This is "fashion"?!

'Style' magazine in 'The Globe and Mail' today included this disaster.  If this is now "fashion", I am in big trouble:





Stuff and nonsense

Five stretch, gas-fuelled limos were lined up idling outside the National Press Club the other day when my friend pulled up for a lunch appointment.  "Holy sh-t, I guess the PM is here," she said on the phone when she arrived.  Guess what?  He was inside -- probably blathering on about how everyone should buy an electric car.  Everyone except him.

Has no one noticed the entire North American economy centres around oil, gas, carbon and fossil fuels?  The latest stupefying move by the feds is to allocate $300 million in subsidies for anyone dumb enough to buy an electric car.  Hey, if you can afford a $50-60K Tesla, you don't need a subsidy; you've got it covered.

Think about it, it's not just the beleaguered oil sands, it's everything else that is tied to cars.  Things like gas stations and the corner stores attached to them, repair shops, after-market suppliers like Canadian Tire, tire companies, accessory companies, automotive trade shows....and on and on and on.  Whither the car industry, whither the entire economy.  Just a plain fact.

I know one guy who has an electric car, but he's a rich doctor so can afford one.  And where do you plug the blessed thing in?  An extension cord from the garage?  I don't think we're there yet.  And by the way, you can only drive so far until the battery dies and if you're in Lethbridge or Upper Rubber Boot Saskatchewan, you're sh-t out of luck.

No, the petrol-fueled car isn't going anywhere because there is currently no viable alternative.  I can think of better places to spend $300 million.     

$19,000

That's what the Kitchenuhmaykoosib reserve in Northern Ontario receives every year to pay for gas and repairs to keep their fire truck in working order.  And that's over-and-above the rest of the millions the band routinely receives. 

But guess what?  The fire truck was not in working order when a fire on the fly-in location killed a woman and four children the other night.  "Just because they have a fire truck on paper doesn't mean it's up and running.  There's not a lot of money given for maintenance," complained Richard Kent, v-p of the Aboriginal Firefighters Association of Canada.  What a bizarre thing to say while the band pockets $19,000 a year for this very expense.  Obviously, they are spending that money on other things -- what we don't know, but not the fire truck.  "Indigenous Services Canada provides money for firefighting, but communities may choose to use fire protection funding on other projects," said the department wimpily. 

Once again, it's the rest of us and the feds who have caused this problem.  It's never the bands' fault.  Well, I'm here to tell you it is.  "The way I feel right now, I don't know how to explain it?" the band chief inexplicably said.  CMHC said fires on reserves are caused by poorly-built housing, a shortage of smoke alarms (would have been useless when the truck wasn't working), arson (there's a good one!) and the use of wood stoves -- all items the responsibility of the bands who have taken over everything, including the firefighting itself.

Why are these people still living on fly-in reserves?  Oh yeah, I forgot, money.  Sorry, but someone has to say it.      

Is he delusional, or just dumb?

"It is untenable that facebook does not recognize the opinion of the Privacy Commissioner and change the way it operates with regard to privacy," said the delusional Daniel Therrien the other day. 

Seriously!?  We are talking facebook here, a social media giant that everyone is on all the time.  If you get on facebook, you know the deal.  You can restrict your profile.  Or not.  Otherwise, fb sells your data to advertisers.  The user has all the options here.  Did Therrien not notice that fb has a lot of advertising on it?  That's because advertisers advertise based on the data fb provides them.  Old-school advertisers did the same thing.  They targeted the general public all the time with surveys and the like to get to the consumers they wanted.  What's new here?  Duh, buddy!

The other gang that sells its data to all-and-sundry is StatsCan.  And where does StatsCan get its data?  Why, from The Canada Revenue Agency, of course.  Nothing is "private" and that's because data is needed for everything -- social programs being the biggest user.  How would Therrien's relatives get their welfare and Child Tax Benefit money without stats?

I predict that next Therrien will go after LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram for "privacy" violations.  How ludicrous.  If you get on any of these sites, it's "buyer beware".  The fact that the Privacy Commissioner has no teeth or power to do anything about anything is proof no one gives a sh-t.  Facebook basically told him to eff off. 

Good on them.  If you don't want your "privacy" violated, don't use social media.       

More ludicrous

People take offence at everything these days.  I posted on a fb "friend's" site that Filipinos sent more money back to the Philippines than any other ethnic Canadians.  Boy, someone got all uppity and accused me of this and that, saying they could send their "hard-earned money" anywhere they liked.

Yes, they can, but it gets taken out of the Canadian economy where it has been earned.  Next in the remittance department are the Nigerians.  I am simply stating what 'The Economist' publishes every week in stats that reveal what is happening all over the world, but this woman took umbrage.  In fact, I actually removed my comment to damp down the internet noise over this stat.

What is wrong with people?!

B gave a lecture to someone who called because she could not read our credit card number on a donation we made to the Foot and Mouth Painters.  "Sorry, I can't understand you," he said.  "Can you transfer me to someone who speaks English?"  Asking her where she was from, he was told the Philippines, so she too got an economic earful about sending money back "home", etc.  "Why do you come to Canada if you want to get back to the Philippines?  Do you think your children born here will want to go back to that corrupt and dangerous country?" he asked.  "Why don't you go to the US."  "Because they won't let me in," she replied. 

#Welcome to Canada.  By the way, she had to call back this morning because she still couldn't get the credit card number straight.  We give a donation because we keep the cards, but if it happens again, I am sending the cards back and not giving them a cent.       

Ludicrous

Universities have become uninclusive places of non-learning, the opposite of what they were designed to be.  I attribute this to the paranoia of visible minority and female students who see every opinion they don't hold as a threat to their identities. 

The latest is the dis-invitation issued Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield to be the keynote speaker at Concordia's 40th anniversary celebrations.  Why was he banned?  Because he wrote a book entitled 'Manliness', in which he describes it as evident in "the person who likes to be in charge of situations of risk.  He has a take-charge attitude.  Most manly persons are men, but not all," wrote the 50-year veteran of teaching at Harvard. 

Wow!  What a concept!  Manly men are usually men!  Amazing!  But apparently, a "diversity of voices among the university's alumni" was behind the decision to cancel the keynote speech and in the end the gala itself!  You know what "diversity of voices" means, don't you.  It means women who don't like the idea of men being manly.  At least, that's what it says to me.

I suspect many of the students against Mansfield's appearance were also "people of colour" who are usually offended by everything -- especially at a university.  Remember when the Middle Eastern students at Ottawa U had Ann Coulter's appearance cancelled by yelling loudly and waving placards at president Alan Rock who promptly caved?  Another example of chicken-sh-t behaviour.

But if anyone says anything like I have here, he/she is vilified and termed a racist.  Frankly, it's the visible minorities who have become the racists.  "The invitation was a surprise, the rejection less of a one, because I am a white male conservative professor," wrote Mansfield in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.  A respected professor and author for his scholarship on political philosophy, Mansfield is also considered a world-class expert on Machiavelli.  But he also writes on gender and culture and his 'Manliness' book is considered by the protestors outdated and demeaning.  By the way, he also criticizes the panic around the so-called "rape culture" which many hysterics declare is rampant on today's university campuses. 

Absolutely a crock.  But apparently, if you are a white, male professor you are automatically a rabid racist.  It's all so ludicrous, but lines up perfectly with what Concordia has become.  We were planning to go to Montreal last Fall for homecoming, but they made it into a "Queer Homecoming" celebration, to which I objected.  When I wrote to tell them we would not be attending because of how they were going to celebrate it, I received an email telling me that this was because Concordia was so "inclusive".

How can a "Queer Homecoming" be inclusive?  It's completely exclusive.  Guess the people who organized it didn't understand the difference between "inclusive" and "exclusive".

Universities are now the thought and word police where no can say anything that's not politically correct.  Sad.     

"Look....."

...says Climate Barbie to every question she is ever asked.  Just saw her on 'Power Play' and that was her answer to everything.  "Look, climate change, a price on pollution, look, climate change, a price on pollution, look, climate change, a price on pollution...."  And on and on and on.  The "look" translates into "....you dummy."  I find her very offensive on every level and a disgrace to her gender.

Last night we went to a Fourth Degree Knights of Columbia dinner touted as "Ladies Appreciation Night".  They have one every year, but the appalling thing is that the wives have to prepare the food every year!  Not I, but some of the doormat wives actually do this.  How can this "appreciate" ladies when they have to do the schlepping?! 

For a couple of years, B organized proper dinners for the ladies when we went to The Palliser Hotel or The Ranchmen's Club, but now it's back to the church basement, soup and chicken.  Ugh!  I thought the Knights were a disaster in Ottawa, but in Calgary they are rock bottom.