Stupid

My stepdaughter met her husband here in Calgary, when both were working for Hyatt Hotels.  Problem was, he was a Texan and once a Texan, always a Texan because as I have often said, "There are Americans and then there are Texans."  So what did he do?  Moved her to Houston, Texas, where they settled and had two children, now in a sitting-duck elementary school in Houston and in danger, in my opinion.  That was stupid.

Today, the 51st school shooting since 2013 in the US happened, ramping up the killings to 88.  There have been 119 school shootings in the past four years.  Guns are now the no. 1 cause of death for children in that country.  There have been 213 mass shootings in the US so far this year and since Sandy Hook in 2012 there have been 3,500.  Thirty-five hundred!

This is insane!  What family does stepdaughter have in Houston?  Zero.  Had they stayed in Calgary, they would have had B, me, her stepsister, brother-in-law, cousins, other grandparents, an aunt and uncle and countless relatives on both side of the in-laws families.  But no, off to Texas they just HAD to go.  And now, sadly, her kids are Texans, living in the same city the National Rifle Association (NRA) is holding its annual conference this very week.  Even the mayor asked them to postpone the convention out of respect for families burying their dead.  They refused.

In Texas, you don't need a license to carry a gun.  You also don't have to submit to a criminal check.  If you are 18, you can just buy any gun -- including assault weapons.  In fact, there are more guns in the US than people.  When B went to buy a fanny pack a few years ago there, the one he returned with had a gun holster built in!  Driving down the freeways in Houston, you see guys on motorcycles casually driving along with guns on their hips.  

Why?

I'll tell you why.  Because, along with violent video games that make these killings seem "normal", the NRA continues to buy politicians with millions of dollars.  Now we will hear all the usual moaning about this latest tragedy, the president will go on national TV and cry -- although why it is taking him seven hours to get in front of a camera beats me! -- the governor will cry, the police will take the stage, the gunman's social media will be scoured for "clues", his friends will be interviewed crying, everyone will be incredulous, grief counsellors will appear, "experts" will pronounce from on high.....and what will change?

Nothing.  Frankly, I'd like to know how much the NRA has contributed to the campaigns of all the politicians currently wringing their hands and wailing.  And watching the coverage, I have never seen so many super-armed police and armored vehicles and tanks in my life!  What did they cost and what did they prevent?!  Rhetorical.  Anyone still want to de-fund the police?  Frankly, they might as well because they prevent nothing.  

Nothing will change because, as it cites the second amendment and repeats its "guns-don't-kill-people, people-kill-people" mantra, the NRA and its money are in charge.  Since Sandy Hook, what gun-control legislation has passed in Congress?  Zero.  The majority of letters to the editor in today's 'Globe and Mail' were about this mess.  Here's one that echoes what I have been saying:

Nothing will change.  Nothing.

    

   

Dinner

The other morning, one of my swim buddies, Theresa, told me she was serving "Chicken Ding" for dinner.  She is Asian, so I immediately thought it was some elegant, sophisticated Chinese dinner.  "What's that, how do you prepare it?" I asked.  "You know when you buy a roasted chicken and it gets cold?" she said.  "Yes," I replied.  "Well you just pop it in the microwave and when it goes 'Ding' it's ready.  That's 'Chicken Ding.'"  I laughed so hard I almost drowned!

Speaking of feeding your family, what's with the panic over the shortage of baby formula?  That's the best advertisement for breast feeding I can think of.  Sadly, it's too late for many babies and their mothers, the latter of whom decided against breast feeding and now it's too late because their milk has all dried up.  I never understood foregoing breast feeding?  I mean, it's right there and so handy and healthy.  I also never understood why co-sleeping was and is frowned upon?  I used to put four diapers on my babies and sleep with them.  They nursed all night off-and-on and I slept like a baby (excuse the pun).

So that's my take on dinner.  

   

A rogue's gallery

Why does everyone dye their hair blonde these days??!!  And, since they do, why don't they keep the roots dyed??!!  Here's a little rogue's gallery of these examples of late:

Sorry, all ridiculous.  Whatever happened to staying brunette, like Jackie Kennedy, Sophia Loren or Elizabeth Taylor??  Beats me!

Rex's accurate take on Singh

Rex Murphy is right about Singh -- a disgrace to Parliament.

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Rex Murphy: If Liberals are 'rigging the system,' why are you supporting them, Jagmeet Singh?

Being in league with the Liberals means you are supporting having carbon taxes on gas and raising them in a time of record inflation

“It is disgraceful the way Big Oil is gouging Canadians at the pumps.

“Gas prices are up and Big Oil CEOs are bragging about record profits.

“Liberals and Conservatives have rigged the system.

“When you pay more – their well-connected friends make more.”

It would have been a strange tweet at any time, but from a (effectively) co-prime minister it strove for the bizarre.

It was Jagmeet Singh who delivered this blistering volley, the one-time leader of the NDP and now parliamentary bodyguard to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

Pay attention please to Line 3 above, the one charging that the Liberals and Conservatives have “rigged the system.”

Singh must realize that rigging oil prices is a criminal affair. So, is he charging that the party (L) that his party (NDP) has just guaranteed a three-year stay in power, is actually fixing oil prices in collusion with “Big Oil?” That is after all what the tweet says.

 

And is he also saying that Justin Trudeau, green to everything but his socks, is covertly, sinisterly fattening the bank accounts of “his well-connected friends?”

Well, Jagmeet if you mean these things why, oh why, are you in league with them? Why have you made your party their prop and support?

Do you not follow the logic of your own thoughts?

You have proof of this “rigging” Mr. Singh? Let us have it. This is not some flip comment during question period. It is a dark and deep accusation that the Liberals and the Conservatives and “Big Oil” have conspired to enrich themselves through the infliction of pain and punishment on the poor of Canada.

By the way, how do the Conservatives come into this? I thought they were in opposition, which offers no sway over policy. As opposed to your NDP, which has great sway over what the Liberals do.

Singh is either confused or lazily glib in his pronouncements. Or perhaps totally invulnerable to the damning ironies of condemning the Liberal party and its leader while offering himself and his party as their buttress, their shield, their scaffold and support. If the Liberals are “rigging” the system, they are giving the Liberals cover. Strange posture for the NDP.

Singh is either confused or lazily glib

As for “Big Oil,” just what is that? Something out of one of the lesser James Bond movies? SPECTRE of the oilsands?

Big Oil — running Canada? They can’t even get permission to build a pipeline out of Alberta.

Will someone please tell Singh that other than in his rhetorical fantasies, Canada is not run by a cabal of oil “billionaires.” In reality it is run by a coalition of his NDP and Trudeau’s Liberals. Singh, alas, is the man with the power — he holds the fate of a whole government in his hands. There is not an oil executive in the country with so much as a whisper of Jagmeet Singh’s influence and power.

Tell him, too, that the cruel cost of gas at the pumps and heating oil for homes is the direct result of his and Trudeau’s blind anti-Canadian-oil policies. Mr. Singh, the carbon tax and anti-oil policies of your brother Liberals are one of the main reason prices have risen to punishing heights.

You cannot shout about high gas prices, Mr. Singh. You made a deal that enabled them, a deal that endorsed the rationalization that making the poor in Canada pay more for essential energy will change — pause for laughter — the global atmosphere.

Supporting the Liberals means you are supporting having carbon taxes and raising them in a time of record inflation. You do know who this hurts most. The poor. The unemployed. Blue-collar workers. Anyone in economic distress. Precisely the set of citizens that in the days of David Lewis and Tommy Douglas and Jack Layton the NDP made it their business to protect, fight for, and represent. It’s been a sad shift from “work to woke,” from being the only true challengers to the “natural governing power” to its obliging consort and always obliging handmaiden. (Ms. Atwood please forgive the appropriation of your sad red-hat heroines.)

Do you really wish to help these same poor people, Mr. Leader of what once was the workers’ party? Drop the expedient coalition. Fight against the useless and injurious carbon tax. Lobby for a couple of pipelines. Talk to a few oil workers. Tend to the wants and needs of ordinary Canadian citizens.

Is it so uncomfortable to realize you were elected as a voice of opposition?

National Post

In praise of working mothers

"Here is my toast to you, ambitious mothers everywhere:  Take hope, take pride and keep the faith.  What you are doing isn't just okay, it's awesome."

So wrote Lara Bazelon, author of  'Ambitious Like a Mother:  Why Prioritizing your Career is Good for Your Kids', in Saturday's 'Globe and Mail'.  Having been a working mother since my children were six months old, naturally I agree.  There was no way I was going to throw over a hard-earned and pricey degree after having a kid to sit around in some pitiable Mums' Club, drinking wine and discussing the latest inane book club recommendation (well, maybe the wine sipping part I'd indulge a bit).  And I certainly wasn't going to be questioned by a husband when I asked for money. 

Nowadays, women expect society to cover their child care; when I had mine, you covered your own.  And so it was that my kids were exposed to a multitudinous bevy of solutions, including, daycare, live-in nannies, neighbours, after-four programs, grandparents and friends -- most of which did a far better job than I could ever have managed.  Never mind that it consumed a bunch of my salary, it was worth it for both me and my children.  Why do women still earn less than men?  Because they have to take those few years off and really never catch up.

In the late seventies, when I had kids, you neither got a year's worth of maternity leave nor your own job back.  You got unemployment insurance and a job back.  (Always pissed me off to see someone else doing my job when I returned, by the way, but thanks to those of us who manned the barricades, this has changed for the better.) 

When I used to visit my stepdaughter in Texas, a card-carrying devotee of the local Mums' Club in a very tony Houston neighbourhood, I would marvel at the number of expensive university degrees and other educational pedigrees sitting around basically doing nothing at such gatherings -- all the while congratulating themselves on having husbands rich enough to allow them to basically sit around and do nothing.  To hang with the money our fathers and mothers forked out mightily for our educational pieces of paper!  We're just going to sit around and do nothing!

But I anecdotally digress.

All studies show that children of working mothers are more likely to be employed, earn higher wages and have jobs with supervisory responsibilities.  They also admire their mothers and feel deeply bonded to them growing up -- in spite of the fact that the mothers were often absent.  So, even if you can, don't quit your job to be a "Real Housewife of....."  Get back into the workforce as soon as possible because if you don't, when your kids are grown and gone, you'll be a nobody with a fancy, never-used degree.  

    

Here we go again

So, native women now comprise half the female population in Canadian prisons -- in spite of the fact they make up only four percent of the total Canadian population.  Four percent!  And this is presumably after a native "healing circle" has been convened in each case to try to play down the crime and mitigate the punishment -- the latter never quite equaling the former.  But even then, they're up to half.

And I won't even ask you to guess who's fault it all is because you know the answer.  Reading my blogs, you might surmise I am a misogynist -- and even more so when it comes to native women -- but we keep doing ourselves in and confirming the opinions of the real misogynists out there.  There seems to be no personal responsibility for behaviours when it comes to natives.  Correctional Services Investigator Ivan Zinger wholeheartedly agrees:

"It's just shocking and shameful for a country that has so many resources," he said about the native over-population in prisons.  I would have put it this way:

"It's just shocking and shameful for Indigenous people who are given so many resources by the people of Canada to have so many disproportionate females in prisons."  That's the truth. 

Rates are on the rise and will continue to be because, as former chief commissioner of the infamously biased MMIWG inquiry Marion Buller says, "The underlying factors we hear time and time again are poverty (Really? With the billions natives are given every year?), violence (by whom against whom?), generational trauma (a real fallacy) and dislocation (from where to where?).  Until these factors are properly addressed, we're going to see the numbers rise.  Governments (you and me) haven't funded restorative justice programs (Really? Yes we have and you now have your own courts to try cases outside of secular law and administer your own sentences).

Just as with the kinship program for native children in care, the above experiment has also failed.  I can't seem to understand why natives take no responsibility for their own actions and decisions?  It's not a lack of money because billions are handed over every year.  Frankly, that's the problem.  Money never solves anything on this file; it just acerbates the mess.  Every time you see or hear a native leader on TV, it's always "We need more resources (i.e., money) to right these wrongs."

"It just makes it really evident how it's a continuation of colonization (that go-to-bug-a-boo excuse). Every actor in the so-called justice system has to take responsibility for their role," wept Emilie Coyle, executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies.

When oh when are native leaders going to step up and shoulder their responsibilities?  That also goes for everyone else.   

 

    

           

Following along on my previous post....

An associate professor and coordinator of women's and gender studies at a local university here in Calgary is decrying the plight of women in this city.  

First of all, call me unenlightened, but I have never understood why universities even have "women and gender studies" faculties at universities, or why we need "gender diversity" or "policy alternative" or "gender economy" faculties either, but OK let's see what she says.  Writing in 'The Calgary Herald' the other day, Prof. "X" says that, "28 percent of First Nations women, 23 percent of single mothers and 15 percent of visible minority women in Calgary live in poverty."  Here's a bulletin:  Don't have kids if you are poor and single!  You'll only be poorer!

A few years ago, B and I were at a dinner and the female speaker's topic was "child poverty".  I had to be gently physically restrained from jumping up and making a comment about single, teenaged mothers being one of the chief reasons for child poverty.  The crowd, mostly university "woke" types, would not have stood for it, so I reluctantly shut up.  Every year I heartily thank my birth mother for having had the good sense to give me up for adoption; otherwise I would have been reared in poverty like the cohort of kids this "gender-brilliant" prof was talking about.

Prof. X went on at length about a lot of things that are obvious to me, albeit anecdotally I admit, but she wrapped it up by calling on Mayor Gondek to "implement a feminist, anti-racist response and plan that includes policies that acknowledge unpaid work (i.e., hello, being a mother!), expanded access to child care, a plan to lobby the province to support a guaranteed basic income and a commitment to systemically (I hate that concept) incorporate inter-sectional, gender-based (here we go again) analysis across all municipal policy-making moving forward (another popular, but completely unnecessary, phrase du jour).

Meanwhile, Calgary's trees and roads are falling apart!  Nero fiddles while Rome burns, but I predict our rabidly "feminist" and "woke" mayor will go for it with gusto!  But wait, Prof. X isn't done yet.  She also wants Gondek and councillors to form the city's first "gender-equity action committee akin to and work in collaboration (how's that for sh-tty grammar?!) with the new anti-racism committee, whose goal since it was formed in October 2020 has been to oversee the development of a community-based anti-racism strategy."  Boy, there's so much "anti-this-and-anti-that" it's hard to keep track of where this would take us and what wonders it would produce!

What these women don't seem to realize is that my cohort invented feminism in the late sixties.  We went to the barricades so women like Prof. X could fool around and get degrees in "gender" nonsense.  All we wanted was a few weeks of maternity leave and equal pay for equal work, the latter of which has yet to materialize, by the way.  We didn't want to spend our hard-earned educational dollars at university navel-gazing and gnashing our teeth in despair.  We wanted to party and study (maybe not quite in that order) and then get the same jobs and opportunities men had.

Prof. X also revealed that a number of critical groups are in on this, namely "The Women's Centre, Vibrant Communities Calgary, Basic Income Calgary and Fair Fares Calgary".  Who knew these august bodies even existed!?  And if so, how many women are making big money running them?!  But wait, if there's still so much to do on this dismal file, what have they been doing!?  She finally concludes with this doozy:

"We need the city to step up in a big way.  A feminist, anti-racist plan, in combination with the creation of a gender-equity action committee and the appointment of Calgary's first special adviser to the mayor on the status of women, (trust me, our worthy mayor will insist she can easily advise herself on this file, thank you very much) gender and sexualities (there's a new one!) is a guaranteed way to move the needle on poverty in our city."

No, it isn't and it certainly won't guarantee less poverty in this city.  That's a delusional objective.  Just for fun, I googled Prof. X and whaddaya know!  She looks about 40-ish and has a PhD in Women's Studies (what else!) from the University of Maryland and a BA in Theatre from Rhode Island College.  Her age may have something to do with her attitude, but that "theatre" degree really nails it.  

All-in-all, her credentials tell you everything you need to know about why she thinks the way she does.  Whew, glad I didn't stick around for my PhD!  

  

You could not make this up

 

Read this and weep.........................The woman just approved for the Supreme Court couldn't answer because....."I'm not a biologist"      Anatomy Texts Prove Women Exist   May 2, 2022   Catholic League president Bill Donohue settles the argument over whether women exist:   Women exist. It's true. The controversy is over. Anatomy texts settle the issue.   "Can you provide a definition for the word 'woman'?" This question was asked of Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during the confirmation hearings. She could not. "I'm not a biologist," she said.   It is hard to believe that as recently as a decade or two ago that this question would even be raised. But we live in strange times. Not only is our newest Supreme Court Justice not sure what a woman is—ironically she was chosen partly because the president thinks she is a woman—lots of well-educated persons are puzzled.   Alia E. Dastagir is a reporter for USA Today. "Scientists, gender law scholars and philosophers of biology said Jackson's response was commendable, though perhaps misleading." They "note that a competent biologist would not be able to offer a definitive answer either."   So who are these people? Rebecca Jordan-Young teaches at Barnard College and claims to be a scientist. She says Jackson was not nuanced enough. "I don't want to see this question punted to biology as if science can offer a simple, definitive answer." But wouldn't we punt to a dentist to explain what a root canal is? For that matter, wouldn't we punt to an auto mechanic to explain what a car is?   Sarah Richardson is a Harvard historian and philosopher of biology, and she believes that science is not best suited to define what a women is. "As is often the case," she says, "science cannot settle what are really social questions." That's funny. When I was studying for my doctorate in sociology at NYU, I was never taught that sociology was the best suited to know what a woman is. Maybe I missed that class.   Sometimes this issue gets very messy. St. Louis University identifies as a Catholic school, yet last year a student group was investigated by the Office of Student Responsibility and Community Standards because it raised the question in a social media video, "What is a woman?" Why they weren't expelled remains a mystery.   So what do they teach in medical school? Surely no one wants to go to a doctor who doesn't know the difference between a man and a woman. I hate to get technical about this, but guys being treated for prostate cancer don't want to go to a gynecologist.   Anne M. Gilroy is the author of Anatomy: An Essential Textbook, Third Edition, published in 2021 by Thieme Medical Publishers. Richard L. Drake, A. Wayne Vogl and Adam W.M. Mitchell are the authors of Gray's Anatomy for Students, Fourth Edition, published in 2020 by Elsevier.   These textbooks are among the most widely used by medical students in the United States and abroad. Both clearly identify what a male and female are and what constitutes their biological status. Those who claim that there are sexes other than male and female find no support in these books. Here is what we found.   Thieme's Anatomy: An Essential Text Book, Third Edition ·       References to Female: 40 ·       References to Male: 25 ·       References to Transgender: ZERO ·       References to Intersex: ZERO ·       References to Other Sexes or Genders: ZERO   Gray's Anatomy for Students, Fourth Edition ·       References to Female: 8 ·       References to Male: 10 ·       References to Transgender: ZERO ·       References to Intersex: ZERO ·       References to Other Sexes or Genders: ZERO   Both books make it clear that there are female bodies and male bodies, and that's it. There is no special transgender body or any of the other pantheon of sexualities or gender identities.   Intersex is a real medical condition where an individual is born with irregular chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals. In the wake of the passage of the Florida Parental Rights in Education law, left-wing activists and teachers quickly latched on to the notion that young children need to know about intersex because some of the students might have this anatomical anomaly. However, the textbooks did not offer a section on this category, so unusual is this condition.   In other words, those elites who are not sure what a woman is made the right decision not to pursue medicine. They would have flunked out of medical school.     Phone: 212-371-3191 E-mail: pr@catholicleague.org

Rex nails it, again

Rex Murphy on the bullsh-t that is Trudeau:

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Amazing as it is, as inflation insidiously crawls across the land, skyrocketing gasoline prices freeze the blood (with a federal carbon tax increase set to hit on April Fool’s Day), as the economy is stifled by debt, supply chains rattle or crumble, and the country crawls out of the devastation of the COVID clampdowns, the Trudeau-Singh coalition government has announced its most determined climate agenda for Canada ever.

In Vancouver on Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, back-stopped by his non-present partner, Jagmeet Singh, leader of the Liberal-merged NDP, announced the new, improved, let-us-save-the-world-by-killing-Alberta-and-the-oil-industry climate plan.

Lord, I wish I had been there. This was a Plains of Abraham moment in front of some of the finest shops in the whole country.

This was a Plains of Abraham moment

The good news. Now that Singh, and I presume the entire NDP party, has effectively merged with Trudeau’s Liberals, the PM has regained his stride.

He is fully back on his climate change kick. The world can spin whichever way it wants, but under the Singh-reinforced Trudeau government, Canada has one purpose only, one duty as a country: to save this great globe of our common earth from inexorable climate doom.

Trudeau went Tuesday to that beautiful and great coal-exporting city — Vancouver ships more coal to the world than any other North American city — to announce new targets for Canada’s carbon-dioxide emissions, and declare new promises to remake the chemical constitution of the global atmosphere. It had to be a rapturous moment for the Green Party’s Elizabeth May.

That achieved, the only other business was a little cash gathering. Save the planet and then hold a $1,675-a-plate Liberal fundraiser at a carbon-neutral hotel. The old saying is true. Virtue is its own well-financed reward.

As was posted in the PM’s Twitter feed on Tuesday: “In the global fight against climate change, Canada is leading the way.”

But how? Leading the way, I mean?

Does Canada nullify China’s massive indifference to this whole hysteria? A massive country with a massive population is determined to have its place in modern life. Windmills will not take it there. It will use every energy resource, as long as it thinks it needs to, to get there. It will mine coal. It will build dams. It will seek gas and oil in every strip of land under its sovereignty, and import however much it wants. And so it is entitled to do.

Is there some thought in the PMO that the autocrats of China are checking into Trudeau’s Twitter feed? And calling “Halt” when they read of Canada’s “leadership” in the spurious fight against global warming? Can the delusion be that deep?

There is another great country, of massive population, and not yet by any measurement a full participant in the modern world’s comforts, security, health protections, or standard of living. It is glorious India.

Is India following Canada’s “lead” in the fight against global warming? It is an insult to think that such could be the case. India, this can be no surprise, will follow India’s imperatives, and will seek to bring its people to some material equivalence with the citizens of countries — like Canada — whose leaders and billionaires preach from lush pulpits in Davos and Vancouver about what lesser countries should do.

How are we leading the fight against global warming? We are a leaf on a river, nothing more. Our standing internationally is feeble or negligent; where do we stand out? On every question of crisis we are on the sidelines. There is a theory that we have an “unsurpassed convening power.” Well, you just wait till the other conveners hear about this.

“Canada is leading the way in the fight against climate change?” It is puzzling to hear the prime minister make the claim because no other country seems to echo it.

Name those following us, Mr. Trudeau. Name the councils and assemblies of the world summoning the Canadian example as they cripple their energy sources, generate carbon taxes, and swear off oil and gas forever. Name one single country that has billboarded Canada as the reason they have gone net-zero. (You have several weeks to answer.)

We are a leaf on a river, nothing more

Let us turn now to one country where the boast is a pure joke. Did the walls of the Kremlin shake when Trudeau pointed to Canada’s leadership?

Vladimir Putin is currently, and violently, demonstrating what control and supply over real and proven energy resources means. There are dead in the streets of Ukraine because Putin owns energy supply for parts of Europe.

Europe went green. It tossed away energy it had, which was both secure and reliable, and signed on to the fantasy of “let’s get to net-zero.”

The cold man in the Kremlin was pleased. How could he not be? He is cruel; he is not stupid. He knew that as long as his oligarchic Russia held the rescue line for Europe’s most basic requirement — real, reliable, carbon-emitting energy — he could invade where he wished and stare back, a grin on his face, at energy-dependent, global-warming virtuous, Europe.

Putin knew another truth. The only “energy” that comes out of the current green fascination is an energy that enables posture and show. We do not like Putin. But he is teaching the world an old fact. Real politics always blast show politics. We have an epidemic of show politics in the West, and hardly anywhere more pervasive than in Canada under Coalition.

We are not leaders in the fight against global climate change. We are stooges in a mock show of virtue signaling.

National Post