Lake of Nightmares ....

Emperor Stevie the Flatulent First believes if you build it, they will come.

It should be interesting to read what the international media will say and write about Lake Ersatz (which a member of Bread'n'Roses adroitly pegged as a shallow pool of ReformaTory talent) and all the attendent perks and hoo-haw.

It's another way for Stevie and his cadre of bullies to manage and massage their message. And the fact he's using money slashed from CIDA funding previously granted to organizations like MATCH International is just the whipped cream on his sundae.

I tend to think about this 2 million $$$ exercise of lunatic largesse in hopeful terms - as Lake ConBeGone. Stevie thinks he knows about feeding sharks but once there's blood in the water, nobody in the water is safe. He has fed a number of his opponents - and members of his own New©™ Government to those yawing jaws.

He could be next. Indigestible though his reign as Supreme Leader was, he will be a choice morsel chunk when his time comes.

Making a Withdrawal from the Karma Bank

I just have to share this.

About six months ago, a dear friend who lives far away had a nasty health surprise that necessitated him quitting his job. In fact, he can't work at all and maybe never will be able to. He has a great network of friends and family, though, who sprang into action to help him out.

He's poor as a church mouse and always has been, but he lives on just about air. So, while the network was collecting the paperwork to get him some kind of disability payment, we were given his bank account number and asked to contribute what we could. So we did that for a while.

Then, spaniard in the works. In order to get whatever measly disability the gov was willing to fork out, the gov needed to look at his bank records and we were told that our contributions would be clawed back.

Plan B. Faraway friends asked to send cash by mail. I have a Scottish grandmother who has strong genes, so this made me very uncomfortable. But I did it. And asked to be told if/when it arrived safely.

No word.

Then, one of the network members fessed up. The mailing address was WRONG and here's the correct one.

I was pissed. It was a largish amount of dough for me. So I put out an appeal to local network members, asking for someone for whom it wouldn't be a burden to provide his or her mailing address and I'd send her or him cheques to be spent as need be.

Someone stepped up and that's what we've been doing.

(For thems as might get sniffy over our gaming the system, the 'emergency' disability the network managed to get, after months of running around mind you, amounts to $650 a month. Not even my pal the church mouse can live on that. Soon, apparently, there will be an update on what the 'regular' disability amounts to. All this takes an amazing amount of time.)

So. Today, I checked my mailbox. In it, with a little yellow sticker on it from Postes Canada Post, was my cash-stuffed envelope returned to sender. Still cash-stuffed.

I mailed it March 30. Today is June 7.

Yay Canada Post!

Or maybe good deeds do attract good karma.

Where's Steve-o?

So, where is Motherhood Steve?

Not here.

The Washington meeting, titled Women Deliver, is timed to bolster the G20 agenda for pumping up funds for maternal health. There are 3,300 advocates and politicians attending from 140 countries, including the heads of major UN agencies, government ministers, parliamentarians, celebrity campaigners and former heads of state.

“It is a surprise that Stephen Harper didn’t come,” said Women Deliver president Jill Sheffield. “He and Laureen Harper were invited and they didn’t even reply. This is his legacy issue. We thought he might at least have sent a message.”

Didn't even reply.

“It’s really astounding,” said Maureen McTeer, a women’s advocate and wife of former Tory prime minister Joe Clark. “Historically Canada has been looked up to in the world, because we believed in issues like this. But (Harper) can’t even take a one-hour flight to Washington to show his solidarity with the world’s women. By not going, he is taking a negative stand.”

. . .

Canada’s presence in Washington so far has been limited to NGO efforts. International co-operation minister Bev Oda, who made a last-minute agreement to appear at the conference, will join a dialogue Wednesday with Tore Godal, a special adviser to Norway’s prime minister, and leader in the campaign for reproductive health. But the Prime Minister’s place at the table remains empty.

Any questions?

How do you spell hypocrit?

In general, I try to avoid reading the Comments section after CBC news items. They are frequented by knuckle-draggers, fact-challenged ideologues, freepers, ReformaTory Attack Parrots™© dutifully re-posting Con speaking points, sociopaths and, occasionally, a few sensible & rational human beings.

Bureaucrats may also be adding to the general confabulation by contributing so-called factual information from Harper's New©™ Government.

Nonetheless, the following comment jumped up when I glanced down from perusing a short article about the public outcry against the destruction of a small forested area in Kanata.

savant1 wrote:Posted 2010/06/06at 11:41 AM ET"Kanata North councillor Marianne Wilkinson said she has explored the area with her grandchildren and, like hundreds of others, has come to appreciate the forest trails." ---------------------- On May 26 she pushed through a Special Tax Levy against her constituents (without a vote) while claiming the taxation per household would be reduced as further new homes were constructed in Kanata. How do you spell hypocrit?

Um ... you spell hypocrite with an "e" at the end. With one word, this commenter's rhetorical flourish became a big, embarrassing FAIL.

We are all fallible. Tpyos and spelling mistakes happen in this blog too; fern hill and I will correct each other's posts when that happens. My particular bugbear: words in English that will differ from the French ones by one letter. Example: aggression and in French, agression.

But. There are occasions and opportunities when correct spelling counts. I don't believe I'm a grammar snob, but when I encounter error upon error in a blogger's text, I tend to stop reading that particular author. I tend to wonder if they're as sloppy about their information as they are about their composition.

And I loathe cutesy, deliberate mistakes such as "teh" that are used by people who unconsciously condescend, as mawkish expressions of their need to connect with hoi polloi or to be "teh" edgy.

Bonus reading: Go immediately to balbulican's brilliant post Are You A "Citizen Journalist", or Just An Asshole?



PS: Speaking of mistakes, it appears that my accidental double click or slip-up with the "enter" key caused my post to be prematurely published, and thus to show up at Progressive Bloggers before I officially released it. Oops.

June 5: Kill the Pill Day

In the midst of perhaps the worst-ever environmental catastrophe, the fetus fetishists are jumping on the enviro-bandwagon.

Really.

Stirring their usual brew of prurience, misogyny, and homophobia, the batshitcrazies are linking the evul birth control pill to intersex fish. Poor fishies turned gay by feminazis killing their pre-born one-celled eggs bay-beez!

And the target audience of batshitcrazies are eating it up, so to speak.

Dig this from a Freak named Hodgson:

The Pill has done more damage to Western Civilization than Hitler, Heroin and Pierre Trudeau combined.

Woo. More damage than PET! That's saying something on the Dark Side, where PET is evul incarnate.

So, to recap: the pill kills bay-beez, turns fishies gay, outstrips a genocidal fascist, a drug, and a Canadian PM in destruction and, of course, 'harms' those vulnerable women the fetus fetishists are so keen to protect as long as they're preggers.

Funny. The sciencey-facty folk at the British Medical Journal reported just the opposite. In a MASSIVE study that followed 46,000 UK women for up to 40 years, here's the conclusion:

Women in the UK who have ever used oral contraceptives are less likely to die from any cause, including all cancers and heart disease, compared with never users.

There are many potential reasons for that result, of course: more contact with the healthcare system, less exposure to the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, higher income, and so on.

But primarily, we would humbly submit, because these pill-popping women have avoided the toxic and life-threatening effects of consorting with batshitcrazies.

Hm. Maybe I'd better stop visiting the Dark Side.

But not just yet. BONUS lunacy from Hodgson, who asks:

If abortion is made illegal again, would we retroactively round up every woman who's had an abortion in Canada and jail them?

We're talking millions and millions of people!

Also, all the doctors and nurses who participated would have to be tried.

Well, first, butthead, the entire legal system would have to be turned inside-out in order to prosecute people retroactively.

Ah. Hodgson has a kinder, gentler side. Viz --

If abortion is made illegal again, I would recommend amnesty for practical reasons.

But a particularly loathesome character over there named Edward Kennedy has no such wussy inclinations:

...with exception...the workers of iniquity who knew it was murder but practiced it for the love of the damned dollar should be prosecuted and partlal [sic] birth abortionists executed.

Remember, they call themselves 'pro-life'.

Slapping Kids Around, Alaska-Style

As the late philosopher George Carlin said: 'If you're pre-born, you're fine. If you're pre-school, you're fucked.'

Another stark example of TheoCon hypocrisy and cruelty today from Alaska.

The guy who took over from $arah vetoed an expansion of state health care coverage for poor children and pregnant women because it covers abortion.

His veto of Denali KidCare money drew by far the strongest reaction, with Democrats saying it was outrageous. Anchorage Democratic Sen. Bettye Davis, who sponsored the Denali Kid Care money, said it would have allowed 1,300 children and 225 pregnant women to receive care.

Ethan Berkowitz, one of Parnell's Democratic opponents for governor, called the decision cold-hearted. "If you want to be tough, you don't be tough by slapping kids around," he said.

Hollis French, a Democratic state senator who is also running against Parnell, said the decision was depriving hundreds of children of coverage "because you're afraid a few women might make a choice you don't agree with." The courts made it clear the state has to pay for "medically necessary" abortions for poor women and the program doesn't fund elective abortions, he said.

Officials with AARP Alaska and the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Head Start program said the governor's veto will hurt people struggling to raise children.

Parnell said he wanted to offer the health care to more women and children. But he said he couldn't bring himself to do it after recently discovering Denali Kid Care also funded abortions. Parnell said he couldn't believe it when he found out.

SHRIEEEEEEK! HE COULDN'T BELIEVE IT!!!!!!!! HE COULDN'T BRING HIMSELF TO DO IT!!!!

Such delicate sensibilities, yet he can quite blithely deny healthcare to a bunch of poor kids and women.

If I were within slapping distance of this prick, he'd get a faceful.

Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome?

OK, anything with the word 'syndrome' in it is suspect, as far as I'm concerned. (Though I definitely had chronic fatigue syndrome about twenty years ago and it was a drag. So to speak.)

But this was the money shot for me:

Generally patients who present with adrenal fatigue can often be heard saying, "After______, I was never the same."

So, with the three-and-a-half year ordeal of the Eviction, Exile and Return, I figured it would take me a while to recover. But I'm not.

I got shaky. I cut out caffeine. I was getting amazing stomach cramps about half an hour after eating dairy products. Cut them out. Out of the blue anxiety attacks. Started yoga again. Light-headed, heart palpitations. Didn't know what to do about those.

Today, lightbulb moment. Several years ago docs found I have an enlarged adrenal gland. ('Twas incidental discovery from CAT-scan for something else.) Got sent to an endocrinologist who in turn sent me for biannual ultrasounds to see what was going on until we both got bored.

Lightbulb: anxiety/shakiness = adrenalin! Googled.

Symptoms:

Common symptoms of most adrenal gland disorders include lightheadedness; tendency to gain weight; lack of energy in the mornings; difficulty concentrating; poor memory; chronically high stress levels; reduced sex drive; mild depression; dry and thin skin; unexplained hair loss; heart palpitations; dyspepsia; constipation; hypoglycemia (low blood sugar); food allergies; and high frequency of the flu or infections.

I don't have all of those, thank the goddess, but a lot of them.

As I read more -- and from the iffier side of the intertoobz -- I was thinking: hell, this is flaky, sounds like something my sister-in-law would get and bore the shit out of everybody talking about.

The remedy is très flaky too.

So. Anybody got experience? Opinion?

The anna project

This is good.

The anna project is a letter-writing project with a difference, conceived out of outrage by Sylvia Bews-Wright, a Victoria artist and social activist (www.sylviabewswright.com). It gives voice to the many faceless and nameless girls and women in developing countries who die each year due to lack of access to safe abortion.

The anna project was prompted by a recent government decision to exclude access to safe abortion as part of its new maternal and child health initiative announced for the G8 summit meeting in June 2010.

This decision puts Canada at odds with the global community by contradicting our previous commitment – along with 191 other countries – to the UN Millenium Development Goals, which recognize that abortion is one of many components of comprehensive maternal health programmes necessary to reduce the unacceptably high rate of maternal mortality in developing countries.

The anna project tells the stories of three young women. These stories illustrate that women and girls are often unable to control the conditions under which they have sex, or even when and if they do. Access to safe and legal abortion could have saved the lives of two of the three annas. The third anna was lucky enough to be born in Canada. CLICK HERE to understand our choice of stories.

Canadian women have the right to safe abortion. How can we deny this same right to women in developing countries, particularly now, when rape is often a standard tactic of war?

The anna project reaches out to unite people in their displeasure at this abrupt change in Canadian policy. We are asking you to sign a string of anna paper dolls to express your disapproval.

Instructions for paper-doll making -- for those of us who haven't done it for a few decades -- at the site.

Also links to petitions. One from Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada and one from International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Pass it along.

h/t my Facebook friend Antonia Z.

Cons too tough on crime for Black's taste?

First it was David Frum disassociating himself from the likes of Sarah Palin and the Hatriots - the Tea Party Patriots aka teabaggers.

Now it's Lord Black himself, gently castigating Stevie Spiteful and his bully boys for their "Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety."

It is painful for me to write that with this garrote of a blueprint, the government I generally support is flirting with moral and political catastrophe. My respect for the Prime Minister prevents me from being any more explicit here about the implications of failure to reconsider the government's course on this issue.

The Roadmap is a bad plan to take Canada to a destination it should not wish to reach. [...]

The whole concept of prison should be terminated, except for violent criminals and chronic non-violent recidivists, and replaced by closely supervised pro bono or subsistence-paid work by bonded convicts in the fields of their specialty. Swindlers and embezzlers, hackers and sleazy telemarketers are capable people and they should serve their sentences by contributing honest work to government-insured employers.

Canada would save a billion dollars annually in prison costs and the employers of the penitent-workers would save $2-billion annually, a tremendous shot in the arm to national productivity. Many of the prisons could be recon-figured as assisted housing for the homeless and slum-dwellers. Canada would again be a model of the innovative public policy pursuit of institutionalized decency and social reform.

The principle that the rape of the rights of the least is an assault on the rights of all is attributed to Jesus Christ and is at the core of Judeo-Christian civilization and the rule of law in both common and civil law jurisdictions. And it is not just a tradition; there are several million Canadians in families that have bitter memories of personal or close relatives' encounters with the vagaries of justice.

According to this, Darcy Sheppard's father is not bitter that his son was pilloried while Michael Bryant won't be held accountable for his homicidal actions on the night of August 31, 2009. Too bad. I'm sure he could have done excellent pro bono work, advocating for the rights of cyclists in Ontario.

And. Also. Read fern hill's 'Stupid on Crime' blogpost again. See? There's a scary convergence happening; some of the Cons are catching onto Harper and his bullies tactic of playing to the stupid, authoritarianism-loving base.