Mike Duffy, Nigel Wright and Pamela Wallin – DollaramaGate
The Senate Expense Scandal or DollaramaGate as I call it because it’s as cheap as the junk you buy at the dollar store, continues to expand and the participants are dropping like flies. What started as a nickel and dime, penny-ante greed fest has now turned into a festival of stupidity that has taken on epic proportions and which has reached into the Prime Minister’s Office and potentially right onto the Prime Minister’s desk.
If there was ever an illustration of how to make a bad situation worse – this is it and the victims of the absurd attempt to cover up and contain this scandal are starting to pile up.
First, Senator Duffy resigned from the Conservative caucus, then Senator Pamela Wallin. Now it’s the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Nigel Wright.
That’s quite a haul for a three day period on a long weekend. Continue reading
What Scandal? Take Your Pick!
I remember when scandals were – well – scandalous! They were out of the ordinary events that caught people unawares. There would be allegations, investigations, exhausting media coverage and eventually heads would usually roll; sometimes all the way to prison.
The Watergate Yearbook Photos
Watergate was such a scandal and so were the Iran-Contra Affair and here in Canada, AdScam. There were more than a few but they usually came individually and with a fair amount of time in between each which was convenient because it gave us time to catch our breath in between them.
It appears the good old days of the odd juicy scandal are long gone.
Now they come in swarms like black flies in Spring. It’s got to the point that what was once rare has become almost common place. It’s not that we’re any less scandalized when they’re revealed, it’s that there’s so damn many political scandals these days, it’s difficult to know where to sling your outrage first.
Currently in Canada and the United States there are no fewer than ten major political scandals currently ongoing. There’s the mess in the Canadian Senate over expenses starring Senators Duffy, Harb, Brazeau and Wallin; three of whom are now sitting as independents awaiting further consequences.
There’s the scandal erupting over the latest allegations against Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, The Toronto Star has claimed to have seen a video in which someone who might be the mayor is smoking crack’. You have to love that straight ahead investigative journalism – an alleged video and a news story with so many qualifiers in it that it makes you wonder why they bothered. But then that’s the kind of gotcha journalism for which The Star is becoming famous and I suppose everybody has to make a living.
The Charbonneau Commission into political corruption in Quebec is just one ongoing buffet of scandals with three mayors having already
Justice France Charbonneau head of Quebec’s anti-corruption inquiry (photo Canadian Press)
resigned and sixteen people arrested by the police – and the Inquiry hasn’t even concluded its work yet.
Some like to suggest that there is a scandal behind Thomas Mulcair being offered and refusing an envelope full of cash by one of the bagmen as another scandal in the making but I don’t accept that. I’m not a fan of the petulant and pouting socialist but it really would only be a scandal if he took the money. He didn’t so let’s move on, there are lots of real scandals to keep us busy.
In Ontario there’s the Liberal Trifecta: Ornge Air Ambulance, the Closure of gas plants and eHealth. British Columbia contributed Ethnigate and not to be outdone, Alberta threw in a couple of nepotism scandals involving the current premier’s ex-husband and her sister.
Down south, our American friends are facing revelations that the IRS targeted various groups for ‘special’ treatment; primarily conservative but also including groups that were critical of the administration during the months leading up to the last election. As bad as that is, it now appears that the IRS also helped itself to millions of health records which, if true, could result in criminal charges.
Attorney General Eric Holder
The Department of Justice was forced to reveal that it had monitored the phone records of more than 100 journalists at Associated Press but like most scandals, it has expanded and it now appears that they were busy monitoring phone records of some Members of Congress as well.
And then there is Benghazi. What a disgrace to everything that the United States stands for that is turning into.
That’s quite a few scandals over the past few months and I’m not even including the lesser or venal sins like Robocalls, NDP improper fundraising during the last election, the Helena Geurges affair or Peter McKay’s cavalier use of Navy helicopters. If we started adding in the minor scandals, we’d be here all day and I promised Maggie I’d take her out for breakfast and then to some garage sales this morning.
PMO Chief of Staff Nigel Wright (left) and Senator Mike Duffy (right)
The simple fact is that political scandals have not only become unbelievably commonplace, they are indicative of a serious rot in our governments. There is an overwhelming lack of integrity and efficient management these days. Ethics, principles and values have been traded away for whatever is politically expedient and in the end, you and I pay for it both in terms of squandered tax revenues and disruption and erosion of our government and political systems.
The increasing number of scandals are a betrayal of the public trust and a symptom of the cynical disregard that too many in government have for the privilege their office affords them.
Richard Nixon must be rolling over in his grave wondering what all the fuss over Watergate was about and I’ll bet the ghosts of Tammany Hall are having a great laugh about it all.
There is no excuse for it and it is long past time we did something about it beyond trying to justify ‘our guys’ violating what we secretly know is unethical and only blaming ‘those guys’ over there for their sins. Scandal has touched all parties and governments of all ideologies lately. The issue is no longer left or right, it is politicians and bureaucrats who are out of control.
It’s come to the point where a sitting Mayor, on trial for fraud for his actions while he was a federal cabinet minister barely warrants news coverage. Even the new revelations that he might have embezzled from his own charity barely raises eyebrows. The attitude is ‘Ho hum. . .what a bum. . .let’s move on’.
We need to give our heads a shake and put petty partisanship aside and demand better from those who want to serve in government.
White House Spokesman Jay Carney working overtime to address scandals with the media
(The key word there, by the way, is ‘serve’.) We need to demand a higher standard of ethics and integrity from the political parties we support and worry less about throwing the slings and arrows of outrage at the parties we don’t. Polarized partisan shouting hasn’t been serving us very well lately.
In other words, if we want our politicians to get a grip on some values, we need to get reacquainted with our own.
I wrote yesterday about Mike Duffy and I was critical of Prime Minister Stephen Harper for whom I voted in the last three elections. As expected, I had a few subscribers unsubscribe. They don’t like criticism of their guy any more than those who worship Justin Trudeau like anything that might tarnish his halo or muss up his hair.
I’m not offended that they unsubscribed, I have enough shallow people in my life but I am offended that so many think that criticizing the sins of the politicians and parties they don’t support somehow legitimizes the sins of those they do support.
That’s not simply partisanship, that’s a lack of values at best and just plain stupidity at worst.
Personally, I’m tired of hearing politicians promise change while slinging mud at the other guys only to turn around and act just like the guys they smeared once they’re elected. You can’t make things better by being what you criticize and condemn.
We desperately need change but expecting it to come from politicians and their parties is like expecting the Canada Revenue Agency or the IRS to call to tell you that they want to help you with your tax return in order to save you money.
If we want more accountability and integrity; more transparency and ethics in government, we need to be consistent in our own values and in particular, we need to hold those we do support to an even higher standard than those we don’t.
To do less is to sell our support very cheaply and makes a mockery of what we claim are our own values. If we’re prepared to sell ourselves so cheaply instead of living up to the values we claim to hold, then we might as well clear the decks and brace ourselves because the scandals we have now are only the beginning.
By rationalizing the sins of the guys we support, we enable them to sin even more and in that way we become participants in their scandals rather than mere observers and critics of them.
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Senator Mike Duffy and the Smart Kids
“It isn’t the original scandal that gets people in the most trouble – it’s the attempted cover-up.”
Tom Petri
For my non-Canadian friends; a brief overview before we get into it this morning.
The Senate Chamber in session
Canada’s Senate, or ‘Upper Chamber’ as it is sometimes called, is an unelected body that has similar legislative authority to the House of Commons, Canada’s elected legislature.
While the Senate can introduce legislation, traditionally it functions as a chamber of sober second thought on legislation introduced by the House of Commons. Senators are appointed by the Prime Minister of the Day which means that it seldom represents the mood of the country.
The Senate is often criticized but it actually does some good work, especially in committee where it reviews legislation that has passed second reading in the House of Commons. Unfortunately, while there are many decent and hard-working senators, for the most part, the Upper House has evolved to become a retirement home for party hacks and bagmen which has led to increased calls for either its reform or outright abolishment.
Into this climate of growing disgust with the Senate stepped Senator Mike Duffy. Continue reading
Watergate & Benghazi – A Failure of Presidential Leadership
“I can see clearly now… that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate.”
Richard M. Nixon
“Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people to decide.”
Archibald Cox, 1st Watergate Special Prosecutor
“From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one – absolutely no one – is above the law.”
Leon Jaworski, 2nd Watergate Special Prosecutor
“If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – all else is lost.”
Barack Obama
I remember Watergate. Initially it was a low-level story about a break-in at the Headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. After the initial news reports, it was given little notice by most of most of the media.
It took time but eventually the small story became major as more details emerged. Where it had been pretty much only the Washington Post that had been chasing the story, other media jumped on it after it became clear that the break-in was tied to a slush fund of the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP).
What followed was like an avalanche rolling down the side of a mountain. The story picked up speed and scope the further it fell. Eventually it reached right into the Oval Office and led to impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon.
Eventually, Nixon resigned, hounded from office by his own bunker-like mentality and inability or unwillingness to get ahead of the story by telling the American people the truth. Incoming president, Gerald Ford subsequently pardoned Nixon as his first official act in office.
It was a dark period for the United States but it did reaffirm that their constitution, their government and their free press worked.
The United States is currently going through another dark period and once again a government is under siege, mired in scandals that touch on the very fundamentals of trust and the law as set out in the country’s constitution. Continue reading
Lessons From The Election In British Columbia
BC Liberal Premier Christy Clark
Yesterday’s election in British Columbia returned a Liberal majority government to power – much, it seems, to the amazement of pollsters and pundits.
Right up to the last minute, polls were predicting either a small NDP majority or perhaps a minority for either the NDP or the Liberals. Some were predicting increases for both the Conservatives and particularly the Green Party but nobody was predicting a major victory for the Liberal Party.
Increasingly, the pollsters and the strategists; the pundits and the columnists seem to get it wrong. They’re like meteorologists who predict the weather on televisions. It was supposed to cloud over and start raining overnight but there isn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun is high this morning. The weather could have been predicted as accurately by a political polling firm as last night’s election results could have been predicted by my local weatherman.
I still remember when Bob Rae’s NDP was elected in Ontario. Nobody expected that including Mr. Rae who was so stunned by his victory he had difficulty coming up with an acceptance speech on election night.
While I appreciate that predicting election results is an inexact science at best, you’d think that people who make their living doing exactly that would be in the ball park or at best be nearby occasionally. Last year, they predicted a victory in Alberta by the Wildrose Party and were somewhat chagrined when the reigning Conservatives were reelected.
It makes me scratch my head that politicians and the media place so much emphasis on polls in their decision making process rather than on their own instincts and good old fashioned research.
Four Different Polls Predictions – all wrong
red = Liberals / orange = NDP
It wasn’t just the actual result that caught the enlightened by surprise. Continue reading
Benghazi – The Inevitable Consequences Of ‘Spinning’ The Truth
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
Buddha
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
John 8:32 – King James Bible
“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”
Winston Churchill
In politics and government there is the truth and there are talking points. The two are not the same. The truth on any issue exists on its own merit. It is based on fact. Something is or is not, something did or did not happen. Truth is reality. It’s that simple. Talking points are the attempt to spin facts in the most beneficial or least damaging manner possible.
There are many reasons for trying to avoid the truth. Often, it is to avoid accountability or to achieve an end result that cannot be achieved if the truth were known. Sometimes it is to avoid criticism or negative publicity and sometimes it is to curry favour or privilege.
This is particularly true with politicians and government where no issue is simply presented in its naked truth to the public. Nothing is divulged without the development of talking points and talking points are based on minimizing the damage or maximizing the opportunity of the issue. In other words, the truth is massaged rather than simply offered.
Typically, many hands touch the development and reworking of talking points before they are finalized with each person changing the narrative a little more until eventually, the truth has been lost to political considerations and expediency.
Where once talking points were simply bullet lists of the key messages about a truthful fact, increasingly today, they are distortions and spin intended to obscure it or at the very least to influence the interpretation of it.
This has become fairly obvious in the ongoing Benghazi investigation. Continue reading
Benghazi – Americans Deserve The Truth
Politics has always been partisan and is often considered a blood sport but there is something far beyond either of those characterizations in the Benghazi issue.
The fact are clear and not in dispute.
The American Consulate in Benghazi was attacked by terrorists.
The Consulate had been attacked twice before although not on the scale of last September.
The United States was warned by the Libyan Government about the possibility of an attack on the anniversary of 9/11.
During the attack, calls for help were sent out from the Consulate but ignored. Emergency response teams were ordered to stand down.
The President was aware of the attack prior to leaving the White House prior to an appearance on the David Letterman Show. He was briefed at 5:00 pm in the White House by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. The President subsequently left Washington while the attack was still underway and went to New York for his television appearance.
The Secretary of State knew of the attack but went to bed only to be awoken at 3 am with the news that Consulate had been destroyed and four Americans killed.
Those facts have been established by unimpeachable documentation and transcripts of witness testimony. Neither side really disputes them. They are sufficient to raise significant and serious question, if for no other reason, than to prevent something like this happening again.
Those questions include:
Why was security not enhanced at the Consulate prior to September 11?
Why were emergency response teams ordered to stand down?
Why were all senior administration officials, including the President, not in the situation room monitoring events as they unfolded and making every attempt to protect American lives and territory?
Following the attack, the Administration denied that the Consulate was attacked and put out the story that the attack was the result of a protest sparked by an old YouTube video of a movie about the prophet Mohammed.
UN Ambassador Susan Rice was provided with talking points to that effect and dispatched to the Sunday morning news talk shows on various cable news programs to present the Administration’s position. The President made the same claim in a speech in the Rose Garden and again at the United Nations and Hillary Clinton made the same claim.
When the truth started to emerge, every major news network and newspaper ignored it. They didn’t try to mitigate the revelations – they refused to report them. It was only weeks before the Presidential Election and there was a collective effort to prevent any negative news undermining the President’s reelection chances.
That’s really all there is to the Benghazi story and it is being confirmed almost daily by the continuing testimony and more documents being revealed and that raises even more troubling questions. Continue reading
Progressive Education: Blow Job Tips In The Classroom
I always find it bemusing that there is so much profanity online and in common conversation but yet, we still refer to the word ‘fuck’ as the “Big F” when we’re talking about sex in the media or engaged in a serious discussion about social issues including profanity.
I’m not advocating use of the word although use of it seldom offends me. We can all make that decision for ourselves but probably the stupidest conversation I’ve heard and seen lately was on CNN between Anderson Cooper and some other talking head in which they referred to the ‘F’ word and the ‘N’ word. I thought I knew that they were talking about and I was almost right. The ‘N’ word was what I thought it represented but the ‘F’ word was not about ‘F_ck’ it was referring to ‘faggot’. It took me most of their dicscussion to realize that.
We’ve reached a strange place in time when we’re so afraid of words even in serious conversation that we are afraid to actually use some words even in a discussion about why they may be inappropriate or even harmful. It’s like taking a shot to the groin in a hockey game but because you’re embarrassed to admit it to your team trainer, you tell him you got hit in the head. Typically it won’t resolve the issue because he’ll only end up bandaging your head.
Having said that, I think we use profanity a little too loosely these days, especially around our children. But then we seem to be schizophrenic when it comes to concern for our kids. On the one hand we try to bubble-wrap them to protect them while at the same time pushing adult concept on them in an attempt to make them grow up faster.
We make them wear bike helmets, knee pads and use car seats, all of which are good things. We protect them from words like Christmas, Halloween and dinosaur but we register them in sports where we push them to a competitive level that is more stress than skills-development and we push social issues on them – adult issues in some bizarre homage to political correctness.
I believe in exposing children to the real world and teaching them about respect for others who are different from them and their families. I also believe that there is a time and place for sex education but that it should be done in respectful way, non-provocative manner and only when children reach a maturity level to fully understand and benefit from it.
Having said all of that, apparently the Big F is inappropriate in a serious discussion between two journalists but no, as it turns out, in a classroom for Grade 7 and 8 students.
Weasel Words
“Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.”
Edmund Burke
“A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.”
William Shenstone
“If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.”
Will Rogers
Former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty
Former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has just finished testifying before the Legislative Committee looking into the cost of cancelling two gas-fired power plants during the last election in order to save two Liberal candidates in danger of being defeated. Rob Snow of radio station CFRA had posted a link to the live video stream of Mr. McGuinty’s appearance and to the best of my knowledge, he was the only member of the mainstream media that seemed interested enough to provide the link for the great unwashed.
Mr. McGuinty’s testimony was, in a phrase, a dazzling performance of weasel words designed to avoid, deflect and obscure the truth. Within the first five minutes of tuning in I heard:
I don’t know the answer to that. . .
I never talked to her about that. . .
It may have been that there was discussion. . .
It could be. . .
It might be. . .
I’m not going to engage in speculation. . .
That isn’t my recollection. . .
I have no reason to believe that ‘he/she/they’ operated with anything but integrity. . .
During his testimony he was able to work in ‘children at risk’, ‘doing the right thing’ and even his mom.
It was an exercise in plausible deniability that took responsibility for the decision but not the cynical reason for it or the poor attempt to cover it up after the fact. It was an attempt to try and sell the decision to close the power plants as a correction of an earlier bad decision to place them in Mississauga and Oakville in the first place.
It was an unbelievable display of hypocrisy. Mr. McGuinty tried to sell the decision as being about health and safety of local residents but when the decision was made and for months after, when it was criticized, there wasn’t a mention of the health and safety of area residents near the power plants. In fact, it hadn’t been a consideration for the five years since the power plants were originally announced and construction started. It still isn’t in one non-Liberal riding where a power plant continues operations. Apparently the health and safety of the children of conservatives aren’t as important to Mr. McGuinty or perhaps he just sincerely believes that Conservatives are made of sterner stuff and can withstand the pollution.
It was just one more masterful performance using weasel words and phrases to try and justify a purely political decision that when it’s all said and done will cost taxpayers close to $1 billion.
The total known cost so far has reached $712 million when you add the cost of new construction in another location to the $585 million in cancellation fees and there may yet be even more cost to be revealed. The fact that the decision was taken in the final days of an election and which did save two Liberal seats is just a happy coincidence.
Sometimes things just work out, don’t they?
I don’t know which offends me more about politics the ongoing cynical manipulation of our tax dollars and social policy, the partisan bickering or simply the fact that politicians think we’re all just plain stupid. Continue reading
Canada- We Used To Be A Decent People
“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”
Confucius
“Poverty is the worst form of violence.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.”
Robert Kennedy
It’s National Hunger Awareness Week although you’d be hard pressed to know that. To date, I’ve seen exactly one post on Facebook with two like and five shares – one of each of which was mine. I had to really search Google to find any media stories on it and did find a couple mostly from small local newspapers. Not one major news outlet showed up in the search that barely returned a list of just over 1,200 references.
The latest ad by Justin Trudeau which aired today, by contrast, yielded more than 12,000,000 responses and all of the major Canadian media were represented. Who says our values are serious out of whack. . .besides the United Nations?
More than 3 million people live in poverty in Canada including 600,000 children. More than 900,000 will need the assistance of a food bank today just to get something to eat. Added to that, are another 1.4 million Canadians who are looking for work which brings the grand total to 4.4 million struggling to get by. Continue reading
Andrea Horvath Wants Your Help To Justify Selling Out Ontario Cheaply
Last Thursday, the Ontario Liberal Government introduced its first budget since Premier Wynne was appointed Premier of the Province by the Liberal Party of Ontario. Having failed to win a majority government in the last election a year ago and with billion dollar boondoggles and scandals piling up around his ears, former Premier Dalton McGuinty prorogued the Legislature and resigned, triggering a Liberal leadership which Kathleen Wynne eventually won.
Typically, when an outgoing leader resigns it is to allow a new leader the opportunity to go before the people and seek a new mandate and to provide the party with a fresh start. Mr. McGuinty, if nothing else, has admirably and consistently demonstrated a complete lack of concern for such democratic trivialities.
Since his election, Mr. McGuinty has repeatedly lied to the electorate although voters do hold some responsibility for that. Despite the proven and publicized lies, many continued to prop up his government and then complain about the state of the province after each election.
And what is the state of the province? Continue reading
Modern Educational Priorities – Protecting Children From Imaginary Grenades And Bad Haircuts
Don’t let schooling interfere with your education
Mark Twain
Never underestimate the power of human stupidiity
Robert A. Heinlein
To fully understand this article, you will need to know the definitions of the following terms:
The Senators – Ottawa’s NHL hockey team
Ottawa Senators – Ottawa’s NHL hockey team and are not be confused with the Senators who work in government. The Ottawa Senators or ‘Sens’ as the home crowd calls them actually do productive things – like breathe.
Montreal Canadians – Not to be confused with a Canadian living in Montreal, The Canadians or “The Habs” as they are sometimes called are Montreal’s NHL hockey team which is sort of ironic considering that Quebec has a significant number of fanatical ‘Canadians’ fans who want to separate from Canada.
The Senators and the Canadians are currently facing each other in a seven game series in the first round of the playoffs; each team has won one game.
Education – defined as “the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.” It is also defined as “an enlightening experience”.
Tee shirt – A short sleeved, collarless shirt.
Imaginary grenade – something that only exists in the imagination not in the real world.
Stupidity – The act of being stupid and an apparent core competency for a job in the educational system these days.
I think that will be all of the technical terms we’ll be using so we can proceed to the article but if I do throw out a term you’ve never
The Senate – Canada’s political retirement home
heard before and don’t understand, please feel free to stop me at any time and ask for clarification.
There are no stupid questions – only stupid educators.
This past week an 11-year old student at Maple Grove Elementary School in Lachine Quebec was told she couldn’t wear her Ottawa Senator’s tee shirt in class. The students had been told they could wear a hockey shirt because of the hockey playoffs but only if it was a ‘Canadian’s’ jersey. When the young girl refused to remove the shirt and replace it with either a ‘Habs’ jersey or her school uniform, she was sent home.
The school board stated that this was for her own good which makes you wonder just how violently fanatical the other kids are about supporting the Canadians.
I write quite often about the stupidity of the people who control our educational system and sometimes get criticized for it but I make no apologies. This kind of abject stupidity – by adults, no less – not only reveals the lack of intelligent thought of too many that are responsible for teacing our children but also threatens to make my head explode, which I tend to take somewhat personally.
If it was an isolated case, we could simply dismiss it as localized stupidity, we could simply rise up as one and slay the local educators and bureaucrats and then move on secure in the knowledge that we had done our bit to help eradicate stupidity.
Unfortunately, it isn’t an isolated event. This kind of irrational, stupid thinking has seized our school systems.
The 12- year old daughter of an American soldier serving overseas was sent home for wearing a ‘Support Our Troops’ shirt. She was hoping to start a ‘wear red in support of our troops’ day which is quite common in cities across Canada and the United States. Apparently she was sent home because the shirt didn’t have a collar but the most incredulous part is that she was sent home from a school at Fort Campbell military base.
It takes a special kind of stupid to tell a child in a school on a military base that they can’t wear a shirt in support of the troops.
In Colorado, a 7-year old boy was suspended from school for throwing an imaginary grenade at a box outside. He was playing ‘save the world’ and threw his imaginary grenade at an imaginary evil thing that was threatening to escape from the box and threaten the planet. The school has a zero tolerance policy for both real and imaginary weapons and quickly suspended the budding terrorist.
In Florida, a 15-year old girl has been arrested and charged with a felony for performing what she identified as a school science project. She combined toilet bowl cleaner and tin foil in a small bottle. She successfully blew the top off the bottle and created a puff of smoke. On April 29 she was arrested and charged with possession and discharge of a weapon on school property and discharging a destructive device.
She was lucky that she wasn’t also charged with possession of a weapon of non-destruction.
In Texas, a 6-year old girl was given a detention because her parents dropped her off late for a third time. Both parents work and have a newborn with medical issues. Nonetheless, in the belief that the little girl should be able to drive herself to school, the school punished her for her parent’s tardiness.
In Springfield, Ohio, a 5-year old kindergarten student was suspended because his new haircut was too disruptive and he was sent home and told not to return to school until his hair had grown in to a style that was more acceptable.
Honest, m friends, I don’t make this stuff up and it isn’t just the students who are victims of this stupidity.
Last year, in Alberta, a teacher was fired for giving a high school student a zero after the student repeatedly refused to hand in an assignment despite being given many opportunities to do so after the deadline. The school’s policy is not to hand out zeros so as not to harm a student’s self-esteem. Apparently teaching things like accountability and responsibility are seen as detrimental to a child’s development by this particular school board.
In Chicago, a teacher is suing the school board after being fired for showing gardening tools to his class; a requirement of the school curriculum. His offense? The tools he showed to his class included a pocket knife. The students were not permitted to use or touch the tools, they were simply shown and their use explained. The teacher was summarily fired for bringing a weapon to school.
There is madness in pedagogy these days and the victims of it are our children.
In Ontario, they have enacted a law that permits teachers to provide instruction to students without any requirement to tell parents what is being taught although it does get out. Parents tend to be a lot less stupid than educators and politicians think they are.
Ontario schools place an undo emphasis on sex education in elementary school and the province invests $1.5 billion per year in full-day junior kindergarten while cutting funding for computer equipment in secondary school. It’s the kind of thinking that led to the province mandating a civics text book that contained incorrect information about Canada’s system of government.
Indeed, schools have become so busy with stupid things they’re running out of time to teach what is necessary and the results are becoming increasingly obvious.
Our schools are graduating students who are functionally illiterate, have no working knowledge of geography and who believe that their feelings are more important than their contribution to society and taking responsibility for their own lives.
In Montgomery County, 6 out of 10 students failed their algebra final last semester leading school officials and parents to search for answers as to what went wrong.
Search for answers?
The search shouldn’t take very long. It’s a school system out of control; an educational system that has its emphasis and focus on all of the wrong things and which has been hijacked by consultants, politicians and ‘experts’ who experiment with the education at the expense of our children.
It’s small wonder that teachers’ unions across North America resist standardized testing. It is a little too revealing for the comfort of many in the business of education.
There is no magic to educating. One group has information and knowledge and it passes it along to another. It is a concept that is as old as humanity and even primitive societies teach their children how survive as adults by passing on the skills and knowledge they will need as they grow up.
We have become too sophisticated for such nonsense. The basis of education which is thousands of years old is no longer the proper foundation for modern pedagogy. Today it is about feelings, social issues and political correctness. It has become one ongoing sociology experiment for the benefit of the system and not our children.
When children are being sent home because of a haircut or a particular tee shirt but schools are graduating illiterates, it’s a fair indication that either stupidity or madness or both have seized the system.
Remember the definition: “the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.” It is also defined as “an enlightening experience”.
There is little evidence that our school systems are developing the powers of reasoning and judgment to prepare our children intellectually for mature life and even less to support the concept of education as an enlightening experience. Apparently those who are responsible for educating our children have forgotten their responsibility.
If we are prepared to continue to stand around bleating like sheep while our children’s futures are being threatened by fools and sycophants then – I think that just might be an indication that we’re becoming even more stupid than they are.
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Readin’, Writin’ and Stupidity
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© 2013 Maggie’s Bear
all rights reserved
The written content of this article is the sole property of Maggie’s Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others
Let’s connect on Twitter: @maggsbear or send a friend request on Facebook to: Maggie’s Bear
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Corrupted By Arrogance – Trading Principle For Temporary Power
Something happens to people when they enter politics. I’m not really sure what causes it but seemingly ordinary, decent people are quickly transformed and usually at our expense.
Some begin to believe that merely because they were elected, they have somehow become smarter than the people who elected them. Others are intoxicated by the position to which they’ve been elected and its proximity to political power and privilege. Sometimes the media interviews them and that becomes an ego-stroke that can be more addictive than mirrors are to a celebrity.
They learn to compromise their principles but prefer to refer to it as ‘seeking consensus’ or ‘making government work’. They announce with great indignation that ‘this’ or ‘that’ is unacceptable but they never really say what they’re going to do about it and often, as we see time and again with minority governments, they don’t actually do anything at all when given the opportunity.
They talk about ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’ and devote considerable time and effort to avoiding both.
Talk is cheap everywhere but in politics where it has more value than money. Talk – meaningless, empty rhetoric – is the currency of politics.
Politicians quickly learn to use weasel language to obscure meaning and to avoid clarity. They manipulate facts to distort their true meaning and they shill the numbers to prove their point or to cover their butts. They almost never answer a direct question with a specific and direct answer.
Politics has never been one of the nobler professions but it has become one of the sleaziest in recent years. Continue reading
A Political Disgrace
Two news stories caught my attention this week and while they don’t appear to be related, to me one is the result of the other.
The first was about Amanda Telford and her husband, who in an act of desperation took their nineteen-year old autistic son and dropped him at a Developmental Service Office of the Ontario Government. After years of struggling to keep their son safe, to supervise him and frustrating attempts to get help from a government department that is willing but seriously underfunded, the couple was finally forced to give up.
Their son is a small, non-verbal child in a 6’, adult male body. He wanders off, has no concept of personal danger and is diabetic which means that there is a constant demand to watch and ensure he doesn’t eat something that could harm him.
Both parents have deteriorating health issues and finally reached a crisis point where they just couldn’t cope anymore and out of concern for the welfare of their son and their own health, they made the decision to simply take him and drop him at a government office.
My initial reaction to the story was to look harshly on the parents but that was an emotional knee-jerk response and I was wrong. I understand that the this was a family in crisis driven by a sense of hopelessness that wasn’t their fault.
Few of us have experienced the 24/7 stress of caring for a seriously autistic child and the ongoing frustration and stress caused by being unable to get the promised assistance you need and for which you believe your taxes pay. The Telford’s are not the first family to reach the tipping point and they certainly won’t be the last.
The second story, which was a much bigger story if you use the amount of media coverage it received as a gauge, was the appearance of Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne before a legislative committee investigating the costs of the Liberal Government’s decision to close two gas-fired power plants during the last election.
The decision was purely political and made in an attempt to save two Liberal seats in a close election. The Liberals claimed the cost to taxpayers was approximately $40 million but to date it has been revealed that the true cost is already at $585 million and still climbing.
That’s half a billion dollars, my friends, paid by taxpayers for something they will not get. The first story is about a family in crisis; the second about politics and it may seem like they are totally unrelated but the simple fact is they are directly connected.
Much needed services, like those for the developmentally disabled are seriously underfunded because government doesn’t have the money it requires to fund them properly. The reason for that is due to bureaucratic mismanagement and cynical politics.
Support for the parents of autistic children was a Liberal promise – wasting money cancelling power plant construction to save Liberal seats wasn’t!
Government spends and wastes money like a gambling addict in a casino and with pretty much the same outcome. They win the odd time but it is a losing proposition that sees money that should be used for necessities lost to everything but. Eventually it leads to spending money you don’t have and cuts to essentials. Just as with gambling addicts, the eventual outcome is misery.
In nine years of Liberal government in Ontario the amount of money being squandered is horrendous.
- $1.5 billion / year on full-time junior kindergarten which is nothing more than free daycare
- $½ billion on cancelled power plants
- $1 billion at eHealth to try and develop an electronic medical records data base
- $1 billion at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission where senior management has given itself 49% salary increases over the past two years for doing such an outstanding job
- $1 billion and counting at Ornge Air Amulance Servicess the Crown Corporation set up to handle air ambulance services
That totals $5 billion plus annual amounts for the kindergarten program and it doesn’t take into consideration the money poured into the failed Green Energy Program or raises above the cost of living that were handed out to public sector employees to buy votes in elections prior to the last. It doesn’t include ridiculous amounts paid to public sector unions for installing things like a pencil sharpener ($143) or commitments to glamour projects that are great for political ego but do little for the quality of life for the people.
Taxes are raised, more user fees are introduced and the money disappears into a sinkhole of mismanagement and corrupt politics.
I consider it nothing short of political rape.
There is a very real human cost for this kind of political cynicism and we see it every time a family like the Belford’s hits the wall. The services just aren’t there to support them even though we’ve funded them. Infrastructure is crumbling, hospital wait times are horrific, schools are underfunded and we are told it is the inevitable outcome of a tough economy.
We’re told there just isn’t enough money to do everything that is necessary but there is always an extra half billion or so whenever there is a need to try and save a couple of seats in the legislature.
Political parties, particularly progressive political parties talk the talk but they don’t walk it. They like to present themselves as having a social conscience but employ the same cynical tactics which they blame conservative parties of using. In fact, they are even more cynical. But they don’t stand alone. All parties, conservative parties included are guilty.
The Liberal Party of Ontario has been so completely inept and corrupt it should have been removed but it will survive a non-confidence vote on its budget because the NDP, the third party in the legislature will support the Liberals. They will claim victory because they will have extracted a few handouts like a reduction in auto insurance premiums but I think selling your stated principles for a handful of trinkets isn’t much of which to be proud.
There are people sleeping in our streets, children going to bed hungry, waiting lists for affordable housing that are years long and families in crisis just like the Telford’s. A cut in auto insurance premiums for the middle class seems somewhat trivial by comparison.
The real tragedy is that Ontario isn’t the exception; it’s the rule in government today. Despite the fact that the average Canadian now contributes 42% of their income to governments at all levels in taxes, our governments are running deficits and carrying huge debt loads.
Think about that for a moment. Almost half of every dollar earned by the average citizen is going to government to maintain infrastructure and fund our hospitals, schools and all other social programs but it isn’t enough. In British Columbia, the two main parties duking it out in the current election are both promising to raise taxes even more.
Federally, the Conservative government can’t account for $3 billion. It hasn’t been stolen or misspent necessarily; they just don’t know where it is. It was earmarked for public security and according to the Auditor General; nobody seems to know what happened to it.
Nobody will be held accountable for this, including Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and certainly nobody will lose their job over it which makes me wonder just how much money has to be lost before politicians do accept accountability.
Money is being squandered on so called 10%ers, tax-payer funded pamphlets to denigrate Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. The government attempted to claw-back combat pay paid to military serving in Afghanistan as an austerity measure until that blew up in their face but here’s the thing. Government shouldn’t be ruled by public pressure. It should be ruled by integrity, sound and prudent management and by principle.
It isn’t! It is ruled by the most cynical vested self-interest and the results of that are not difficult to see. Drop by an aboriginal community and see the underfunding for schools, medical services and even things you and I take for granted like clean water. There was an extra $50 million to drop into Treasury Board President Tony Clements’s riding during the last G8/G20 summit in Toronto but there isn’t enough money to provide drug and addiction treatment programs on reserves.
In Manitoba, the current NDP government which ran and was elected on a promise not to raise taxes is not only breaking that promise, it is changing a provincial law requiring government to put tax increases before the people in the form of a referendum. In other words, not only are those politicians breaking their word, they are quite happy to violate the democratic rights of people in the process.
And the price for all of this?
It isn’t the taxes they take from us – it’s the human cost to families like the Telford’s, to people living on social assistance that is lower now than it was 20 years ago even though the cost of living has increased. It is reduced police services to combat crime, especially crime related to illegal drugs. It is the human cost of increasing teen suicides and bullying because of a lack of funding to adequately address the causes of those issues.
While Justin Trudeau tours the country like Tom Cruise promoting his latest movie; while former Dalton McGuinty squandered money to buy and maintain political power; while the Conservative government robs Peter to fund Paul, loses track of a few billion and spends our money for its own political gamesmanship – real people are suffering; real people are paying for it all.
Many like to only blame the Conservatives but the majority of governments in this country are progressive and have been for years. Look around and see what wonders they have wrought at the expense of those who most need the help progressives like to promise but never deliver.
The simple truth is that it isn’t an issue of political ideology – it is an issue of cynical, corrupt politics and there is more than enough blame to go around.
To put it bluntly, politics in this country is a disgrace made all the more so because there isn’t a political party today that has the moral principles to accept and change things but then, neither do we. We’re too interested in getting what we can out of government for ourselves and scre w everyone else.
All too soon it’s going to be too late to do what we usually do – find someone else to blame when it all goes south.
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© 2013 Maggie’s Bear
all rights reserved
The written content of this article is the sole property of Maggie’s Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others
Let’s connect on Twitter: @maggsbear or send a friend request on Facebook to: Maggie’s Bear
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In Their Own Words – The Unbelievable Things Some Politicians Say
Politicians have opinions and they aren’t shy about sharing them. Tragically, the words often come out of their mouths without benefit of having traveled through their brains first.
Often their supporters like to pass them along but there seems to be more enthusiasm for sharing the gaffs and stupid comments made by politicians on the other side; the Dark Side of the political spectrum. It always makes me laugh because there is no bright side in politics. The light of critical thinking burned out a very long time ago, it’s just some of the folks on Facebook and Twitter who have been slow at catching on to that.
Rather than try to explain what I mean, I’ll let the politicians speak for themselves. Continue reading
Newton And The Law Of Unintended Consequences
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”
Newton’s Third Law of Physics
“We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinium physics ruled by Frankenstein logic.”
David Russell
Sir Isaac Newton who lived during the seventeenth century is still considered by most to be one of, if not the, most influential scientists of all times. His laws on motion have been proven time and again and are the basis for the development of everything from flight to calculus. His third law of motion, quoted above, is a fundamental principle of physics – and, as it turns out, of life.
We live in a point of time where we are, more than ever before, victims of the Law of Unintended Consequences; an ongoing example of Newwton’s Third Law in action. Decisions are being made and policies proposed and implemented that never seem to take into consideration the consequences beyond the band aid fix to a particular issue.
Consider, for example, the latest brouhaha over the importing of foreign workers into Canada. The Conservative Government revised the law a year ago ostensibly to help Canadian business, in particular small business, find employees for positions that Canadians seemed unwilling to fill. Whether or not that’s true, it didn’t work out very well.
Big business took advantage of the reductions in foreign worker restrictions to fill jobs with cheaper foreign labour. That did take jobs from Canadians which forced the government to reverse itself this past week and reinstate the provisions it had removed.
The government simply hadn’t stopped to consider all possible consequences before making the changes last year. It saw an issue and a quick fix and immediately both Newton’s Third Law and the Law of Unintended Consequences took over. They have compounded the mistake by reacting to the controversy rather than responding with some critical analysis and there is no question that new unintended consequences are waiting around the corner on this issue.
It isn’t the first time that government has acted without looking at the bigger picture – it’s almost part of government’s DNA to avoid consideration of the long-term consequences of its actions.
In the 90s, the Liberal Government raised the taxes on cigarettes in the belief that it would reduce smoking. While the objective may have been laudable, the consequence was a marked increase in cigarette smuggling which increased crime and, therefore, the cost to law enforcement and the judicial system without having much impact on cigarette use. The result was that the same government that raised the tax on cigarettes was forced to reduce it a few years later and look for a better solution.
The issue wasn’t whether or not government should be discouraging cigarette smoking, the issue was what are the best and most effective methods to achieve that without creating new problems somewhere else?
Newton was right. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and because we don’t consider all of the possible forces that can come into play on an issue, we are ill-prepared for many of the consequences of the decisions we take as nations, as communities and even as individuals.
There is a push on in my city to open a safe-injection site for heroin and crack addicts. I don’t doubt the sincere intentions of many of those who are behind the initiative. They are, for the most part, driven by a desire to help addicts and to protect the community from diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C. Some simply want to reduce the amount of used drug paraphernalia like needles that are too often found on our streets and in neighbourhood back yards in the city’s core.
But there is more to this issue than infectious disease control and the nuisance hazard of used needles lying around.
Illegal drugs are supplied by criminals, typically by gangs and anything which enables safe use of illegal drugs enables that criminal enterprise. We have already seen gang shootings over territory, robbery and theft caused by addicts looking for money to feed their habit and despite the Safe Needle Program which has distributed more than 1 million needles to addicts; we’ve seen increased sharing of dirty needles which spread infectious and potentially fatal disease.
Enabling addicts doesn’t help them either. Put bluntly, street drugs destroy lives and not only the lives of the user. Safe-injection sites are basically a sign that society has given up on the individual and is providing a convenient place for them to come and slowly kill themselves by allowing them to indulge their addiction. It legitimizes the wasting of human life and for some, the use of illegal drugs.
Neighbourhoods are affected negatively, small business near safe-injection sites suffers and respect for our laws is undermined. It is the opposite but equal reaction to the original action taken.
We would be better served to understand that fixing one problem only to create a dozen others isn’t really much of a solution.
If the issue is that addiction leads to sharing of needles which leads to increased diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C, I would suggest that we put as much money as possible into rehabilitation and treatment programs rather than enabling the behaviour that is causing the problem in the first place. It seems to me that might be a more positive approach to trying to rebuild broken lives rather than simply reinforcing what is breaking those lives down.
It is easy to blame government for much of this because government typically takes the shortest route possible to resolution of an issue; seldom thinking much farther than the next election. But it isn’t restricted to government. We are all guilty of it to some extent or another. We rush to support what we think might resolve an issue without considering the consequences that might ensue from that decision.
Gun control is one of those issues.
I have no problem with reasonable regulation being placed on gun ownership but the problem we face in society is crime, not gun ownership and most gun crime is committed by criminals using illegally obtained firearms. Placing restrictions, particularly the somewhat innocuous regulations recently proposed and rejected by the American Senate does nothing to reduce gun crime. It is a significant amount of public debate and acrimony for no good purpose.
We can pretend otherwise and delude ourselves into believing that there are simplistic solutions to complex issues but it is an unfortunate illusion embraced by too many. We don’t consider the long-term consequences of public policy or even the support we throw to politicians, political parties and major issues.
Most of us want the same basic things: good jobs, a clean environment, safer communities with reduced crime, lower taxes and more efficient government but because we tend to react rather than respond to proposals to achieving those things there is no room for listening to or considering the opinions and ideas of others with whom we disagree.
We become so focused on winning the argument and implementing a quick solution that we lose sight of the original problem and only end up creating new unintended consequences which themselves have to be addressed.
Abortion became a women’s issue rather than a human issue. I was around when the original argument was put forward and one of the primary kicks against legalizing abortion was that it would become a form of birth control, a charge vehemently denied by pro-choice supporters.
As it turns out, abortion has not only become an acceptable form of birth control, it is also being used to cull the species with many using it as a means to reject the birth of children which may have potential health issues or simply based on their gender. An alarming number of pregnancies are being terminated for no other reason than because the baby is female which I don’t believe was ever the intent of those who supported abortion rights and most that do today.
Now we are being forced to deal with the consequence of post-birth abortion and if even half of the evidence presented so far in the Gosnell trial in the United States is true, we have moved from trying to decide when life begins to not caring when it begins and simply terminating it at our convenience.
I am not anti-abortion but we entered into it without much thought beyond a woman’s right to choose and because we refuse to face and consider all of the opposite consequences to our decision, Canada has become one of the few nations in the world with no abortion law guidelines whatsoever.
That has led to some in some jurisdictions being charged with homicide when the assault of a pregnant woman causes the death of her unborn baby; an unequal application of law based on an undefined concept of what is and is not life.
Organ donation and euthanasia are also serious issues that have created unintended consequences. I believe that organ donation is an important and necessary means to help others and support and encourage it. I also accept that ultimately, the individual should have final determination on whether or not to continue their life or to end it, especially when facing a long-term, fatal and painful illness.
But we saw the unintended consequence of those two programs come together recently in England when doctors declared a young man brain dead and wanted to harvest his organs immediately. His father refused permission and fortunately for his son who recovered and is quite alive today. The unintended consequence of organ donation has been snap judgments, sometimes incorrect judgments, about the probability of a patient’s recovery. A market for organs has been created which has seen people kidnapped and an internal organ stolen and led even one young man to sell one of his kidneys to raise money to buy the latest iPhone.
I believe organ donation is an essential component in health care and is to be encouraged but when it first ramped up, we didn’t really stop to consider all of the possible consequences of that program and put the proper safeguards in place. We are playing catch up now.
And that ultimately is the problem with the way we approach things today. We are constantly in a state of catch up after extensive periods of acrimony and division on key issues. We should be united. Political ideology is no excuse for being stupid and for making careless and poorly thought through decisions. Neither is political or social expediency.
There is nothing to be feared from considering all of the possible consequences that flow from the decisions we want to make and the social policies we are considering. We would be better served to fear the fact that we have not thought something through sufficiently to minimize, if not prevent, the Law of Unintended Consequences creating more issues than we originally set out to overcome.
We are experimenting with real lives when we avoid examining all possible outcomes before making a decision and that has a direct impact on all of us. Every life has value and we all have a right to expect better not only from government but from each other.
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Precious Little Insight At Insite
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© 2013 Maggie’s Bear
all rights reserved
The written content of this article is the sole property of Maggie’s Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others
Let’s connect on Twitter: @maggsbear or send a friend request on Facebook to: Maggie’s Bear
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Me Do Something Stupid? Surely You Jest.
I write often about the stupidity I see out there in the Big World and not too long ago, someone asked me if I have ever done anything stupid which I thought was a bit cheeky. I told them, of course, that the short answer is “no I haven’t”.
I told them that I am always focused and never make the kind of silly mistakes to which so many others seem to be prone. I was so convincing, I almost began to believe it myself.
While we were in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago, for example, I bought a watch. It’s a very nice watch and much easier to read than the stainless steel face on my old watch. It’s a chronograph with multiple dials and is water proof which will come in handy should I ever decide to take up scuba diving or fall off a cruise ship. It has a soft gold face with numbers I can actually see.
My previous watch was just a plain circle of burnished steel; no numbers just highly light-reflecting steel that made it almost impossible to read.
Multiple watch – watch winder. Price $9,500. God’s way of telling you that you are making too much money and clearly not the one I purchased.
One of the things about which I was particularly proud is that the new watch is automatic and self-winding. There’s no need to use environmentally unfriendly batteries, just give it a good bit of movement before the first time you wear it, set the time and away you go. The movement of your arm keeps winding it or at least that’s the theory.
The problem is that I don’t always wear my watch. I don’t like to wear it while I’m working which means that it is off more often than it is on and that, my friends, means it wasn’t getting enough ‘action’ to keep it powered up.
I didn’t want to have to wear the damn thing all day and I certainly wasn’t going to admit to Maggie that we had a bit of a technical issue so I did some after-purchase research and discovered that there are things called watch winders; an instrument that actually provides sufficient movement to keep your self-winding watch fully powered. They come in single, double and multiple watch models and can range in price from $39 to more than $10,000.
Imagine that. Civilization has advanced from winding our own watches to battery power and now to a point in human history where we now have machines that run on batteries or direct AC to – well – wind our watches. Who says we aren’t progressing?
I decided I needed to buy a watch winder to prevent my watch from becoming one more ornament cluttering my desk and it works perfectly. I now have a very nice watch that I got a real deal on and a watch winder that cost 2 ½ times what the watch cost. It also takes up so much space on my desk I had to rearrange some stuff.
Some might consider that kind of stupid but I prefer to think of it as an unintended consequence of trying to do my bit to keep the planet green. The fact that the watch winder uses more power than a battery-operated watch is and inconvenient outcome. My heart was in the right place – just like Green Party Leader Elizabeth May’s.
Maggie suggested that the next time I consider a battery operated Timex. I asked her how many more pairs of shoes she needed.
Sometimes, I confess that I come close to being stupid but I don’t actually believe it is my fault.
The other day I called a plumber and when he answered the phone, I forgot who it was I was calling. My brain went blank, a complete white out, a flash flood that cleansed the land washing away all in its path.
He said ‘Hello’ and so I said, ‘Hello’ to buy some time and then there was a bit of an extended silence while he waited for me to say something and I tried to remember who I was calling and why. To be honest, I don’t actually consider this to be stupid, I prefer to think of it as Bell Canada’s fault for not having two-way caller ID.
I’m a good driver and haven’t had an accident in more than thirty years but as much as I hate to admit it, I still have my non-lethal moments.
Last month, Maggie and I were on our way out to visit the kids. We stopped for breakfast on the way and then headed across town. When we got to one particular stop sign, I just sat there and Maggie finally asked what I was waiting for and I realized that I had been waiting for the red stop sign to turn green.
I didn’t admit that, of course. I told her that I was trying to remember if we had turned off the stove which I was forced to admit wasn’t really very quick thinking on my part. . .especially after she reminded me that we had just had breakfast at The Diner and hadn’t used the stove.
Sometimes you actually end up looking even more stupid when you try to wriggle your way out of being stupid.
Some might consider my inability to spell even with Spell Check but I like to consider that more of a flamboyant use of language and grammar; sort of accidental creativity rather than stupidity. I can rationalize with the best of them.
The sad truth is, however, that like most people, I’ve done lots of stupid things in my life. The new watch is just the latest in a long litany of poorly thought out things that I’ve done and they all share one thing in common. They were impulsive acts, the result of things I hadn’t thought through or instructions I hadn’t bothered to read before trying to assemble something.
Most of the time it’s fairly benign stupidity but on occasion I’ve done things that were not only stupid but stupidly dangerous.
Probably the most dangerous stupid thing I ever did involved a very nasty and unpleasant run-in with Purell. I hadn’t heard of Purell when it first came out but my
office staff all started putting small dispensers of it on their desks and every time they came to see me they were always rubbing their hands. I knew it wasn’t because they were rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of spending a few minutes with me so I asked what it was. I was impressed to discover that there was a product that sanitized your hands and self-dried at the same time and immediately bought four or five dispensers plus a large refill bottle. When I commit to something; I commit.
It wasn’t long after that we were going out for dinner after work and I was late and didn’t have time for a shower. It was one of those hot, sticky and very humid days which meant that my body was hot, sticky and very humid. I started to wash up when I saw the bottle of Purell and thought, “there’s a quick and easy solution” and slathered it on ‘the boys’.
As it turned out, this was not one of my better decisions and rather than act impulsively, I probably should have stopped to consider the ramifications of my actions.
For those of you who have never thought of doing that but are wondering what it might be like; try to imagine someone lighting a fire in your crotch with a blow torch. I spent the next half hour in the bathtub in cold water and we were, of course, late for dinner.
There is no teacher like experience but sometimes experience is one bitch of a teacher – a bigger bitch than my Grade 10 Latin teacher, Mrs. Jamieson and she could be pretty bitchy.
In my own defense, I at least knew the difference between The Czech and the Chechen Republics and I seldom make the same mistake twice which I can assure you ‘‘the boys’’ are relieved to know. I seem to learn from my mistakes which is a good thing because there just seems to be so many new ones waiting to be discovered.
So yes; I do and have done stupid things in my life but not very often when it comes to my opinions or my beliefs. I try to base my opinions on a combination of real facts and my own life experience and that has served me well over the years.
I just wish I could remember that before I buy a watch or discover the limitations of a product like Purell.
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A Really Bad Idea – Installing A Dimmer Switch
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© 2013 Maggie’s Bear
all rights reserved
The written content of this article is the sole property of Maggie’s Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others
Let’s connect on Twitter: @maggsbear or send a friend request on Facebook to: Maggie’s Bear
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The Stupid Things Some People Say and Do
“To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.”
- Thomas Paine
It never ceases to amaze me how so many so easily throw rational thought to the wind in their rush to believe some really stupid things. There are times when I am forced to conclude that we have crossed the stupidity threshold into absolute madness.
Take the recent pronouncement from John Sullivan, a candidate for town council in the United Kingdom. An established anti-gay adherent, Mr. Sullivan has now come out with the preventative antidote – exercise. He has announced with great aplomb that increased physical exercise will prevent ‘gayness’. It isn’t true, of course, there are more and more professional athletes, highly trained military around the world that put the lie to that idea. It’s a shame, however, that increased physical activity doesn’t prevent stupidity or we might have Mr. Sullivan, and a significant number of others, run laps every day.
Recently, Canadian Green Party Leader Elizabeth May compared Stephen Harper’s Canada to North Korea.
“So upset Harper pulled us out of another global [environment] treaty. He’s making us a rogue nation. The North Korea of environmental law,”
Maybe if she had picked a country with better values, a better quality of life for its people or even just a modicum of concern for anything other that threatening the peace and security of the world, her comment might have had a touch more validity or even a bit of connection to reality. I always find this over-the-top extreme rhetoric to be more than just a little revealing. It is usually the last resort of those who really don’t have any facts to support their opinion or their firmly-held dislike of someone or something with whom they violently disagree. It ranks up there with calling people Nazis, fascists, communists and poo-heads.
It is so adolescent that it makes elementary school yard taunts seem positively intellectual.
Not content with that, Ms May then wrote to the Queen imploring her Majesty to get involved in the investigation into the robocall issue from the last federal election.
“I write to request that Your Majesty Commission a Royal Inquiry to investigate what may potentially be criminal activities which influenced Canada’s last election, and that the aim of the Royal Inquiry be to restore Canada to a free and fair democracy.”
The Queen politely but firmly refused and in the end, Ms May simply ended up making herself look as foolish as Chief Theresa Spence who thought that she should negotiate future deals with the Queen and her representative rather than the Government of Canada which actually coughs up all the money for which Chief Spence finds difficult to account.
A study released by the Center for Science in the Public Interest linked the food colouring in Kraft Dinner to increased hyperactivity in children and went on to suggest that it ‘may’ contain carcinogens – heavy emphasis on the word ‘may’, no evidence in the study actually proved that it did.
It always makes me wonder how people can bring themselves to believe that food manufacturers believe that the best way to increase market share is by producing food that – well – kills off their customers.
Undeterred by reason, two women in the United States immediately took up the cause and generated a petition with more than 300,000 signatures demanding Kraft remove the food colouring. It never occurred to them, I gather, that they could have just stopped buying it.
We see a lot of that these days. Instead of voting with our wallets which is always the most effective way to bring about change, many would prefer to become activists, generate pointless petitions, hurl invective and accusation and spread all kinds of unsubstantiated stupidity around social media.
If you don’t like something – don’t buy it. It’s really that simple and if enough people do that, change will come and a lot more quickly than marching around Twitter and Facebook with self-righteous idiocy.
One of the most glaring examples happened shortly after it was revealed that the Boston bombing suspects were Chechen immigrants. This touched off an avalanche of angry messages on social media calling on the American government to ‘nuke Czechoslovakia’ which, as most of you know, is a democratic republic that is part of the European Union, a member of NATO and which has nothing to do with The Chechen Republic (a part of Russia) or Chechens.
Stupidity isn’t the sole preserve of the great unwashed. There are some high flyers with incredibly stupid ideas.
American Senators have waxed eloquently on everything from rape to gun control making statements like “a woman who is raped can genetically prevent herself from getting pregnant so there is no need the government to permit abortions.” and “women don’t know how to defend themselves with guns”. One Senator was so well-informed about guns that she didn’t see the problem with high capacity magazines because once they were empty you simply threw them away and pretty soon there wouldn’t be any more. I gather she had never heard of the concept of ‘reloading’.
Nestlé-Konzernchef Peter Brabeck waxed eloquently in a recent video that there should be no human right to water. It should be treated like any other food product and controlled and sold by a few. It’s that kind of thinking that led to unpleasantries like the French Revolution where the elite became so stupid that they lost their minds just shortly before losing their heads.
The simple fact is that the majority of people were not put on earth to serve a small elite and the world’s natural resources belong to
nation’s not just individuals. We all have a right to basic things like potable water. It is a cornerstone necessity of life – not simply one more product to be bottled, sold and consumed.
One of my favourites remains the constant demand for more and more government regulation on everything from wearing bike helmets to the environment. It’s not simply that I’m tired of wading through mountains of regulations designed to control how we live, it’s the absurdity that people who can’t balance a check book or manage efficiently the things for which they are already responsible can somehow be the saviours of even more issues.
Surely to Christ, if we have learned nothing in our brief time on this planet it is that government – any government – is not the solution. If history has taught us nothing else, it should have taught us that by now.
Consider social assistance in Canada’s province of Ontario as just one small example.
In 1993, NDP Premier Bob Rae established a new high in social assistance payments — $663 / month. In 1994 and 1995, he froze those payments which meant that thanks to inflation, those on social assistance almost immediately started falling behind.
So much for the Socialist dream.
No worries, the Conservatives were elected led by Mike Harris and his ‘Common Sense Revolution’. Premier Harris decided that it would be better for people to work than live on handouts and so he developed a concept called Workfare, which meant you would have to work for your social assistance.
The theoretical concept had merit but on a practical level it left quite a bit to be desired. First, there was no meaningful work to be had. If the Conservative government put people to work doing what others were already employed to do, they would be killing jobs and if they made people do meaningless work, it was kind of like slavery.
Mr. Harris and his government decided the solution was to cut social assistance payments to $530 / month and froze it at that level for eight years.
So much for Conservative common sense.
Two parties – two strike outs but fortunately for the poor, along came Dalton McGunity and the Liberal Party who jumped right into tackling the social assistance problem by ignoring it.
Strike three. So much for Liberal concept of social caring.
The bottom line is that just to restore social assistance to the level it was at in 1993, which even then was barely subsistence level, would require an increase of more than 50% and that, my friends, took three different political parties twenty years to screw up.
There are many who believe that people on social assistance are lazy and living comfortably and I often wonder how they would do if they had to live on what amounts to about $7,000/year. Wait until they have to buy water from Nestle.
Somebody remind me again why it we should believe that government regulation and intervention is the solution to most of our problems.
“Any man who thinks they can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him better take a look at the American Indian.” – Henry Ford
The examples are endless and I see them every day in the mainstream and social media. The stupid things that people believe and support, literally takes my breath away. There was a time when stupidity was part of the subculture but thanks to social media, it has gone mainstream. People expose the small dramas of their lives, their uninformed opinions and then wonder why other judge and criticize them.
Some things that are posted are so stupid it almost makes my head explode.
Certainly educating people isn’t the solution. That hasn’t been working too well for us lately considering the quality of the graduates of our school systems and universities.
We have lost the ability to reason, to think critically and primarily because we have rejected the will to listen and to learn. We no longer care what is true; we only care about what we believe and increasingly – what we feel and whatever is trending on social media.
There are days when I believe that we are beyond redemption; that we have passed the point where medication will restore sanity and that Thomas Payne was right. Reasoning with stupid people is like trying to medicate the dead back to life.
Note; the following video featuring George Carlin contains coarse language.
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A World Full Of Smart Phones and Stupid People
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The 35 Dumbest Things Ever Said On Facebook
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Readin’, Writin’ and Stupidity
“In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
Mark Twain
“It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.”
Robert Green Ingersoll
Teachers’ unions in Canada are upset with the current Conservative ad that suggests that Justin Trudeau’s career as a substitute drama teacher isn’t sufficient preparation to lead a nation. They decry what they see as the denigration of their profession. Perhaps they would be better served if they turned their focus inward if they want to raise respect for the work they do.
In the past, I’ve written about the New York City Department Education’s war on words like dinosaur, dancing, divorce and bodily functions. I’ve dedicated posts to the politically correct stupidity of schools in Canada that have sought to eradicate the ‘Halloween’ from Halloween by having children dress up only in costumes that reflect occupations of caring or by changing the name to Black and Orange Day.
Schools routinely refuse to allow teachers to assign a zero to students who have failed to submit a required assignment and advance students who have failed the course curriculum so as not to harm their self-esteem.
I’ve written about these things because the education of our children is a sacred trust, a trust that is being abused and violated by educators, consultants and bureaucrats who place more emphasis on politically correct sociological nonsense and social activism than on graduating functionally literate young people who can spell, who have a fundamental grasp of the basics like geography, history and even civics. Continue reading
“We Have Met The Enemy. . .”
The Westboro Baptist Church in the United States has become infamous for its polluted concept of Christianity. This is a congregation that is convinced that they are the only ones who speak with, and for, God and God has ordered them to inflict hate and intolerance on the world.
They protest the funerals of soldiers killed in action. They take delight in the murder of gays, law enforcement officers and just recently announced they would be raising a ruckus at the funerals of some of the victims of the Boston bombing. They are a people of hate who raise their children to be as hateful.
They are the antithesis of everything Christianity is meant to be. They are like radical Islam, dedicated to hatred rather than the teachings of their own scripture.
It made me wonder where people like the folks at Westboro and radical Islamic terrorists come from and how it was possible for so many to pervert a message of love and tolerance into a doctrine of hatred.
And then I took a look around. Continue reading
A World Full Of Smart Phones and Stupid People
Have you ever felt the craving for an informed discussion on anything – I mean anything at all? Christ in Heaven, it’s got to the point these days that it is virtually impossible to discuss something intelligently let alone with a bit of good humour and some common civility.
Take the piece I wrote yesterday about global warming. You would think that all those concerned with global warming would be thrilled to learn that it is, in fact, not happening. They aren’t; they’re annoyed that anyone, including scientists would actually undermine what they ‘choose’ to believe.
It’s pretty much established that for most of the past two decades while global warming alarmists have been jetting to conferences around the world and clueless celebrities have been chaining themselves to fences, there has been no measurable change in the earth’s climate. Despite this, the extreme edge of the global warming crowd have been turning themselves inside out demanding the government do something. What unmitigated arrogance. Climate change is older than humanity and will continue long after we’re gone. The thought that we are the cause of it and can do something to stop it is the height of self-obsession.
After taking exception to what I wrote about yesterday one person who was unable to argue the facts decided to throw unregulated coal plants into the argument in order to try and shore up his opinion – or is it faith? It’s hard to tell these days because for many climate change is more religion than anything else; a vague attempt to fill the spiritual void in their lives.
There was nothing in the article to suggest that there should be no environmental protection; in fact I pointed out that I support protecting our environment. I just don’t support uniformed stupidity.
One person, a somewhat regular critic tried to dismiss the facts presented in my post and combine his opinion with an unrelated issue regarding the control political parties exert over their members in Parliament. Currently all political parties, with the NDP actually being the worst offenders, decide which of their members will be permitted to speak and which won’t. This is the comment that was left.
“The sad truth is how your grandchildren’s grandchildren will look back at you reading your tripe. On a happy note Justine Trudeau freed the backbench con slaves allowing them to quote the bible more often in the house.”
While I admit that it is somewhat flattering to have someone tell you that your words will last for generations, it is just one more example of an attempt to prove superiority without bothering to get informed. Justin Trudeau hasn’t saved anyone from anything. His motion regarding MPs comes before the House today. It was a Conservative MP who requested a ruling from the Speaker of the House and it was the Speaker who yesterday ruled that all MPs have the right to be recognized regardless of whatever list the party whips have provided to him. Justin Trudeau is a day late and a dollar short on the issue but that hasn’t stopped this person from believing that it Justin Trudeau who saved the day.
We see it this lack of thought all the time in the environmental movement.
They condemned the government for cancelling the Kyoto Accord, a document signed by the Liberals in the 90s but never implemented by them. Why? It was too expensive and did nothing to get the world’s major polluters to reduce their emissions. I support regulating polluters. I don’t support pointless agreements that are more about penalizing small polluters to the benefit of the major ones.
It’s like cap and trade. It hasn’t worked in Europe and serves only to provide major polluters a way to buy credits to continue polluting. It has created a market for buying and selling emission credits which is open to corruption as the Europeans have now discovered. I would prefer sound regulation rather than more absurd taxation, convoluted schemes and feel-good measures. Continue reading
The Sad Truth For Environmentalists About Global Warming
For years, I had a next door neighbour who was a nuclear physicist who worked for a defense contractor. He was a pleasant kind of guy and although he was definitely a lot smarter and better educated than I was we got along quite well. We even managed to assemble a new gas barbeque together once although when we finished we realized we had assembled it backwards which I suppose goes to prove that book learnin’ ain’t no substitute for ability.
I saw him coming home one day from work and he seemed a little down so I asked him if anything was the matter and he looked at me somewhat glumly and said,
“Yes. Peace is breaking out all over the place.”
Apparently peace is not something defense contractors embrace with much enthusiasm. Sure enough, my neighbour was laid off not too long after and he had to take a job in the nuclear energy industry which turned out to be like jumping from the frying pan to the fire.
Environmentalists, it seems, are even less forgiving than pacifists. Continue reading
A Canadian Two Solitudes Solution
“Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
There are days when the bickering and adolescent name-calling between the left and the right just gets downright boring. I am unbelievably weary of it all. It has accomplished nothing and the rhetoric isn’t even clever or imaginative anymore. It’s just the same tired old stuff day in and day out.
It’s all so frightfully dull and tiresome that I decided to do something about it rather than just continue to sit around whining about it. After months of exhaustive thinking and research and more than a few bottles of very good wine, I have come up with a plan to put it all to rest once and for all.
It’s quite simple really because – well – I’m quite simple and it builds on the existing division between us. We are a highly polarized nation and I doubt we’re going to change any attitudes in the foreseeable so I decided to work with what we have and see what we could build out of it. Continue reading
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Paranoia, Intolerance, Stupidity and Hypocrisy
“Do we fear terrorism so much that we throw out our Constitution, and are we unwilling and afraid to debate our Constitution?”
Rand Paul
“We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.”
Christian Nestell Bovee
“The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.”
Thomas Carlyle
Well. . .that didn’t take long.
It’s been just over 24 hours since the capture of the second Boston Marathon bomber and less than a week since the bombing itself and already the conspiracy theories are everywhere. They range from the entire event was a government inspired plot to advance gun control to Michael Moore’s early insinuation that it was the work of the Tea Party..
One fellow on Facebook is convinced that the ‘shelter in place’ action by law enforcement as they looked for an armed terrorist who might have explosives was really nothing more than yet one more example of a major government plot. It is his fervent belief that the government is intent on enslaving the American people by stripping people of their rights.
What rights – the right to get caught in the crossfire between law enforcement and the terrorist or perhaps blown to hell because they were too close to the action when the terrorist detonated another bomb? Continue reading
Freedom Of The Press Does Not Include The Freedom To Lie
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”
- Sir Walter Scott
Michael Moore – calling him a hypocrite is as redundant as calling him fat.
In a series of tweets last week, Michael Moore suggested cryptically that there was a connection between the Boston bombing and the Tea Party. When it comes to stupidity, the man is absolutely indefatigable. He goes out of his way to repeatedly demonstrate the danger of holding an opinion without any facts, or even basic common sense, to support it.
Or to put it more delicately, I think that the man is an idiot.
He has made a career out of human misery and being wrong. Bowling for Columbine was nothing less than using a terrible event to support a one-sided, perverse view of the world while cashing in to build a career. His statements about the Canadian health care system in Sicko were wrong. His early support of the Occupy Movement blew up in his face and he even admitted on Larry King Live that President Obama hadn’t delivered what had been promised but – he’d vote for him again anyway. Continue reading
Justin Trudeau and The Voice Of Reason
“Close but kind of meatless like actors who play Jesus
in movies of the week
What other people wish for oozes from my every pore”
-The Odds: Someone who is cool
One of my Facebook friends called me the “voice of reason” the other day in a message to someone who, like my baby sister, thought I was an idiot. Such is the world in which we live these days that I wasn’t sure if he was defending me or using sarcasm to agree with her.
It hardly matters. I’ve been called many things and have reached a stage in my life where I don’t much care what anyone says about me or thinks of me for that matter. Criticize Maggie or even my baby sister and I’ll rip out your throat but you can say what you like about me – just try to be creative if it’s going to be negative.
I get bored with all the usual, dreary labels like fascist, Nazi, pig, racist, jackass, poo-poo face and poo-head.
One person from England who really didn’t like my articles on Occupy called me a capitalist lickspittle which impressed the hell out of me. I had no idea what a lickspittle actually was but it had a certain ring to it that set it apart from the usually boring names some throw at me. One person was so incensed by something I wrote that she accused me of – get ready for it – watching Fox News.
That cut to the quick because I gather that in some circles, there is no lower form of life than a Fox News viewer. On the bright side, nobody ever accused me of watching Evan Solomon on CBC so I guess it all balances out.
I think I got thinking about all of this because poor old Justin Trudeau seems to continuously be a target for name-calling. I’ve done it myself, labeling him Canada’s Peter Pan but if the truth were known, sometimes, I feel a little guilty for it.
The simple fact is that Justin Trudeau is a nice guy.
Yes – I’ve said it out loud or at least put it in writing and I can already hear my conservative friends thumbing through a thesaurus to find creative names to call me while cursing the day they ever stumbled on my blog – but it’s true. Continue reading
Democracy – Tilting At Windmills and Sheep Instead Of Dragons
“Your grace, come back, Senor Don Quixote, I swear to God you’re charging sheep!”
― Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
In his column today, Andrew Coyne writes about political attack ads. I don’t always agree with Mr. Coyne but I always read his column and for two reasons. First, I read his column because he is simply a gifted writer and I appreciate just about anything that is well-written. I even aspire to become a decent writer at some point.
The other reason I read Andrew Coyne is that whether or not I agree with him, his commentary is always based on facts. In other words, he does his homework and is well-informed; sometimes annoyingly so. There’s nothing more frustrating than taking exception to an opinion that is based on solid logic and accurate and factual information – it’s like trying to argue with Maggie in areas of her expertise.
His piece today is worth the two minutes it will take to read it and I recommend it to any who are interested.
What interested me in the article was more the title than anything else: Attack ads are political death stars but their target is democracy. It’s a catchy headline but not all that accurate. Political attack ads are less an assault on democracy than they are the dark, sleazy side of it. As cheap, distasteful and abhorrent as they can be, they are the extreme edge of freedom of speech. We see worse online every day.
Democracy is under attack, however, and by the same folks who brought us political attack ads; politicians and their strategists. Government spending is out of control at all levels of government, individual rights are being eroded and our government institutions are being denigrated and undermined.
I believe it is the result of three main things: political cynicism, political mismanagement and political corruption. You don’t have to stray very far from the beaten path to quickly find countless examples of all three and from all major political parties. Continue reading
Margaret Hassan
“A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us from without.”
- Margaret Hassan
In 2004 I made a promise to myself and to a woman I had never met.
She was born in Ireland on April 18, 1945. Her name was Margaret Fitzsimmons.
Shortly after the war, her parents moved the family to London, England where she grew up. At 27, she married Tahseen Ali Hassan, an Iraqi student studying engineering in Britain. In 1972, they moved to Iraq where she taught English.
She eventually learned to speak and write Arabic and eventually became an Iraqi citizen; a requirement of the regime under Saddam Hussein.
She became the Assistant Director of Studies at the British Council of Baghdad while her husband continued his work as an economist. She would subsequently be appointed to Director of Studies.
Both she and her husband remained in Baghdad during the Gulf War in 1991.
In 1991, Margaret Hassan joined CARE International which had established itself in Iraq earlier in the year. Because of the direct impact of United Nations’ sanctions on sanitation, health and nutrition, she opposed the second war in Iraq and spoke out against the American invasion citing that every-day Iraqis were still suffering from the first war and living under what amounted to crisis conditions.
By 2004, she was head of Iraqi operations for CARE and was well-known, liked and respected by young and old, the wealthy and the poor.
She was a tireless advocate for children. She was a part of the effort that eventually brought leukemia medicine to child cancer victims and worked tirelessly in support of Iraq’s youth whom she called “the lost generation.”
On October 19, 2004, she was kidnapped. Continue reading
Boston – The Evil That Men Do
“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”.
William Shakespeare
“The wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.”
Carl Jung
The bombing of the Boston Marathon is a reminder that evil walks freely in our world driving dark souls to commit terrible acts against the innocent. It is an evil that has grown stronger because we have allowed it to make us weaker through our fear. That fear has changed us, driven us to become less than we were and when that happens, evil wins.
In countries that include Iraq, Ireland, Egypt, England, Turkey, Pakistan, the United States, Israel, Afghanistan, Japan and Syria (evil’s playground), bombs, gas attacks, shootings and kidnappings have been employed against the innocent by those who place no value on the lives of others; dark cowards whose fanaticism and ignorance has killed tens of thousands of men, women and children.
Evil has no regard for culture, race, religion, nationality or age. It is found in every country and is eager to inflict itself on anyone. We forget that sometimes in our desire to simplify our fears by blaming one homogenous group or another.
When The Towers fell in 9/11, we came together. Nationality, race, gender and age became irrelevant. Political ideology was put aside and we became one people united by grief and our resolve. People of many nationalities died that day and people of many nationalities helped to dig out Ground Zero. Around the world, people of many nationalities came together to mourn and to lend support to Americans in the aftermath of this terrible and senseless tragedy.
And then something happened to us. Continue reading
Birth, Death And The Part In Between
“We are all going to die, all of us. That alone should make us love one another but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.”
- Charles Bukowski
“Every man dies. Not every man really lives.”
- William Wallace
I don’t know how many years I have left and quite honestly, don’t want to know. Maggie worries about it for me sometimes but I prefer to live my life today rather than focusing on the eventual end and that end, my friends, comes for us all.
We are born and we die. That part in between birth and death is our lives; that’s where we get to make as much or as little of this gift as we wish. It never ceases to amaze me that so many are so careless and place so little value on that brief time they have in between arriving and departing.
Some accomplish great things. They are driven by some need within themselves to find answers, to discover or develop new things. Others are driven by a creative hunger that results in works of art, music and literature that touch almost all of us. But most of us fill our time here on the merry-go-round with the inane, the trivial and the banal.
That has never been more apparent than it is these days.
I watch the tweets and the comments fly by on Twitter and Facebook with increasing incredulity. People grasp issues they don’t understand with all of the ferocity of a wolverine tearing into a rabbit and the attention span of a fruit fly. The issues are here today and gone tomorrow, replaced by a new issue, a new quote accompanied by a cute picture of cuddly animals doing contrived cuddly animal things.
Does anybody remember the issues they were raging about a year ago today or what they did about it besides hammering out some invective on social media? Continue reading
Comfortable Opinion
“Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
John F. Kennedy
“Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.”
Voltaire
The Liberal Party of Canada are gathering this weekend to anoint their new leader, Justin Trudeau and the New Democratic Party of Canada are having their annual policy convention this weekend as well. Both are pretty much non events that have, if nothing else, provided pundits and columnists lots and lots of trivial stuff to write about over the coming days and weeks.
Thousands of words will be written and will draw vacuous, uniformed commentary from readers who have put as much thought into their opinions as Justin Trudeau has put into his policy platform which is to say – not much.
There are days when I don’t know if we should blame whoever invented the Internet or go all the way back and condemn Gutenburg for inventing the printing press. Life was a lot more real and certainly more civil before everyone became literary and turned literacy into illiterate drivel.
Everyone’s an author now but despite the fact that there are more self-published novels, comments, tweets, posts and text messages flooding the Internet, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find anything worth reading anymore.
The publishing industry, like social media, isn’t interested in good writing; it’s only interested in selling books. When Dan Brown scored a hit with the Davinci Code, there was a sudden rash of badly written thrillers detailing bizarre conspiracies about ancient artifacts and secret organizations. Stephen King single-handedly saved the horror industry spawning dozens and dozens of new horror writers who published a couple of forgettable novels and then like their books, disappeared.
It’s only the great writers who stand the test of time. Continue reading
