Gone To Glory

Somehow, my heart, which should be heavy, feels gratitude at the news that this crazed evangelical, who urged his followers not to get vaccinated, is no longer with us. 

Daystar Television

@Daystar

It’s with a heavy heart we announce that Marcus Lamb, president and founder of Daystar Television Network, went home to be with the Lord this morning. The family asks that their privacy be respected as they grieve this difficult loss. Please continue to lift them up in prayer.

What the bereaved family does not reveal is this little nugget:

Marcus Lamb Cause Of Death – Anti-Vax Televangelist Marcus Lamb has passed away from Covid-19 on Tuesday, 30, November 2021. Lamb’s passing was confirmed by Mark Lowry on his Facebook page. Lamb died  Tuesday morning, November 30,  2021 leaving his loved ones devastated and broken.

Truly, the Lord works in mysterious yet productive ways.

It's All A Matter Of Perspective, I Guess

Some people are losing good union jobs because of their 'beliefs'. No doubt those being fired from well-paid positions at Toronto's TTC, from various hospitals, etc. see themselves as principled martyrs for refusing vaccine mandates. 

Others, however, see them in a different light.

H/t Patrick Corrigan

It's all a matter of perspective, I guess.

A Peek Inside The House Of Ford

Although the newspapers are apparently shying away from this, there is strong evidence of a breach in the dyke of official solidarity in Doug Ford's family. And that breach is his daughter Krysta, who, it seems, is unhappy with current societal regulations regarding Covid-19.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford's eldest daughter Krista has a bit of a history with anti-vax rants, voicing her vaccine skepticism, love of poppies over masks, dislike of vaccine passports, and steadfast support for fringe conspiracy theories.

The former football-playing 30-year-old — whose private Instagram profile refers to her as a 'police wife' — got heated on social media in both the figurative and literal sense this week, going on a sweaty cardio rant after her Toronto cop/bodybuilder husband was sent home on unpaid leave for failing to comply with the police service's vaccination mandate.

Sergeant Dave 'Juggernaut' Haynes (really, that's his actual nickname) of 31 Division has served on the force for 20 years, and wife Krista is furious about his suspension, a move which applies to all Toronto Police Service employees who refuse to get vaccinated or disclose their status.

Her fury is being vented via social media: 

H/t Caryma Sa'd

But wait! Justice is coming:

One ardently hopes that given all her furious spinning, some much-needed oxygen will make its way to her brain.

You Can't Get One Past Her

Admittedly, it has been a while since I have turned my thoughts to crazed evangelicals. Ever since Pat Robertson left the scene, no doubt having retired to better await the rapture, it just hasn't been the same.

Nonetheless, although not necessarily a worthy successor to Pastor Pat, preacher Sharon Gilbert proves she is ready, willing, and most able, should the call come:

End Times preacher Sharon Gilbert says that an alien imitated her husband, and then it tried to have sex with her, and then it claimed to be Xerxes, and then Jesus got involved, and then the alien turned out to be a reptile with a posse of gargoyles.

Jailed For Doing Their Jobs

It is an action worthy of a third-world nation. You know, the kind run by an authoritarian who takes it as a personal affront whenever someone demonstrates against or writes about human rights abuses, lashing out with incarceration or worse for the offending parties.

Only this time it is happening in Canada.

Two journalists reporting from the Wet’suwet’en territory were among 15 people arrested and detained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia Friday night. Both remain in custody.

Since last year, media has covered RCMP raids in the territory, Indigenous rights and police removal of defenders of the land who are blocking the logging of old-growth forests in the area.

Photographer Amber Bracken was on assignment for The Narwhal when she was arrested. Filmmaker and photographer Michael Toledano, a freelance reporter who has been living in Wet’suwet’en territory in order to create a documentary about what Indigenous people face in the region, was also arrested.

Despite having all the right credentials attesting to their journalistic enterprises, both are still in jail and slated to be transported to Prince George tomorrow for a bail hearing.

Anyone who reads this blog regularly may know that I have a deep respect for the work journalists do. Despite the odd number being mere mouthpieces for propaganda, most are hard at work in an often thankless job, disseminating the kind of information crucial to an informed democracy.

None of  this, it would seem, matters a whit to the RCMP, despite the fact that they are now engaging in clearly illegal action.

The Narwhal said in statements posted to Twitter that they are “extremely disturbed” to learn that Bracken was arrested and that the RCMP is refusing to release her in violation of her charter rights.

Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), says that the two arrests are unjustified.

“It’s completely and utterly shocking the extent to which the RCMP are going to prevent journalists from covering events that are happening in the public interest,” he said. 

The action is especially shocking in light of a court ruling last summer.

In July, the Canadian Association of Journalists, a non-profit that works to defend press freedom and connect reporters across the country, along with multiple other journalism organizations won a court challenge at the Supreme Court in B.C. on press freedom in the Fairy Creek area.

 They urged the court to modify an injunction that would tell the RCMP to stop restricting media from the area without an operational reason to do so. The final decision from the judge agreed with the media groups, explaining that the RCMP had failed to prove why they needed to exclude media from covering the region.

Media have argued they need to be present to document police actions on the territory, where the Wet’suwet’en people say they have never ceded or given up their land.

Jolly says the recent arrests demonstrate that the ruling has fallen on deaf ears.

Our country has many things to be proud of. Suppressing freedom of the press clearly is not one of them.

 

 

 

When Words Fail

 Editorial cartoonists step into the breach.

H/t Patrick Corrigan

And The Answer Is ...

Education. Well, it's part of the answer anyway. And the question? How does society mount a serious effort to combat racism in its many forms, be it directed against Muslims, Asians, Jews, Blacks, Indigenous or anyone else who falls within the sights of  the benighted and the evil?

The stakes are high. Elmira Eleghawaby writes:

Recent data from Statistics Canada paints a disturbing picture about who is involved in hate crimes. According to the agency, nearly a quarter of those accused of hate crimes between 2010 and 2019 were between the ages of 12 and 17, a majority of whom were male.

And the effects of racism are even higher:

Hate crimes, described as message crimes by the American Psychological Association, are a threat to the safety and well-being every person in Canada deserves to feel.

“Hate crimes send messages to members of the victim’s group that they are unwelcome and unsafe in the community, victimizing the entire group and decreasing feelings of safety and security,” reads an analysis by the association. “Furthermore, witnessing discrimination against one’s own group can lead to psychological distress and lower self-esteem.”

The role of education in all of this should be obvious. While many advocate teaching so that students have a better grasp of things like Islamophobia and how online hate is propagated, it seems to me that a better counter-strategy would be to establish a mandatory course, likely attached to the history department, in which students can learn from a Canadian perspective about the various cultures that are under attack, thereby, if you will, better 'humanizing' them. Such a course would include our own country's mistreatment of the Indigenous, the Asian, the Sikh, the Jewish and the Muslim, as well as stories of collaboration and easy co-existence. How many know, for example, that the first mosque in Canada was established in Edmonton in 1938?

Such an approach would not, of course, eradicate the stench of racism that will always linger. And my experience as a teacher, despite education's perceived role as an equalizer and answer to society's woes, is that we have limited impact in countering the home environment that sometimes fosters an array of attitudes that infect children, much to their detriment.

Education has often been described as shedding light on the darkness. Even if it has only limited impact in addressing all that ails us, it seems a good place to start.

Unflappable No More

As the world continues its devolution, it becomes clear that few things can be taken for granted anymore. One of the casualties of the times is the erstwhile British unflappability, as the following amply demonstrates. 

Tesco’s festive TV ad featuring Santa Claus bearing a Covid vaccine passport has prompted more than 1,500 complaints, making it the most complained-about advert of the year.

The advert, titled “This Christmas, Nothing’s Stopping Us”, shows the public determined to enjoy a proper Christmas with family and friends after lockdown restrictions prevented gatherings last year.

However, in one scene a reporter appears on TV with “breaking news” telling viewers that “Santa could be quarantined”. Father Christmas is then shown presenting his Covid pass at border control, proving he has been vaccinated to a customs officer so he can enter the country without restriction. Most of the complaints made to the UK advertising regulator state the scene is coercive and encourages medical discrimination.

 The scene sparked controversy on social media, attracting criticism from those in the anti-vaccination movement.

Before clicking on the offending ad, deliberate carefully on whether it might be too unsettling for your sensibilities. 

I Guess It Would Reduce Confusion

 

Change Of Pace Friday

A former colleague of my sent me this. I guess it has been around for a while, but it is new to me, and seems relevant given our current spate of dysfunctional Titans.

A Canadian Clown Show

 

My previous post dealt with the racism-tinged dismissal of a high school principal in Texas. Today's deals with malfeasance of another kind: the unjust treatment of a co-op student who was threatened with suspension and removed from her hospital placement due to her making the "okay' sign in a selfie group photo taken by her teacher. 

An anonymous complaint to  Hamilton Health Sciences netted this result:

After just a few days in the co-op program, her parents got a call from the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board saying she was not to go to the hospital, but should come in to the school for a meeting instead.

Her dad went with her for that meeting. They were told she was being removed from her placement because someone had complained about her hand sign. And she was in jeopardy of being suspended.

“They said it was a racist sign,” says Megan. “I didn’t know.”

Despite her protestations of ignorance, the Board ignored the opportunity for it to be, as they like to say, "a teachable moment." 

An email from school board spokesperson Shawn McKillop says: “A community member noticed an unacceptable symbol in a social media post and reported it to HWDSB and program partner, Hamilton Health Sciences. The symbol, which can be interpreted as promoting hate, does not align with HWDSB’s commitment to equity and inclusion. Symbols of hate that promote racism or white supremacy ideology are not tolerated in HWDSB or anywhere in our community. The image was immediately taken down.”

As you might imagine, the public has reacted with outrage, as a sampling of letters-to-the-editor demonstrate.:

No safety or respect for my daughter

First, I would like to say Susan Clairmont wrote an excellent column on my daughter and it raises a lot of issues (which was the point).

How can someone who is faceless, nameless, hiding behind a computer claim they are offended over something so innocently done invoke such a heavy handed outcome? Just like to point out a couple of more facts here, that neither HHSC or HWDSB spoke to my daughter, and that they said she “purposely” placed the hand sign in the pictures. Wendy Stewart from HHSC claims “everyone behaves in a manner that ensures everyone at HHSC feels respected, safe and welcome.” Yet they had no problem calling my daughter a racist, white supremacist. My daughter and my family sure feel respected and safe from these clowns.

Shawn Breeze, Hamilton

Punishment is over the top

This is completely unfair in my opinion. The student in question said she did not know that the OK sign was now considered offensive. I am a senior citizen, and I had no idea! So I accept that she did not. I thought people were innocent until proven guilty. This was a teachable moment, she was informed that it is considered unacceptable to use this sign, she expressed remorse, and that should have been the end of it. It is also a teachable moment for the HWDSB to make sure that when they assign placements, they should diligently go over the employment policies of the businesses they are sending students to. And also the responsibility of the businesses to clearly outline their HR policies to students (or any new hires) that they have. White supremacy is not something we should ever condone, but this was a very poor way of expressing that.

Sharon McKibbon, Hamilton

Put her back in the program

With regards to your article about the young girl being removed from her co-op, this is the first time that I heard the OK sign meant white power. I have been using it for the past 78 years to mean OK and I still use it to mean OK, and so do most of the people that I know. This young girl should be put back into her co-op program and receive an apology from whom ever removed her from it.

Ian Noble, Hamilton

We need a list of acceptable signs 

 Could The Spectator please provide us, who don’t see hate in a symbol like the “OK” sign, with a list of socially unacceptable signs? I understand the “Hitler salute” as being unacceptable because in our country, it has always been unacceptable, but the OK sign? If the picture had not been included in the article, I still wouldn’t have known how the “OK” sign would be considered racist.

The damage HHS and HWDSB have done to this young student is reprehensible! Instead of taking this opportunity to educate everyone (myself included) in a positive way, you made it punitive and the only one who suffered was the student. Shame on you! Hopefully, HHS and HWDSB will recognize the error of their ways and not only apologize for how you handled the situation but also reinstated the student back into the program; if they still choose to participate.

Kathi Howes-Jones, Hamilton

Am I absolutely positive the girl is innocent in this case? No one can know for certain, but it seems to me that the rush to judgement with no real opportunity for Megan Breeze to defend herself  is at the crux of the matter. Due process, it would seem, exists only when the political winds allow it.

Such are the times in which we live.

 

 

Then They Came For The Educators

As a longtime educator, I have always believed that whatever progress we can make as a species resides within the domain of knowledge and its concomitant, critical thinking. When both fall into societal disrespect, devolution seems to be the inevitable outcome.

Now that education has become one of the right's political footballs, what happened to Colleyville Grapevine principal, Dr. James Whitfield, should surprise few but dismay all fair-minded people.

Please advance to the 9:55 mark for the story:

It would seem that in Amerika, a little knowledge is, indeed, a dangerous thing.

Thought For The Day

Busy as I am these days performing outside maintenance chores before the storms inevitably start to fly, I offer this for today's reflection, as well as gratitude that Aaron Rodgers was not chosen to replace Alex Trebek on Jeopardy:

Apparently, Just An Error In Judgement

I find myself sinking into seemingly irremediable cynicism about the human species. This is but one of the reasons:

From The Land Of Freedom

 It's hard not to be inspired by our southern neigbours, eh?

Business As Usual

I have to confess that I am not following the Cop26 Glasgow Summit very closely. My suspicion is that all the hot air being vented there will only aggravate our climate crisis. 

From my cynical perspective, two editorial cartoons by the redoubtable Michael de Adder capture precisely the tenor of the times:

And post-conference:

Book Crime

A column by The Star's Heather Mallick dredged up memories of my teaching day, memories that are not altogether pleasant.

Many years ago I was teaching a Grade 10 advanced level English course. The thorn in the side of all of us teaching it was a novel Entitled Obasan, by Joy Kogawa. An important book detailing the terrible injustices faced by Japanese Canadians during World War 11, it detailed the personal suffering resulting from the Canadian government's expropriation of their homes and businesses and forced relocation into internment camps. It is a shameful period of our history that we should never forget, and one that prompted Brian Mulroney to issue an apology to survivors and their families in 1988.

The problem was that the novel was far too advanced stylistically for Grade 10 students. Indeed, another school within my board taught it at the Grade 12 level, which was far more appropriate for such a difficult book. After many years of frustrations, we banded together and asked our department head for permission to find a substitute. She agreed, with two major stipulations: the replacement had to be written by a woman, and she had to be Canadian.

While we eventually found another novel, I objected to her selection criterion. In my view, literature cannot be judged by either gender or nationality. It either addresses universal themes or it doesn't. That being said, I am not one of those dinosaurs who insists that only the canon of dead white men is worthy of study. However, it cannot be a reason to exclude such works while at the same time seeking out works works from other cultures and sensibilities. The two are hardly mutually exclusive.

Which brings me back to Heather Mallick, who opines about the decision by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board to remove William Golding's Lord of the Flies from the curriculum. This strikes me as an extreme overreaction to a thought-provoking piece by a 17-year-old who describes herself as a Black, Jewish, feminist, and social justice activist advocating for greater diversity in the curriculum.

The author of the piece, Kyla Gibson, writes:

The OCDSB has no right to claim that the education system is inclusive when I spend my time learning about white and male supremacy. I do not need to learn about Lord of the Flies and how these boys cannot act in a civilized manner to protect one another without desiring power, hierarchy and having a thirst for blood. I need to learn about why it is important to protect one another and to be allies to those who are less privileged.

Perhaps a little unfairly, Mallick dismisses her concerns:

I fear for students like her. The novel is at base about bullying. A plane full of children crashes on a tropical island. Their means of survival is a plot that will be re-enacted in every workplace, social justice enclave, airplane flight and Green party meeting she will ever encounter.

What she seeks, she wrote, is “to learn about why it is important to protect one another and to be allies to those who are less privileged.” But this was precisely what “Lord of the Flies” revealed.

 I can’t see how she missed the novel’s slide into group madness led by frat-boy Jack and the killing of Simon and his fat, asthmatic, bullied friend Piggy. But then I frequently finish murder mysteries and have no idea who the killer was.

As she wrote, Golding’s boys were all white so perhaps they seemed much of a muchness, fair enough, but blood is blood and by the end Simon and Piggy were simply covered in it...

Truth be told, as you may have discerned, I feel some ambivalence about this whole issue. On the one hand, as stated earlier, important themes dealing with human nature should have no cultural or racial restrictions placed upon them. On the other hand, all Ms. Gibson seems to be asking for is literature that also accommodates her cultural and racial realities. The two are not incompatible.

Is she really asking for too much, and has the Ottawa-Carleton Board been too hasty in its decision to jettison an important piece of literature?

"Here I Come To Save The Day"

Sorry to disappoint you, but it is not Might Mouse who will save the day, if only we listen. It is Barney Frankie the dinosaur, with a timely message regarding our pending extinction.

I have to confess, the following left me, not with any sense of optimism but rather deep despair. Is our last best hope to avert climate disaster an animated reptile whose warning, despite its juvenile nature, is addressed to adults?

The infantilization of our species continues apace.

"I Want To Live!"

That is the impassioned cry of a young lady as she confronts West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin leaving a corporate donor lunch.

Hunger Strike 4 Climate Justice

@HungerStr1ke

BREAKING: Abby, 20, confronts

@Sen_JoeManchin

on his fossil fuel corruption on his way out of a corporate donor luncheon on hunger strike day .

Abby can stand up to Manchin, why can’t @POTUS ?

Watch and RT if you agree

Another Reminder About A Multi-Tasking Premier

As the reinvention of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives continues as we move closer to next June's election, yet another reminder about the man behind the curtain.

H/t Graeme MacKay

Gullible White Male Trump Voters

Although I am not a big fan of his novels, Don Winslow has been releasing some really interesting videos on Twitter. This is one of them:

Just A Reminder

With an election in Ontario next June, Doug Ford has been trying to rebrand himself, somewhat unsuccessfully given his unusual capacity for stepping in it. Nonetheless, a little reminder from Patrick Corrigan serves to highlight Dougie's true nature and the values he really embraces.

But Who Serves The People?

In one of his most significant works, Death of the Liberal Class, Chris Hedges argues that the traditional bulwarks against corporate power no longer fulfill that role. He asserts 

that the liberal class has failed to confront the rise of the corporate state and argues that the five parts of the liberal establishment--the press, liberal religious institutions, unions, universities, and the Democratic Party--are more concerned with status and privilege than justice and progress.

While I did not completely agree with everything he said in the book, the author did offer some pretty compelling illustrations to support his thesis. Today, Rick Salutin offers a similar view as he looks at the Democratic Party in the U.S., arguing that people like Joe Manchin are not the real reason that Joe Biden's progressive agenda is being impeded.

For 80 years, efforts to stifle even minimally “progressive” measures like universal public health care have been led not by individuals like Manchin but by the party establishment — including Biden himself for the last five decades. Come tiptoe through a few of the weeds on this with me.

•FDR’s New Deal of the 1930s genuinely moved the U.S. leftward with its social programs. By 1944, when he was preparing to run for a fourth term, the party bosses pressured him to replace his vice-president, the left-wing Henry Wallace, with a typical “party machine” Democrat, Harry Truman. Wallace ran against Truman as the Progressive Party candidate in 1948 and lost.

•In the 1960s, president Lyndon Johnson could’ve completed FDR’s New Deal agenda by finally confronting the racism issues that Roosevelt ducked. But Johnson was destroyed instead by another U.S. dilemma, its imperialist impulse, embodied in the Vietnam War. He flinched, backed the war and chose not to run for re-election. The party elites then beat back anti-war candidates for president and nominated a pro-war Democrat, Hubert Humphrey, who was defeated by Republican Richard Nixon.

•In the 1980s, Arkansas Democratic governor Bill Clinton lost a re-election bid and concluded he’d been seen as too “progressive”; he became pro-death penalty and anti-welfare. He was elected president in 1992 with the same approach. He put his wife Hillary in charge of health-care reform. They refused to even consider a universal public program. Their project died inelegantly.

•Barack Obama was seen as progressive when elected in 2008. But in his first crisis, the financial crash of that year, he bailed out banks and did nothing for people who lost their homes. He was absorbed into the party establishment.

•In 2016, independent “socialist” senator Bernie Sanders ran for nominee against Hillary Clinton, surprising even himself with how well he did. In 2020 he ran again and held a clear lead, when the Clinton-Obama forces joined to defeat him in the South Carolina primary. Sanders graciously supported Biden for president in the hope of moving the party’s agenda leftward. He succeeded. 

There were many progressives sufficiently motivated to run for the party, such as Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, resulting in the defeat of a number of conservative stalwarts and subsequently helping to form Biden's current agenda, an agenda that looks increasingly at risk.

They continue to take on a party elite that has struggled against serious social change, going back to the years just after the New Deal and the Cold War’s onset. 

Salutin, however, is not particularly optimistic that the old guard will cede their power willingly. He draws upon an example from Buffalo, where a self-described democratic socialist, 39-year-old Black nurse India Walton, won the mayoral nomination against the four-term Democratic mayor. The election is next week.

The establishment response was to try and get the former mayor on the ballot anyway, and then to have the position of mayor itself eliminated. Last week, the party chair for the state announced they won’t support her, just as they wouldn’t support David Duke — the longtime KKK leader — if he won a primary in nearby Rochester. These are people who’d rather lose an election than lose control of “their” party, and they often get their wish.

Sadly, it would seem that "serving the people" is just another example of empty rhetoric instead of words approximating reality. 

 

The Real Joe Manchin

Ever resistant to climate change mitigation measures, 'Democrat' Joe Manchin has succeeded in scuttling most of Joe Biden's ambitious plans for the environment. It now appears Biden will reduce his $3.5 trillion plan to a $2 trillion one, sacrificing vital components that would be immensely beneficial to the environment.

A key holdout on Biden’s proposals, conservative Sen. Joe Manchin from coal-state West Virginia, has made clear he opposes the president's initial Clean Energy Performance Plan, which would have the government impose penalties on electric utilities that fail to meet clean energy benchmarks and provide financial rewards to those that do — in line with Biden’s goal of achieving 80% “clean electricity” by 2030.

One might think that Manchin's obstructionism comes from the fact that he represents a coal-mining state. However, in a short video writer Don Winslow produced for Twitter, it is evident that the truth is more sinister than that.

EXPLOSIVE NEW VIDEO! #JoeManchinSenatorForSale

@Sen_JoeManchin

is blocking Joe Biden's agenda. We found so much vile and provable corruption in Manchin's life and his families life that we could not fit it all into one video. So this is just Part 1.

These revelations of  massive conflicts of interests perhaps will come as no surprise to seasoned political observers for whom the endemic corruption of U.S. politics is a given. That being said, it is outrageous that egregious greed can stop initiatives that the entire world could benefit from.

Good For Mark Cuban

 He is an American who gets it:

Dallas Mavericks and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban was asked on a sports talk show why he is one of the few owners requiring fans at his games to be vaccinated or show negative test. He gives a fantastic answer on his strong stance on the vaccine.

Things Fall Apart

Can a society that regards books as threats survive? I have my serious doubts, doubts you may share after becoming acquainted with the following story, yet another nail in the coffin of the empire known as America.

This tale comes from Southlake, Texas, where many are concerned about the ability of books to make people think, feel and, God forbid, possibly act. 

The debate in Southlake over which books should be allowed in schools is part of a broader national movement led by parents opposed to lessons on racism, history and LGBTQ issues that some conservatives have falsely branded as critical race theory. A group of Southlake parents has been fighting for more than a year to block new diversity and inclusion programs at Carroll, one of the top-ranked school districts in Texas.

Late last year, one of those parents complained when her daughter brought home a copy of “This Book Is Anti-Racist” by Tiffany Jewell from her fourth grade teacher’s class library. The mother also complained about how the teacher responded to her concerns. 

Carroll administrators investigated and decided against disciplining the teacher. But last week, on Oct. 4, the Carroll school board voted 3-2 to overturn the district’s decision and formally reprimanded the teacher, setting off unease among Carroll teachers who said they fear the board won’t protect them if a parent complains about a book in their class.

The following news clip revolves around a benighted administrator with Southlake's Carroll Independent School District, Gina Peddy, urging teachers to provide balancing material for 'controversial issues' involving racism and the like; she provoked outrage when she said that if they are teaching about the Holocaust,  they should also offer students access to a book from an “opposing” perspective.

Fahrenheit 451 was written in 1953 by Ray Bradbury. It seems that in Southlake and many other areas of the Benighted States of America, his horrifying dystopian vision is edging ever closer to reality.

 

Be Careful What You Wish For

Now that the U.S. has announced its land borders will be open to vaccinated Canadians sometime in November, many, especially snowbirds, are exultant. There are, however, numerous reasons to temper that enthusiasm, including the poor rate of full vaccination south of us (only 57%), the ever-present threat of violence, and the other perennial American pandemic, hatred and racism, the latter of which I shall turn to in a moment.

Edward Keenan suggests the need for caution in his column today. He cites Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on non-essential travel:

“I’m going to quote Eileen de Villa, the Toronto Public Health officer, who offered some really good advice,” Freeland said. “She said, ‘Just try to do the things you need to do, and maybe hold back on doing the things you just want to do.’ And I think, if you just keep doing that a few more weeks, Canada can really fully put COVID behind us.

The key medical authority in her government, Health Minister Patty Hajdu, said over the weekend that Canadians should travel to the U.S. only when it’s “absolutely necessary,” specifically warning against going to some U.S. states where COVID-19 is “very, very out of control.”

But as I suggested above, there are other reasons to avoid unnecessary travel to the U.S., including its twin plagues of violence and racism. It is the latter I will examine next, and I have to warn you, it gets ugly.

There is a man named Michael Slawson who has been exposed on Twitter for what he really is, and what follows is somewhat hard to watch:

H/t Danesh and Michael Mc

It also appears that Slawson has an unhealthy interest in young girls:

I am happy to report that Slawson's Twitter account has been suspended. I am sure I'm but one of hundreds who lodged a complaint about him, so can hardly take credit for his removal. And one would be foolish to think that there are not countless others like him still spewing their hatred on various social media platforms. 

My admiration and respect go out to Danesh and Michael Mc for exposing this dangerous malefactor whose hatred and perversion is but one of the many reasons I cannot see myself ever returning to the United States.

 

 

A Meme For The Times

This particular meme has been around for awhile now. If you haven't seen it, I think you will agree that it is particularly germane to the times in which we live.

And this seems an appropriate accompaniment to the above:

H/t Graeme MacKay

This Is Not A Parody

A little something for those Canadians who pine for the re-opening of the border to Amerika. 

Rarely have I seen such a sterling expression of commitment and leadership: