Quebec City Massacre: solidarity in the face of horror

The Montreal Gazette editorial:

Regardless of what they may have thought they were doing, in firing on innocent worshippers the gunmen were firing at all of us. And therefore it is incumbent on all to show solidarity in the face of this horror. In due course, the accused gunmen will have to answer in court for their actions. In the meantime, the unity of our condemnation must be the only response to these repugnant actions.

Trudeau immediately called it a terrorist attack -- there was no dithering about this at all.  Initial reports blamed two shooters, one of whom was apparently Muslim.   Right wingers seem to think it couldn't really be terrorism if a shooter was Muslim -- I read many right-wing tweets about this, which I will not embed here.  Montreal Simon is rounding up the appalling right-wing reaction to the Quebec City Massacre.
But the news now is saying that there was just one shooter, a right-wing white man.  I expect silence will now descend on right-wing twitter....

Canada needs to step up

It is just tragic what is happening in the United States today.

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it's all right, it's all right
We've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we're traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what went wrong

Canada needs to step up to the plate and accept the refugees, US green card holders, dual passport holders, prospective immigrants and everyone else that the United States is now turning away.

Buh-bye 2016

Sorry Frank, but I'm glad to see the last of 2016.

Great post of the day

From GQ: The Least Influential People Of 2016 - everyone from Anthony Weiner to Ryan Lochte, from Hillary Clinton to A Rod....

And don't miss DB Wong's chicken wing instructional video at the end.

Merry Christmas

And from the oddest Christmas special of all time:

According to co-writer Ian Fraser, Bowie balked at singing "Little Drummer Boy": "I hate this song. Is there something else I could sing?", Fraser recalls Bowie telling him. Fraser, along with songwriter Larry Grossman and the special's scriptwriter, Buz Kohan, then wrote "Peace on Earth" as a counterpoint to "Little Drummer Boy". Crosby performed "Little Drummer Boy", while Bowie sang the new tune "Peace on Earth", which they reportedly performed after less than an hour of rehearsal

And I missed the fall, too

Well, I thought at the end of August that I was recovering but instead I just kept on getting sicker and sicker. Finally I went into hospital the third week of September, followed by immediate surgery to begin to deal with an obstructed bowel, followed by a seven-week hospital recovery. Barely eating for three months resulted in a complete depletion of the protein in my body so following the surgery I could barely stand up, much less walk or do stairs -- and we live in a four-level split. So I needed extensive physio and lots and lots of nutrition before I could come home. I finally managed to get home last week. Provided nothing else goes wrong, I am looking toward likely two more surgeries in the next year, before this trouble is behind me (so to speak!)
All in all, I would sum it up as a miserable experience, mitigated only by the love of my family -- they all faithfully visited almost every day, in spite of the cost of hospital parking!
And they brought me Tim Hortons.
One other silver lining -- I lost 70 pounds! Maybe I could write a book on how to lose weight. It would be a short one: 1. Get seriously ill 2. Don't eat for three months. 3. Lose weight! -- however, somehow I don't think it will be a best seller!
So hopefully, I will be able to get back to blogging now. And given the Trump election (gag!) I have a feeling that there will be lots to blog about over the next while.

The year without a summer

So I got sick in early July, and I am finally just recovering now -- just the flu, originally, but then I couldn't eat anything, then got diverticulosis -- awful -- and I'm finally just coming out of it now.  I'm still not eating normally, but I can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

But basically I missed summer this year.  I hope we have a really long, nice fall!

I'm back!

Sorry for the lack of posts -- I had too much going on in "real" life, for a change.

I'm a patriot too

What is the matter with these people? In spite of all the positive talk at the Conservative convention, the Conservatives haven't changed a bit.
Harper isn't at their head anymore, but he's still their leader in their hearts.
Today, the CPC is doing whatever it can to obstruct a dying MP from making a picayune, sensible and long-overdue change to our national anthem:

Time is of the essence for the MP {Mauril  Belanger], who was diagnosed with ALS last fall and whose health has deteriorated over the past few weeks. But his determination to see Bill C-210 pass is inspiring people from inside and outside his party to support him.
After question period Thursday, government whip Andrew Leslie sought the unanimous consent of MPs to allow the bill — which would change the line "in all thy sons command" to "in all of us command," making it gender-neutral — to proceed under the whip's name to take some of the pressure off Bélanger.
Enough Tory MPs shouted their objection to deny unanimous consent for Leslie's motion.

Oooh -- changing "in all thy sons command" to "in all of us command" obviously demands  nation-wide hearings, according to CPC.
Personally, I've always hated that wording in the national anthem, it was a minor but definite insult to every woman in the country.
And there is nothing particularly sacred about the English version of O Canada.  The song was originally written in French in 1880, and it was more than 25 years before several versions of English lyrics were written. The line used to read "thou dost in us command". The "all thy sons command" version was introduced in 1914 -- likely with the idea of supporting the troops in WWI.
But "True patriot love in all of us command" is the way O Canada should always have been translated, so I'm glad Belanger wants to change it. And its the kind of change that would never happen except as someone's dying wish, because in the larger scheme of things, it is just so supremely unimportant that it would never rise to the top of any government agenda.
I'm glad its getting done at last.

On this historic night

BREAKING: @AP finds Clinton reached the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination for president pic.twitter.com/e473F0G4vX

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 7, 2016

I am woman, hear me roar in numbers to great to ignore


This is my fight song


Sail on Silver Girl...your time has come to shine.

Endorsing Trump is like tying a rotting fish around your neck

I loved this comment at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Endorsing Trump is like tying an already “whiffy” dead fish around your neck – it’s already going off, and it will just smell worse and worse, until, finally , people are disgusted to be around you. And then you have to answer the inevitable questions – Why would you tie a dead fish around your neck? Didn’t you know it would smell? Don’t you know fish goes off? Do you like the smell of rotting fish? Do you believe in wearing rotting fish? What’s wrong with you…..? But the worst thing is after weeks, you personally will no longer be able to smell the fish – it will be normal to you – and people will have to yell at you, “you smell of rotting fish! You’re disgusting!”
And finally when you want to take it off – “yech, you still smell of rotting fish … get out of here.” And once you remove the fish, you’ll start to smell it again, in your clothes, your furniture, your car – and you’ll be mortified. And before anyone will let you back into polite company you’ll have to burn your entire wardrobe, disinfect or reupholster the remaining furniture, and you’ll always have to deal with people worried about your taste for the smell of rotting fish.

That's exactly what the Republicans are now finding out.
Even Harper wasn't as bad, and that's saying something.

The difference between Trump and Clinton

Eric Alterman writes about How False Equivalence Is Distorting the 2016 Election Coverage | The Nation and sums up the basic difference between Trump and Clinton:

 Journalistic abdications of responsibility are always harmful to democracy, but reporters and pundits covering the 2016 campaign will be doing the public a particularly grave disservice if they continue to draw from the “both sides” playbook in the months leading up to the November election. Now that Donald Trump has emerged as the presumptive Republican nominee for president, some simple facts about him and his campaign should be stated clearly and repeatedly, not obfuscated or explained away or leavened into click bait. Trump is a pathological liar and conspiracy theorist, a racist, misogynist, and demagogic bully with a phantasmagoric policy platform and dangerously authoritarian instincts. Hillary Clinton’s flaws and failures are many, and they should not be discounted, either. But they are of an entirely different order. Love her or hate her, at least we don’t have to wonder whether she believes in democracy. When it comes to sane and even semi-sensible policy proposals for America’s future in the 2016 presidential election, there is only one side.

Emphasis mine.

Pride

pic.twitter.com/IcydKeYvXk

— Scott Brison (@scottbrison) June 1, 2016

Events at Saskatoon's Pride Festival are here.

One of these things is not like the others

Canadian politics has apparently entered its silly season just before everyone takes the summer off and goes to the lake.
While Canada discusses Sophie's workload and "elbowgate" -- both such important news stories! -- in the United States we see Hillary Clinton gearing up to do battle with Deadbeat Donald.
Forgive me if I think that what is happening down south is much more consequential and ultimately more meaningful than either of our scandals-du-jour.

Ahhh.....

Duck family gets police escort to safety | Saskatoon StarPhoenix: