And now a word from Quebec

The next leader of the CPC will be from Quebec. Once again the rumour mill is running in Quebec that high ranking Conservatives are planning to oust the Harper if he loses this election. Comments to that effect were made on Mike Duffy's show prior to the Christmas election break.

Several high ranking Conservatives in Quebec are suggesting that the Conservatives need a leader from Quebec in order to win an election in Canada.The fallout over the Conservatives Western Canadian leadership continues from the fall.

They have dismissed Peter Mckay as a potential leader instead focusing on the current candidate from Pontiac if he gets elected, or failing that some old Conservative hacks from the Mulroney era. Either way, the night of the long knives will begin on January 24 should Harper lose again.

The Conservatives maybe Her Majestys Loyal Opposition on that day, but the party will disintegrate into faction fights that have been patched over in order to win this election. Conservative unity will be tested should they not gain seats in Quebec, the Maritimes and lose seats in Ontario, and the prairies, sans Alberta. This is a fragile party held together not by policy but by sealing wax and string, and Harpers ego.


Also See:

Tory Watch

Harper



Tags Canada Federal Election Conservative politics Quebec Stephen Harper

Gay Cowboys

The proverbial manure has hit the fan, and will continue to, over the movie Brokeback Mountain, because of its depiction of homosexuality on the open range. Queer Thoughts ~ News for the Gay Community has reviews and will have the Christian Conservative response to the movie on his blog. I left him this comment, without links, so I have added them here and expanded on it.

Whats interesting is that gay cowboy culture was first mentioned in the CD and Book Who Built America a working class history of the U.S. and caused such a fuss that Dick Cheney's wife, Lynn, when she was head of the Endowment for the Humanities under Bush I,attacked it. Now I am not saying this was the only mention, the Journal Radical History also had a good article on Gay Cowboy culture, History of Manhood in America by Bruce Dorsey in 1996. But it too came out after Who Built America. Lynns fury over the gay cowboy section of this CD caused Apple to pull it at the time, they were including it in a bundle with several other encyclopedias for the Mac.

The real Cowboys.

The truth is stranger than friction to misquote T Bone Slim, and such is the case with the John Wayne, John Ford, Hollywood and Zane Grey's fictional characterization of cowboys in the North American prairies. Cowboys are not merely an American phenomena but one that stretches from Mexico to Canada. Their real story is the story of Capitalist expansion westerward after the Civil War.

Home on the Range: Richard Phillips

The cowboy of Western mythology rode the range during the heyday of
the long cattle drives in the l860s and 1870s. Despite the individualism
emphasized in myth, most cowhands were employees of Eastern and European
capitalists who raised cattle as a corporate enterprise to serve a growing
appetite for beef in the U.S. Cowboys were overworked hired hands who rode in
freezing wind and rain or roasted in the Texas sun; searched for lost cattle;
mended fences; ate monotonous and bad food; and suffered stampedes, quicksand,
blizzards, floods, and drought. The work was hard, dangerous, and often lonely;
pay averaged from $25 to $40 a month. Many became cowboys for lack of other job opportunities; one of every three cowboys was an African American or Mexican. In
the late 1930s writers employed by the Federal Writers Project in Texas interviewed more than 400 cowboys, providing some of the only firsthand sources
about late 19th-century cowboys. In this interview, cowboy Richard Phillips
offered a firsthand glimpse of the hard life that awaited the men who trailed
cattle to market.

And like the masculine/male relationships in pirate culture why should we should be surprised to discover a gay cowboy culture, or even a female drag culture ( Annie Oakely comes to mind) in the North American west? For that matter why should we assume that all cowboys were white? In Alberta the first cowboy of renown was John Ware, a black cowboy and rodeo legend. Cowboy culture was far from the red neck stereotype so affectionately embraced today. And we can expect to hear the gnashing of teeth and the whining from the right wing as yet another historical fiction bites the dust.

For those who don't know the story of Mr. John Ware, he rightly deserves
his reputation. His cowboy skills were legendary, and contrary to the popular
Hollywood image of cowboys, he was a gentleman, led an honest, moral life, and
was a loving father. His work was extremely difficult, as the working conditions
were as harsh as could be possible, and in those days there was not much in the
way of assistance if he became injured or disabled. Cowboys were responsible for
the well-being of cattle as they were moved from ranch to ranch or from
pastureland to pastureland. They had to protect them against poachers and from
wild animals, and they had to keep them from wandering away from the herd (in
the days when the great plains of Western United States and Canada were not
fenced off).

Tags
Alberta
Brokeback Mountain
Gay
cowboys
United States
Wild West
Pirates
masculine
movies
history
Lyn Cheney
Who Built America

Take Tasers Away from Cops

As I wrote here its time to remove tasers from the cops. The Canadian Mental Health association agrees. Police training inadequate, mental health advocates say
"Certainly the use of non-lethal weapons is preferable, but here we have an incident where Tasers are not non-lethal." Yep I said that too.

Tags
Taser / police

After Klander

In the aftermath of le affair Klander Paul Wells made this very funny comment:

"What can you say to stop people from extended reverie about how cowboy hats make people look gay? I mean, I'm not sure what warning would have forstalled that.''



Meanwhile the fallout from Klander has also hit the blogoshpere in general, inditing both Liberal and Conservative blogs for their intolerance and general nastiness. And the target of these attacks, are more often than not the NDP. Unfortunately giving them advertising like this just drives up their visitor numbers and puffs up their egos.

Blogging could come back to haunt some bloggers

Another blogger who describes himself as a supporter of Liberal candidate Deborah Coyne, describes her opponent, NDP Leader Jack Layton, as a "carpetbagger" that he doesn't like.
"I don't like Jack Layton, let's get that out of the way," Tyler King wrote at http://tyking.blogspot.com.
"I'll be spending as much of my holidays as possible on Deborah Coyne's campaign to unseat Jack."
A posting titled "Bye! Bye! Tommy 'Commie' Douglas!" at www.vivelecanada.ca isn't much nicer.
"Tommy Douglas was an idealist, but not a realist. This scumbag really believed that eliminating choice and taxing the crap out of the public was the best way of 'caring' for people. Douglas is a piece of crap.
Toss his 'legacy' in the garbage next to the graves of all those who died waiting/mistreated by this failed public health care system," Loonie wrote.
But the raving opinions, off-colour insults and offensive language seen in many election blogs are prime examples of what could one day come back to haunt the bloggers, many of them wannabe politicians

And even Shelia Copps got into le affair Klander, she knew the guy since he was a young wannabe politician. Her comment reflects the problem with many Liberal blogs, and of course the same can be said for Blogging Torys.

His blog struck me as stunning in its ignorance. No depth there, simply hate. Martin good, everyone else bad.

Tags

Canada

Federal Election

Conservative

Liberal

NDP

blogs

klander

Martial Law

Well it's not only the Harper that wants to bring in troops into Canadian cities, now its his fundamentalist backers that want to do the same thing, in T.O. This same dingbat called for the return of the War Measures Act last time there was a shooting in T.O. now he wants full blown Martial Law, to protect the (white) middle class from them (coloured) folks in the high rise crime zones.

And why is he a dingbat, cause the killers are members of his Christian congregation, so how come he ain't instilled in them the respect for the 10 comandments and moral values that he espouses. Yep he would rather blame society than his own failure to enforce the morality of his religious teachings. Gee Pastor, whats so hard to understand about Thou Shalt Not Kill.

A Toronto-area pastor says enough is enough and yesterday stepped up callsfor up to 8,000 soldiers to be deployed in Toronto to help root out gunmen
plaguing the city."We have had this scenario of killings all summer,"
said Pastor Allan Bowen, of the Abundant Life Assembly in suburban
Etobicoke. "TheBoxing Day shootings have all the earmarks of those in
the troubled areas." Bowen has attended or officiated over the funerals
of at least 10 men, somewhom were suspected gang members, murdered last
summer in the Jane-Finch area. "They (city leaders) have to call in the
army," he said yesterday. "There isno end in sight for the killings."

Instead of "turn the other cheek," this is what he wants.

Klandernacht

In the world of the blogs Paul Wells kicked it off Christmas day, revealing a High Powered Liberal insiders racist blog attacking other party candidates of colour. By the end of the weekend it resulted in the shutting down of his blog and his resignation for offensive racist comments and pictures of both an NDP candidate and a Conservative who were NOT white folks. Mike Klander resigned according to the Globe and Mail butLiberal spokesman Stephen Heckbert said: Mr. Klander, who could not be reached for comment, has a strong record of inclusiveness, he said. Yep he included people of colour in his attacks and only people of colour.

His intention was to have a humorous site with some biting humour that he and some fellow Liberals could [read]. He recognized there's a couple of things that crossed the line."

Well his blog was PUBLIC, he had not made it private, dummy, and even if he had made it as an inside party joke well its still racist and offensive. For a cross section of responses from the right and left in the blogosphere check here.

The Globe and Mail header is also misleading; Liberal resigns over vulgar blog

Vulgar denotes common, or bad taste, which is make light of what Mr. Klander really did. His blog was Racist, in the extreme. And aimed so. Against others. Comparing Olivia Chow with a Chinese Chow dog, with pictures is not vulgar, it is obscene and racist. If any thing wit was certainly not an off colour joke, but a joke at the expense of people of colour running in this election. But then what do you expect from the Globe and Mail with their connections to the Liberal campaign.

What was vulgar was Scott Reids remarks about Beer and Popcorn. Mr. Klander went even further over the edge. And got caught. So far the blogs in this election have had quite an impact contrary to comments made by Warren Kinsella.

The word vulgar now brings to mind off-color jokes and offensive epithets, but it once had more neutral meanings. Vulgar is an example of pejoration, the process by which a word develops negative meanings over time. The ancestor of vulgar, the Latin word vulgāris (from vulgus, “the common people”), meant “of or belonging to the common people, everyday,” as well as “belonging to or associated with the lower orders.” Vulgāris also meant “ordinary,” “common (of vocabulary, for example),” and “shared by all.” An extension of this meaning was “sexually promiscuous,” a sense that could have led to the English sense of “indecent.” Our word, first recorded in a work composed in 1391, entered English during the Middle English period, and in Middle English and later English we find not only the senses of the Latin word mentioned above but also related senses. What is common may be seen as debased, and in the 17th century we begin to find instances of vulgar that make explicit what had been implicit. Vulgar then came to mean “deficient in taste, delicacy, or refinement.” From such uses vulgar has continued to go downhill, and at present “crudely indecent” is among the commonest senses of the word.


Tags
Canada
Federal Election
Globe & Mail
Conservative
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blogs
klander

Primate Man

A tip o the blog to Larry Gambone for
pointing out this interesting article from Foreign Affairs.

Robert M. SapolskyFrom Foreign Affairs, January/February 2006

More discomfiting is the continuum that has been demonstrated in the realm of cognition. We now know, for example, that other species invent tools and use them with dexterity and local cultural variation. Other primates display "semanticity" (the use of symbols to refer to objects and actions) in their communication in ways that would impress any linguist. And experiments have shown other primates to possess a "theory of mind," that is, the ability to recognize that different individuals can have different thoughts and knowledge.

Since tool making is part of the evolution of man as Engels correctly observed, then tool making in other species shows a movement towards social evolution as well. Unfortunately this knowledge that other species make toosl will also give the right wing another excuse to blame someone else for climate change.

Our purported uniqueness has been challenged most, however, with regard to our social life. Like the occasional human hermit, there are a few primates that are typically asocial (such as the orangutan).

So I guess that makes the orangutang an Objectivist. See my Ayn Rand 100

Apart from those, however, it turns out that one cannot understand a primate in isolation from its social group. Across the 150 or so species of primates, the larger the average social group, the larger the cortex relative to the rest of the brain. The fanciest part of the primate brain, in other words, seems to have been sculpted by evolution to enable us to gossip and groom, cooperate and cheat, and obsess about who is mating with whom. Humans, in short, are yet another primate with an intense and rich social life -- a fact that raises the question of whether primatology can teach us something about a rather important part of human sociality, war and peace.

And genetically we are closer to chimps than chumps contrary to the Creationist who believe swe were lumps of clay until god breathed life into us, 4,400 years ago. We are social beings as, anarchists have attested to all along, Kropotkin observed our societies thrive when they are based on mutual aid rather than mutually assured destruction.

More Thaw

First it was the Arctic Ice cap thawing now it's the permafrost. But is anyone listening to the sound of the ice melting? Permafrost-thawing concern deepens

It is puzzling that conservatives are so thick headed about the environment while claiming the mantel of Teddy Roosevelt or even Edmund Burke. Denying global warming and climate change is not real conservatism, which is anti-monopoly, anti-big business as much as it is anti-big government, rather they are apologists for corporate capitalism, they are ne-cons which is not a traditional conservative position at all.

In a WSJ opinion piece on Burke, Jeffery Hart quotes Burke on Beauty, that is nature...

Among the needs of civilization is what Burke called the "unbought grace of
life." The word "unbought" should be pondered. Beauty has been clamorously
present in the American Conservative Mind through its almost total absence. The
tradition of regard for woodland and wildlife was present from the beginnings of
the nation and continued through conservative exemplars such as the Republican
Theodore Roosevelt, who established the National Parks. Embarrassingly for
conservatives (at least one hopes it is embarrassing), stewardship of the
environment is now left mostly to liberal Democrats.
Not all ideas and initiatives by liberals are bad ones. Burke's unbought beauties are part of
civilized life, and therefore ought to occupy much of the Conservative Mind. The
absence of this consideration remains a mark of yahooism and is prominent in
Republicanism today. As if by an intrinsic law, when the free market becomes a
kind of utopianism it maximizes ordinary human imperfection--here, greed, short
views and the resulting barbarism.

Oh dear what does that say about the so called conservatives that want to drill for about six months worth of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Forever destroying the open range of the declining caribou herds. What would Burke and Roosevelt say?

Arctic Power regroups after another ANWR defeat
Associated Press
According to the Associated Press, the lobbying group Arctic Power says it
will consult with Alaska Senator Ted Stevens before deciding its next move.
Arctic Power is the nonprofit group that lobbies for the opening of the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to petroleum drilling. The U.S. Senate last week
refused to include the drilling measure in a defense spending bill. Jerry Hood
says the group is not ready to give up. He says be believes a measure can pass
Congress.
Opponent David van den Berg is director of the Northern Alaska
Environmental Center. He says that with a billion-dollar surplus, the
Legislature is likely to continue to support Arctic Power. The Legislature gave
Arctic Power more than a million dollars this year.
State Senator Gary
Wilken says he thinks of money for Arctic Power as an investment to help the
next generation of Alaskans. The Fairbanks Republican says if the Legislature
continues to see Arctic Power as an investment, it will find money for the group

A tip o' the blog to Northwestern Winds for the Burke lead

Also See:
Arctic
Melt Down

Weather
Report

Arctic
on the Rocks

Global
Warming:

Tags
environment
science
climate
change
science
arctic

A Revised Second Amendment

ITS BEAR HUNTING SEASON IN ALBERTA

My Blog articles on Bears:
Alberta Sacrifices Wildlife for Profit
Save Our Grizzly Bears

Grizzly Slaughter

Rail Accident Kills Grizzly Mom

Bear Baiting

Grin and Bear it

Liberal MLA Bill Bonko on Alberta Grizzly Hunt

The Right to Arm Bears

I Support The Right To Arm Bears!

The Right to Arm Bears Sample chapters

(Paperback)by Gordon R. Dickson

Charlton Heston would just be an old, washed up actor. A bear would run the NRA as according to 2nd amendment...only bears can have guns.

"Bears are not companions of men, but children of God, and His charity is broad enough for both... We seek to establish a narrow line between ourselves and the feathery zeros we dare to call angels, but ask a partition barrier of infinite width to show the rest of creation its proper place. Yet bears are made of the same dust as we, and breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters. A bears days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart-pulsings like ours and was poured from the same fountain....." John Muir

Support the Right to Arm Bears

By BONNIE ERBE

Nov 1, 2005,

Last week's local section of The Washington Post celebrated -- yes, celebrated -- the killing of a black bear by an 8-year-old girl. The compassionate among us mourned not just the cruel and completely unnecessary killing of one of nature's most fabulous creatures, but the love of violence and destruction instilled in this child by her family.
That certain Americans sadly find valor in killing is beyond doubt. But in many ways, it's also beyond belief. That they would take pleasure in a wantonly destructive act and train this into an 8-year-old female heart is beyond forgiveness.
We've heard it all before. Hunters love nature. Hunters work to preserve wildlife. Hunters are great stewards of the environment. Hunters eat what they kill. What was the justification here? That enough bears exist in Maryland to kill them off without destroying the species, as mankind once almost did. Only cowards could find solace, justification and pride in that.
There's no sport in taking down a large, lumbering animal with a .243 caliber rifle, the kind used by the young girl portrayed in worshipful prose by the Post. That's the same caliber weapon NATO uses in its assault weapons. There's more technology than sport in today's high-powered, scoped weapons. (The Post did not report whether the rifle she used was scoped or not.)

Tags

Alberta

Canada

wilderness

Big Game Hunting

Grizzly

endangeredspecies

environment

hunting

Harper is Bush Lite

Well golly gee wilikers, after wanting to expand our military into the North now the Harper wants the Military on every street corner in Canada. Yep the Party of Law and Order is begining to sound a bit fascist, sorta like George Dubya Bush, who wants civil emergencies in the U.S. handled by the military. Can you say Martial Law?

Cities should have regular army presence: Harper
"A large number of our cities have no military presence," he said after announcing plans to beef up the military's capabilities in the West.

Tags
Canada
Federal Election
Conservative
politics
military
Stephen Harper