Some of these new Tea Party candidates are pretty vicious.

Gwendolene Thomason, 42, a Tea Party supporter from Jefferson City, was one of the hundreds on hand who were convinced that the Doberman was a Tea Party candidate until he was outed as a dog.

“I liked what he had to say,” she said.  ”He reminded me of Glenn Beck, only furrier.”

The Doberman’s canine identity finally became clear when he lunged at a man in the front row and wrested a hamburger from his right hand, taking two of the man’s fingers with it.

And some of them are predictable.

**********BREAKING NEWS!!!***********

At Randy Hillier’s request, Hudak representatives are reportedly in talks with Mr. Buster to bring him into a prominent role on the Ontario PC team.

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

… is only putting off the inevitable unless something more substantive can be done to alleviate the unfathomable levels of American debt. Americans are going to have to pay now – because the price to pay later will bring their proud nation to its knees.

Usually, The Onion is a work of satire. Usually. But after reading this entry this morning, I kind of have to think that the authors were being a little more than tongue-in-cheek…

Following Sunday’s pathetic excuse for an agreement on raising the government’s borrowing limit, Democrats and Republicans took time to celebrate the meager, ineffective deal, calling it “a testament to the not-so-great things that can happen in Washington when both parties barely come together and agree to not really accomplish anything.

American politics has become so damned polarised in the past decade that simply agreeing on the time of day can be considered an occasion worthy of celebration. The arrival of the radical Tea Party-ists has made the finding of any common ground between Republicans and Democrats next to impossible.

And this is really bad news for my American friends as this is a critical time in their history. In my very humble opinion, I think that not since their Civil War has there been a greater crisis. All levels of government and many households and businesses are barely treading water or are on life support.

My thoughts are in sync with those of Jeffrey Simpson when he wrote this:

Americans can blame foreigners if they want for some of these problems – currency manipulation by China, unfair trading practices, companies shipping jobs offshore – but they’re mostly responsible for their own problems. Systematically, Americans have refused to tax themselves at levels commensurate with their spending. The result of this collective irresponsibility has finally caught up with them.

They waged wars while cutting taxes, as in Iraq and Afghanistan under George W. Bush’s disastrous regime. They let the Pentagon budget explode, raised the costs of public health care (as in Mr. Bush’s unfunded drug plan for seniors), kept the cost of gasoline below that of any Western country, left the financial sector largely unregulated until its excesses brought the economy to its knees, and designed an immensely costly and, in many respects, quite foolish Homeland Security apparatus.

In the days when the King of the land decided to go to war, he sent out word to his Lords that they must help to fund the mission. The Lords, in turn, sent out tax collectors to the towns and countryside to get what they could in order to fund their Lord’s obligation to his monarch. Without these monies, the King could not run his wars nor keep the royal treasury stocked. Credit was non-existent save for some parts of the world where usury was an accepted practice.

No money. No way to pay for arms, arrow fodder and supplies. Ergo, no wars.

Flash ahead to today. Americans of all stripes must simply realise that in the absence of adequate personal and corporate tax levels they cannot wages wars – or live in a modern democratic country – without paying for a significant proportion of its operations.

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

Looks like the congressional elections in the States this fall might prove to be interesting.

With the rise of the über-right-wing-nut Tea Party whack jobs, the GOP nominations are facing ideological splits, and this may harm them mightily at the polls.

It encourages me to see that there is still some sanity within the ranks of the Republicans.

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Question - Why doesn’t McDonald’s sell hotdogs? It seems like it would be a no-brainer.

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Here at home, Harpy seems to be trying to dare the Opposition into forcing an election through a non-confidence vote over the detainee documents issue.

While the robot was initially all “sure, whatever the Speaker has ruled is something we’ll live with”, he has now backpedalled…

Initially, Harper said he “looks forward to complying” with the ruling, adding that he’ll consider any reasonable suggestion that will give MP’s access to the documents while protecting national security.

But he later said that the government may prevent the release of all of the requested documents.

He also said that the other parties can have a vote of non-confidence on the matter, possibly sending Canadians to the polls.

No big surprise, though.  The politics of cynicism is Harper’s specialty and if he senses a bullying and polarization opportunity, then he will go for the jugular. Don’t take the bait, dudes of the Opposition… it is exactly what the Harperites want!

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Question: If you had an envelope that someone told you contained the date of your death, would you open it?

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This is interesting.

Bilingualism in Canada’s Public Service has long been a sticking point for unilingual folks.  Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to be bilingual to get a job in the PS, but you do have to learn your second language if you want to advance up the food chain.

The latest debate is about whether new Supreme Court Justices should be bilingual.

Bill C-232, a private-members bill, would require that any future Supreme Court justice “understands French and English without the assistance of an interpreter.” It passed the House of Commons last March, with the opposition MPs uniting against Conservative MPs, and is now being considered by the Senate.

As long as we have the English/French duality in this country, we will have debates like these. But as long as Canada is n officially bilingual country, we need to require those in charge of the ship of state to be capable of communicating in both of the founding languages.

Yet, like we can see with the language requirements in the PS, many very well-qualified people would be automatically excluded from the bench of the highest court in the land because they cannot conjugate an irregular French verb. And that to me is a pity. Only 7 per cent of Anglophones outside Quebec speak both official languages, and most of those live close to the Quebec border, meaning that if you are a highly qualified judge who is from somewhere west of the Ottawa valley, your chances of being a Supreme Court Justice are slim unless you are one of the rare ones who speaks both languages.

The fear in this matter is that there is always a danger that language will trump everything – including ability – and that while we may appoint a judge qui peut dire «il faut que je sois bilingue», they may not necessarily be the best person for the job. Me, while I do support the requirement that senior members of the PS and those who interact with the public on a daily basis need to have level of proficiency in both languages, I don’t think the argument that “a unilingual English judge has only limited access to the large body of legal commentary and scholarship written in French” is strong enough.

But that’s just me.

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Question: How do you handcuff a one-armed man?

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Finally, here’s hoping the Habs make a quick exit from the playoffs! If there is one thing more annoying than Sen fans, it’s a fan of les glorieux (moi, je préfere les pathetiques…)

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario