We’ve moved.

We’ve moved to greener pastures.

www.CalgaryLiberal.com is where we will now be posting.

Canadian Coalition

Okay. I’m pissed.

When you have Prime Minister who ran on no policy (aside from the one posted just three days before the vote), dominates any free thought in his party, allows next to no leadership from his cabinet, promotes regressive social policies (such as allowing anti-choice rhetoric and anti-freedom resolutions to pass through Conservative carcases without his veto), pushes for a budget that threatens to kills off most of his opposition, and plays Adolf Albin styled brinkmanship day in and day out–on every vote–there’s a problem. There is a problem when Mr. Harper plays the parliament like it’s his own toy box. There is a problem when he threatens an election rather than trying to guide all the parties into a compromise. And the opposition-government dichotomy died when Harper went overboard with his threats of dropping the election writ almost-every-single-vote-in-2007-and-in-2008. It’s rather difficult opposing government whenever you ideologically oppose something, since you’re faced with an election and a government more than happy force it.

I’m pretty sure this is going to sound petty, but I’m going to say it anyway. Harper pushed this crisis on everyone. It’s annoying, pisses me off, and has prompted this whole fiasco in the first place.

There is a problem when the Conservative party is pulling down its pants and mooning Canadians everywhere. It’s almost like he, Harper, thinks he’s in a majority government. Heck, he’s pushed through policies up to the October elections and has continued to do so since the election. There’s no dealing with this man. There is no changing his policies–except, of course, when it appears when he has gone to far. Like with his asinine budget.

So when 62% of the population’s representatives are fed up with this little prick I’m in full support of their actions. Let’s have a coalition government which will actual govern, not divide and push through legislation that’s going to kill all the other parties (as Harper’s economic plan would), and provide a moderately secure, forward thinking parliament.

Let’s have a democracy, not a Harptatorship.

Edit(Dec.4): And now Harper has prorogued, ‘expelled’, parliament from convening on parliament hill.

The Name Game, The Final Days Of The Election

“I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over.” Those are the words of Dr. Khalidi, an academic New York native. Khalidi spoke about McCain’s recent attempts at vilifying the Democratic presidential hopeful, Barrack Obama, through association.

This would be the third time John McCain has impinged on Obama’s right to his ‘freedom of association‘, as listed in the American constitution. The first was with regards to Obama’s childhood preacher, Jeremiah Wright. The issue with regards to veteran Wright was that he was using quite a bit of inflationary language when talking about injustice in the USA and abroad. This can be seen here.

It may be because that I’m Canadian but, when I watched and witnessed the entire context, Dr. Wright’s comments are not that strange. The full record of Dr. Wright’s sermon is here and here. It sounds down right reasonable once you think about it.

The second case is about how Obama and a fellow by the name of Bill Ayers. Dr. Ayers was, once upon a time, a ‘terrorist’. He was a part of the Weather Underground. Hilariously, the Obama had to make a comment with regards to the McCain campaign spouting this misadventure.

“Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous.“~ Washington Post

So, in short, Obama is suddenly a terrorist since he was eight years old. And he’s a wing-nut, America-basher. And, on top of all this, he’s a muslim terrorist. Then there is the issue of Obama’s “socialism (that has been debunked here, here, on CNN, and on Fox News.) At least, if you consider anyone he has ever met determines who he is at this very moment, never mind who he chooses to be. But, if we follow this logic, McCain has some problems. And so does Ms. Palin.

McCain, according to the logic placed on Obama, is a crook, liar, out-of-touch billionaire, terrorist, terrorist, Hitler-level right winger, anti-Semite, war-monger, Watergate minion, and war criminal.

Palin, as we continue in this logic, is an occultist, pagan, socialist, separatist, communist, homophobe, environmental retard, fascist, and a minion of the corporate overlords of Corporate Alaska.

The name game can be pushed both ways. Now I can only hope that the people in the USA can dis-entangle this little fiasco when Nov. 4 comes by in 76 hours.

What Rhymes With Failin’?

Palin.

Seems like this one Alaskan governor is acting like Dan Quayle circa 1992. She is destabilizing the ticket by taking matters into her own hands. Sadly enough, this means making unscheduled visitations with the press, uncouth remarks towards the patriotism of other candidates even though McCain vowed never to do so, taking an obscene stance on polar bear extinction, and Troopergate, the never ending scandal of how this woman brought her personal life into her public job. And then there is the $150,000 wardrobe and the $22,000 hair cuts. And the borderline illegal contracts between Alaska and others.

Currently, she seems to be turning into Geraldine Quayle.

On the bright side, though, she seems to have shifted the focus away from McCain. For now, at least, McCain’s blatant flip flopping between 2000 and 2004 and then again an abrupt flip in this election year will not be the focus of any large media attention. Perhaps this is a good thing for the media to forget McCain’s issues. His anger issues, when he called his second wife a cunt in public, his already stated flip flopping on issues, the nigh 99% of veterans against him even though he himself is a vet, and his 25% probability of dying before the end of his first term, if elected, may have ended this race before the media could have cashed in on its ratings.

Some people may view this ‘bright side’ as a ‘dark side’.

Kindness Is Not Dead.

I bent down, sweating and half exhausted from the one and a half kilometre walk I just made. Both my book bags weighed heavily on my shoulders, along with the some 40lbs of groceries from Safeway, as all my belongings rested on the ground and my knees gritted against the concrete of the sidewalk. I let out a small sigh.

I took breath, then, and stood back up. I let out that breath of air and then began to walk again. Within a moment a car came by and stopped with an old lady peeking her head out to ask if I wanted a ride. Seeing as I was some ten minutes from my house I accepted her offer.. after I asked if she was sure if she wanted to allow a complete stranger into her car. Seeing as I’m a 6′2″, 220 lb, and rather brick-like character I have a rather bad tendency of frightening people–or, at the very least, putting them on their guard.

Kindness is not dead. Just a few moments ago I, an over encumbered University student, was walking home with some 70lb of books in addition to groceries. An old woman was kind enough to give me a lift to my house some eight or so blocks away–isn’t this type of thing unheard of? Isn’t it what police officers warn people? Isn’t this level of good Samaritan attitude something dead? Isn’t this the type of thing that may end the life of the driver? Wouldn’t it, if there was the offchance the ride was offered to a worser being than I, cause the old woman to die? Kindness seems like it isn’t dead, though.

I’ve met a lot of people who say Calgary, a city of 1.5 million people, has lost its small town roots after its boom from a small encampment of just around 10,000 people. It’s too fast, too high priced, too many big-city problems like drugs. Calgary’s business interests, lobbyists, high rises, and condos block out the sun and blemish the hearts of people, and blast away the old feeling of the west.

That old feeling of being in the middle of no where, out on the plains, with no one for miles. It’s the old feeling that sets the person with the mindset that things have to be done right–they have to make the world right. Justice, love, and community should be built by everything single hand in the empty plains of Alberta, and that if we don’t do it right no one else will.

Now if we could only get everyone to think like this.. It is true, by the way. The idea that we are rather isolated on a global scale, that is. We, as a planet, are in the middle of nowhere. It’s called the galaxy and we seem to be rather alone in our endeavours. So maybe it might be a good thing to adapt our old wrassling the wild west cowboy hats again?