America – the land of hatred

The United States is on a downward spiral into an era similar to the McCarthy years.  The average citizen is becoming more inward looking, thinking only of themselves and people of like mind.  They spew hated towards blacks, Hispanics,, Muslims, LGBT, and anyone who disagrees with them.  They have a new spokesperson in the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party Presidential candidate.  He uses innuendo much like McCarthy to smear people, incite hate towards those not like them.   It’s kind of sad that many of the people in the Republican Party support it without question, yet this is the party trying only to protect big money.  The party doesn’t care about middle and lower income families.

The hatred has spread to the youth of today, not just in America but in many places, “haters going to hate”.  It’s so easy to use strong words like hate using social media, to attack people for the fun of it.  Not that long ago, people didn’t spread these feelings and comment publicly, maybe because there wasn’t the anonymity of social media.

With the situation in the middle east, most of which was precipitated by American actions, people in the States don’t want to help the innocent people that are suffering because of this mess and barbarity of groups like ISIL or the Syrian Government.  You have wars and other violence between different sects of Islam, intolerance of other religions and exportation of terrorist acts against the west.

So much is going wrong in America and there is no one who can lead them out of the darkness and into the light.  It’s sad for them, but it is worse for neighboring countries that deal with the fallout of failed drug policies, violence, gun culture, no respect for anyone else.

We’ll see if things are worse than during the cold war, if we keep going along this path as world citizens, we are doomed to self destruction.

RMR: Rick’s Rant – Veterans’ Pensions

The Conservative Government thinks that it doesn’t owe Service Personnel nor Veterans anything. They are a disgrace to Canada.

Are the Conservatives Past Their Best Before Date in Ottawa

We are well into the life of the Conservative Government of Stephen Harper.  In the early days we were warned of a hidden agenda.  They are morphing into an ultra conservative government.  I haven’t always agreed with their policies but I appreciated and supported a number of policies that were different from the previous Liberal Government.  Lately they have been playing to their core support and started pissing off a lot of us that supported them in the past elections.

I am finding that they are starting to implement actions which I have trouble supporting.  My problem and perhaps theirs is that the number of issues are growing quite rapidly and I am not willing to continue my support of the Conservatives.

The issues that I am having problems with are:

1.  The treatment of our Veterans is not acceptable.  They argued that the Country doesn’t owe them anything, yet the Country asked them to go into harms way and risk their lives, we lost 158 service personnel and with thousands of personnel having served over 10 years we have a large number of people who were wounded/disabled and/or affected (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).  After WWII, Korea, UN and NATO service we had service personnel who needed help.  We are failing to help them.

2.  They seem to be hung up on gun registration and certification.

3.  They are reneging on agreements for government retirees.

4. Their treatment of the First Nations people, they need dignity and solutions to improve their life situation, we can’t just throw money at them but we should say we are doing something and doing nothing.  We should be ashamed of how we have treated first nations people.

5. They are pushing tar sands development and pipelines but they are saying fuck the environment.  It’s all about resources and forget the rest of the country’s manufacturing and let’s screw the unions and non union workers.

6. Can we believe them?  They say there is a crime problem and we need stiffer sentences yet crime is down.  The Law and Order agenda is bogus and appeals to the conservative base.

7. Much as I dislike what the 3 senators are accused of, they are owed due process and the PMO doesn’t have the right to deny it just for political expediency.  This stinks to high heaven.  So the Prime Minister wants to have a “good” Conservative convention and he will deny “innocent until proven guilty” rights to 3 senators.  If the Senate rules were crystal clear there wouldn’t be an issue but they seem to be very loose and open to interpretation.  Stephen Harper is a bully.

8. They have declared war on public servants.  They don’t trust the people who work for them and are removing hard won rights from contracts, such as removing ability for groups to seek arbitration and force them into conciliation/strike.  Destroying the sick leave provisions replacing it with short term disability yet they support and allow senior management to abuse their employees.  The work environment is poisoned by lack of trust and understanding.  It’s no wonder that there are so many workers suffering from stress related illness.  The Government has removed any negotiation over which employees are deemed essential and they can make it impossible for a strike to put any pressure on the government.  They are the judges, jury, and executioners and if they don’t like the solution they can pass a law to give them what they want.

9.  We have seen Stephen Harper throw everyone under the bus and say he isn’t responsible for anything.  The PMO has fucked up the 3 Senator situation.  The Prime Minister would have us believe that everyone acted without his knowledge yet it wasn’t that long ago that he said the Paul Martin as the leader of the Government and Liberals  was responsible for Shawinigate.  Can’t have it both ways.

10. The Canadian government is dodging fire over the revelation that more  than two-thirds of all requests to a group tasked with burying  impoverished war veterans are rejected.

The Canadian Press reported the Last Post Fund turns away two-thirds of all the applications it receives for a federal burial fund. And those that it does help are limited to a government stipend of $3,600 — less than most social assistance programs.

more to come.

Tories

From This Hour has 22 minutes….

One Guy With A Marker Just Made The Global Warming Debate Completely Obsolete

Global warming is too colossal of an issue to summarize on a whiteboard, but the way this guy divides the possible futures of humanity makes a lot of sense. Skip to 1:28 for the whiteboard magic.

Talking with yourself, 20 years later…..

Another ordination…..ULC

Get ordained online.

G doing his thing…..

http://www.facebook.com/v/10150870815306189

The problem with power for Canada

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

“Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it”

I believe that governments need to feel the pressure that they can replaced at any time if they don’t act in the best interests of the people of the country.  If they don’t have to worry about remaining in power it is only a matter of time before they start to rot from within.  They will take the voters for granted and push their own agenda regardless of the realities of the world that don’t support their perceptions.

In the past, I found the ruling Liberals who thought of themselves as the “natural governing party” gave the appearance that they were corrupt although not proven in court and they knew what was needed more than the people would know, that they could spend our money better than we could.

I am starting to sense a similar attitude from the governing Conservatives, they have an agenda but it is not a centrist agenda but more from the political right.  I’ve seen enough lately to fear moving in the direction of the United States, to me, the US has changed and become something that is dangerous to free people in the world.   They have become a country of extreme positions where compromise and for the good of the people have become irrelevant.

In the United States, you have the mythology that you too can be President or really succeed as a free independent citizen.  That may be true for a very small percentage of the population, likely in the 1% that hold all the power and the wealth of the country, that leaves the other 99% struggling to survive and thrive with no safety net.  Americans have a real distrust of governments and they are always citing their constitution about their rights and freedoms, they seem to forget about responsibilities.  States have enacted laws based upon propositions such as we want a good education but someone else should pay for it, a number of states have laws which allow citizens to kill someone if they feel threatened yet we have the recent case in Florida where it appears that a man used this power to threatened a teenager coming home from the store and then shoot him and he’s not considered guilty of any crime.  There is no real social conscience in the American way of life.  Now the Obamacare bill is being challenged in the Supreme Court which is dominated by the Republicans and one can only guess that they will over turn this small step to protect Citizens from financial ruin should they get sick and require hospital care or medications to live.  America has lost its soul.  I don’t think their founding fathers wanted people packing guns with the freedom to basically kill anyone that bothers them, nor did they want people to not have access to health care.  It’s funny when you hear about average citizens saying that they want less government yet don’t touch their Medicare or Social Security or Unemployment Insurance or their food stamps.  Ignorance about what their government does for them is widespread and its flames are fanned by rather radical politicians on the extreme left or right.

Now in Canada, we are seeing the governing Conservatives ignore the realities and they are sticking to their unfounded beliefs that Crime is rampant, Justice is not working, Punishments aren’t fitting the crimes.  From my understanding crime is down overall, Justice needs a bit of tweaking to have some consistency in punishments but we don’t really need mandatory sentences.  These are very costly assumptions on their part, we don’t need every criminal in jail.  For cold-blooded murder you get 25 years before you are eligible for parole, for some comparatively minor offences you end up with similar sentences.  Again the pendulum of justice just needs to be adjusted not replaced with mandatory jail time.  The punishment should really fit the crime.

I am beginning to wonder if the Conservatives are trying to emulate the Americans.  We are not America, they have a wonderful country but I would not choose to be an American because I believe that Canada is a better place to live.   We have a better quality of life, it isn’t perfect but as the American’s are wont to state “democracy is a flawed system” but what you replace it with.  My vote goes to a system such as Canada’s, Australia’s, and other social democracies.

 

Ottawa Snowfall – 2011-2012

From the Environment Canada web site:

OTTAWA MACDONALD-CARTIER INT’L A, HAMILTON A, DEER LAKE A, GANDER INT’L A, ST.JOHN’S A, SASKATOON DIEFENBAKER INT’L A, LONDON INT’L A, SAULT STE. MARIE A, EDMONTON INT’L A, YARMOUTH A, THUNDER BAY A, CHURCHILL A and SMITHERS A weather reporting stations have switched over to new NAV CANADA sensors and reporting tools. Due to some unanticipated data processing issues related to the new data flow, the display of daily data from these stations is not available on our website at present. However, hourly data is now being displayed for the new stations: OTTAWA INT’L, HAMILTON, DEER LAKE, GANDER INT’L, ST. JOHN’S INT’L, SASKATOON DIEFENBAKER INT’L, LONDON, SAULT STE MARIE, EDMONTON, YARMOUTH, THUNDER BAY, CHURCHILL and SMITHERS.  For more information, please click here and expand the message. Thank you for your patience while we work to fix these current issues.

So no data for the forseeable future.

 

Environment Canada has changed the data collection process and has not provided an update to Ottawa since Dec 14, 2011 which is the same as the table above.  There appears to be a new table for Ottawa International.  It is not known how long it will be before additional data will be available.  The originating data is a mess, the December total is a partial figure from 2 different tables with a large hole in the middle of the data.  Basically December’s data is unreliable.  January data is full of gaps as is February.

I won’t be updating this as often as I had in previous years, I will probably update it a couple of times a month depending upon the snow activity.  I was finding it a lot of effort for minor changes, I had received requests for detailed analysis of the data but it’s only a compilation from the Environment Canada weather information available to anyone.

It’s looking like we might get back to normal snowfall by January, we need the moisture don’t need the shovelling.

Age Activated ADD

Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder

Video – The English Language Challenged By A 102 Year Old

A dog’s love

Navy SEAL hero Jon Tumilson was killed in Afghanistan. His loyalty to his country was reflected in his dog’s loyalty to him. His Labrador retriever Hawkeye moved the nation when he lay down next to Tumilson’s coffin to bid farewell. The video of Hawkeye’s final tribute to his fallen friend has logged almost 7 million YouTube hits.

We get too soon old and too late smart.

This is a very stressful time of year for many people.  It’s supposed to be about family but it seems that many people have to go it alone.  Someone has done someone wrong and it can’t be forgiven nor forgotten, let’s carry on with the “war”.  Sometimes, it’s just time to let it go.  It amazes me that some people remember every little event (make that a transgression) and bring it up as an example whenever such an opportunity presents itself.  In my life, it seems to be the women that have this trait.  When I am reminded of something I did wrong I try to remember what I did and often I draw a blank.  What’s a guy to do?

I found out this morning that one of my favorite radio personalities passed away at the young age of 52.  Kevin Nelson had contracted a virus on vacation over a year ago, he had to leave the airwaves due to ill-health earlier this year.  He succumbed this morning.  He was the son of “Jungle Jay Nelson”, a well-known radio personality who had died in 1994 at the age of 57.  You never know when it will be over for you or a loved one.

I know of another woman whose daughter recently had a new baby but she’s not allowed to be a part of this childs life.  It seems that the woman made a decision that the daughter disagreed with and now she’s being cut out of this daughter’s life.  Forget that the woman took care of the daughter in recent years with the birth of the first grandchild and provided a place for them to live.  The disapproved action was a one timer that is now over and not likely to be repeated but it seems not to matter to the daughter, the mother has erred or sinned in her eyes and cannot be forgiven.  Time to ask yourself, “what if something happens to any of us?”, will it weigh heavily on their hearts for what they didn’t do?

Another woman I know is full of hatred and anger.  Imagine living your life with a lens of anger, everything you see or do is tainted by your bias.  Nothing brings joy nor happiness, she is miserable and judges everything and everybody as being unworthy or worthless.  A good dose of amnesia would be a blessing in this case.  It has to be eating away at her every minute of her life.  She hates men, basically all men for their perceived transgressions.

I find it interesting that there are different rules for a wife’s family and a husband’s family.  It is usually the husband’s family that gets short shrift.  That “family” component isn’t as important as her “family”.  Two sets of rules and two sets of behaviours.  I see this behaviour in a number of people who I know.

It is not uncommon, in my view, that sometimes the anger can’t be traced back to its origin.  It’s not that it wasn’t justified at the time, it may be a perception and not fully understood by the party who has offended.  The one who is angry has often failed to communicate the problem.  The estranged one is at a loss as to “why” but has to learn to just accept what it happening.  Sometimes it’s just best to let it go, reconciliation is not an option.

As I said we get too soon old and too late smart.  As we age, we know that our time here on this earth is dwindling and if someone doesn’t want you in their life we just have to accept it and move on and live our lives.  Banging your head against a wall is a painful experience but stop banging and the pain subsides.

Merry Christmas and may you have a good family celebration.

My Canada Includes:

We live in a great country, we have freedoms and responsibilities that only a small percentage of the world population enjoys.  Our country is based in the Christian ethic, many statutory holidays are religious holidays such as Good Friday, Easter and Christmas.  I find that these celebrations are under attack from several sources.  Some religions hold that theirs is the only true religion and that if you don’t follow their path you are an infidel or condemned to hell.  Our religious and multicultural tolerance is being turned against us and our cultural and religious is being subjugated to the minority view or some strange concept of being politically correct.   It is stated that we offend those who do not adhere to our path and that we must give up our freedoms in the name of not offending someone else who has immigrated recently to this county.

We’ve gone too far in our “Multicultural Mosaic” to the point that soon we will lose our cultural and religious identity because it is offensive to others.  In the United States they have the melting pot which pushes immigrants to become an American with American beliefs and values.  That’s the rules going in and you know it when you become an American Citizen.  That isn’t the model that we need in Canada but our current model threatens to turn Canada into something our forefathers never intended nor a country that we won’t recognize, we’ll become less tolerant of others because they offend us.  We need to move the “Mosaic” bar towards a requirement that immigrants understand what Canada is, they need to be able to live as a Canadian while still being able to celebrate their religion and culture in tandem to that of Canada.

Recently, the city of Gatineau produced a guide for new immigrants with a set of values such as don’t offer bribes, on a page titled “Children are our most precious good,” the guide says that no-nos include “excessive punishments, corporal and sexual abuse, confinement, neglect, forced labour, humiliation, willful malnutrition,” among other things.  I believe that it is a useful guide one that would be appreciated should we go to another country with a different culture than Canada’s.

The section on punctuality says it’s best to show up to appointments on time or even a few minutes early. Under freedom of expression, the guide tells immigrants that journalists in Canada have the right to openly criticize their government. Religion, it says, is a private affair and religious indoctrination is “often not well perceived.”

There is a hue and cry being raised by the immigration industry how it treats immigrants as paternalistic.  I think it offers good practical advice on what Canada is about and I applaud the guide.  It will be a useful tool for someone who has never experienced the freedoms and way of life that we have here in Canada.

For example, at the current rates of growth, Islam will become one of the dominant groups in Canada is the near future.  The radical components of Islam are offended by the Canadian way of life and will move to curtail it and model on the countries and cultures that they left when they came to Canada.

Those who profess no religion are also moving to make everything neutral and non-specific.  Christmas is an inflammatory word and should be replaced with simple a simple non descriptive term “Holiday”.  Christmas has both religious and pre-christian roots.  Many religious holidays or celebrations have their roots in the pagan practices before Christ.

Quebec works hard at protecting French and the French culture and the rest of Canada should be doing the same to protect Canada and the Canadian culture.

The latest uproar is the government requiring anyone taking the oath of citizenship to remove anything covering their face.  A vocal minority is saying this is discrimination against women.  I am sorry but this is a great nation and we accommodate many freedoms but we should be free to demand certain restriction be honoured in order for new arrivals to meet minimal security requirements.  Where most of these people came from don’t honour our customs nor freedoms.

 

If we continue on the “experiment” of full multiculturalism we will lose what is good about this country and become less free and accepting with that change.