Of Course The People Are Happy With Us

They all vote!

If one had doubted whether the totalitarian impulse is alive and well and abroad in the land, the number of voices clamoring for compulsory voting in the wake of less than half of British Columbians voting last week should remedy that.

This concept is incompatible with individual liberty as it assumes state ownership of the individual, rather like conscription to military service, which in a free society, takes, as Daniel Webster put it, "an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from substance of a free government."

Its also instructive to note how popular compulsory voting is with authoritarian governments and governments in general who feel insecure about their legitimacy.

As Filip Palda puts it so well in Vote. Or Else

"The less legitimate politicians feel, the more they try to pass laws that build around their regimes a Potemkin facade of citizen involvement. This is why Soviet Bloc countries forced their citizens to vote. I remember one election day in Prague in the 1970s when my aunt had returned from the polling station. A young man had started shouting that the election was a farce in which he refused to participate. Police whisked him away, perhaps for a lesson in civic duties administered by truncheon. As the fall of the Soviet Bloc showed, government cannot paste a happy face on a political system and hope that people are smiling inside."

Then there are those great defenders of democracy like Team 1040's Don Taylor (who should stick to sports) and CKNW curmudgeon Bruce Allen who figure, in Taylor's professional broadcaster turn of phrase:

"All's (sic) I'm saying is if you didn't vote you got no right to complain."

Apparently, free expression and free association (as opposed to the forced sort) are even more devalued than ever in some people's minds, while taxes of all sorts count for nothing.

As for Bill Bland's assertion that people who disdain the choices on offer should just vote "for someone, for anyone or spoil your ballot", well, every day in every way Bill demonstrates why that nice deep voice of his is so good for reading the news.

Genesis live 1977 - Firth Of Fifth*

STV Goes Down To Defeat

*And so with gods and men the sheep remain inside their pen
though many times they've seen the way to leave.

Verily, They Getteth It Not

Its simply not good enuff to have scofflaws
charged with the governance of British Columbia

BC-STV Debate Made Real Simple

Backroom boys like these don't want you to vote yes.

Need more? Check out Christy Clark, of all people, on STV. Yes, that Christy, the one I've so excoriated so often. Whether it was a visit from three ghosts one night or, as she says, listening to vox populi, Christy's seen the light.
Note especially her mea cupla for her previous opposition to BC-STV,

Then go vote YES on Tuesday.

Illegal in the UK?

But, but, everybody loves the classics! Don't we?

A Brit, an American, a Vietnamese, a Russian and an Israeli are sitting at a bus stop when a reporter approaches doing a 'streeter'.

"Excuse me, may I have your opinions on the shortage of grain in the Third World?"

To which the Brit asks, "What's a 'shortage'?"
The American asks, "What's 'the Third World'?"
The Vietnamese asks, "What's 'grain'?"
The Russian asks, "What's an 'opinion'?"
and the Israeli asks, "What's 'excuse me'?"

Is that someone at the door?

What a Revolting Selection

Please tell me this is just a bad dream.

Let's see, I can take my pick, one of three varieties of poison.

Jane Sterk's Greenies -yeah, right. I experience one of those cognitive dissonances whenever I see Jane 'cause she should be an earnest 9th grader to listen to her. I spoke with her local candidate whose big idea was establishing separate PACs in the schools for parents who don't speak English. The party for hippies.

Carole's Cadre - I don't fall into too, too many of the approved victim groups Carole discriminates in favor of, and as a matter of fact, I hold to all sorts of heretical ideas about equality, individualism ... and I abhor antiSemites. I'd find myself on Minister of Niceness Mabel Elmore's Shortest Shit List in short order no doubt. The totalitarianism of the Non Democratic Party should frighten anyone who thirsts for Liberty (is that someone at the door?) if using that word won't get me dragged in front of an HRC for offending some imam.

Then we have Gordie Campbell's Crew. I had to chuckle the other day when Christy Clarke referred to "conservative voters" voting for Gordie. Gordie is the archetypal Liberal, complete with the stench of corruption, cronyism and the co-option of media magnates.

The fairy tale of Human Induced Global Warming, oops, its not warming anymore? Well, Global Climate Change then induced Gordie to fish ever deeper into taxpayers' pockets. Surely the Hansel and Gretel Tax can't be far behind.

The cruel, absurd, postmodernist shibboleth of 'aboriginal self-government', though struck down emphatically by the courts, has nonetheless been championed relentlessly by the Liberals federally and now Gordie plans to weigh in with his Aboriginal Recognition project, which will be a disaster for BC's economy while, far from doing anything to alleviate the miserable plight of natives, will further impede their integration into modern civilization and make their situation far, far worse, aside from the tribal chiefs, who will get richer.

Conservative? Gordie has a Ministry of Healthy Living! What's next, the Ministry of Optimistic Encouragement? How many zillions of tax dollars can be poured into turning that into some sort of a monster a la Human Rights Commissions?
Twenty years from now, I can see the Ministry of Healthy Living issuing us all chits entitling the bearer to buy so much of this food item, so much of that, all for our own good of course.

Under the ideologues of the Liberals and the NDP BC has become a place where I can sit in the doorway of a shop shooting heroin, but I can't ride my bike without a bucket on my head.

This is reminiscent of the era that produced Social Credit as a BC based alternative whose leader spoke of the paramount importance of the individual. I sure wish we had one of those nowadays.

Which One of These is Not Like the Others?

a)Robert Dziekanski b)Frank Paul c)Ian Bush

Well, if you chose c) Ian Bush, you're correct. Give yourself one of those nice gold stars.
The strange case of Ian Bush's in custody death doesn't feature any video evidence to uh, confirm RCMP Constable Paul Koester's highly intriguing account of how he came to shoot Bush in the back of the head in self defense.

Although there should have been a video cam recording everything that happened, goshdarnit, for some reason the camera wasn't turned on during the crucial time. How hideously inconvenient. I'll bet Stetson'd heads have rolled over it, we just haven't had that briefing from the RCMP yet.

This case then, if nothing else, should have an effect on English usage, which until now has featured the phrase "shot in the back of the head - execution style."
So remember, that's now to be "shot in the back of the head -self-defense style." (I wonder if the style guides will publish new editions to cover this.)

Just ask the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, in whom we all have such confidence.

It Can't Be Helped But There's A Lot Of It About

Vague (at least) suspicion, that is. It hit me again last night as I read:

" ... Sometimes I think he is the naif. Other times I think something much more sinister is afoot."

Thus endeth the wonderful Deborah Gyapong's typically wonderful evisceration of President Bamessiah's recent "New Foundation" speech. I can't help but be struck by how many who hardly qualify as paranoid wingnuts are experiencing dark forebodings too.
Its nice to know we genuine paranoid wingnuts aren't alone in wonderin' about this guy.

Meat Is Murder

Tasty, tasty murder.

So This Is What A "Community Organizer" Does

Apparently, this sort of thing is an expression of Pride in some circles.

Carole the Nice , leader of the Non Democratic Party, had better get a memo out toot sweet to all candidates re: getting one's freak on for all the world to see via one of those incredibly popular narcissistic achievement substitute social networking sites.
Remember the federal NDP candidate who had videos up of himself driving around with a face full of reefers?

Well, now one of Carole's Cadre has weighed in with her very own where do they find these people? moment to wear with her trademark indignant on behalf of working families, women, the disabled ... look.

In Ray Lam's defense, posting weirdo pics of you and your pals is a far cry from endangering public safety by driving impaired (pulling a Gordie in some circles) but one does tend to hope for some shred of mature judgment (a spot of dignity wouldn't be amiss either) in an elected representative, trained seals for the party leaders tho' they be.

So, how does this work, do they have to find another gay guy who looks Asian or is one or the other enuff? What about someone with a visible disablity who's one of the other two? What about a lesbian who's differentially abled, how would she stack up against someone who could tick off 'transgendered', or, how does that whole thing work?

Anyway, fearless leader has said she will be looking into how the NDP screen potential candidates. Oh, that. While its a bit late now for that, still this bunch o' bananas figure they should be running BC.
No, thanks.

Daylight Fading pt MMDCCLXI

Barack Hussein Obama, the successful candidate, grovels to the
King Of Manchuria Saud. The UK's Queen got a pat on the back.

"With a grinning Goliath staggering about sporting a "kick me" sign on his back, even reputed allies joined the fun. Pakistan freed from house arrest A.Q. Khan, the notorious proliferator who sold nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran. Ten days later, Islamabad capitulated to the Taliban, turning over to its tender mercies the Swat Valley, ..."

Perhaps, but you know, since the normally Obamaphile Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer krauthammered President Hopechange over his "supine diplomacy" back in February, increasingly, the Appeaser-in-Chief's Middle East policy strikes one less and less like 'earnest' (stupid wot's been to university) bungling and more like that of someone who grew up attending a madrassa in somewhere like Indonesia.

How else to make sense of basing American policy on the appalling 2002 Saudi "Peace" Initiative (more properly "Destruction of Israel" Initiative) which hinges on the so-called "Palestinians"'s alleged "right of return" in addition to the two state solution? This would mean of course, not only a state just for the "Palestinians" (we can imagine, I'm sure, what that would be like), but their "right" to overrun Israel in the bargain. Two states indeed. But both Arab.
Hmmmm ... that would make 24, right?

But while His Hopeiness dismisses such revolting developments as Iran hitting the home stretch to nuclear powerdom (probably handy for that wiping Israel off the map thing they're always raving about) as "distractions", his throwing Israel to the wolves will be making the world a far more dangerous place.

The Teleprompter's Sidekick can sing Kumbaya, kow tow, bow, scrape, beg forgiveness, play the lyre while Jerusalem burns ... all he likes, clearly the Israelis have no intention of going down without one hell of a fight.

And then heaven help us all.