The obvious

'The Globe and Mail' and 'Calgary Herald' are chock-a-block full of stories about what's wrong with Erin O'Toole and the Conservatives.  They even commissioned some kind of inquiry into what went wrong in the last election and what's still going wrong.  

I can tell you right now:  Erin O'Toole.

Frankly and cruelly, it starts with his first name.  "Erin" is not a man's name, in my view; after that, it's downhill all the way.  Hard to believe, but he is actually younger than Trudeau -- looks like he could be the latter's uncle.  Then we move onto that blue suit and tie he wears ALL THE TIME.  Then we have his flip-flopping.  Then we have the fact that he's over-coached.  Well, he has to be because he is not a natural leader.  And while I'm at it, why do political leaders have to have their wives and kids draped all over them in photos?  The days when "the wife" had to be trotted out to attract the female vote are long gone.  Women vote -- or don't -- for the leader and in Erin's case his wife is not an asset, in my never-to-be-humble opinion.  (At the risk of attracting more "fat shaming" labels, I posit that they both need to lose a few pounds.)  But back to attracting women, it's insulting to think they will only relate to wives.  I mean, how many mothers are from in-tact families these days?  

(Relevant note:  I was interviewed for the position of the Head of the Secretariat on the Status of Women way back when, but didn't get the job because I said women of all kinds had to be represented -- such as the single mother cashier at Walmart, or someone on welfare -- not just "smarty-pants, liberated" university grads.  But I digress......)

The Conservatives need to quit navel-gazing and dump O'Toole before it's too late and Trudeau gets in with a -- G-d forbid -- majority!  Worse still, he steps aside and Freeland gets it!@%^$%^@#$!!!  This is highly likely because the polls are now putting her ahead of both Trudeau and (Art, as I call him) Carney as the preferred leader -- even in Quebec!!@#$^%$%!@#%#$^@!!

Let's all pray that Diefenbaker was right when he said, "Dogs know what to do with polls."

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A word about another "obvious" mess.  Apparently, an investigation is still underway about the party flight a bunch of twenty-somethings took on Sunwing.  Hello!  It was a bunch of kids living it up on a private flight!  What's to investigate?  I remember back-in-the-day when all flights were a sort of free-form party junket, with people smoking and drinking with gay abandon.  Now, however, everything has to be "investigated" to death.

I'm sick of it all.      

   

Facebook can be annoying

 Just going to do a quick blog about a picture I posted on fb yesterday:

This was a terrific Depends ad on the inside back cover of 'The New Yorker'.  I thought it was superb because it featured women "of a certain age" who have lost that twenty-something body and who often need things like Depends to ensure those little leaks don't escape.  

However, I remarked that I thought I looked like the gal on the left, but beastly B said I resembled more the model on the far right.  He's right, of course, but you know how we resist admitting we've gained a few more than we'd have liked -- especially after having endured two years of mindless COVID munching and no exercise!

I added that I was glad I didn't look like the model in the middle -- I mean that's a bit extreme in the face of how I've looked for most of my life.  Well, I was sharply criticized by a woman I don't know (how she was able to see my post, I have no clue?) who happened to have been related to that model.  It all got out-of-hand with comments about "fat shaming" and the like, so I deleted the post and that pissed me off.  As I have said, that's why I blog because I can say pretty much whatever I like -- as long as it isn't libelous and contains factual numbers. 

So, here's the picture.  I still love the ad, but I still unapologetically hope I don't get too big.  However, this viral beast is still around, so we'll see.  I certainly am bigger than I have ever been, but hopefully the pool will take care of some of that.    

Two salts, no bacon

That was what arrived when in-room breakfast was delivered on our first morning at the Banff Springs Hotel last week.  Now, this is a VERY expensive hotel, as in up to $1K a night for a suite, so one doesn't expect mishaps like this to befall.  

Naturally, we booked a suite, so you would not expect breakfast to arrive with no pepper and forgotten bacon -- the latter being the most egregious deficiency.  But after I told a manager I had a blog and intended to write about our experience, EVERYTHING miraculously changed!  Well, not exactly miraculously because the manager googled my site and must have put out the call which caused everyone everywhere to snap into action.

We were shadowed by managers, met at elevators, escorted to every destination and treated to tableside consultations with the chef of every restaurant in the place.  Our suite was upgraded and we were moved immediately.  When the final bill arrived, our room charge had been drastically reduced.  So, I guess having a blog read by thousands pays off now and then. 

Here are a few shots from our suite (the heated pool I would never enter, but lots did):

     

Executive exemption

Remember when tennis was a civilized game, played by refined, well-mannered, decorous, genteel men and women?  Remember when everyone wore white and abided by gentlemanly rules?  Remember when you didn't need linesmen or referees to make sure no one was cheating because opponents called the lines themselves? 

Not any more.

Now we have that boor Novak Djokovic raving in the public thoroughfare about not being permitted into Australia because he is not vaccinated.  He has obviously missed the part about sovereign countries deciding who gets in and who doesn't.  Tennis Australia, for purely money reasons, gave him an executive exemption to slide in in hopes he would fill the stands.  So far, the courts have given him a hall pass, but the ultimate decision comes down to the minister of immigration, who can overrule the courts in this instance because, as I mentioned, Australia is a sovereign country.

The biggest spectacle -- apart from the Serbs marching in the streets -- was put on by Mama Boor, who claimed on television her gazillionaire son was not being treated like a human being and was imprisoned.  She even threw in the charge that he had been "tortured".  Papa Boor, shedding tears, agreed and together the two of them cemented the impression some of us have about Serbs and Eastern Europeans as being a rather yobbo bunch who view laws to be trampled upon if they don't like them.  And speaking of boors who don't get sovereignty, the president of Serbia actually had to gall to call the prime minister of Australia to try to strong-arm Djokovic's way into the tournament!  That guy needs to google info on the Commonwealth to see how countries work outside the Soviet block.  Rule of law anyone?

I hope the government ships him back, but if it doesn't, I hope the more civilized of spectators don't pay to watch that oaf play.  Roger Federer he most certainly is not. 

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Read Cathal Kelly in 'The Globe and Mail' today.  He covers it much better than I, but same idea.

 

  

Why I prefer to blog

When I read that a tenured professor at Mount Royal University is fired for her support of debate and free speech because a horde of the "woke" stomped all over her, I know why I will never be a columnist.  That's why a blog is the only route for me.  

Frances Widdowson was hysterically dumped because she said things I write about all the time.  Imagine, she had the "unwokeness" to say that the BLM movement had destroyed Mount Royal.  Guess what?  It has!  She also came out publicly and actually had the nerve to say that, in spite of what transpired at times to some children (principally, it turns out, perpetrated by older students upon younger), residential schools did a lot of good in educating natives.  Guess what?  They did.  

Do you think for one moment all the educated native leaders would be where they are had they not been given an education in a residential school?  Would they be lawyers, like Ovide Mercredi and James Bartleman, for example?  No, they would not.  Yes, there was abuse, but there's abuse everywhere in every setting where vulnerable children live.  Even the sainted boy scouts found it within their ranks.  And, as I have blogged, it happened to me in my respected orthodontist's office with my mother sitting right outside the door.

So, blogging is my only outlet.  I blog for myself and if anyone else finds it illuminating, great!  I blog because I am a writer who must write and I hold strong, well-researched opinions -- opinions that would offend all the "wokers" about whom I don't give a sh-t.  

Did I ever tell you about the time I went to a family gathering here and was told by a sanctimonious guest that, "I read your blog, but I don't agree with a lot of what you say."  I laughed and said, "Really!?  Well, write your own blog.

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How the incompetent have deteriorated trying in vain to do their jobs.  Here's Patti Hadju today:

Gawd!

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This really burns me

Just as the Lebanese did a few years ago, when war disrupted their tidy lives, now the Afghans are demanding Canadians fork over to get them out of the sh-t-storm in their homeland and back to safety in Toronto.  

Many immigrants and "refugees" come to Canada simply to obtain "citizenship of convenience" for goodies like health care and education and then go right back to their native countries to live for years.  Until something bad happens.  What did it cost to evacuate thousands of Lebanese out of that failed state?  Millions -- and they argued entitlement to get back!  Naturally, Canada ludicrously obliged.

Here's the latest headline in 'The Globe and Mail'.  It's infuriating but it'll happen because it's all about lobbying for the Afghan vote in Canada.  

  

One agenda

Chinese-Albertans are reportedly rioting in the streets because Premier Kenney talked about the pandemic and said, "Who knows when the next bat-soup out of Wuhan will arrive?"

Well, of course they are.  As I keep saying, ethnics' principle agenda on everything is race.  Apparently, Kenney's "vicious" comment will further ramp up prejudice against the Chinese community in Alberta.  Really?!  Never mind that COVID actually did come from bats deliberately infected in a lab in Wuhan -- never mind all that.  No, this is clearly a "fiery insult" to the Chinese in Alberta.  It's ludicrous.

Just as Freeland's agenda is the Ukraine and Gondek's is race, so too the Chinese have picked up the ethnic-outsider cudgel to pound Kenney.  The natives too have their needle stuck on race -- oh, that and money.  I predict the Chinese will demand "compensation" for his casual remark.

People, please get over yourselves.      

That's their main job

Governments have one basic function -- to keep their citizens safe.  At that, each and every one has proven abjectly incompetent, criminal in my opinion.  Every day we are told something different about vaccines, tests, quarantine -- you name it, it's a dog's breakfast of ineptitude!

First it was stay in and don't go anywhere.  Then it was get the vaccine, then it was get two doses, then it was get a booster.  Now they're pushing a fourth shot!!! What the f-ck!?  What was the point of the vaccine and hibernation if people are still dying even with three shots??  In my view, the point of the vaccine-plus movement is to further enrich drug companies.  Time to buy stock in a few! 

Quarantine has gone from 14 days to 10 to five and now to three.  Currently, if you test positive on a rapid one at home, just assume you have COVID and stay home.  That's an insane way to "manage" the health of Canadians.  As my pharmacist says, "No one knows anything."  I did a blog about all the health ministers, deputy ministers and chief public health officers still employed and raking in hundreds of thousands in salaries.  It's all so wrong.  Robyn Urback had an excellent analysis of the mess in her 'Globe and Mail' column yesterday:

"It is a function of good fortune that the (disastrous) implosion of testing, tracing and the orderly distribution of vaccines in many provinces has been met by a variant that does not appear to result in severe illness as often as its predecessors did.  Indeed, this 'you're on your own' phase of the pandemic is bearable only because citizens aren't dying by the thousands.  It's an abject institutional failure, buoyed only by dumb luck."

Read it and weep.  

First, our "leaders" had no clue what was coming.  Then, when the pandemic arrived, they hadn't enough PPEs, then they had to ration vaccines, now there aren't enough rapid tests for all Canadians.  Two years on, how can our health -- read "death" -- authorities be caught flat-footed yet again?!  Canadians should be outraged, but not enough of us are.  And Trudeau just sails merrily along.  He and Tam should both be dumped, charged and jailed.  Blood of thousands on their hands. 

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Re-read "Just a tad behind," Feb. 22, 2021, to see a list of all the "health" ministers who are still collecting HUGE salaries, while literally killing Canadians.