Note to myself

Note to myself:
How lucky can I be that I not only had a flat tire at the right pit stop on my way to Ottawa where there was a mechanic shop, but that I found one who actually said to me: “Oh, you can’t get that spare to deploy? Lemme take a blow torch to it and get it cut out.” Thank God for Jerry at Rekmans.

If you wanna make a fortune, figure out how to build a simply assembly for tires stored under vans. If I could do that, I’d be rich…

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It is a good point that was made by a caller recently about Barack Obama. How, the caller asked, could I vote for this man to be president over me who thinks I am his oppressor? It is quite a poignant comment and very telling. Tony Snow is saying that people like Rev. Wright are “crapping” on Dr. King’s legacy every time they open their mouthes. Whatever happened to brotherhood and getting together, black or white, regardless of skin colour? What about the content of your character? Comments like Rev. Wright’s forces people into racist thoughts. Just terrible.

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Just in case anyone thought the Liberals and the left of Canada were forgiving creatures, tolerant open-minded individuals who are ready to open themselves to the fact that sometimes people change their minds over time and should not be held to the sins of their youth, they prove that this is not so. It’s okay for young offenders who actually commit crimes to get a fair shake and another chance. But not if you’re a Conservative Member of Parliament who said severely homophobic things when you were 16, years before you were a Member of Parliament or had any responsibility at all. It’s not good enough that as an MP you have said sorry, said you’re ashamed at being caught on tape saying these things while fooling around with some friends, and do this in the most abject and public way. No, you must resign.

Frankly, I don’t believe this member’s riding is as intolerant as the press makes it out to be. He is the MP for this riding and if this is true, a lot of a people want to run him out on a rail because of something he said when he was 16. It’s more likely that two-thirds of the people in the riding said that boys say stupid things.

I wonder if a Liberal MP who was separatist when he was 16 would suffer the same calls for his resignation. Maybe not. Hell, the CBC can’t use the phrase “visible minority” because it believes it is tantamount to racism. After all, the UN Anti-Racism Committee says so. The UN also says that Dalton McGuinty is tantamount to a KKK grand master for fighting Mr. Tory’s plans to bring public funding to al religious schools regardless of denomination. The UN said that having Catholic schools as the only publicly funded religious school in Canada was a violation of the Human Rights Charter. I must say that I did say hurray as I tend to agree. It’s wrong for us to have a system. But I know a lot of other Canadians will tell the UN to butt out. This is also the same organization that allows the likes of Lybia and China to sit on its Human Rights Commission.

This is a politically correct sham taken to its worst extent. I am sick and tired of the UN judging countries like ours and those of our friends by a different standard, especially when these countries do take human rights seriously. When the UN starts acting consistently, it’ll be taken seriously in the countries that are dealing quite well, thank you, with their visible minorities. There are real criminals out there that need dealing with by the UN.

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When are governments and their participants going to understand that in a free and democratic society, when the government does something wrong, like killing a person who was simply waiting for his mother to pick him up at the airport, and was considerably irritated with tasers without any provocation while his arms are up in the universal gesture of “I surrender”. Will the governments investigating such an incident think that they should open up the discussion to the public? When the people expect that, it’s difficult to accept comments about respecting the participants’ rights. Hearings should not be held in camera. The process should be public. When you do that, people think you’re covering up and lying and protecting the wrong doers. They think you’re part of the problem. There needs to be accountability.

For instance, I would like to know what the Prime Minister’s office is telling our members on that committee about this investigation. It shouldn’t be telling them anything. This is something that should be opened up to the widest possible review but still making sure that any legal proceedings, especially criminal charges, are not affected. But there is no reason why you can’t have open investigations that the public can see and hear and read about and not still have criminal charges and investigations at the same time.

Politicians weren’t elected to run the country. We run the country. Politicians don’t own the government, they’re trustees of it on our behalf. We own the government. One day, we’re going to throw out governments and MPs that don’t get this.

*****

A note re Bill Clinton and his tax avoidance, offshore scheme:

If there is any example now of the hypocrisy of liberals, socialists and democrats and labour, this has to be the number 1 example. There is no better example than this.

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How can you argue with your political opponents, especially in Iraq or Afghanistan when they essentially argue that worse than failure would be success? My favourite thought is that Iraq’s neighbours mistrust its unseasoned Shia politicians, but they would be even more threatened by ambitious pro-Western reformers in Baghdad. Pessimism. Even to the point of being pessimistic about optimism.

It took 40 years for Korea to become a democracy. Does anyone think that the US’s involvement in the Korean War did not essentially augur that or help provide the conditions for it? I’m sure some will say it had nothing to do with the US, but I think it’s a perfectly good example. The culture in Korea was hardly democratic. There was no tradition of democracy there or in Japan or Germany of the Philippines. They have all become thriving, top industrial democracies. Why shouldn’t Iraq?

For some, the Marshall Plan was an ephemeral phenomenon. Good will and generosity came from everywhere but the US.

*****

To witness the liberal factions talk about the Bush oppression and the violation of civil liberties and unconstitutionalities, though nothing has been proven to come to that level, it’s difficult to believe that they are still considered to be the lunatic fringe of their party. But their spiritual soul brothers in Britain, New Labour, have brought in far more oppressive measures to battle a threat that is far less than, say, the Irish threat was when Thatcher was fighting it, and she received far more vitriol from the press whenever she did anything that might not be according to Hoyle fighting them. One shivers to think what the self-righteous Gordon Brown would do if the Muslin fundamentalists were as successful in the 2000’s as the Irish were in the 1980’s. But US commentators, particularly those who are liberal democrat, who have sung praise for Brown and Tony Blair certainly don’t want to point that out when they fight the comparitively limited things Pres. Bush has done in a far more difficult executive constitutional arrangement. This was after an attack on the US that was fare more devastating than the one that has occurred in Britain.

*****

Someone has to tell me why it is that ARM mortgages have been a source of foreclosure. Interest rates are plunging. Surely if you have an ARM, the rate would be adjusting down, not up. I can’t understand any ARM that would have the rate going up. Someone needs to clarify this.

*****

I was the original Mountie freak. One of the things I loved was the little costume that my mother bought me when I was four. I also loved my box of Mountie toy soldiers. I went to the Centennial show in 1973 and was so excited. I was in awe of a Grade 8 kid whose father was a Mountie. I grew up respecting and loving them. I fought for them after they burned separatists’ barns. I always got a chill when we drove by the barracks where the Musical Ride was trained in Manor Park in Ottawa. I was mister little kid Mountie.

But now, I have to wonder what happened to this police force I loved so much. Who are these people who refused to have public meetings about tasering man to death at an airport while he waited for his mother to pick him up? What happened to the commissioner, who was not a Mountie himself or even a police officer, who has become housetrained so that he is like a lapdog who acts as a political force for a Prime Minister? What the heck happened? I want my Mounties back!

John Doyle who is not given to writing well about the police was almost gloating during his television article when he stated that no one makes shows about Mounties being heroes anymore. No one would buy it. I have to agree. Paul Gross, Cst. Fraser, where are you?