2008 - WWWWWTF?

About 20 years ago, this page was fortunate enough to be given rudimentary lessons in journalism as part of a grade 5 english class. I learned the fundamentals of the five W's: Who, What, Where, Why, When, and their non-W interrogative sidekick, How. Drawing on the five W's, let's take a look ahead at the coming year:

WHO will be the next POTUS?

The 2008 Presidential election, which has actually been going on for the past couple of years, will reach its soul-shattering climax in November. This page sees another close race with Hilary Clinton and Mike Huckabee as the last two candidates standing.

WHAT will it take to make governments take Climate Change seriously?

Climate change is being taken seriously by governments - Washington and Ottawa, for example, are doing everything conceivably possible to give the appearance that something is being done.

WHERE is the next front in the War on Terror (tm)?

After the Bhutto assanination this week, this page guess it's moved a few kilometres further into Pakistan. Even if he's a little eager about military action, Barack Obama is correct about engaging Karachi if Al-Qaida is ever to be significantly subdued. Otherwise, Canadian troops in Afghanistan (who, if Reason is reading, are in fact good people doing a sh*tty job as best they can) are so much sniper fodder.

WHEN is the next Federal election?

If the best that Stephen Harper can do looking across from Stephane Dion is a string of virtual ties in the polls, more than likely the writ will be dropped when the Liberals think they can wrestle another minority government from the Conservatives.

WHY does anybody want to be Mayor of Vancouver?

Carole Taylor thinks it's the stepping stone to the Premier's office. It's also a job where nobody can actually do anything as the result of Metro Vancouver, TransLink, the idiotic At-Large system for electing Councillors, and Victoria's heavy-handed application of the Vancouver Charter. If Carole wants to parade around on the short leash of her former BC Liberal buddies and their VANOC syncophants, hey, it's her parade.

HOW will the Canucks do this season?

All the way, baby. Just like the Mariners. You people come here for whacked-out opinion, right?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

What's in Santa's Brand New Bag?

One more item before this page takes off for a couple of weeks - The Mitchell report was released yesterday, which points the finger at 90 current and former Major League Baseball players for taking performance enhancing drugs. Besides the usual suspects (i.e. Barry Bonds), the report takes much note of one Roger Clemens, who up until recently displayed an uncanny ability to repeatedly retire and come back a few months later throwing harder than ever.

Senator Mitchell's report could also explain how someone could deliver presents to people around the world, then come back and do it again year after year. Maybe it's not that the elves or so small, it could be that their boss somehow managed to get really big....

Enjoy the holidays, and join this page on December 31 for some kind of half-assed year-end hijinks.

Crazy. Old. NIMBY.

Once again, the selfish and self-serving attitudes of Vancouverites are getting in the way of establishing much needed social housing in this city. West Side residents are up in arms about a proposed development at 7th Avenue and Fir Street which would primarily house people suffering from mental illness. According to Rob Whitlock, a City of Vancouver housing planner, several concerns have been raised about the seniors home across the street from the proposed site, as well as 'strata councils and individuals just generally living in that area who feel that this is not the right location.'

This page calls bullshit - invoking a seniors' home as rationale for precluding social housing for the mentally ill amounts to cynical discrimination. Both groups need the medical services available at nearby Vancouver General Hospital and are equally entitled to the access that the 7th and Fir location provides. Besides many seniors already suffer from mental illness - Alzheimer's Disease, Dementia, and Depression just to name a few. Complaints from Strata Councils should be dismissed outright, as they're little more than bastions of NIMBYism. The Strata Council that this page deals with regards anyone who cannot afford to own their home as a second-class citizen who shouldn't be trusted. As for complaints from 'individuals', I contend that Whitlock is using code for real estate developers who hope the City will back down and let them put up more overpriced condos.

Indeed, it sucks to be old. It also sucks to suffer from schizophrenia, severe depression or a personality disorder that may keep one from ever being able to grow old. Why is it O.K. to shove the mentally ill into the squalor of the Downtown Eastside but we won't do the same to seniors?

Program Notes

Revolutionary Moderation is up and running again, so feel free to click over and catch up with Don. Also, this page will being going into holiday hibernation after December 14, but will return with some kind of year-end piece by the 31st.

For those of you scoring at home, this page is relishing the fact that Conrad Black is going to jail, even if 6 and a half years is far too short a time. During the Calgary Herald strike of 1999/2000, this page witnessed a confrontation outside the Palliser Hotel between Black and one Andy Marshall, President of Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Local 115A. The public has a pretty good idea of what Black is like, and Marshall was the exact opposite: bespectacled, soft-spoken and genuinely likable. Marshall very politely asked Black why his newspaper was refusing to bargain. Black's response was to hurl back psychotic epithets of how the newsroom staff were 'gangrenous limbs' that needed to be cut off. CBC radio had their mics on at the time so some of the public heard Lord Almost's vicious little outburst. As far as this page is concerned, I hope they throw away the keys.

Rent your own Cops

Vision Vancouver is saying no to the pleadings of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (DVBIA) and their request for City funding of the Downtown Ambassadors Program. For those of you who live outside Vancouver, these 'Ambassadors' are little more than glorified security guards in snappy red outfits. From having seen them in action on a number of occasions, it appears that their primary mandate is to harass and intimidate homeless people, skateboarders, squeegee kids and anyone else our corporate overlords deem to be on the wrong side of B.C.'s Safe (for the rich) Streets Act.

Most trouble downtown actually happens in the middle of the night/early morning, thanks to extended bar hours and the establishment of the Granville 'entertainment zone', another initiative of DVBIA members. Apparently, drunk and disorderly is fine as long as one pays the cover charge. If anybody doesn't feel comfortable shopping or dining downtown without the presence of several pseudo-cops paid for by City taxpayers, you should probably be on the first SkyTrain to Metrotown, where everything is white, clean, and neat and Mall Security calls in the Mounties if someone picks a soda can out of a garbage bin. When this page pays his taxes, he expects to be getting actual police services provided by actual police officers.

A Kick in the Crystal Balls

The Amazing Kreskin has locked the name of America's 44th President in box at Donald Trump's bar across the street from the United Nations building in New York. This page's prognosticating skills only go so far as the gridiron (take the Seahawks plus the points vs. Arizona on Sunday), but I will predict that Election 2008 will be an even bigger mess than the 2000 or 2004 editions, thanks to Republican political maneuvering to carve out Electoral College votes in California.

Let's look at some numbers: In 2000, George Bush (with the help of his Florida Governor brother Jeb, the U.S. Supreme Court, and an avalanche of hanging chads) beat Al Gore 271 electoral votes to 266. In 2004, Republican 'voter suppression' tactics in Ohio plus a string of hate-mongering anti-gay marriage referrenda, Bush opened the margin of victory for his second term, 286 to 252 over Senator John (Swiftboat) Kerry. That makes the average margin of victory over the past two elections 13 Electoral College votes.

Where it gets messy is the last line of the article about the California GOP's machinations:

'If the measure qualifies for the November ballot, it remains unclear whether it would apply to the presidential election held that day.'

Traditional voting patterns in Congressional Districts have Republicans carving 22 of California's 55 electoral votes, and no one is sure whether or not the new rule could put those 22 votes in play will count on Election Day? For Kreskin's sake, this page hopes the Donald gave him the key.

Out of Order

This page's affiliated site, Revolutionary Moderation, is currently experiencing technical difficulties. Hopefully, Don will have his ship righted as soon as possible. If there are any regular RevMod readers lurking around, welcome aboard, and mind the screeching polemic.

Note to Don - it could be worse. At least RevMod isn't broadcasting from Boston Bar.

Furious George just can't let go

Despite the report from the National Intelligence Estimate that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program four years ago, President Bush will not give up the sabre-rattling. The President claims that's "nothing's changed". He's right - despite a lack of credibility so large that states are racing to conduct the primaries to replace him, the Bush dynasty continues to conduct international relations using its own special brand of Texas style weapons grade bullsh*t.

Remember the Kuwaiti babies snatched from their incubators by Iraqi soldiers as justification for the first Gulf War? How about Colin Powell's little slide show at the UN about Iraq's massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction? Are we supposed to give the House of Bush the benefit of the doubt this time so they can extend their Mesopotamian Misadventure next door to Iran? This page wonders the kind of treatment North Korea would get if Kim Jong-Il claimed he struck oil and changed the name of his country to the Islamic People's Republic of North Korea.

At the close of the first Gulf War, this page remembers Bush the Elder gloating something about 'licking that Vietnam syndrome'. Not letting the facts get in the way of a good war, Junior appears to be flailing around looking for something to lick the emerging 'Iraq syndrome'. A good place to look first would be in the mirror.

Mascaught between a Rock and a Hard Place

Last week our VANOC overlords introduced us to our 2010 Olympic imaginary friends: Miga, Quatchi, and Sumi. Immediately, message boards and open line switchboards were lit up with screeds about how they were too 'Asian-looking', resembling anime characters. To those people, I say SHUT THE HELL UP! I'm trying to watch Naruto!! And don't call me back until I'm done with Bleach, Gundam Seed Destiny, Death Note and Inu Yasha!!! Other threads whined about the constant use of First Nations motifs whenever Vancouver presents itself to visitors. You people can go suck it - try living under the giant bombastic 'YA-HOO' cowboy hat of Calgary's civic identity like this page did for two decades.

The more pressing concern for this page were raised by labour activists, who rightly pointed out that the mascot toys currently on sale at The Bay and Zellers stores across Canada, just in time for Xmas, are made in what I like to call the Anti-Santa's Village, the Peoples' Republic of China. VANOC claims that they have third-party oversight to address child and/or prison labour issues, but they won't disclose who exactly provides that oversight: Let's call it the Ice Dancing method of judging your suppliers. As for the criticism, it would help if the BC Fed could name two or three companies who could manufacture the toys rather than having Jim Sinclair heckling from across the street like a more nasal version of Lou Dobbs.

However, this page looks at the $25 and $40 price tags for replicas of these five ring circus brand babies, and wonders how much Miga, Qatchi, and Sumi can rake in to save British Columbians from tax increases, cancelled programs, and service cuts once the post-2010 bills start rolling in. Contrary to what my detractors think, this page likes the Olympics, and I'm willing to rub a couple of nickels together for the games. I just don't like anyone who doesn't being forced to pay for them, nor do I like people being put out on the street because of them. How many stuffed toys are we going to need to cushion those blows?

For those of you just joining us...

First of all, to those of you outside of the Lower Mainland who habitually snicker about how Vancouverites cope (or don't) with severe winter weather conditions, it isn't as funny when the names of family members are attached to phrases like 'head-on collision'. This page considers a snowstorm to be nature's way of telling people to rethink their infantile attachment to the internal combustion engine and find a different way to get around. For those of you scoring at home, if you insist on wrecking the planet by burning fossil fuels, the planet may just insist on wrecking you.

Carole Taylor won't be running for the BC Lieberals in 2009. This page is not surprised. Taylor is the last of any actual 'Liberals' of note in Victoria, and its not likely her government would see her federal counterparts come to power anytime soon, leaving BC's falling on the deaf ears of the Alberta-bred, Quebec-obsessed Harper administration. What's left surrounding Gordon Campbell is the likes of Kevin Falcon, Mike De Jong and Stan Hagen, which leaves this page wondering if we can just calling this gang Social Credit again.

What's the difference between Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez? In Russia, Putin and his KGBullies gang up on the opposition, whereas in Venezuela, the opposition gets a free hand gang up on Chavez. Despite the perpetual bleating and bitching to Washington, and the 2002 coup attempt that was shut down by overwhelming popular support for the President, Chavez has survived the backlash of Venezuela's rich elites and furthered the Bolivarian Revolution, and uses democratic means to consolidate the revolution, even if it does mean coming up a little short at times. This page will take Chavez' bombast over Putin's menace anytime.

To Serve and Protect...yourselves

Despite the overwhelming public horror and disgust surrounding the October 14 death of Robert Dziekanski at the hands of Taser-wielding RCMP thugs at Vancouver International Airport, the British Columbia Association of Police Chiefs is unrepentant about continuing to use this potentially fatal instrument of torture. In fact, the Vancouver Police Department is ordering up a few more to fry anyone who makes life a little too difficult for the boys in blue.

Before the knuckle-dragging cop lovers creep out of the woodwork to give this page the usual rhetorical beat down, let's bear in mind that Vancouver is a city where citizens are snatched by police officers, taken for a midnight ride to Stanley Park, and beaten senselessly. If that's not bad enough, Vancouver's 'finest' also have a bad habit of people dying in their custody. In both cases, it appears the objective of the Police Complaints Commission, instead of finding justice for those victimized by police harassment and brutality, is to protect the Police from those complaints. These are high times for the badge bullies, with the Conservatives bleating about 'serious time for serious crime' in Ottawa, the BC Liberals' criminalization of poverty through the 'Safe Streets Act' and the 'Non-Partisan' Association's shenanigans of 'Project Civil City' at 12th and Cambie. To celebrate our new Police State, a round of tasers for everyone!

To hear Police Chiefs Association President Gord Tomlison is to hear a deluded and misbehaving small child make up excuses to keep his favourite toys from being taken away:

"Potent drug cocktails turn average people into unstoppable aggressors bent on our destruction and often theirs".

Wrong. More often that not, those potent drug cocktails destabilize those aggressors to make it easier for them to be killed by a taser.

"Organized crime has high-powered weapons that our body armour can't stop. "

Wrong again. If the weapons belonging to organized crime or too powerful for body armour, how are the cops going to get close to use a taser? When did the police stop handing out guns?

"Even reaching down to help a gunshot victim carries with it the modern day threat of contamination from blood-borne diseases"

Three strikes and he's out. I've seen more than enough police officers at Emergency wards in hospitals around Vancouver that they would have easily learned by now that no one is electrocuted to death by using latex gloves.

Next week marks the 10th anniversary of the 1997 APEC summit in Vancouver, where student demonstrators were attacked by the RCMP because they chose to speak out and stand up to the oppressive regimes in places like China and Indonesia that our government believed would be good trading partners. Those protests set the stage for 1999's 'Battle in Seattle' at the World Trade Organization meetings, and the massive anti-globalization protests that followed, but aren't widely remembered by the public. It could be because the Mounties' weapon of choice at the time was pepper spray rather than a Taser. This page is certain that the way things are going, our memories of Downtown Eastside riots of 2009 and the 2011 General Strike will be far more 'shocking' and disturbing.

Happy Thanksgetting

Today is Thanksgiving in America. For the record, this page has long preferred the American version of this particular holiday: it's a four-day weekend, there's parades and football games (which apparently, fight global warming), and a natural kickoff point for the 'holiday' season which runs from now until New Years Day.

However, Thanksgiving also kicks off the hyperbolized, hysterical holiday shopping season. Tomorrow marks 'Black Friday', the busiest buying day of the year, where consumers are whipped into a frenzy to run up their credit cards to finance purchases of the latest state-of-the-art whatsits, lest their loved ones be crushed by disappointment under the Xmas tree. In border cities this year, the gridlock at the malls will be exacerbated by Canadians burning hundreds of dollars of fossil fuels in order to save a few bucks on an XBox 420 or an iTase. Some stores aren't even waiting until tomorrow, Walnut Boat was invited to join a carload for 'Midnight Madness' in Bellingham, Washington tonight.

Call this page crazy, but if I was celebrating Thanksgiving this week, I'd be spending tomorrow with a six-pack, a few leftover turkey sandwiches, and the TV, and wishing everyone else a happy Buy Nothing Day.

Stop that Train

Vancouver Mayor Sam (CUPEphobe) Sullivan wants Translink to extend the Millennium Skytrain line to UBC. With his re-election prospects darkening with each passing day, it says a lot about Sullivan's tenure as Mayor that he's hoping the light at the end of the tunnel is in fact, a train. For the record, this page wants rapid transit to UBC just as much as the mayor. In fact, given that I actually use public transit, I probably want it more. However, conducting an online survey to gauge public support for a Skytrain extension is like the audience applauding to save Tinkerbell: it makes everyone involved feel good about themselves, but it's totally disconnected from reality.

Let's stick a few pennies on Sullivan's manipulative track to re-election: First of all, the final destination for the SkyTrain extension, the UBC campus, is actually outside the City of Vancouver's jurisdiction, and the University has yet to weigh in on whether or not they'd be willing to chip in. The line would have to go over, around, or through Point Grey, the West Side's NIMBYist neighbourhood. Since the bait-and-switch Canada Line put Cambie Street merchants on the fast track to bankruptcy, it's doubtful that their Broadway counterparts would tolerate a similar fate. Meanwhile, the Northeast Corner would see plans for the Evergreen Line derailed for another at least another decade.

There may be a more pressing reason to hold back the Evergreen Line: doing so also holds back any real debate about what kind of technology should prevail in future transit expansion. The Evergreen line was going to use cost-effective Light Rail, similar to Portland's MAX, Seattle's Sound Transit Link, or Calgary's C-Train. Skytrain is routinely criticized by transit advocates as being little more than a rolling vacuum cleaner sucking capital out of the pockets of taxpayers and into Bombardier's corporate coffers. Ever wonder why Vancouver is the only transit system in North America that uses Skytrain?

Obviously, the Mayor doesn't, which is why he's pitching simplistic solutions to complex transportation and infrastructure problems. This page won't be clapping his hands.

Mike De Wrong on Affirmative Action

Mike De Jong is upset about the BC NDP's new targets for nominating women and visible minority candidates for the next election. Mr. De Jong's bloated epitaph is that setting aside a percentage of non-incumbent ridings for women and minorities amounts to "a typical NDP, big-labour approach to an issue, which is to tell people what to do." For those of you scoring at home, the NDP is setting aside 30 % of available ridings for women, and 10% for visible minorities. If every New Democrat MLA runs in 2009, that means that only the 46 Liberal-held ridings would be subject to this formula: do the math and it works out to 14 ridings for women and 5 for visible minorities. Is De Jong saying that BC shouldn't have 14 more women or 5 more members of a visible minority as MLAs?

A 'big-labour' approach? De Jong can't be anymore clueless and instead grasps at the familiar anti-worker slander of the right wing. The NDP doesn't give out bulk Union membership anymore - the number of delegates a Union gets is based on the number of individual memberships within that Union. As for 'tell people what to do', this policy was passed at last weekend's NDP convention by a substantial majority of delegates across BC, so who gives a rat's (besides the Globe & Mail) what De Jong and the Lieberals think?

Affirmative Action targets are a far more democratic and transparent attempt to bolster representation from equity-seeking groups in the legislature than the Lieberals' elitist practice of parachuting 'star' candidates into ridings. Women and minorities are more than welcome to seek a position on Gordon Campbell's team as long as they were a Supreme Court Justice, President of the CBC, or an Olympic Wrestling champion. Anyone else who's background isn't as upwardly mobile doesn't count with the Lieberals, so thank the NDP for at least trying to come up with some numbers of their own.

Lest We Remember

Remembrance Day is once again upon this country, and in the Stephen Harper era, the occasion is shifting from a solemn marking of military sacrifice to forced cheerleading for what this country suddenly stands for: shop till you drop tax cuts, state-sponsored murder, and viciously attacking anyone who doesn't think either is a good idea. It also galls this page that Remembrance Day is the exclusive property of the Royal Canadian Legion, an organization which has shown fellow veterans the door for following the 'wrong' religion or having the 'wrong' skin colour. The Legion will have my sympathy for being asked not to solicit in front of Home Depot when the Legion stops threatening to sue peace activists for distributing white poppies.

Like the Legion, Remembrance Day is an occasion that has not evolved and remains ignorant to the reality of what war is like today. The overwhelming majority of people killed in war after 1918 are innocent civilians, yet does anything happen in the official program to recognize that? Our corporate masters take out ads imploring us to 'remember' and 'support our troops', yet big business turned a blind eye to Hitler's slaughter of German Trade Unionists, Socialists, and Communists long before he set his despicable sights on the Jews. After all, the Fuhrer was just being a good capitalist, just like the butchers of Beijing who won a free pass after Tiannemen Square.

This page knows full well that whenever I question the military that knuckle-dragging rage-filled rebuttals will light up my inbox. I won't engage your wounded patridiotic manhood, you can wear your plastic poppies, stick out your chest and get all sentimental about 'glory' and 'honour' all you want. You can threaten and insult me, but I come from a family that saw the neighbours abducted, tortured, and executed because they didn't 'Support our Troops', sticks and stones, people. While you're at it, go pick on this guy: When Clay Macleod says that our way of life isn't worth protecting if all we have is war to protect it, he's absolutely right.

Remember when people used to say 'Never Again' on Remembrance Day?

CSI: Crazy Stockwell's Interruption

What would have been a routine crime scene investigation for Vancouver Police early this morning was disrupted by the political opportunism of one Stockwell Day, dinosaur hunter, jet-ski enthusiast, roller skater, and Minister of Public Safety. Day happened to be driving by the site of a Downtown Eastside stabbing incident and decided to make himself the star of his own little press conference, tubthumping the Tories' position to get tough on crime.

This begs the question, what was Stockwell Day doing driving around Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in the wee hours? Did he have a police scanner and looking for this kind of photo op? Was he lost? Was he looking to score a little rock? Is he a suspect trying to cover his tracks? The VPD would be wise to take this troublemaker in for questioning, and if not the police, at least the Opposition should be asking a few questions.

*note: this page will be on hiatus next week

Saskatchewan up against the Wall

Saskatchewan voters go to the polls today, and the most likely outcome is the dismissal of Lorne Calvert's NDP government for the right-wing antics of Brad Wall and his Saskatchewan Roughriders...er....Saskatchewan party. If you've seen their TV spots, you know it's easy to confuse to the two. This page felt quite annoyed in receiving a fundraising mailer from the federal party a couple of weeks ago, hot on the heels of Thomas Muclair's victory in the Outremont byelection. The envelope proclaimed that triumph and other relative breakthroughs in Atlantic Canada, Ontario, and here in British Columbia. Conspicuously absent was any mention of any victories in Saskatchewan, the birthplace of the CCF and the spiritual home of New Democrats.

Don't get me wrong, New Democrats have done some good things in recent years, but when a competent NDP government in Saskatchewan is a few hours away from being swept from office, and the party no longer has any MPs in the province that reveres Tommy Douglas, something is seriously wrong. In fact, this page has already seen the script for Lorne Calvert's ouster: Right-wing business coalition shakes off criminal past by attaching new label of convenience. Compliant corporate media badmouths NDP government despite sound management during economic struggles. Right-wingers peddle tax cuts, keep their cards close to their vests and accuse New Democrats of fear mongering. 'Time for a change' mantra saturates the airwaves with no questioning what the change will really mean.

It's disappointing to see history repeating itself in Saskatchewan. Is anyone else sick of the self-absorbed, tax cutting, 'it's your money', Let's cash out our collective prosperity and nation-building capacity so we can hop in our SUV's and drive to Wal-Mart to buy slave-labour made crap direction this country has been heading for the past few years?

If Saskatchewan's beloved Roughriders can bring home the Grey Cup this year as many are predicting, it will be the only comfort for Saskatchewan after Brad Wall and the SP use their fabricated mandate to smash Crown Corporations, attack Unions, ignore First Nations, and turn the province over to factory farms and big oil, who would love nothing better than another Tar Sands and their greasy little mitts on Saskatchewan's uranium deposits. Of course, the history of the past 16 years under Roy Romanow and Lorne Calvert will be rewritten to make it the bleakest period in the province's history.

Fortunately, there's nowhere in Saskatchewan that can only be accessed by ferry, so at the least Wall won't have that to rub in anyone's face.

I'm no 'Fun' anymore: Go Fun Yourself

Facebook's stupidest application: the Fun Wall. Remember how you used to get all that idiotic chain mail from your distant relatives and friends you don't talk to anymore? The racist ethnic jokes, the right-wing propaganda masquerading as patriotism and/or folk wisdom, the nauseatingly saccharine shout-outs to babies, puppies, true love and Jesus? Guess where they went?

The really annoying thing is people who relay Fun Wall posts - post it on your friend's profile, and it shows up on all of the Fun Wall's of the recipient's friends: viral and vile! I didn't even need to have Fun Wall installed, it installs automatically if I follow the e-mail link that tells me someone posted to my Fun Wall. The Fun Wall is easily my biggest annoyance with Facebook. That and still having to list my political views as 'other', rather than Socialist.

At least it's easy to delete applications, and it's free, unlike deleting CanWest Global and Bell Globemedia crap from my programmed TV channels that still show up on my cable bill.

Whistling on Death Row

Let's make no mistake: the 1982 execution-style murders of Harvey Mad Man and Thomas Running Rabbit by Ronald Smith of Red Deer Alberta are an atrocity. However, there's no difference between marching someone into the woods and murdering them and marching someone down death row and murdering them on behalf of the state. There's a reason why Canada does not have Capital Punishment, and in reversing Canada's long-standing policy of pleading for clemency in death row cases, the Harper government has either forgotten that reason, or they're willfully ignoring it.

Perhaps it's yet another cynical ploy to shore up the Tories reactionary base, perhaps it's an another attempt to show the Bush administration that Ottawa is willing to 'play ball', unlike the Liberals who criticized Bush when in 1999, as Governor of Texas, committed the state-sponsored murder of Canadian Stanley Faulder. Maybe our government just gets off on watching people get killed, which would explain a lot of other Conservative policies, like the occupation of Afghanistan and closing safe injection sites. Will somebody get these people a copy of Faces of Death so they can stop playing their dirty little political games with the lives of Canadians?

If our government doesn't stand up for Canada's disdain for state-sponsored murder, what other fundamentals of Canadian society will they refuse to stand up for next?

Your Tax Cuts at 'Work'

In another short sighted and pathetic effort to buy themselves a majority government, Stephen Harper's conservatives served up another round of high-test tax cuts, this time to the tune of about $60 billion. One would think that given Harper's obsession with optics, our fossil-fuel injected federal surplus would be going towards items that consistently top opinion polls, like debt reduction or increased spending on infrastructure, health care and education. Not in Little Stephie Wonder's ideologically-blinded universe: everything is all right (uptight!) as long as our money is buying our own votes and shiny new toys for the military.

In the Tory haste to buy us with our money, even NeoConservative articles of faith, like maximum security airports, are having to go cap in hand. For a government that follows the Project for a New American Century around like a lost puppy, its surprising that our airport security is being performed by indifferent low wage contract workers rather than dedicated public employees like the U.S. Transportation Safety Agency. If maintaining the post - 9/11 de rigeur police state at the runways can be left by Harper and his minions to go begging, imagine how long First Nations without safe drinking water on their reserves have to wait, or the homeless, or anything else that doesn't involve killing brown people and buying plasma TVs.

All the stupidity and moral depravity of the Bush Administration without having to leave our homes.