Why Do I Care?

I haven't lived within the boundaries of Metro Toronto since 1998. The last Toronto election I voted in was also the FIRST Metro Toronto election after the "megacity" was created. Since then our family has moved around, but for the most part we've been within the boundaries of the Greater Toronto Area (some "greater" than others).

So you might wonder why I care about who was elected Mayor of Toronto. Here are a few reasons:

1. I may not live there anymore, but I really do love Toronto. I love wandering around downtown. I love Queen West and the Beaches (wait, the Beach?). I love the entertainment district and all of the mega-musicals put on by Mirvish Productions and Dancap, among others. I love the smaller theatres like Passe Muraille, the Factory, Soulpepper and CanStage. I love the fact that I can walk all over downtown Toronto in the middle of winter without a coat using the PATH system. I love watching baseball games at SkyDome (I will never admit that it's no longer called SkyDome, so don't even try to make me.) I love the Toronto Islands. Most of all, I love the people - well, most of them, anyway. So I don't want to see a loudmouth politician screw up "my" city. I also don't want any Lastman-sized international embarrassments (African cannibals, anyone? How does that compare to wanting someone's wife to be go over to Iran and be raped? Hmmm...)
2. The truth is, what happens in Toronto affects the whole province to a certain extent, most notably the 905 area (for those not familiar with Toronto, this is a horseshoe-shaped area outside of Toronto thus called because of their "905" area codes.) If not a majority, then a lot of 905-ers are commuters. We may start our mornings in Oshawa, Pickering or Mississauga, but we spend our days firmly in the 416. Gridlock and public transit are issues that don't just affect Toronto residents. 
3. Again, because so many 905-ers work in Toronto, if you mess up the economy of Toronto, you mess up the economy of a much wider area. Even if you don't take into account the commuters, products and services are regularly traded amongst the cities of south-central Ontario. The economy of the country's largest city has a ripple effect across the whole area, at minimum.
4. I was talking to someone last night who works in social services in Toronto. The look on his face when told Rob Ford was elected said it all. Outside of the Great Depression, this may be the worst thing to ever happen to the poor, under-privileged, and mentally and physically-challenged people in Toronto's history.
5. Why is it that the right wing is so against funding for arts organizations? My guess is that most of them can't read a book or have the attention span to sit through a play, but that's just my (somewhat biased) opinion. Arts organizations in Toronto are surely quaking today. Hopefully many of them have been making plans based on this possibility, because they can be sure sure to lose most, if not all, of their funding if Ford gets his way. It amazes me how people think this is such a huge waste of their tax dollars. Do you know how much Toronto currently spends per capita on the arts? THIRTEEN DOLLARS. Yes, that's right: $13 of your hard-earned money goes to support the arts. How much do you spend on coffee in a week? Or on take-out meals? Or anything else. You can't afford $13 per year to support thousands of artists and workers in arts organizations that bring in millions of dollars to Toronto's economy not only through ticket sales, but through hotels and restaurants as well? An article in the Star says that Pantalone and Smitherman both hoped to raise that spending to $25 per year. San Francisco, to compare one city to another, spends $86 per year on the arts. Yet Toronto, for example, is the third-largest centre for English-speaking theatre in world, behind only New York City and London.
6. Toronto will host World Pride Day in 2014, just a few months before the next mayoral election. Can anyone picture Rob Ford riding on a float in the Pride parade? Me neither. With the cuts that he surely wants to make to their funding, the entire experience will likely be embarrassing. However, I have faith in the Pride Week organizers, and I'm sure they'll find a way to get around the whole "bigoted mayor" thing.

I am not completely terrified of Rob Ford as mayor - just yet. I admittedly do not know much about those who have been elected as councillors, and so I don't know how much of his mandate he will really be able to pass. It could be - as many have speculated - that we'll have gridlock until the next election. Not that four years of a stalemate is a good thing, either, as we've seen in our years of minority federal governments, but at least it may mitigate the damage Ford will likely do. With any sort of luck, we can all just look back on the Rob Ford experience in four years as an amusing anecdote, and let the grownups go back to running the city.

Mississauga or Abu Ghraib?

According to The Star, employees of Mississauga's transportation and works department were tied up with duct tape, spanked until they were bruised and humiliated, at the behest of a supervisor for over five years. The Ministry of Labour and Peel Region Police did nothing after viewing a videotape of one of the attacks. Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion admits that the city knew about the video back in 2009. Investigations were conducted by the MOL, police and by the city, and "action" was taken by the city, but the supervisor, Domenic Galamini was NOT fired. McCallion declined to specify what action was taken by the city.

In the words of SNL's Seth Myers and Amy Poehler: "REALLY?" Physical and psychological TORTURE of employees isn't a fireable offense? What the heck do you have to do to get fired from there? "Well, no one was actually killed..."

It's international news and people are jailed when American soldiers do it in an Iraq prison, but a supervisor doing this to his employees in a major North American city is worthy of what? A suspension? A note on his record?

This is why government employees (and unions) have such a bad reputation. I mean seriously - use some damned logic, people!

Mr. Rogers is EVIL???

I must thank Roger Ebert (whose Tweets I enjoy mightily @ebertchicago ) for pointing this out to me. It's apparently an oldie, but still amusingly asinine, clip from good ol' Fox News.

Yes, it's Mr. Rogers' fault that the current generation has a sense of entitlement. God forbid anyone think that they're special just because of who they are. Just wait until you see the response from "Nancy" in Tallahassee. Apparently it's not just Mr. Rogers who ruined children's lives!

I'm not sure which to be more upset about...

So hopefully some of my readers can help me decide. Karla Homolka - the shedevil of St. Catharines, is apparently eligible not for parole, but for a pardon - this year.

That's Part One of my outrage tonight.

Part Two of tonight's outrage? That Stephen Harper is blaming this on previous "soft on crime" governments.

May I point something out, Sir?

You have been in power for four years. In all of that time, you never noticed that there were problems with the pardon system? It took the media pointing out that Canada's flawed pardon system had allowed a nasty pedophile asswipe to be legally forgiven, and that one of the country's most infamous serial killers could be pardoned this year (and apparently 99% of those who apply for a pardon receive one - WHAT???) before he realized that there was a PROBLEM???

The one thing I truly hate about politics is the amount of time (and money) wasted on blaming previous governments for problems. You know what? The general population doesn't care who caused the problem, they just want you to fix it.

I swear, if that woman gets pardoned... grrrrr... I don't even know what the appropriate response is to this. I wonder if there will be a response from the French and Mahaffy families.


 

Tea Partiers are Old, Rich White Dudes? I'm Shocked.

So, a poll conducted by the venerable New York Times (I love being able to use the word "venerable") and CBS News is aiming to show the demographics of the "Tea Party". They like to proclaim that they are "of the people" and try to make out that they are the voice of the blue collar workers tired of having Evil "Big Government" take all of their money and redistribute it. So in other words, they don't like Robin Hood. This makes them what? The Sheriff of Nottingham? I'm just sayin' is all...

Anyway, despite what they would have you believe, the new poll shows that the 18% of Americans who say they are supporters of the Tea Party tend to be older than 45, male, married, white and Republican. WHAAAAT? Sorry, did my eyes just roll into the back of my head? I'll try to stop that.

More than half of the Tea Partiers believe that the current administration's policies favour the poor instead of the rich or middle class. It's also worth noting that 25% believe that the administration's policies favour blacks, rather than whites. Oh yeah, I forgot about that "Blacks can't be charged for armed robbery: they're just giving themselves a step up" Bill.

Ninety-two percent believe that Obama is heading the US towards socialism. On a related note, the Times failed to mention the percentage of those who could actually give the proper definition for socialism.

“I just feel he’s getting away from what America is,” said Kathy Mayhugh, 67, a retired medical transcriber in Jacksonville. “He’s a socialist. And to tell you the truth, I think he’s a Muslim and trying to head us in that direction, I don’t care what he says. He’s been in office over a year and can’t find a church to go to. That doesn’t say much for him.”(from the Times article)

Oh, and while they are against Evil Big Government, they don't want Medicare or Social Security cut.

Yep, these are definitely the people I want running the country two hours away from me. Yep.

Glen Beck is an Idiot. And So is His One Brain Cell.

I have to admit, I have never seen Glen Beck. Then again, I've never sat in a pool with piranhas, and I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't like that, either. Everything I've heard of the man offends me to my very core. His brand of Conservatism isn't about the government redistributing wealth, as he'd have you believe. It's not about how individuals should be helping each other, rather than government. It's about "ME ME ME!!!" It's about "I shouldn't have to give you one red cent of my millions to help anybody else because my new Bentley is more important than a 3 year old's cancer surgery and treatment." In other words, it's bullshit for greedy sheep.

My friend Jen posted this blog by Roger Ebert. It sums up my feelings pretty damned well.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/03/jesus_was_a_nazi_and_sos_your.html#more

Pretty near everything Glenn Beck says strikes me as absurd, but he scored a perfect 10 when he warned his viewers against the dangers of Christianity. You already know all about it. Well, maybe not, because the usual defenders of Christianity, like James Dobson and Pat Robertson, were very quiet on the topic. Not even a peep from Pat about this man who showed every sign of having hired the best lawyers to draft his pact with Satan.

Many other Christians were not so silent Dr. David P. Gushee, Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, wrote: "He managed to do something few have been able to do -- speaking only of my own religious community, he has united Catholics and Protestants, evangelicals and mainliners, Christian progressives and moderates and conservatives."

What were Beck's unifying words? "I beg you, look for the words social justice or economic justice on your church web site," he told his audience. "If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop and tell them, 'Excuse me are you down with this whole social justice thing?' If it's my church, I'm alerting the church authorities: 'Excuse me, what's this social justice thing?' And if they say, 'yeah, we're all in that social justice thing'--I'm in the wrong place."

I was on the brink of picking up the phone and asking Francis Cardinal George if he was down on this whole social justice thing, but then I recalled that I no longer use the telephone. Do you suppose the cardinal texts? I know some priests pretty well, and two ministers I went to high school with, and a rabbi, and I have a Muslim friend who teaches that faith in Chicago universities, and I work with a Buddhist, but it's no use asking them. They're all down on this social justice thing.


What are the words "social justice" code for? Why, Nazism and Communism, says Beck: "Social justice was the rallying cry--economic justice and social justice--the rallying cry on both the communist front and the fascist front." Beck even went so far as to cite Jesus Christ, saying, and I quote: "Nowhere does Jesus say, Hey, if somebody asks for your shirt, give your coat to the government and have the government give them a pair of slacks." Well, Beck has me there. It is quite true that nowhere does Jesus say that. Nor, for that matter, does he ever say, A wop bop a lu bop, a wop bam boom!

What I would enjoy hearing is one single clergyman from any faith in America, appearing on Beck's program to agree with him and denouncing social justice. Such a person might be a real piece of work. I suspect he might currently be in between congregations. Beck's oversight is that all religions teach social justice. That's sort of what they're about. "My church doesn't," said Beck, who is a Mormon. Not for the first time, he was dead wrong, and the mountains of Utah rang with the thunder of outraged Mormon elders. I know now, and did not know before, that before statehood the Mormons in the Utah territory provided universal health care and care for the poor as a matter of their duty.

What Beck has demonstrated, in a singularly inelegant way, is an increasing tendency of the extreme right to automatically describe its opponents in negative buzz words. You would think that if it's possible to be a conservative it's also possible to be a liberal. Not so. In the Beckian theology, a conservative is merely a conservative. Liberals are socialists, community organizers, Marxists, traitors, communists, haters, Nazis, elitists and, in general, liars. Conservatives, on the other hand, are moderates, patriots, reasonable, pro-American, and stand for family values.

I am proudly a liberal. I am also patriotic, reasonable, pro-American, and stand for family values. Sometimes I stray from moderation. I do not remotely identify with the ideologies Beck wants to tar and feather me with. Nor, for that matter, could a genuine conservative identify with a flywheel like Beck. Conservatism is a political and ethical philosophy that exists in another universe from Beck's shopping cart. Remember that TV show where couples raced up and down aisles seeing who could jam the most loot into their carts? Beck loads up from the shelves of the Discount Screwball Supermart. He needs material to fill his daily hours of air time and fuel his fans with one-liners they can pass off as thought.

What is social justice, anyway? I think it involves civil rights and liberties. It involves a trial in a fair legal system. It involves freedom of speech and the practice, or non-practice, of religion. It involves a living wage and decent working conditions. As my father often repeated, "A fair day's work for a fair day's pay." Which of these areas does Glenn Beck believe the Communists and Nazis excelled in? Is he holding in reserve a secret cache of obscure speeches by Hitler? If his listeners heard those words (which real liberals and real conservatives subscribe to) emerging from Hitler's mouth, would they be confused?


Another quote from Beck. The Communists and Nazis "talked about economic justice, rights of the workers, redistribution of wealth, and surprisingly, democracy." Why, that proves it! Those are the very same things Christians talk about. And Democrats. And liberals. And find me, please, one single genuine Republican who doesn't also talk about them. We can gather that Beck disagrees with all of them. Even -- given his maladroit syntax -- surprisingly, democracy.

Beck has strayed way, way off beyond conservatism, to a land where reason itself is an evil conspiracy. This is a growing trend. In Texas, I learn from prisonplanet.com, "A prominent insider has told Infowars that Texas Governor Rick Perry and other establishment neo-cons have decided to deliberately target grass roots constitutionalists with dirty tricks campaigns in an effort to derail and hijack the growing liberty movement whose influence is threatening to blow the Texas gubernatorial race wide open." Yes. Rick Perry, indistinguishable from Democrats, mainstream Republicans, liberals, socialists, Nazis, elitists and believers in social justice.

This whole argument is described by a term widely familiar on the internet, the reductio ad Hitlerum. It is also known, Wikipedia explains, as playing the Nazi card. Anyone using this argumentum, it is believed, is signaling that his logical facility has jumped the rails. It is frequently used in a reflexive sense, as when your opponent accuses you of doing the same thing: "You guys called Bush a Nazi, so it's all right for the Tea Partiers to call Obama a Nazi." To the extent that this is accurate, it is an appeal to -- why, one's sense of social justice, actually.

I am writing this because I have a blog and I needed to vent. I am told repeatedly that Fox News is fair and balanced, that it has the largest share of the (actually rather small) cable news audience, and that it speaks for ordinary Americans. To the degree that this is true, Beck has left them all behind, watching his figure shrink on the far horizon of fanaticism. He has finally, definitively, said something that is completely Wrong from every viewpoint.

Does Glenn Beck speak for average Americans? His logic indicates they must be attending churches that preach Communism and Nazism from the pulpit every Sunday. Why are they so slow to catch on? Now that Beck has alerted them, where can they flee to worship? What will become of them? They have been cast out into the wilderness, where nothing makes sense anymore. The lonely, barren, ignorant wilderness, silent but for the gnashing of Glenn Beck.

And You Thought YOU Liked Tim Hortons?

Apparently when some men want their Timmies, you shouldn't get in their way! I thought my husband got grumpy without coffee, but not compared to Harvey Hale, 37, Randy Cayouette, 23, and Kevin Doucet, 25, all of Ajax. They apparently decided that a 36 year old, father of 2 was taking too long to get his order straight at the drive-thru. They began honking and screaming at him. The man got out of his vehicle (with his wife and kids inside) to try and calm them down, and the three men got out of their truck and began kicking and punching him.

I know we all get a little impatient at the drive-thru sometimes, but isn't this taking it just a LITTLE bit too far, gentlemen?

That being said, can I just point something out to the people who design drive-thru lanes? Once you're in, you can't get OUT without going through the whole line. If you decide that you can't wait any longer, you're screwed. While I do think people should use some common sense in looking at the lineup BEFORE getting in line, it would be nice to allow people to leave if they're pressed for time and stuck unexpectedly.

However, that being said, I am NOT justifying resorting to violence because you're going to be late for your anger management class!