Quote of the Year

"Canada needs to dismantle its public health care system and allow private enterprise to get involved and turn a profit."

Guess who?

Sarah Palin.

Turns out this woman is both stupid and dangerous.

Loco TV

Local TV Matters?

This is what Global, CTV, CBC and others have been yelling at us for several weeks now in full page ads across the nation.

Well, kids, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Today, CBC Newsworld, or whatever they're calling themselves these days, offered complete and extensive coverage on the Ottawa hearings into allegations of Canadian soldiers knowingly handing over prsioners to be tortured by the Afghan army.

And in the same time slot, CTV, Global and City?

American eye-candy crap, as always.

Get real.

Dr. Phil is local TV?

Is watchable?

Two Sides of the Gay Divide

How's this for a list of charges?

Seven years for defending the rights of gays and lesbians.

Three years for being aware of homosexuality in your neighbourhood and failing to report it within 24 hours.

And the prize goes to...

Life imprisonment on anyone who “penetrates the anus or mouth of another person of the same sex with his penis or any other sexual contraption.” The same penalty would apply if he or she even “touches another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.”

I had no idea our penises fell into the category of "sexual contraption," but so be it.

Of course, you can't make up stuff like this. A hundred comedy writers trapped in a room off Sunset Boulevard with Sprite and nachos for three weeks couldn't top this.

It comes from the government of Uganda.

That's the smiling face of the Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, one of the acknowledged great leaders of the modern world. But we just call him, "Yow!"

In contrast to all of that...

Let's instead cheer a man for whom we have had little use over the years.

This is what can happen when you don't really know someone and leap to conclusions based on public persona and media coverage and water cooler b.s.

I plead guilty in my previous assessment of Brian Burke, the hockey man.

Yesterday a good old friend sent me a powerful and moving article, written by John Buccigross for ESPN.

The story details how Burke's son, Brendan, has dealt with being gay. The young man is, like his dad, completely involved with the world of hockey. The story tells how he came out to various family members and then recently to his dad.

And how beautifully his dad reacted. And how honorably he has conducted himself since.

Turns out, Brian Burke is a mensch, a real mensch.

It is unlikely that the Burkes will be vacationing or playing hockey in Uganda soon.

That's Brendan Burke with the You Know What after the Ducks won it all in 2007.

Ze Plot Sickens

Richard Colvin sent some of his reports about the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan to Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs.

This is the latest little bombshell in the continuing little melodrama of lies, innuendo, denials and intimidation coming from an inquiry in Ottawa these days.

So many questions to be asked.

Not the least of which is why is the Prime Minister jumping into the fray?

“We also know that a large number of his colleagues did not agree with those opinions,” Mr. Harper told the Commons Tuesday.

Stephen, baby. Shhhh...

We thinks the Preem doth protesteth too much.

The Globe editorial - in a Passover frame of mind - asks four questions. Read them here and ponder the curiosities getting curiouser and curiouser...

Principles Shushing Away in Flurries

To paraphrase...

"It little profits a man to sell his soul for the world, but for...ski jumping?"

Yet this is exactly what we are doing.

No sooner do we raise the flag and flame with the excitement of having The Games here in a great Western democracy, then we abandon all principles and become a Fascism of the Happy Face.

The culprits are VANOC and the IOC. The victim is Free Speech.

Listen to the language:

"The artist shall at all times refrain from making any negative or derogatory remarks respecting VANOC, the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Olympic movement generally, Bell and/or other sponsors associated with VANOC."

Nice.

Keep those nasty noisy artists quiet, we're luging here, folks.

Why have The Games, if the price is reducing the social order to Orwellian sheep?

Salt Lake City and Melbourne had no such restrictions.

What is it about Vancouver that makes it so hyper-sensitive?