Let me join the throngs of outraged West Coasters who have properly decried the nutty little mandarin decision to close the Kitsilano coast guard station.
Now we have the embarrassing sight of a Maple Ridge MP making a public spectacle of himself by defending this idiocy. Like they've got lots of oceans in Maple Ridge...
Barack Obama on Wednesday became the first president in U.S. history
to personally endorse same-sex marriage, putting one of the most
socially and culturally divisive issues in American politics at the
forefront of his campaign for re-election.
After several years in
which his personal views on gay marriage had been "evolving," Obama said
he felt it was "important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think
same-sex couples should be able to get married."
Those first two paragraphs are a direct quote from this morning's Vancouver Sun.
Yes, there are more pressing issues at hand in the current U.S. election. The American economy and the American sense of pride are both wobbly. Jobs, productivity, immigration, the role of government, all of these and more have huge daily impact on the lives of all our neighbours south of the border.
But this matter of equal rights and opportunities for gays is also important, and President Obama's forthright declaration is courageous, righteous and historic.
This is called progress and all the agencies that call themselves Family Somnethingorother and exist only to hate a tiny segment of the community are whistling in the wind.
The following two paragraphs were sent to me in a private email from an old and dear friend who knows whereof she speaks; she might also have added that soon we will be giving smokers free cigarettes:
My son has a long time friend who is now a school principal.
Mr. P. is furious. He should be. And so should you.
He now has to fill in for the teachers at his school who will not coach teams or referee or help with the school play or grad ceremonies.
I am so tired of this almost annual sham of teachers going on strike just as exams, report cards, inter-mural sports and graduations all come to a spring and summer boil.
The BC Teachers' Federation claims a 73% vote in favour of this cheesy carry-on at the expense of children and parents.
I know dozens of teachers who would love to do these volunteer assignments, but are constrained from doing so because of the Fed.
Every day something ridiculous happens.
We react, and we chatter about it over coffee and we declare the world gone mad and we make dinner and watch Seinfeld re-runs and forget about it.
Then the next day, something even more outrageous happens.
And we recoil in horror, declaim solemnly over coffee and declare Life as a constant re-enactment of Alice's Mad Tea Party, make dinner, watch Seinfeld and so on.
But then there was yesterday.
A headline so lunatic, so twisted, so incomprehensible, we knew with certainty that The End Is Upon Us.
Here it is:
Walter Stewart, great Canadian journalist of yore, used to speak of "sweet reasonableness."
He was usually asking where it had gone.
And he never met the BC Teachers' Federation or the provincial government.
Today, we learn that "a major track-and-field meet for Surrey high school students has been cancelled and other sporting events risk the same fate as more B.C. teachers withdraw from voluntary activities, including coaching, to protest a law intended to end their contract dispute."
The Vancouver Sun should be given full points for writing an editorial this morning about the overdiagnosing of ADHD.
And full demerits for completely, totally, utterly missing the point.
The piece correctly points out the shocking and destructive rise in alleged cases being reported worldwide.
"U.S. doctors’ office visits for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder rose by 66 per cent between 2000 and 2010.
Let me introduce you to the newest and most remote place for a real getaway.
It's the tiny island of Newtrush in a Pacific atoll, not far from Ridway, uh, Midway.
You'll love it.
Almost uninhabited, there are only two permanent residents there, both fat, babbling old white men.
One of them keeps muttering, "I'm the chief, I'm the chief, I'm the chief," while the other intones deeply into a large conch. He seems to believe that otherS can hear him somewhere. Or would want to.
Once a month, small boatloads of tourists arrive. They all belong to a kind of historical society, They claim, often with tears in their eyes, that they and their parents and grandparents used to be members of something called "The Republican Party."
He shows up for his first national press conference in blue jeans and a black sports jacket.
And we're talking here ratty blue jeans at that, not some designer conceit.
He's not a teen-ager. He's the leader of a national political party, just elected.
His name is Thomas Mulcair.
Where Bob Rae, former NDP politician, is now the interim, erstwhile, almost Liberal leader, Mulcair, former Quebec Liberal, is now the leader of the NDP.
Are you following all of this?
To make matters worse, he's what the writers of Seinfeld would call a "quiet talker."
Quiet talking, like a host of other devices, is not a nervous tic that visits its hosts unwillingly. It is a sick, sucking passive-aggressive control strategy, designed to bring everyone in proximity to his or her knees.
The quiet talker is a closet Ninja warrior who sees the whole world as a threat. He is always en guard.
