Sunday 27 November 2011

Democracy - The pipe dream

I've been in an ongoing debate with my mother about the merits of "democracy" as we know it.

"Gogs in a wheel" OR "Jobs be damned...be a good person"

These are lessons that I've been taught over the years and ideals that I've taken to heart. I don't wanna be a cog in a wheel. Dammit, I am the freakin' wheel, not a cog !!

Free trade, global trade, global banking and all those other theories that are supposed to benefit us all have run amok. We, here in the west have lost our minds. Money has become the new god. Babylon has returned and it's a lot bigger now. We spend more on the military, against a threat that's amorphous, we've been duped into believing that civil liberty is exchangeable for security and we've been arrested for arguing against the bullshit of it all.

I'm a Canadian, a once proud Canadian. I am now left wondering where my country's leadership is steering me (and my fellow 30M compatriots). We kept out of Iraq because it wasn't "right" which turned out to be prudent. But we leapt in with both feet into Afghanistan which is now becoming our version of Vietnam (part deux). No win, no victory, only ongoing losses in lives, souls and yes...Money.

I'm rambling because I'm pissed off. I have so many things to scream about BUT, like a "nice" person, I've kept it under wraps. Today, no more. I'm tired of being nice. Tired of the system working me over.

Tired of watching those that don't care about me making decisions that will directly hurt me.

To the 99% I say I am with you. To the 1%, watch your back.

Revolution is coming and it ain't gonna be kind.

Capitalism was meant to offer each and every one of us a path to better ourselves but what it's become is a path for us all to better improve a few others. The media would have you believe that the beneficiaries of our current economic & political system are you & I.....Really?

Just out of curiosity, when was the last raise you got? Did you get a bonus last year? Are you improving the whole work/life balance thing? Answer NO. You're working longer, harder, for less and with less job security! But we're being told that if we run the wheel a little bit harder next month, things may improve...........Sure.....For the bottom line.

The Europeans took it too far to the "left" and we here in North America have taken it too far to the "right" but there is a workable middle ground. We don't need to bankrupt our society to achieve it either. Everyone can have a slice of cake and be happy. It's the greedy MotherFu##ers who need to be restrained.


Sunday 13 November 2011

Silvio's finest...God I love democracy


ROME—Silvio Berlusconi, who resigned as prime minister on Saturday after dominating Italy for 17 years with a mix of political talent and brazen behaviour, has a sense of humour that often landed him in trouble.
Here are some of his memorable quotes:
Nov. 2011: Berlusconi comments on the state of Italy’s economy. “Life in Italy is life in a prosperous country. We see that on every occasion, consumption has not gone down, the restaurants are full, you have trouble booking seats on aeroplanes, holiday areas are totally booked out on long weekends. I don’t think that if you went to live in Italy that Italy is feeling anything that could resemble a serious crisis.”
Oct. 2011: In remarks to party deputies in parliament, Berlusconi suggests his ruling PDL party should rename itself “Forza Gnocca!” a play on the name of his original Forza Italia! (Go Italy!) party, using a slang term for female genitals.
Sept. 2011: In widely reported wiretapped conversations, Berlusconi brags of fending off a line of young women outside his door and “doing only eight girls, because I couldn’t do more.”
Nov. 2010: “As always, I work without interruption and if occasionally I happen to look a beautiful girl in the face, it’s better to like beautiful girls than to be gay,” he tells a meeting at a motorcycle industry show in Milan.
April 2009: During a visit to survivors of an earthquake in the central Abruzzo region, who were staying in emergency tents, Berlusconi says: “They should look at it as a weekend of camping.”
Nov. 2008: Berlusconi hails Barack Obama as “handsome, young and also suntanned”, after he was elected the United States’ first black president.
Feb. 2006: “I am the Jesus Christ of politics,” Italian media quote Berlusconi as telling supporters. “I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone.”
Feb. 2006: “Only Napoleon did more than I have done,” he tells a TV talk show. “But I am definitely taller.”
Jan. 2006: Berlusconi promises to give up sex until the next election. “Thank you dear Father Massimiliano,” he tells a preacher who praised him for defending family values. “I’ll try not to let you down and I promise you two and a half months of complete sexual abstinence until April 9.”
June 2005: Berlusconi says he used his charms to persuade Finland’s president, Tarja Halonen, to give up her country’s claim to host the new European Food Safety Authority. “I had to use all my playboy tactics, even if they have not been used for some time,” he said. Finnish ambassador protests.
Sept. 2004: “Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini sent people on holiday in (internal) exile,” Berlusconi tells Britain’s Spectator magazine, replying “yes” when asked if he thought the World War II dictator was “benign”.
July 2003: “Mr. Schulz, I know there is in Italy a man producing a film on the Nazi concentration camps. I would like to suggest you for the role of Kapo. You’d be perfect,” Berlusconi told socialist German lawmaker Martin Schulz, who was heckling him during his debut at the European Parliament. A kapo was a concentration camp inmate who was given privileges for supervising prisoner work gangs.
June 2003: “One citizen is equal to another (in the eyes of the law) but perhaps this one is slightly more equal than the others, given that 50 percent of Italians have given him the responsibility of governing the country,” he says, referring to himself, during an appearance at his corruption trial in Milan.
Dec. 2002: “The most keen can certainly find a second job, maybe unofficial,” Berlusconi says, encouraging laid-off Fiat workers to seek employment on the black market.
Feb. 2002: During a group photograph at an informal EU summit in Spain, Berlusconi raises two fingers behind the head of the Spanish foreign minister, Josep Pique, in the traditional Latin gesture for a cuckold.
Oct. 2001: Berlusconi causes an outcry in the Muslim world when he says the West should be aware of its own “superiority”. “We should be conscious of the superiority of our civilisation, which consists of a value system that has given people widespread prosperity in those countries that embrace it, and guarantees respect for human rights and religion,” he said. “This respect certainly does not exist in the Islamic countries.”

Sunday 6 November 2011

Wealthy, Un-Educated & Broke (but armed to the teeth...)

The USA is bemoaning it's lost status as a world power....and one of the reasons is


Saturday 5 November 2011

Farewell to an old friend over the years. Andy Rooney

First off, I'd like to express how deeply & truly sad I am at the death of Andy Rooney from CBS' 60 Minutes.

I grew up watching that show every Sunday night. If you knew me as a kid, it was playing in my home every Sunday when you were over for some of my mom's barely edible steaks, if you knew me as a young adult then it was playing every Sunday over Chinese/Pizza takeout AND if you had known me on Oct 6, 2011 when he did his last broadcast, I was there watching as well.

Andy represented to me a kindly, grumpy, wise and yet childish grandfather. He said some pretty pertinent shit, called it like he saw it and for all his faults, he was at least honest with himself and his audience.

I will miss him and his bushy eyebrows every Sunday from now on.

RIP Andy, you will be missed in my household.



Some quotes stolen from CNN (don't worry...they can afford it)


(CNN) -- Andy Rooney, who died Saturday at the age of 92, had the last word each week on the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes." Here are some of his great lines from those essays, along with a few others, that reveal his talent as a writer and the dry wit that made him famous.

"I try to look nice. I comb my hair, I tie my tie, I put on a jacket, but I draw the line when it comes to trimming my eyebrows. You work with what you got." -- from an essay on his eyebrows, Nov. 24, 1996

"We need people who can actually do things. We have too many bosses and too few workers. More college graduates ought to become plumbers or electricians, then go home at night and read Shakespeare." -- from an essay on finding a good job, March 21, 2010

"We didn't shock them, and we didn't awe them in Baghdad. The phrase makes us look like foolish braggarts. The president ought to fire whoever wrote that for him." -- on the start of the war in Iraq in 2003

"I recently bought this new laptop to use when I travel. Look at that. Fits right into my briefcase. It weighs less than three pounds. I lose that much getting mad, waiting to get on the plane through security at the airport." -- from an essay on computers, Feb. 11, 2009

"We can all be prouder to be human beings, because that's what they were. They make up for a lot of liars, cheats, and terrorists among us." -- on the astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger after it exploded on takeoff in 1986

"Not many people in this world are as lucky as I've been. ... All this time I've been paid to say what is on my mind on television. You don't get any luckier in life than that." -- from Rooney's final "60 Minutes" essay, Oct. 2, 2011

"One of the things we can be sure of over the July 4th weekend is that news reports will keep telling us how many of us are going to die in automobile accidents." -- from Rooney's first "60 Minutes" essay, July 2, 1978

"The third rule of life is this: Everything you buy today is smaller, more expensive, and not as good as it was yesterday." -- from an essay on coffee cans, Oct. 23, 1988

"A lot of these products are actually pretty good. But why are they always trying to con us with the contrived pictures on the box that don't look anything like you get when you eat it?" -- from an essay on the pictures on food packages, Dec. 4, 1988

"I don't know anything offhand that mystifies Americans more than the cotton they put in pill bottles. Why do they do it? Are you supposed to put the cotton back in once you've taken a pill out?" -- from an essay on pill bottles, Oct. 12, 1986

"I understand shipping -- you have to expect to pay for the stamps or for the freight company -- but what's this handling they always have? How much does handling cost, anyway? I don't want a lot of people handling something I'm going to buy before I get it. How much would it cost if you didn't handle it before you sent it to me?" -- from an essay on fine print, March 12, 1989

"Dogs are nicer than people." -- from an essay on the true things in life, Dec. 5, 2007

"I did not believe in the war. I thought it was wrong to go into any war. And I got to the war, and saw the Germans, and I changed my mind. I decided we were right going into World War II." -- from a CBS interview with Morley Safer, Oct. 2, 2011

"I am interested in details. If you go into anything far enough, you get into the details of it, and people turn out to be interested in what makes things work." -- from a 2010 interview in The Colgate Scene