With Friends Like These...

As a minor contributor to Dammit Janet! (who has, thankfully, not pushed any code buttons saying 'wipe blog out'), I'd like to say I am in concurrence with the senior writers at DJ! in withdrawing from an internet aggregator that does not serve the purposes of the information and opinions here.

I admit to a lethal bias, since I'm uhm...not actually aware of the aggregator as a waystation on the internets, except of course in the vague, annual reportage of their bloggy awards and the bunfest over the awards administrators' intransigent confusion over what feminism is.

I came to DJ! by googling around.  I use DJ!'s blogroll as my aggregator starting line to meander around to the other blogs that have interesting things going on at their virtual kitchen tables.  I use my own bookmarks otherwise.  I do not know what 'voting up' is.

 Everyone has opinions on what words mean and in this case Progressive is being defined by those that have the admin rights on the aggregator.  That is their prerogative and they are free to express it.

I would like to think that 'progressive' has at least a baseline definition of aligning with the Canadian Charter of Rights.  It was the Charter's existence that gave the Supreme Court of Canada the legal foundation to make a very unconfused decision January 28, 1988. 

If someone calling themselves a societal progressive cannot get behind that decision and the two following it, cannot comprehend that what they airily claim is merely an intellectual exercise, is in actuality a matter of literal life, liberty and equality to billions of human beings around the world at this-very-moment, I require that person to define what 'progressive' is and what exceptions they are willing to insert into the definition.

Why? Because it is my prerogative to not accept that I must stay quietly in place and accommodate someone who can look me in the eye and tell me that I, and any womb possessing human of a certain fertility, shouldn't mind if our bodies and lives are *debated* over cocktales as being *unworthy* of autonomy, by authoritarian, lying, anti-evidence, theocracy-pandering plutocrats who smugly know that whatever prescriptive law exists, exists for the 'little people', which of course, aren't them.

I cannot help but suspect exceptions in the definition of progressive will be ones the exceptionalist believes, or knows, will not affect *their* personal privilege in society.

I also invite that self-identified societal progressive to consider, since so much time has passed and science has progressed so amazingly, this topic of bodily autonomy should also be up for debate among people concerned for those members of a nation too irresponsible to be trusted to look after themselves and others.

Harper Wants to Campaign on the Economy?

Nice economy ya got there, Stevie, be a shame if . . .

. . . the Conference Board of Canada rates it 10th among 17 'peer' nations and sinking.

When grading is complete, the Ottawa-based Conference Board said Thursday, Canada will slip to 10th on a list of 17 peer countries in 2010 from sixth in 2009. The Conference Board’s advance rankings have Canada in ninth place in 2011.

Maybe you shouldn't have spent all that dough on gazebos, fake lakes, overtime for useless and/or brutal G20 G8 cops, and your religious cronies.

"Wycliffe Bible Translators slurped up a hefty $495,600 of your money and mine. But that was dwarfed by the $3.2 million awarded to an outfit called Youth For Christ--and, while children living in poverty on a reserve in Attawapiskat have been denied a new school for years, Edmonton's Newman Theological College was recently awarded $4.2 million of Harper's largesse."

Maybe you should have spent stimulus money -- that you didn't want to spend at all -- wisely as other countries did, like on green job creating strategies.

Environmental researchers say the Harper government could have created three times as many jobs if it had invested stimulus funding in climate projects rather than in traditional infrastructure.

An analysis by the Pembina Institute shows that climate-friendly projects tend to be more labour intensive.

It suggests the $16 billion Ottawa spent on building roads, arenas and the like during the recession could have created or maintained almost 240,000 green jobs — instead of the 84,000 the government boasts of.

The study was funded by the British High Commission and relied on Ontario government research into how effective environmental spending is on job creation.

The Conservative government put just eight per cent of its stimulus funding into climate projects — much lower than in other countries.

Yo! Liberals! NDP! The Harper Regime wants to run an election on the economy? Bring it on!!!!!!