . . . Manuel Rodriguez, chinga tu madre.”
The epithet, widely used in Mexico but not in the rest of the Spanish-speaking world, means, crudely, to have carnal relations with your mother.
Now look I understand that "chinga tu madre" along with "otra cerveza por favor" are the only Spanish words most redneck hosers ever learn at a cheap resort in Mexico.
Well I see that Great Choo Choo Leader is trying to put some distance between him and the lockout at the Electro-Motive plant in London, Ontario.
Even though he once used the factory to shill his corporate tax cuts.
"This is a dispute between a private company and the union and we don't comment on the actions of private companies," Harper spokesman Carl Vallee responded Wednesday in an email.
The prime minister showed no such reticence on Mar. 19, 2008 when he visited the Electro-Motive plant to showcase a $5 million federal tax break for buyers of the diesel locomotive-maker's wares and a wider $1 billion tax break on industrial capital investment.
Now I can understand why Stephen Harper is running away from those job-killing tax breaks. Because it must be so embarrassing to be exposed as a total fraud. And he's such a miserable coward.
But why is he refusing to stand up for Canadian workers who are being treated like animals by an American company? Why does he hate Canada soooooo much?
It was -17 degrees in London, Ontario, today, where a foreign company has locked out 400 Canadian workers. To try to slash their wages and benefits by more than fifty percent, and gut their pensions.
And in Alma, Quebec, where another foreign company has locked out 700 Canadian workers, and is using the courts to club them like seals, it was even colder.
But don't worry eh? The big bosses in this country are warm and toasty.
Stephen Harper greased Electro-Motive's wheels three years ago with a big wad of our tax dollars.
If London's Electro-Motive plant is closed and its jobs moved to Indiana, it'll be after having milked the benefits of a billion-dollar tax break once trumpeted on the plant floor by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
And like every other corporate giant in Canada, the company just got another juicy tax break from the Harper government. For doing less than nothing.
Praise the Dark Lord. I see that Stephen Harper has a shiny new present for his religious base.
Early in 2012, the Tories will finally flesh out a campaign promise to install the Office of Religious Freedom within the secular confines of the Department of Foreign Affairs – a controversial pledge that has drawn accusations of vote pandering and blurring lines between church and state.
To whom he is beholden, for faithfully sending him the cash he needs to fund his Office of Perpetual Political Warfare.
To which I say Hallelujah and God bless his righteous majority.
But here's what confuses me eh? How can he stand up for religious freedom abroad, and ignore what is happening in his own Calgary backyard? Does he really support Ezra Levant's bigot excrement?
Is this the Office of Religious Freedom? Or the Office of Selective Bigotry Against Women, Gays, and Muslims?
