Political Apathy

I’m sitting at the Starbucks in the mall where I work on the outdoor chairs under the pole heater daydreaming all by myself. There’s usually a gang there but nobody has showed up yet. I look across the outdoor coffee, (and smoking), area, and stuck to the back of one of the stainless steel chairs is a sticker with the Victoria flag and the words, “I voted” on it. There was an election held in Victoria last week. I can’t give you an accurate list of the candidates who ran, (though there IS one from 2009 online), but I read in the newspaper there were over 200 candidates. 212 I think it was. I saw pictures of some of the candidates in the newspaper the week before, (because it’s important for us to elect people who LOOK like they know what they’re doing), and was surprised to see a girl I KNOW running for the school board rep. But then with 212 candidates odds are even a newcomer to Victoria will know one of them.

I also read in the newspaper and saw plastered on buses and buildings, heard on the radio, and couldn’t escape for a while the desperate pleas of those running for office to those of us who have within our power the ability to NOT vote and cost them ALL their jobs to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE enable our seriously ineffective and outdated behaviour for a little while longer. There were articles written by newspapermen and women upholding the traditional habit of glorification of the vote as a responsibility we should all cherish and yada yada yada. The inexplicable voter apathy. So hard to understand! Well not for me, a confirmed NON-voter. I’ll explain why I don’t vote and I am sure some or maybe ALL of the same reasons apply to the rest of the folks who choose to exercise our supposed democratic powers by not voting for those intent on taking them away.

First of all, if you want to see true apathy try going to any of our government agencies. Better yet, try calling them up. First you have to find the name of the agency you are looking for. The names all change regularly as it becomes easier for voters to locate our government representatives and bother them with our little problems. If you need a passport, driver’s license, or even some social assistance you need to know the name of the agency that provides it. Internet? Try it. It ain’t so easy. Phone book? There used to be handy listings in the white pages like, “Driver’s licence – see Access Centre.” Or even in the blue pages. Nowadays, not so much. And for the love of God, ACCESS CENTRE? For welfare I think it’s “Cool Aid.” Could they possibly find lamer, less recognizable titles for such important services?

THEN, if you are lucky enough to stumble upon the correct name for the agency you are trying to locate, we ALL know what happens when we try to call them up. At LEAST a 15-minute session of telephone gymnastics. “If you want endless telephone runaround, press one. If you want some useless recording that does nothing to assist you, press two. If you want to talk to a human being, stay on the line until your problem solves itself, until your start worrying about your phone bill, or until you die. If you want information about taxes you must pay for dying in Canada, press three.”

I wanted to get my driver’s license and had to call an insurance company. They transferred me to the correct office, whatever the name of it was, and whatever their number and only after half an hour of the answering machine labyrinth for BOTH places did I get through to a human being. Then when I wanted to call them back and cancel was faced with the prospect of doing it all over again. Didn’t bother, and will be charged the 75 bucks for not cancelling when I finally DO show up for my driving test. Minimal person-to-person contact with the electorate and 75 bucks for doing NOTHING. The perfect government agency!

Let’s see what our government has been up to recently so we can more fully illustrate my point. The big news in government is Pat Martin’s “industrial language” on Twitter. This is “inappropriate.” It’s “unnecessary.” He said, “This is a fucking disgrace… closure again. And on the budget! No democracy in the world would tolerate this jackboot shit!” Oh how terrible! Disgusting! Those expletives are so harsh!

Oh the endless entertainment one can derive from watching the histrionics and machinations of the leaders within a society trying its best to balance its diametrically opposed commitments to puritanical morality and salacious greed! While I support fully the people out there who try to be profound without being profane, I don’t believe in Santa Claus, I know pro wrestling is staged and I am well aware that people FUCKING swear! Even politicians and athletes! Actually Mr. Martin has pointed out for us all the same thing I’m going for in this post. You see, the REAL issue, the one that’s being almost ignored behind the more pressing issue of Twitter f-bombs, is that the government budget, which, (let’s give our politicians a little credit), is a veritable work of art every year, is being pushed through parliament without enough debate. That is, POLITICIANS, not just the people they are supposed to be representing, are being ignored by federal conservative Harper government and those guys and gals we elected are just doing what they want without listening to anyone in parliament. Hey all you politicians not in the majority government, now you know how we the people, (voting OR non-voting), feel! The government never does what WE want either.

Voting for people makes things LESS democratic in Canada because, (fake well), they’re people! Don’t kid yourself, regardless of party or platform, most, if not all of the important stuff they do is done at the behest of the rich, the corporate and the banks who are the hands up the arses of all our government puppets. It’s for the benefit of our “owners.” And that is almost always exactly what WE don’t want.

The main issue in the budget I must admit I have mixed feelings about. It’s the C-10 or “Crime Omnibus Bill.” This bill will create more minimum sentences on lots of crimes that will land an awful lot MORE people in the clink. Jails are already a huge waste of our tax money to begin with. Hence, politicians like them and want more so their budgets will grow every year. For years in Canada we’ve had very safe streets and very high numbers of people in jail. And it’s mostly poor folks who can’t afford lawyers or don’t have enough money to pay their fines. Fines that are probably just unfair or STUPID fines designed by our apathetic government agencies as ways to avoid dealing with these less appealing citizens in the first place. And in our country where, like many, the money is being more and more efficiently funneled straight to the top, what do you know – there are more poor people! So we need more jails or they might, I dunno, march on major cities across the country or something.

Then again, being a security guard I’m not saying I’d refuse a 20-buck-an-hour job at one of these poverty palaces either. That is if I don’t end up IN one!

It’s similar to another issue our government is trying to sneak past us. Again there is no distinction between the parties and we, the people, could not vote for anyone based on this issue. We just have to settle for what they decide. It’s the oil pipelines. I don’t know a lot about them but I DO read stories in the papers about shipyards in Victoria and Vancouver proposed to DOUBLE in size and pipeline construction and maintenance creating many new jobs mostly to serve the traditional role that Canada has taken on in the world, that of a primary resource provider. It’s mostly about America and China lusting after our oil sands. And the amount of money that could earn for our “owners.” And rather than build refineries here in Canada that would create WAY more jobs than the pipelines and transporting of CRUDE oil would, we are going to be nice to our more powerful neighbours as always. And at irresponsible risk to our planet. If there’s one thing we should know by now it’s that the transfer of crude oil is absolute hell on the Earth. It should be illegal no matter how “safe” a method we devise. Any oil that is transported should be in environmentally safer refined forms. PERIOD! And if people knew the issues I think most Canadians would feel the same.

But then again they wouldn’t turn down an 18-dollar-an-hour job on a pipeline or at a shipyard either.

Which brings up an obvious point: Why don’t people in office do what the whole country wants them to do? The main issues NEVER change! More jobs, less taxes, better wages. Believe it or not this would make our politicians jobs easier. It’s what they probably want to do. More jobs with decent wages would make the citizens of Canada happy and gov’t agencies wouldn’t have to constantly devise new methods of HIDING from us. In fact why not hire about 50,000 people to work FOR the government, (and earn good government wages), answering the FUCKING PHONES! See? Sometimes the f-bombs are warranted. I don’t think “darn” would have been as effective there.

More jobs with higher wages is a nightmare for the government workers though because they’re all Brewsters. Like Richard Pryor in that movie Brewster’s Millions. He had to spend a whole bunch of money and have nothing to show for it. That’s most of our government’s job. And with everyone in Canada working and earning MORE money, that would mean more taxes to somehow waste. So the obvious solution would be to lower taxes. It’s so simple!

Problem is this is NOT what the REAL rulers of our country, (and owners of us), want for Canada. So the government will continue to go about its duty deciding things like corporations no longer have to pay tax on the money they make in Canada. We didn’t vote for that! No candidates even brought that up! Yet somehow it got passed! Do some research. Keep your eyes open. Taxes going up; prices going up; minimum wage going up at a fraction of the rate; major changes to education; cuts in social programs… has anything GOOD happened in Canada in recent memory? More to the point, anything that we voted for? We the people, in our supposedly democratic country get to vote once in a while whether or not to separate from Quebec and whether we want GST or HST. That’s like choosing between lethal injection or firing squad.

I think the voter turn-out numbers are exaggerated in Canada. I don’t think that many people vote any more. It’s a system dying a death. A long overdue death but that’s how we do things in Canada. My government sees me as a numbered consumer and any time they do anything major to change my country, it's something none of us voted for. These are the reasons I don’t vote and probably most voter apathy is caused by the same issues. The only time my government seems to really notice me is when they want me to legitimize their jobs by giving them my vote. Well, as Pat Martin might tweet, fuck that jackboot shit!

Super Dave's Save the Earth From Billion Blindness Fund

Okay, with all the recent marches on Wall Street and all over the cities of the world, (which I think are really great, btw), I thought it was about time somebody came up with the plan that all the MWS detractors are criticizing them for not having. So here goes...

I read an article lately written by one such detractor stating that one of the things that led to the marches and the anger worldwide is lack of financial and fiscal education. It's a very good point! How many of us can honestly say we have a firm mental grasp of the numbers thrown around by governments nowadays when talking about taxes, federal budgets, Paris Hilton's champagne bill, election price tags, deficits, bank bail-outs, Warren Buffet pocket change, military expenses etc. etc.? Do any of us even know what a million is when it comes to dollars? Or when it comes to anything really. If there were a jar with a million jelly beans in it how big would it be? And would the ones at the bottom just be crushed so badly you wouldn't be able to count them anyway? I bet the stuff on the bottom would taste like the black ones. They're my favourite anyway so that'd be okay. I digress.

This is one of the beauties of being a politician. It makes us all easier to lie to. We just can't wrap our heads around a million bucks because we've never come close to having it. We'll never GET it cuz we'll never get it. A BILLION? Forget it!

Ever seen that movie "The Social Network"? There's a scene where the Napster dude, (played by Justin Timberlake), says, "A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars." The audience goes silent. The main character, Mark Zuckerberg, who, let's remember, wanted to avoid the money, goes silent and gets this far off look in his eye. The seeds of money lust were planted. Money played a very small role in his life. In fact he had said earlier in the movie, and I'm guessing in real life, that the second facebook becomes about the money it's no longer cool. Sean Parker almost contradicted that verbatim but with that mysterious word, "billion" in there and the greed-enabling culture Zuckerberg grew up in, it worked! Blinded by the billion. I think that happens to a lot of folks.

Now people can make a billion in a year. George Soros made 2 billion in one day. I'm sure I read that Bill Gates made 48 billion in a year. I used the magazine article as an ESL lesson for years before I lost it. Now I suppose the Forbes 500 have learned: It's not very good to let the rest of the world know how much you are making. It could lead to unrest and possibly marching in the streets. Incidentally, Gates is reportedly worth something like 56 billion bucks now. I'm pretty sure he's made more than 6 bil. since I read that article and he's not giving THAT much to charity.

The corporations, rich, banks and the governments they run are inflating the numbers they bombard us with regarding government and business expenses and they are massively DEflating the numbers that accidentally on purpose leak out that are supposed to represent their earnings. That's what I believe anyways. But let's work with these flawed numbers and see what we come up with, shall we?

First of all a billion. In an average work year allowing for 8 hours a day, a 5-day week and a 2-week vacation you would work 2000 hours. If your salary were exactly a billion dollars you would be """"EARNING"""" half a million dollars an hour. But that number is still too big for our brains - that's $8333.00 a MINUTE! $139.00 every SECOND for crying out loud! In one second you are making more money than most of the world earns in a day. This is why the word "earning" above is surounded Custer-like, by quotation marks. I didn't think just one set would suffice. If I were saying this out loud I don't think the finger quotes would do the mega-sarcasm justice either. I think if I could somehow bend a couple of football goalposts and use them to make my air quotes it still wouldn't be sarcastic enough when talking about someone "earning" a billion a year. Come ON! NObody is worth that!

If you could think of the person who deserves the highest pay in the world who would it be? A soldier fighting on the front lines? A firefighter saving cute orphan children from a blaze? The janitor who cleans the frat house toilets? If I had a girl who was a dead ringer for Jessica Alba, naked, pleasuring me now while feeding me pizza and expensive Chianti AND playing bagpipes for "It's a Long Way to the Top" with the real LIVE AC DC backing her up even SHE's not close to 139 bucks a second! Just that one song would come to a total of $43,924.00. No way I'd have the money, (or the prowess), to ask for "Downpayment Blues" as an encore!

But what are these folks who make a billion a year actually doing? Well if you look at what Vancouver's own Kevin Ham does in a day you'd laugh your arse all the way to the bank. He buys internet domains. Somebody says the domain name, he air-types it, then lays down a few hundred grand for it. I'm not making this up. Guys like David Tepper just move imaginary money from place to place. There are filthy rich people known as corporate hawks or international speculators who essentially buy pieces of COUNTRIES and hope that they default on their debts, which adds to destabilization and usually the selling off of the country's resources at bargain basement prices.

A lot of the jobs people do for their billion dollar annual paychecks are so simple any of us could do them IF we had the start-up capital, they're not back-breaking or stressful, or they're just completely immoral. You just can't convince me anyone earns a billion a year.

SO... here's what we're gonna do: There are, (reportedly), 1210 people in the world who have the equivalent of a billion American dollars according to a March 2011 Forbes Magazine article. Between them they have 4.5 trillion, that's $4,500,000,000,000.00! I know, THAT means even LESS than nothing to me too! But that averages out to 3.72 billion each. Some of these people are evil, or have such bad cases of billion blindness to believe they not only EARN their money but that they MUST earn more every year. The rest of them like Gates who says he will leave his fortune to charity, Soros who gave 8 bill. to charity since '79, and I recently read about the heiress of the Tupperware fortune secretly giving to all kinds of charities. These are fairly normal, yet rich people who have made more than enough and it's time to let someone else play. Forced retirement for all of them, (some are damned lucky they won't be thrown in jail), and they will be made international heroes by their mandatory donation to Super Dave's Save the Earth Fund of a billion U$ each.

As of Oct. 2011 there were reported to be 6.97 billion people on earth, 4.4 billion of whom are between the ages of 15 and 64. So I'm just spitballing here but I'm guessing that between the ages of 19 and 60 there'd be less than 4 bill. Through the generous donations from the world's 1210 billionaires every one of the people on Earth between 19 and 60 could be given over $1125.00 U.S. Now that doesn't mean a whole lot to a person like me here in Canada but the changes made in each country would be more revolutionary in direct proportion to how poor the country is. Let's take The Sudan as an example. I like that example because I dig countries with "The" before their names. According to this article, it would cost a person about 843 SDG, (Sudanese Pounds), to start a business. That's $315.50. He/she's gonna have lots left over for supplies, employees, overhead, you name it. $1125 bucks could change the third world so much that it might even be safe to say it was eliminated!

But wait, there's more. I don't know why but I couldn't find up-to-date stats on millionaires in the world. However, a 2010 study by Boston Consulting Group figured that there were 12.5 million millionaires in the world. (The equivalent of a million U$ dollars). If they all had exactly one million dollars, which, don't be silly, they DON'T, that would be another 5.2 trillion dollars. I know, I know, the billionaires are included in there. Well those 1210 people don't even amount to a percent so it doesn't affect the stats at all. What we do is we give these people, the luckiest people on the face of the Earth, the privelege of contributing half a million dollars each to Super Dave's Save the Earth Fund. That's another $650.00 to everybody on the planet who isn't too old or young to need some dough. So we're now up to $1875.00 U$ each! Don't feel sorry for the millionaires. Who do you think will be taking over the vacated posts of the billionaires? And with a newly created, oh I would guess 2 BILLION consumers worldwide, they'd have to be morons to lose money no matter what they did.

The weakness in my plan is admittedly logistics. How do I get money to 4 billion individuals? Furthermore, certain people like recidivist criminals, drug addicts, people with terminal diseases and plain old lazy assed sluggards won't qualify for Super Dave benefits. So how will I know who's who? Simplicity itself! They'll have to pay for their money by filling out some forms and donating blood. That way their blood can be tested, their backgrounds checked and the blood banks of the world would be overflowing! Not to mention the new varieties of viruses we might detect and eliminate, (possibly Billion Blindness ITSELF!), or antibodies we might discover and use to heal people!

After disqualifying some people, and allowing for larger donations from the GOOD rich people of the world, I'm going to say we could give 3000 bucks to everyone. Imagine every citizen in your country getting a lump sum of 3 grand. What would that do to consumer confidence? What if it was given out December 1st so you'd have time to go Christmas shopping with it? So many people would buy so many things and the money would almost ALL go straight into the pockets of those nice millionaire contributors. Their money would return to them probably a million fold! Then they would become BILLIONAIRES at which point they'd be forced into massive contributions and retirement and their places would be filled with the huge number of newly created millionaires and we could start all over again! Perpetual world enrichment. Perfect, right?

I can only see one problem. Kryptonite! The fact that it wouldn't take too long before everybody was not just not starving, but very comfortable. Then very happy. Then very wealthy. Then very rich. When that happens who the hell will work? Aye, there's the rub! Who will put little umbrellas in the marguerita of the hot babe sitting beside me in my golf cart in Thailand? What hot babe will be poor and desperate enough to golf with me? Who will sell that marguerita to us? Who will cut the greens? Do you suppose this might have something to do with why the 3rd world is KEPT the 3rd world? Did the filthy rich think of this already and plan to maintain poverty so that there would always be someone desperate enough in some country to MAKE those little umbrellas for a buck a day? To sew footballs in sweatshops? To dance half naked for and date ugly old guys with big bulges in their jeans where their wallets are?

GAAARRGGGHHH! Feeling weak. Ex-ray vision failing. Ability to use articles and verb "to be" getting difficult. So cold. Humidity a bit high. Vision failing... faaiiliinggg...

Oh well I took a stab at it anyway.

Every Day Is A Pair Of Socks

The first noble truth: Life is suffering. Or at least that's what it boils down to. In the first teaching of the Gautama Buddha after attaining Nirvana, (not going to one of their concerts), there were four noble truths, the first of which was that life ultimately leads to or IS suffereing, (dukkha), in one way or another.

The other three noble truths are about the causes of and solution to this suffering. Basically life is full of "Maya" which is a delusional clinging to attachments and worldly pleasures of all kinds. Even our ideas of self, existence and reality might be maya.

When you find a way to eliminate all this delusion, FIND THE TRUTH, by eliminating craving and desire, you reach a state called "bodhi" or what is called "enlightenment."

In short, don't worry, be happy. You have stumbled upon the path to enlightenment, the "way", the truth, the Light, the Tao, the secret of life or whatever you wanna call it, when you figure out a way to find joy in your suffering. This is not just a Buddhist idea but I think their way of explaining it is the clearest. No pain, no gain. Wisdom comes through suffering. I could go on and on...

This is one of the prevailing philosophies that contributes to my blogging. One might read these pages and wonder why I am such a negative person. Scan through. When was the last column with a little positivity to it? Quite a while ago. So one might be drawn into the trap of believing I am not finding joy in my suffering. But one would be a little bit off the mark in thinking so.

I think of one of the wisest old guys I briefly met and a saying he related to me and my good buddy Gil, (his nephew), under the influence of copius imbibement was, "With all the good in the worst of us, and all the bad in the best, it behoves us all to find fault with the rest." I heard that MANY years ago and it has always struck me as something I needed to remember, yet something I didn't fully understand. Probably because of the use of the word "behove." Be honest with me, YOU had to dive for a dictionary too didn't you? I didn't know what it meant back then either, but I do now. If you didn't, hey good for you! I'm serious. We all should learn at least a word a day.

However, I would like to make an amendment, if I may, and change that old saying to, "With all the good in the worst of us and all the bad in the best, it behoves us all to find some joy in all the rest." I don't think this is much of a change at all since the original words of wisdom are shared with tongue firmly implanted in cheek and that irony all but implies my amended version. I think it was the irony, the purposeful sarcasm with which it was said that created the confusion in me. But I got it. Finally. I think...

Another sage piece of wisdom that steers me down the path to enlightenment was gleaned from an episode of the Sopranos. I'm not kidding. Tony was talking with his therapist after being shot and almost dying and he was just a little past the days when he is grateful for absolutely everything because he nearly lost it. In probably my favourite line from my second favourite TV show, he says, "Every day is a gift. But does it have to be a pair of socks?"

In Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club" there's a scene in which Tyler Durden, (Brad Pitt for those Phillistines who haven't read the book), holds a gun to the head of a guy and threatens to kill him. Here is a pretty good remake of the scene from the movie. Gee, I wonder why the REAL scene isn't on youtube. I wonder why this isn't the most popular clip on youtube. The key is in the last line of the clip. Don't just watch the beginning. Watch it to the end. "The ability to let that which does not matter slide."

Why will Raymond K.K.K.K.K.K. Hessel's breakfast taste so good the next day? Because unlike all of us the night before he had nothing. He was dead. Today he appreciates every single thing he has. If we could remind ourselves daily that we have all we need and THEN some we'd be on our way.

I just got back from years away from my home country. I've been here for about 6 months and I STILL have to force myself to savour the taste of the Canadian beer I'm drinking right now that I couldn't get in Korea. I have to remind myself that the smell of dead leaves I love so much was pretty hard to come by unless you went up to the mountains in Korea. I have to constantly force myself to appreciate my life here or I start to take it for granted and WORST of all DESIRE more. CRAVE more money; a better house; a bigger TV; a car; a faster computer; a hot girlfriend; there is no end to the shit that I crave that I DO NOT NEED! That which I crave is that which does not matter.

In a nutshell, this is the problem with the world. And it's a spiritual problem. To borrow and amend a common phrase from Alcoholics Anonymous, There is no political or economic solution to a spiritual problem.

Every day is a pair of socks. A pair of socks to US in the priveleged countries of the world means exactly nothing. We were really hoping for a lot more. But you give that same pair of socks to someone in a third world country and there will be rejoicing! I think the third world countries are MUCH closer to true happiness, (and I've been in some and people are generally WAY happier in their abject poverty than we are in our abundance), because, whether they want to be or not, they are closer to that state of abandoning all that can lead to craving and desire. Do we have to be forced to be happy? Do we have to have someone take away everything we have to make us appreciate it? Do we need to have someone GIVE us everything we want to make us understand that we don't need it?

These are all mind-bending, bong-filling questions that could be contemplated, ruminated and extrapolated upon for as long as the party goes on. At last we come to the point of this whole blog entry: this is the point of this whole blog entry. I write because I have to. I have to write because it allows me to vent. Allowing me to vent gets all the negativity out so I am able, (or at least more likely to), see the positive side of things and appreciate the veritable goldmine of life's gifts that I have happened into. When I went to the Philippines during Christmas not so long ago my friend Wallace and I bought up a bunch of cheap crap for Christmas gifts for my friend Wallace's family. Junk like liquid watches called "slotches"; yo-yos that lit up as they spun; puzzles; word games; dolls; you get the idear. Nothing over 5 bucks. Wallace dressed up in a Santa suit, rode a trike to the house in Diamond Subdivision, Angeles City, Phils. where we were all gathered for the Christmas festivities. He had a sack full of all the presents and he gave them out to kids who, unlike Canadian kids, actually APPRECIATED them! They all freaked out and said, "WOW! A yo-yo that glows!" And they played and played with their small gifts never losing the joy that they brought. I don't think I have ever spent a better 50 or 100 bucks. Whatever it was. See? I don't remember. If they had all been like Canadian kids and opened them up and immediately said, "Oh. Ho hum. Nice. NEXT!" I would know exactly how much I wasted on those little bastards. But it wasn't like that.

Here is the problem we all have that leads to Prozac and illegal drugs and what have you: it takes a HELLUVA lot to give us joy! And here is the mathematical algorhythm or however you spell that: the amount of joy you have is directly DISproportionate to the amount of money you have. Very complicated eh? It's because the more money you have the LESS impressed you are with everything.

It works on the same principal as "Ignorance is bliss." People who don't know many things and haven't experienced much are far more likely to be easy to please. It's just a fact. We live in societies that are constantly moving from thing to thing thinking the exact opposite: that all this new knowledge and experience will somehow lead AWAY from boredom. But how's that been workin'?

So should we just avoid new things? Should we hide from reality? Or at least what we perceive that reality might be? NO! We just need to develop a kind of spiritual consciousness that allows us to appreciate the all singing all dancing performance of life that is being constantly soft-shoed and belted out before us, FOR FREE, for our own personal enjoyment. If that takes meditation, go for it! If you need to seek psychiatric treatment, you go! If it just requires a few alcoholic beverages or some other form of mental inhibition, I think that's good. If you think you get it from belonging to a club or organized religion, fill yer boots! But if there is some way you can just get it on your own by forcing yourself to OPEN YOUR EYES, I think that's probably the best method. Just, not the easiest thing to do...

See, there IS some reason we're all here. Least that's what I reckon...

Bradley, Assange and Santiago: Conduct BECOMING!

Nicholson: You want answers?
Cruise: I think I'm entitled to them.
Nicholson: You want ANSWERS?
Cruise: I want the TRUTH!
Nicholson: YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!
...
Nicholson: I have neither the time, nor the inclination to explain myself to someone who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the 'freedom' I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it... Either way I don't give a DAMN about what YOU think you are entitled to!

That was directly from memory folks! Thank you very much.

Ah the movies... If only things were really like they are in the movies. In "A Few Good Men" Jack Nicholson's character, Colonel Nathan R. Jessep, goes to jail for ordering a "code red" on a soldier, private Santiago, who turned out to be sub-standard because of heart problems. These heart problems, which the military medics showed some negligence in diagnosing, eventually lead to his death while receiving the "code red" binding, gagging and beating by his peers. Two soldiers who participated in the code red, Dawson and Downey, were cleared of murder charges, but dishonourably discharged for NOT helping Santiago, i.e. not disobeying orders and reporting, thus exposing this dirty military secret. This is called "conduct unbecoming a United States Marine." So the point is that NOT reporting military misconduct is conduct unbecoming a US soldier and people can get punished for it.

"In no case shall information be classified... in order to: conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; prevent embarrassment of a person, organization or agency... or prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security."

This is executive order 13526 made by Barack Obama on Dec. 29, 2009 and seems to support the same point. However, before you start waving your "Yes We Can" flags, there were a stack of documents scheduled to be automatically declassified on Dec. 31, 2009 that were suddenly in need of review after the order, which effectively re-classified the soon-to-be de-classified documents for another couple years thereby BREAKING the e.o. by its issuance. Don't ya just LOVE politics?

Have you heard of Julian Assange or Bradley Manning?



If not it's pretty surprising. I'm not saying come out from under your rock because I hadn't really heard much about them either. What's surprising is the fairly successful sweeping under the carpet they are receiving when their story is WAY better than the above movie, which was nominated for 4 Oscars. I liked Unforgiven and LOVE Gene Hackman but come on! Jack shoulda won. Hackman shoulda won the evil lawman Oscar for The Quick and the Dead. It was the same character only a better performance of it I think. If not for that scene in Unforgiven where he hands that reporter the gun and tells him to shoot him, I'd say it was no contest. "Pretty HOT idn't it?" ha ha ha. Come to think of it, Gene Hackman as Colonel Nathan Jessep! Could that have even been BETTER? Ah the movies...

Anyhoo, here is a pbs vid. about the supposedly "troubled" life of Bradley Manning including the 911 phone call made while he allegedly assaulted his stepmother with a knife. He aparently STRUCK a fellow soldier and threw some chairs. Even YELLED at superiors while in the military. Gasp! Back to Colonel Nathan R. Jessep, "My existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives!" Soldiers are BETTER if they're violent. Don't forget, their job is to shoot people.

Why does the reporter keep asking questions to Brian Manning inviting him to embellish how "troubled" and "erratic" Bradley Manning's upbringing was? Why is his sexual status important? Why does the music in the video portend something ominous? The cops didn't even charge Bradley after the 911 call, why is it getting publicized now? I think people in high places want very badly for Bradley to be thought of as a bit unstable. Now, immediately I'm gonna take a hit for this but some people believe that being gay is a choice made by mentally unstable people. His father says in the video that his reaction to finding out Bradley was gay was, "That's YOUR decision." I'm gonna take the military position on this one: Don't ask/don't tell. Boy does the military wish Bradley Manning hadn't asked and hadn't told!

You see, he is responsible for leaking over half a million classified government documents to Assange's organization, Wikileaks. Now maybe the military members who are party to this classified information, like Colonel Jessep, "...have a greater responsibility than we can possibly fathom." But it's pretty hard to imagine what kind of "responsibilities" require the ignorant and innocent public to be kept from fathoming stuff like why it's necessary to ignore torture in Iraq; cover up child trafficking in Afghanistan; throw people in Guantanamo prison for fashion or fashion accessory choices; classify the killing of journalists and the rate of innocents killed to combatants in Iraq, (2 non-combatants for every combatant btw); keep the huge 3rd world slave labour market desperately poor for our corporations' picking, (like 5 bucks a day was TOO MUCH money for financially strapped American corporations to pay their Haitian workers!); the list goes on. For the complete list and a well organized and researched site about all this, (better than mine), go to the "Free Bradley Manning" site here.

It would appear that like the doctored log books, phony transfer order, and coerced doctors of "A Few Good Men", there is some character assassination and covering up going on here. And it isn't limited to Bradley Manning. Julian Assange is now fighting a rape charge made by some women in Sweden. Now, I am not going to say it's impossible that he committed this crime, but if he's extradited to Sweden, it would make his extradition to America possible where he could be tried and found guilty of conduct that SHOULD be considered becoming. He COULD end up in that place that links all three of these stories together: Guantanamo prison. As I type Bradley Manning is in the brig where I'm sure he isn't being treated very nicely and he may soon be joined by Assange. All the while, BOTH are up for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. And maybe for good measure sombody'll throw Lady Gaga in there with them for suspected complicity in the events arising from the fact that the data was transfered to Wikileaks via a Lady Gaga CD.

Ever hear about something that made you say, "They oughta make a movie!"? Folks there is GONNA be a movie made! Directed by Steven Spielberg. I'm guessing Leo as Bradley Manning though he could play Assange. Daniel Craig looks like the best Assange although I'd like to see Sting given some consideration. Or as a long shot Jason Isaacs, (Malfoy's Dad).

And Steve, Mr. Speilberg, if you're reading, please give Gene Hackman a part. He's probably my favourite actor.

Ahh the movies...

Let's Stop Rewarding Corporate Behaviour and Start Kicking This Bully's Ass!

"We're sure not heading down a very happy road!" David Suzuki





On the left in the white van is the person who ran over the baby girl who wandered into the street in front of him. She didn’t dart. She didn’t sneak. She was moving slowly. And at about 3 or 4 miles an hour the van wasn’t moving much faster. The driver had plenty of time to stop. Even had plenty of room to swerve. Did neither. Not until the little girl was rolled over by the front, left wheel did the driver stop. For about 4 seconds before deciding to run her over with the REAR wheel as well and continue on with his business.

On the right the Tiananmen Square Tank Man. During demonstrations to encourage economic reform and liberalization in 1989 protesters were forcibly removed by the Chinese military. This one-man protest was an iconic photo of the event. The Great Firewall of China is so unbelievably effective that many Chinese people STILL have never seen this picture. I’m sure most of them haven’t seen the video of the baby being run over either. If you have seen the movie associated with this tank photo, the tank tries to avoid the man but he moves so that the tank must mow him down in order to move forward. The tank driver never does run him over.

Changing times in China and the world! The war is not about soldiers, bombs and tanks any more it’s about businessmen, buyouts and corporations. The soldier driving the tank doesn’t think the military’s purpose is important enough to sacrifice the man’s life. But the psychopath in the van thinks HIS time is much more important than the life of that little girl.

Before we get too hung up on the fact that these are both Chinese men and before we even think about putting the blame on Communism, don’t you think there are a LOT of businesspeople who would run this little girl down? Ever seen the movie Wall Street? I could just hear Gordon Gekko on the oversized cell phone now if it were HIM who was driving the white van. “Okay, yeah the little girl thing. My time is just too valuable for this! Get one of my aids to find out how much the parents will settle for out of court. If it’s more than a mil. we'll take them to court. I don’t think I need to tell you this but, please, don’t START at a million. Try to lowball them if you can.” Beep “Now, young, pre-meltdown Charlie Sheen, tell me more about your father and this airline…” But Gordon Gekko is just a fictional character, right? Back to these real men.

Which of these men will be encouraged and which will be corrected? As a more general question, which behaviour is encouraged and which corrected?

If these two men were applying for a job, (a high paying job where you make REAL money and aren’t living paycheck to paycheck like most of the schmucks in the world), in China or practically any country, and had these photos as the first pages of their respective resumes, who do you suppose would be hired?

What will happen to the baby killer if his company sees the video of him driving over a helpless baby in order to deliver the product on time or arrive at a meeting on time or pick up an important client at the airport on time? Will he be fired and turned over to the police? Or will this video be played at the next shareholder’s meeting and used as inspiration for employees to let nothing get in their way of doing a good job? Will this guy who treats a baby human being worse than most people treat a skunk get a RAISE? A promotion? Will he become a highly sought after employee who never has to worry about unemployment again? And will he look back at the incident and someday think it was the BEST thing he ever did?

I think you know what I think are the answers to these questions. I also think you know what the RIGHT answers to these questions are. But in this world where we are marching backwards and calling it progress the WRONG answers are where we are ALL headed. David Suzuki calls it a road that's not very happy. In true Chinese fashion, they have just arrived there ahead of most of us. But then again they have the perfect situation to promote corporate thinking. Huge population and terrible, dollar a day jobs that are at a PREMIUM. People are desperate to do anything to get or to keep a job. Sound familiar?

George Carlin calls the heads of corporations, the rich, the banks and the governments they control our “owners.” The owners know we could all have nice houses, new cars and money in the bank but then they think we wouldn’t have the hungry, go-get-‘em, greed-is-good, profit-at-all-cost, turn-a-baby-into-roadkill corporate attitudes. So they keep us all about one really rainy day away from the poor house. It’s like Roberto Luongo. He’s a millionaire goalie who is good but not great. Some say back in the days when he was young and had the drive to keep his NHL job he was much better. Now most Canuck fans are wondering if we should give Luongo’s job to this kid in the minor leagues called Eddie Lack. He’s young and not rich and playing great because of it. Get the best for the least. This is corporate thinking and we all do it sometimes. But it’s gotten WAAAYYY out of hand!

THIS is what the marches on Wall Street, (MWS), and all over the world are trying to wake us up to. Don’t think we are quite so bad yet? Okay, ask yourself if you were a couple hours late for work would you get in trouble? Maybe get fired? Ask yourself if your boss would accept any excuse, even, “I stopped to help a baby who had been run over by TWO cars.” Okay, maybe your work situation isn’t so bad. Maybe the answers to these questions were both NO. I think they are for ME too. But now ask yourself if one of these wouldn’t be a niggling concern while you came to the aid of that baby. If you waited an hour or two for the ambulance would you check your watch? Would you phone in and tell the boss you will be late before or after the baby was as stabilized as she could be? And then if you WERE fired at some later date, you absolutely KNOW your boss would say, "And then there was that time you were two hours late!" It is courageous, selfless and heroic to help out a baby that has been hit by a car, but it could be held against you at work. Even in Canada. And we know this.

We are preconditioned and socialized, mostly by our owners, to think of money before people. Community and Society are people but Capital is money. Why are Communism and Socialism weighed down in our minds with such heavy negativity? It’s training. Sure Socialist and Communist regimes have committed terrible atrocities but you really should blame the “ists” before the “isms.” And there are two overlooked, but elephant-in-the-room obvious facts here: 1. Capitalism has been the political ideology of a LOT of people who committed a lot of atrocities too. And 2. Good old fashioned, apolitical GREED is the cause of most of the atrocities regardless of which government regime committed them.

How long before Canada will get to the point where we are so concerned about business, keeping our jobs and filthy lucre that 18 people would pass by a dying baby before she gets some help? In Canada we have social programs available that give enough money to ANYone so they can at least have a home and food. For now. Until those are cut to maximize corporate profit. See, a corporation sees “Profit” and “loss” in a very different way than a normal person. If I make 40,000 dollars 10 years in a row I feel like I have had 10 fantastic years. I wish I could just have ONE year like that! A corporation that profits the same two years in a row doesn’t see it as sustained success. They actually see it as LOSS! They MUST profit MORE! And believe it or not if in year two your profit is 10% more than year one, then in year three your profit was 9% more than year two, a corporation will even see THAT as a loss! But it’s important to recognize the corporation NEVER actually loses. They pass all the loss on to the customer and the low level workers. No corporation big wigs EVER take a pay cut. Even in a depression they give themselves healthy raises.

It is also important to note that most governments nowadays are run exactly like corporations. Probably because they are run BY them. That includes Canada. If you think that's not true, when did we vote for the cancellation of corporate capital taxes? It happened federally in 2006 and provincially just last year. The corporations in Canada pay 1/3 of the taxes that regular people pay. And even what they DO pay, that's right, the cost is passed on to the little guy.

Our government has learned from the corporations. When we have a bad year the government raises taxes or government mark-up on food items or inflation or adds another excise tax "for our own good." When will they just axe social programs like welfare or old age pensions? It could happen. If it ever did, in a Canada where possible homelessness and starvation are one mistake at work away, would 18 people walk by a dying baby THEN? I hope we never find out! This is what they’re up against in China. There but for the grace of the Canadian social net could go you and I. And if we continue the way we are indelibly stamped by our owners to proceed, we’re not too far behind the Chinese.

I'll tell you who is right behind China: The U.S. I think the best analogy I’ve ever heard to explain the situation, and the best characters ever created to illustrate it are: the Hershey’s Kiss experiment and the South Park boys. An American teacher, let's say Mr. Mackey, (though he's just the guidance counselor), did an experiment in his classroom. He put 100 Hershey's Kisses in a jar, lined up 20 students and explained that they could take as many Kisses for themselves as they wanted before passing the jar to the next student, mmmkay? When the jar reached the end of the line the Kisses would be doubled and the jar would be passed again as many times as it takes until it's empty, mmmkay? So Kenny takes a few, Stan takes a couple, Kyle takes a few Timmy takes one, Jimmy Vulmer takes a couple and then the jar gets to Eric Cartman with 89 Kisses still left. The other students are pleading with him to only take 2 or 3 so that at the end of the line there are 50 left and the jar will start at 100 again and everybody will have an endless supply of FREE chocolate. But Cartman just can't understand it. He takes the 89 Kisses for himself. And feels just fine about it. The kids say, "But Cartman, we all could have had chocolate for life!" He says, "Yeah but then I wouldn't have been able to do THIS," he shoves all 89 Kisses into his mouth and says, "Nyah nyah, I ha mo oc lit an yeeuu!"

This was an actual experiment done in the States and aparently there are Cartmans in every classroom there. I've done it in some of my classrooms in Korea and even though they are all about money over there I was proud of my students! They caught on and nobody Cartmaned the whole jar. I guess they are a bit behind the States in their corporate training. But which of the South Park kids would you bet your money on becoming the most "successful" in America?

Here's Cartman eating the skin off the KFC him and the gang were going to share. Kyle, Stan and Kenny are helping bring in the rest of the groceries. Cartman doesn't help bring in the groceries, eats the best part off everybody's KFC then goes home. There you have it, the model citizen in modern society. He will be CEO of a huge corporation some day.

My point is we have to stop encouraging antisocial, corporate behaviour in our government and in our societies. And if people refuse to stop thinking of themselves and their money before anything else, they must be corrected. And how about a little bit more reward and encouragement for people who think of other people?

How can we correct a government that has gone corporate? I'm glad I asked that question. The one part of the David Suzuki interview I didn't like was when he was asked for some concrete suggestions and out came that dusty old political panacea, "VOTE!" Well, he's a biologist, give him a break. But I find it really strange how even the smartest people seem to think we have no power in the situation we're in. The media continues to feign confusion or misunderstanding about the concrete issues the MWS protests are about. Well Suzuki nails the issues perfectly in the interview but the act of voting is actually just enabling the corrupted, corporatized system that is messing everything up. What can we dooo? Superman save us!

I think I'm going to draw a cartoon. It'll be a huge, money-eating monster ravaging the cities of Canada and a couple of Canadians saying to each other, "How can we stop this monster?!?" "I don't know, help me feed it this dump truck full of income tax cash, will ya?" Again, it's all about the training. Almost 100 years ago the government incorporated income tax to help in the war effort during WWI. It was a TEMPORARY tax. They have been collecting this tax from us for almost 100 years since the war ended. And that makes up a reported 40% of our government's revenue every year! But we are all well trained to pay our income tax every year. We even pay money to H&R Block to have them figure it out FOR the government. That's like digging our own grave, (or paying the grave digger bill), before being murdered. If we were thinking straight we would realize that our government owes the people of Canada TRILLIONS of dollars in illegally collected backtaxes. Or they should at least be thrown in jail. But it's pretty hard to put all the politicians from the past 100 years in jail.

Now flip that around. If we stopped paying income tax, (like we should have YEARS ago), they couldn't put us all in jail. Of course the government would complain that the 40% cut in their revenue would make their jobs so much more difficult. But would a single MP cancel a vacation, postpone a purchase or go without his/her regular raise? Of course not! They would pass the burden on to... who? Now you're catching on, US. So we would have to kindly request that the government reinstate the corporate taxes they cancelled not so long ago. And then request politely that they add some more taxes on top of them. There are THREE concrete suggestions about what we can do in Canada.

And when they don't work, which they likely won't, THAT'S when things are gonna get REAL all up in this bitch. There are lots of things we can do to take down the corruption at the top. They're soft and we are the workers. There is no way they should be able to bully us. I'm looking forward to kicking this bully's ass.

Dave's Canadian Budget

Yesterday I found "The Shakiest Gun in the West" on Youtube and decided I'd watch it for old time's sake. The last time I saw that things were sure different in Canada! I had a job where I was earning a good living at 10 bucks an hour and if I wanted some midnight munchies I could go out and get a bag of cheese popcorn for less than 2 bucks.

I am earning a SHYTE living now at 10 bucks an hour and I got a bag of cheese popcorn to eat while watching the movie last night. It cost almost 5 bucks! But cheese popcorn isn't the thing that has gone up in price the most since then. Not by a long shot. I was looking at tuition prices for the English program at Lakehead U. That's where I graduated in 1994. In the 17 years since then the price, (and this is only tuition, not books, rent and other essentials while you are studying), has QUADROUPLED!

I am noticing a trend in the news stories they put out nowadays. It's what I like to call "False Flag Journalism." They write a story telling the truth about something like prices going up in Canada or taxes getting worse and try to make it appear like they are concerned about how things are. Then they give statistics and half truths, (and sometimes NON-truths), that totally downplay the situation and make is seem not so bad. One recent article was about the .04% inflation rate in Canada or some crap like that. Well if you figure the inflation rate of my tuition it's damn near 25%. Why don't I see an article written about that? Another example was an article in which the author stated that pajamas, pillows and some other p word, I dunno, pickles were more expensive in Canada than in the States. Hello? McFly? EVERYTHING is more expensive in Canada than in the States. Even things we MAKE in Canada!

I think the big problem here is taxes and since I am now paying them again I have a right to bitch about them. And I'll need to prepare for the beating I'll take this year through taxes so I best make myself a budget. So here goes: a history of Canadian taxes and just a few examples of the greed/corruption that has gone along with them and made Canada such a ridiculously expensive place to live. This WON'T be false flag journalism so if you can't stand anything bad being said about Canada, even if it's the truth, stop reading now.

Before 1867 Canada was a nice place to move to because there weren't any taxes. People from England were showing up to get away from the taxation in their land. But at least at home they had the collection of said taxes under the pretense that God had chosen the royal family to rule Mother England and all the subjects of the royal family should give God his just deserts through His representative family. Or whatever...

Here in Canada did you ever wonder where taxes came from? I'll tell you where they came from. Out of NOwhere, that's where they came from. In 1867 the Constitution Act assigned federal parliament power over "the raising of money by any mode or system of taxation." And the provinces received something similar. This was not a price paid for someone new moving to Canada, it was just a bunch of Canadian people who presumed to tell a larger bunch of Canadian people that they HAD to give them a portion of their money because this group called "government" knew how to do exactly that, govern the country and the average person was too stupid to do it him/herself. And maybe they were right because, as has since become our specialty, the large group of Canadian people said, "Oh, well, I dunno, that seems, um not so, oh, um, er, well okay, I guess..."

But it wasn't so bad. About 90% were indirect taxes. Until 1917 when the Borden government introduced a temporary tax called "income tax" that was only a temporary measure to aid in the temporary fighting overseas. Oh and in politcalese "temporary" means "permanent" at least where taxation is concerned. By 1946 with the political advent of WWII, the Canadian government was bold enough to change the taxation system to where less than 40% was now indirect tax. And the Canadian citizens said, "Oh, well, I dunno, I'm kinda tired of fighting after these two wars, not to mention paying for them, so I'll just say, well, um, okay, I guess..."

And nowadays, as I have become abundantly aware since returning to Canada, we, as citizens of this great country, are nothing more than numbered consumers. We're commodities to those few in charge, the rich, the corporate, the banks who all control the government in order to get the highest yield from each of us. All through taxation. If you think I'm being a negative Nancy here, capital tax, which was introduced at the end of the 19th century and is a tax charged on a corporation's taxable capital was eliminated on the federal level on Jan. 1, 2006. Did you know that? Did you vote for that?

On the provincial levels Ontario got rid of this nasty tax on the only people in their provice who could afford it on, (how patriotic!), Canada Day, 2010. I think in B.C. it was axed on a more appropriate day, April 1, 2010 because we are fools to let corporations pay LOWER taxes than the rest of us in Canada! A study, (they had to do a study to figure this out?), done in 2007 found that the richest in Canada pay the lowest rates of tax of all income groups. Last fiscal year the government collected 3 times the amount of personal tax as it did corporate tax. And without capital tax, even lower now. And the rest of Canada said, "Well, um, yeah but, we don't really like, um, er, uh, oh well, okay."

We still have the "temporary" income tax. That makes up about 40% of the government revenue every year. Or so we're told. In a study done in 2005 it was reckoned that the average household making the average Canadian income, (that's gross including social security contributions by employer), paid a personal income tax of 31.6% of his/her wage if he/she was single. Only 21.5% if married with two kids. I've DONE it folks! I have found the one and only GOOD reason to get married and have kids!!! Oh well too late for me.

But don't be fooled. We don't pay only 31.6% of our income, (our GROSS income), on taxes. We should BE so lucky! What if you have a house? Property tax makes up 10% of the government's total tax revenue in Canada. Or so we've been told. A house is one of those things that people HAVE TO have. In economic terms I think these things are called "inelastic" goods because supply and demand doesn't affect them. People always need them. So the government wouldn't be evil and take advantage of people by taxing essentials would they? Well only a little. There is property tax. But don't worry, if you die and leave your house to someone in your will there is no estate tax in Canada! Good news! It was abolished by Trudeau.

Uh, but, um, when a peson dies there IS a "deemed disposition" of all capital property. This includes stocks, bonds, RRSP's and, yes, real estate. What it means is your capital property is treated as sold at fair maket value on the day of your death. Your estate must pay capital gains tax on all that property, which, um, er, CAN be over 50%! We have to pay it when we die but corporations don't have to pay it any more. So if a house is passed on twice, the government gets its full value. Or at least COULD get. If it's passed on from generation to generation the government gets more value from it than you. So I guess they DO take advantage of the Canadian taxpayer on the home.

So that's 31.6% income tax. Add to that the payroll taxes like E.I, C.P.P., Worker's Comp., Employer Health Tax etc., which is about 12% That's 43.6% of our income. Considering the average renter and/or mortgage payer tends to pay 35-40% of his/her wages on their home, (a guy making 10 bucks an hour and living in Victoria pays WAY more than that! Like 60%), we're now up to 78.6. Since the government will gauge us if we try to sell or even GIVE AWAY our houses, let's say 80% shall we?

But what about another essential: food? Surely we all have to eat to survive. Our government isn't going to screw us on THIS front are they? Well this one is complicated. There is, of course, a varying group of sales taxes on food anywhere from the Albertan's 5% to 15.5% in P.E.I. And I remember when certain essentials like food didn't have sales tax I'm sure of it! Nowadays there is supposed to be no G.S.T. charged on food or essentials but we've all seen it. One of the tricks of the proposed H.S.T. was to allow taxation of extra essentials like toilet paper and other things. Who are we kidding, in 10 years it'll all be taxed anyway. Between tariffs, duties, store mark-ups, inflation and who knows what else food already IS hugely taxed. As illustrated with the cheese popcorn, it ain't getting any cheaper! In this study it was figured that the average monthly grocery bill in Canada per person was $244.00 per month. That's about $3000.00 a year. If you take home $30,000 a year these days in Canada you are pretty damn lucky so let's say food is about 10% of our budget.

That puts us up to 90% already! And we're not even through with the essentials! Or at least what I would consider essentials... Let's look at some well known hidden taxes our beloved government charges on us. Excise taxes are sometimes called "Sin" taxes because they are often associated with things that aren't necessary and some people consider bad, like alcohol or cigarettes. It's pretty tough to get actual figures on how much these taxes are. Only the government really knows. But I have it on pretty good authority, (whatever that is), that 67% of cigarette prices are taxes and government mark-up. (That's before sales tax is added to the other two taxes). 48% of the price of gas. For distilled spirits the tax is $11.06 for a 1 litre bottle. I couldn't figure it out for something that is more of a staple than a luxury: beer. But the brewers pay a tax, ($2.30/case), and then the consumers pay too. In 2004 Canadians paid 1.005 billion in GST on booze, 1.221 billion in excise tax and 3.567 billion dollars on government mark-up. They can get away with that because government regulation on alcohol sales creates a monopoly. That's illegal for any other goods but for alcohol, cigarettes, gas, gambling, hydro and lots of other things, it's okay. Cuz they're the government!

Wait a sec! Now we're getting into some things that aren't luxuries! We all have to pay heat, hydro, water, gas, cable, internet and these things we call utilities. This will definitely eat up the other 10% of your budget. So now the average Canadian has spent all of his/her money on tax. Well except for food and utilities, which are mostly tax. Almost 100% tax rate. Oh Canada!

What if we want anything like a car, gas, entertainment, or things that aren't necessary to keep a good consumer, uh, I mean citizen alive? Since we've spent 100% of our money on the essentials, (and don't forget we haven't even included SALES TAX!), we can't afford this other stuff. I guess this is all supposed to be purchased by the rich with the money the government saved them in capital and corporation taxes. So we shouldn't mind if it's taxed a lot. No, don't worry, the government will give you credit to buy the luxuries and then tax the crap out of the money you borrow and call it "interest!" Yes, banks ARE government too, Sparky.

And then there are the cases of double taxation. This, our govenment has told us for years, is something they are trying to make sure NO Canadian has to endure. When I buy a pack of smokes I pay sales tax on my excise tax don't I? Not to mention on the government mark-up. Same with booze. Income tax when not paid immediately accrues interest. That's tax on top of tax. The duty charged on the price of a product made cheaply in China is charged to make local prices more competitive. We pay sales tax on all duty and tariff price hikes, not just the original prices.

These "inelastic" goods that the government taxes include cigarettes and alcohol and things people become addicted to. THAT'S why nothing affects the demand! There are proposed excise taxes to TV, fatty food, internet, cable, even prostitution. A couple guys in Quebec got addicted to gambling between 1996 and 1999. They made some huge bets on some longshots and were lucky enough to cash in to the tune of millions of dollars. The government called them up in 2000 and said they wanted their cut of that since the gambling constituted a business and was subject to taxation. The judge ruled that there was no evidence of a ?system? so the brothers won. So if you gamble with a system, (???), it's a business and they'll try to get THAT too.

Insert your own outrageous Canadian tax story here.

The average Canadian gets battered all year by taxes and then in April he/she gets ass-raped by income tax. AND WE, (with the help of H&R Block), ARE FORCED TO DO IT ALL OURSELVES AT OUR OWN EXPENSE! Now I remember why I went to Korea.

But, I have hockey, er, um, good beer, fresh air, um, er, I dunno, cheese popcorn, humm, humm, Kraft Dinner, haw, haw, I guess I'll do it too, I guess, um, humina humina, er...

Dawkins: The Blind Watch Faker

Won't Richard Dawkins please just go away? His moment in the sun is over. It's sad watching him talk about the origins of the universe acting like he has even an inkling of an idea of what's going on like an audience member at a magic show pretending to understand the magician's tricks by saying, "It's all smoke and mirrors." Dawkins, once known as Darwin's pitbull, IS very much smoke and mirrors and the sad part is not the many fans who have read, or claim to have read his books and support him and the educationally, and societally mandated "MEME" of Darwinist thinking, it's that it's pretty obvious he's a smart enough guy to know he's full of shit. The more he studies, the more he realizes this, but he is so completely invested in his false cause that he can't just change his mind now.

Although, in the spirit of science, which I think he genuinely DOES respect, it would not be out of character to completely flip-flop. Science does it all the time. And scientists constantly disagree. Even though they are always claiming to require hard evidence and uncompromised objectivity as the basis of scientific method. One wonders how these things could happen... Is the Earth flat or round? Are birds related to dinosaurs or not? Are brontosaurus and triceratops just mistakes? Are eggs good for me or not? Is light actually the fastest thing known to man? What the hell happened to Pluto?

I don't think it will be long before this whole wave of Darwinist, evolutionary thinking will be just another famous scientific flip-flop. Evolution happens. That's not what I'm debating. It's the extent that people, most who claim science as their ally, carry it. A scientist I once read defined faith as assumption based on imagination. In the interview above, O'Reilly's very first statement was that it takes more faith to believe in what Dawkins is shovelling, natural selection, than to believe in intelligent design. If people bother to actually READ "The Origin of Species" they'll find a lot of passages where Darwin virtually says he's probably wrong. And if one was to pick up a copy of Dawkins' book, "The Blind Watchmaker" he/she would find Dawkins elucidating, in chapter 2, the wonders of bat echolocation and writing the following:

"We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully
'designed' to have come into existence by chance."

He then spends the rest of the book saying that Darwin and Wallace took a "very large leap of the imagination" but there's no faith, there's no design, there's a much more plausible way that the wonders of cre - (oops I almost typed "creation"), the universe came about. How can a person use words like "plausible" and then claim to be scientific? There's no plausible in science. It is or it isn't. As Dawkins says in this interview, "Somethings got to either be true or not." At least it's supposed to be that way. But when convenient, Dawkins can just flippantly say, "We're working on it." We BELIEVE in it 100% but we're working on it. There goes evidence and there CERTAINLY goes objectivity. How can terms like "natural selection" be used for that matter? If nature, as Darwin, Wallace and Dawkins are constantly telling us, is just an inanimate, non-sentient force, how can it make a selection?

This book, "The Blind Watchmaker," was also the origin of the word, "meme," which I hated long before I knew Dawkins was responsible for it. Could, irony of ironies, everything he writes about and believes be just that? A meme? I think so. But I'm not going to just hypothesize and pass it off as scientific fact. Let's explore this a little bit more and see exactly how "plausible" it is. I'm not inclined to think, "Well the guy wrote a book and he's on T.V., he must know what he's talking about."

Back in 1802, (50 years before The Origin of Species), William Paley used a famous analogy to explain why we believe in a Creator when we see nature. It was called the Watchmaker Argument or Analogy. It was something like if a person who had never seen a watch before found one in the wilderness, he would conclude that it was a product of intelligent design. It had a creator. A watchmaker. The thing most people DON'T know about Paley is that he compiled a staggering catalogue of evidences of intelligent design from mostly the human body but also the animal and plant kingdoms and he said that all of these evidences were much more compelling than the watch in their complexity. Let's not forget that the watchmaker analogy is macroscopic. We know that cells are divided into parts made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of particles, some of which are made of sub-particles. And in 50 years maybe sub-sub particles or sub-sub-SUB particles will be discovered. The irony is that because of scientific knowledge, (which evolutionists are always claiming to support THEM), we know that the watch is actually a watch made of millions of tiny pieces even more complex than watches, which themselves are made of billions of even tinier pieces more complex than watches. And there is undoubtedly MORE going on there that we can't yet see. What kind of person could understand this and not take it as a compelling argument for creation over random happenstance? Someone who has TREMENDOUS faith!

Even though he uses phrases like, "increasingly fewer," talks about seeing Apollo not looking so good, O'Reilly is absolutely right. And Dawkins knows it. Come on!

Also in the same book Dawkins expands on what he calls the more "plausible" explanation of how things come about. He created a program called the Weasel program. It was designed to randomly generate the Shakespearian phrase, "Methinks it is like a weasel," from Hamlet. A parent of randomly generated letters was created and it bred offspring through random mutation. In his own opinion his program would have taken a million, million, million, million, million years to produce the phrase. As further research has shown, he was way off. Monkey typing Shakespeare programs have been tested all over the place and the best they have ever done was in 2005 when the first 24 characters from Henry IV were randomly typed. It only took 2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey years to get it. Whatever the hell that means... Another typed "Valentine Cease to idor:eflpoFrjwK78axzv" the first 19 characters of Two Gentlemen of Verona, and THAT only took 42 billion billion billion monkey years. Considering the age of the earth, the streak of 24 characters, the best ever recorded, would take many billion billion earth ages. The complete works of Shakespeare are about 4.5 million characters. Yet there are people who still believe that a room full of monkeys would eventually bang that out if given enough time. That's just a complete misunderstanding of how random works, which undoubtedly contributes to their belief in evolution. Or it's incredible faith!

Back to the weasel program. Dawkins wanted to randomly generate a phrase of 28 characters with it. As we now know, that just ain't gonna happen. And it didn't. But did that stop Dawkins? No. He then changed to program to CHOOSE the closest progeny to the desired quotation. This, according to Dawkins, "shows" or "demonstrates" the ability of natural SELECTION to generate biological complexity out of random mutations. Well hold on now! These mutations were no longer random. Like I said before, call it choosing or selecting, that's intelligence. All Dawkins has done here is Goded up his Godless program. It's not random any more. But even if you inexplicably believe, as so many did, that this is proof of natural selection, there is a much bigger problem: it took 43 generations.

24 mutations to the same species. 23 useless spandrels that only became useful after the 24th mutation in the 43rd generation. Dawkins was quoted as saying that the probability of a gene mutating is less than one in a million. What then are the odds of something mutating 24 times? Don't make the mistake of thinking it's only one in 24 million. Every mutation raises the odds exponentially. That's what Shakespeare's monkeys showed us. 24 mutations is not gonna happen. Add to this that mutations very rarely make something more attractive or better able to survive. Genetic material is not gained but lost during a mutation. Mutations are often lethal. Some examples we know are cystic fibrosis, sicle cell anemia, Down's syndrom and cancer. We naturally mate with attractive survivors. Mutation almost always makes the mutant less likely to procreate. Anything different is usually scorned. AND, a lot of mutations are recessive. That is they will not be passed on unless BOTH parents have them.

Taking all the SCIENCE into account, this model was insanely inane. But it was lauded as hard scientific evidence of natural selection by a LOT of people. People with a LOT of faith.

In the same book Dawkins uses an eye for an example. He begins with a simple organism capable of only distinguishing between light and dark. Then through a series of what he calls "plausible" minor modifications the organism builds in sophistication until we arrive at the elegant, complex, mammalian eye. This is not science, it's science fiction! Any REAL scientist knows that this is absolutely absurd! Zoologist Pierre Paul Grasse, former president of the French academy of science observed that a single animal or plant would not require 24 but thousands and thousands of these luckily approprate events called mutations.

Another highly respected scientist, Dr. Lee Spetner sat down and figured the odds of developing a single new species through mutation. He multiplied the rate of mutation by the chance of it being advantageous by the chance of mutation spreading through the species by the lowest number of steps required to form a new species. Though he used numbers VERY favourable to the evolutionists, the resulting odds were one in 3.6 x 10 to the power of 2738. That's 36 with 2737 zeroes behind it. The average biologist estimates there to be 15 million species on the Earth. Some say up to 100 million. It has been proposed that 90% of the species on Earth have yet to be identified.

Add to all of this the ecosystems' interdependance, the rotation of the Earth, the wind, water, seasons, volcanic action, rocks, gasses, stars, clouds, rain, lightning and then contemplate that we are just one planet in a HUGE universe that is probably one in a huge number of universes! For all we know everything could be made of an infinity of particles each more microscopic than the last, and the expanse of the universes may be endless as well. Infinity both ways. Infinity: the Achilles heel of the whole Darwinist movement. The only thing more astonishing than the vast miraculous nature of our universe is the incomprehensible FAITH in the unfortunate people out there who either don't see, or pretend not to see any evidence of a Creator here.

Least that's how I see it.