Monday, February 21, 2011

Priorities of a Harper Majority

Crime: Solving the problem of the increasing number of unreported crimes, that has been sweeping the nation.

New laws will make it illegal to not report serious crimes, including crimes dealing with drug use, which simultaneously will be treated in the future as more serious crimes, by doubling the length of sentences for possession, distribution and consumption of marihuana and of course implementing mandatory sentencing. With more criminals and longer sentences the increased costs to build and manage the new prisons across the country will be offset by private sector partnerships with US based security conglomerates. 

Terrorism: Eliminate the American’s angst of Canadian suicide bombers pouring across the largest unprotected border in the world.

By reducing quotas for the number of family members that can migrate to Canada, the majority of new immigrants will consist of temporary workers whose movements will be tracked by the various provincial sponsorship programs and immediate placement into the US controlled DHS databases. The same databases that will record the travel of all Canadians outside of their country, after they have been processed by either retina and/or full body scans, which will be purchased from the US based security conglomerates.

The deficit: Provide more cost effective services while alleviating Canadian fears of loosing access to social services, healthcare and retirement.

Similar to the current proposal to supplement the Canadian Pension program, with privately funded programs thus allowing the government to reduce future costs with the current program, tax incentives will be offered to Canadians who wish to opt out of the government healthcare program.

It is all about providing Canadians a choice and Canadians who take control of their own healthcare needs will be serviced by the expansion of private specialized clinics and of course access to private US hospitals. As more Canadians opt out, wait times in the existing emergency rooms will be reduced, thus eliminating the need for the government to slash provincial transfers beyond recovering the cost of the necessary tax incentives. The cost of new clinics will be offset by private sector partnerships with US based healthcare conglomerates.

The Economy: Keeping Canada better off than the other G8 countries.

The Americanization of services will allow the government to complete negotiations and finalize the tar sands to Texas pipeline. Albertans will continue to pay less sales taxes because it is their oil and after all the federal government should not be involved in a national energy program.

The Environment: You can’t mention oil without mentioning the environment.

The federal government will increase environmental messaging, until all Canadians are convinced that the tar sands are no longer harmful to the environment. The increased costs will be offset by partnerships with the oil conglomerates who in reality own the rights to the oil.

Bring on the election, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. 

Pains, Trains and Political thought

Spent yesterday performing my weekly, husbandly duties.
Aimlessly and painfully amongst wandering malls, I found myself sitting in a 30,000 sq. foot warehouse dedicated to designer shoes, and in horror I watched as predominantly younger women, googled, giggled, and forced their feet into spiked, six inch plus, heeled stilettos.
My mind drifted to the bound feet of an estimated 2 billion chinese girls, who from the late tenth century to a year after I was born, destroyed their feet in an effort to be more appealing and I thought how little has changed over time. Young women continue to cause themselves pain, just to satisfy their own, personalized vanities. Personalized, because the last thing that most males would care about is what you have on your feet or in some cases whether their female partner can stand up.
Explaining, my new theory on shoe shopping, on the way home, quickly led to some sort of complaint about my thought processes, which immediately faded into background noise as I spotted a commuter train coming into a station. The GTA is the only place in the world where saying, “Here comes the GO” does not make you a rapper. In fact rappers from other cities would probably say man that is sic and start making up their own meaning for GO and only those of us living on the edge of the center of the universe would know that they were really just rapping about trains.
My mind tends to wonder when it is focussed on politics. Being a closeted liberal, non partisan, who bases political allegiances more on feelings than political stratagems I’m having a difficult time accepting the so called capitulation of Jack Layton.
Cutting a deal to support the corporate tax cuts in exchange for increasing the CPP deductions and whatever the other three are, is what I expect an opposition party to do. I’ll let you assist the corporations if you also assist the workers. Capitulation no, politics yes.
The capitulation only comes at the time of the vote, if and when you accept less than what you signed on for or some vague promise for future action. Something both Harper and other opposition parties have been guilty of in the past.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

We were a somebody once

Sadly there is a lot of dispiriting talk around these parts, lately. We can no longer recognize our country. Foreigners are asking our emissaries: where is Canada, what happened to the Canadians? 

We want our country back.

As many bloggers have commented, I too, was starting to become frustrated with the ridiculous conservative ads, attacking Ignatieff’s citizenry, followed by soft spoken, hazy images of Harper working alone, tirelessly at the helm of the nation, protecting us from the troubling international waters.

Yes, it is despairing times, indeed.

Then LeftDog gave us a memory from 40 years back and I remembered what it felt like to be a Canadian when I was somewhat younger, in the seventies, when we had a leader that was more proud to be a Canadian than I was.

A leader that snubbed his nose at our largest trading partner and opened relationships with Cuba. A world class statesman that opened communication with China, the USSR and the world at large. 

A leader that would never sing an Irish ditty to impress a US president and secure a personal retirement program.

A leader that would never act like a junior partner just to sell some oil.

Unfortunately, I get it, Iggy is not a Trudeau and sadly neither is Jack, or your parents thought old Pierre was an arrogant asshole (which he probably was) and therefore he will always be one to you. 

However back then I felt proud to be a Canadian and not because we won more gold medals than anyone else ever or because the PMO told me so, but because we had a leader that was a somebody and more proud to be Canadian than I was.

I refuse to believe, that was the best we will ever be.

Oda shark bites

Trapped like an ODAlisque in a Turkish harem, Bev ODA, the Minister of International Cooperation sat quietly through question period yesterday as Harper and Baird ODAiously repelled questions from the opposition.

However despite that fact that Harper ODA great deal to ODA for taking the fall, the ODAmeter is running on the beleaguered minister's career, because in the end she does not matter one iODA to this prime minister.

ODA a name we will not forget.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Sorry Coyne they are not the same

Although I am not necessarily a big Ignatieff supporter, in fact I would rather spend an evening with Jack, I have a real problem with the Iggy Liberals are the same as Harper conbots argument put forward regularly around these parts and in particular by Andrew Coyne’s recent article in MacLeans.

This article is being promoted as some sort of insight that the Liberals are faux progressives because they did not vote against Harper’s bills in the past and their new found messaging that Liberals are different than Harper, is not valid or I guess insincere.
From Coyne:
The difference between them and the Conservatives, the Liberals would like you to know, is all about “values.” That is, it’s about “priorities.” I mean to say, it’s about “your Canada” versus “Stephen Harper’s Canada.” 
Sorry Coyne that is good enough for me. The Liberals when they have their act together will turn on a dime, if the polls show that the majority of Canadians are for or against an issue, especially when they are in a minority position and I believe that is a hell of a lot more democratic that the idealogues we currently have in power. 
Although I have been scolded by progressive bloggers in the past for criticizing Coyne, the way I read it, his article is nothing more that a sarcastic, conservative attack ad disguised as a non partisan criticism.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

I cant get some songs out of my head

Well son, every generation has their music, my father used to tell me as he turned up the volume for a Frankie Lane song

And of course he was right as we all seem to identify with and or for some be identified by, the music we started listening to, in our so called formative years. We take ownership of it. 

Apparently my music, from 1965 to 1975 was the psychedelic decade, at least according to Q107's Andy Frost and his Psychedelic Sunday show. Hell, I used to play the White Album every Xmas morning and my kids grew up thinking that the Birthday song was a xmas carol for the baby jesus (a spurious concept that the neighbor's kids told them about).

However, every now and then, songs from other generations break through and take on special meaning. One example is my four and half year old granddaughter's favorite song, The Killers, All things That I've Done. Play this song while driving and she will actually stop talking and asking questions for three and half minutes. She just sits there smiling. Apparently, my daughter was a Killers fan when she was pregnant.

The night or in reality the early morning after John Lennon was killed, I was driving a van in Ottawa and when I turned on the local FM station, the same song kept playing over and over again, at least five times before the announcer came on and said that John had been shot dead in New York City. The song was People who Died by the Jim Carroll Band. At the time I had no idea who Jim Carroll, was, or had never heard of The Basketball Diaries, his book or the movie, but the song seemed so appropriate that night and sadly ever since. 

Now every time I feel the loss caused by someone's sudden death, I think of that night and the lyrics from Carroll's haunting song start playing in my head. Probably not really fitting, for a gentle, retired, librarian from Stratford, who told me to fix my font size, so she could more easily read my posts, but I can't get the song out of my head this weekend.


Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Imagine Jobs for Life

The talking heads who read the news on my local CTV station are aghast, aghast I say that city workers have jobs for life. They sent their cubbies out on the Toronto streets to ask passers by if they would like to have a job for life.

Apparently, Toronto mayor, Rob Ford just found out that he can’t simply fire the existing city workers who collect garbage and outsource their jobs to contractors. You know the typical thing that happens when spoiled rich kids who took over their father’s business, think they can run a city like a quick print shop.

In reality it is a contract, a union contract that states if their jobs are eliminated due to outsourcing, the worker must be given a job in another department. Much like the contract that the talking heads at CTV have with their  broadcasters. The only difference being the news readers have built-in golden parachutes.

Bloody hypocrites, I would rather have a beer with the garbage collectors.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

The perfect anonymous corporate serf

After working over 2,100 weeks, 11,000 days and over 88,000 hours I finally realized, two weeks ago, while sitting next to a pool, reading a book, on a hot island, that all my years of toil and so called achievements has made me into nothing more than the perfect self employed, self made, anonymous, corporate serf.

Got the kids and their kids, a house, two cars and a wife, who hasn't left me yet, but I don't own any of it. You can't own people, even your family members in my neighborhood and the banks own everything else. So I continue to work to service the debt and remain the perfect TD customer. I just wish they had more of those comfy green chairs available, so I could at least relax when I deposit my bi-weekly interest payment.

But, anonymously blogging as Willy Loman, even as sparsely as I do, is a real break from reality and great for my soul. I can anonymously rant and rave, bear my grievances, state my case or just have fun. Blogging is my way out from under, so to speak. At least that was the case, until I read You are not A Gadget by Jaron Lanier, that book by the pool.

If you do not know Jaron, the dude in the picture, he is a fifty year old computer scientist, known as the father of Virtual Reality, as well as a whole whack of other geeky stuff. His book reads like a rant and is actually made up of a series of rants that he has published over the past ten years. These are rants about technology, the current state of the internet, the blogosphere and social networking in general, from someone who was around at the beginning and on the inside.

It is a difficult read and not written for the computer illiterate. Willy Loman is technically astute, meaning that I at least know the meaning of all the acronyms in order to sell the technology, and I have sold a lot of different technologies over the years, but Jaron is coming at you as computer scientist, code writer on steroids, so you really have to dig deep to follow his logic.

But logical he is. Jaron's biggest complaint and he admits that it goes against the flow of the current community of Silicon Valley gurus, that he is a member of, is that they are destroying the individual and if they do not change the direction of the current technologies, the technologies will become locked and future ways of expressing individual creativity will be lost. We will all be a modified version of the Borg's gallery of templates.

However his book is not all doom and gloom, he offers many ways that things can change, cool stuff. He also, almost nonchalantly includes little tidbits of cool stories about early engineering choices that were made along the way. As an example, in reference to blogging, he describes and laments about the decision to allow anonymous posting and how the blogosphere might be very different today with less hateful rants and more decorum, if we all had to take ownership of what we post or comment on.

On that theme or at least the darker side of that theme, Jaron believes, that we, as bloggers, tweeters etc., no matter how many hits we get or followers we have, are simply supplying data to the group think, that is controlled by the new corporate overlords, Google, FaceBook, Twitter and the like. We are currently no more than corporate serfs that at best provide searchable data.

And if Jaron is correct, which I think he is after spending four days reading and rereading paragraphs in the hot sun, blogging anonymously makes me nothing more than an anonymous corporate serf.

Hi you can call me Al and I will be back.