A happy life in a scary world...
Feb. 17th, 2006 07:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusMeme
Yep. That looks about accurate. Too bad every category is weighted the same for the overall total, though. I think "mind" and "spirit" compensate for a lot.
Writing
Is going very well, and I've made good progress -- though the massive revision is going to slow me down yet more.
Still, I'm way ahead of my November deadline for getting this publishable.
Politics
So what has Harper been doing while that Wormtail-to-his-Voldemort Emerson is hung out to dry? He's been having a lot of secret conversations with a lot of very important people, according to according to the Globe & Mail.
When I say secret, I don't mean that the conversations themselves are secret -- it's quite public they're happening. But we don't get to find out the contents of those meetings.
Indeed, there's never been so much secrecy in a government before this. I thought it was bad under Mulroney, Chrétien, and Martin, but Harper is far worse. Even Harper's own people didn't know Emerson was switching sides. Harper does nothing out in the open, which is not surprising.
Democracy only functions with a free flow of information, and as long as no one knows about Harper, he can play to the religious right, the libertarians, and the moderates, convincing all three he's one of their own.
Anyway, who's he having conversations with? Jean Charest and Bill Frist, among others. A day after his conversation with Charest, the Premier of Quebec announced that he'd be moving forward with a mixed public/private system of health care. I really don't think that's a coincidence.
Medicare is on Harper's chopping block, but he's being very smart about it. The Canadian population is aging, medical equipment is more expensive, and Medicare needs a massive infusion of cash to survive. Harper is plotting to kill it merely by denying that infusion, not by cutting it further or killing the Canada Health Act.
Worse is plan to regulate the so-called "fiscal imbalance" with the provinces. The "fiscal imbalance" is the difficulty that provinces have funding social programs while Ottawa is running supluses -- but Harper's answer to it to is to cut taxes so the provinces can raise it.
Theprovinces can already fund their programs if the federal government helps. The real con the Cons are pulling is getting the federal government out of social programs -- and out of a position to force accountability. The provinces, being more right-wing, won't raise taxes to compensate, and the program will die due to lack of funding -- or become such a desperate nightmare that it can't even adequately serve the poor.
Then there's Bill Frist. Those of you who don't keep up with American politics are probably wondering who Bill Frist is. Frist is the American Senate majority leader, and one of George Bush's shock troops.
Frist is an anti-abortionist, opposed to universal health care, and a promoter of abstinence-only and "intelligent-design" education. He also fought to against Clinton's appointment of an openly-gay ambassador to Luxembourg, and is expected to lead Bush's charge towards a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage this year.
Kind of makes you wonder what Harper and he were talking about, eh? I guess we'll never know.
(Frist is sometimes known as the "Cat-killer" in American political circles, after it was revealed that he'd purchased cats from animal shelters under false pretences, to use in medical experiments when he was in med school.)
Lest we be worried that Harper has forgotten us here at home, his party did make a couple of those wacky and crazy appointments of Pure Evil that they've become known for in the last 11 days.
Just in case you were jittery with Stockwell Day in charge of public safety, guess what? His assistant is a man named Scott Newark. You probably haven't heard of him. Let me introduce him with a few choice quotes:
And finally, let's not forget Mr. Fred Loiselle, the new chief of staff to the unelected minister in charge of much of our money, Michael Fortier.
Who's Fred Loiselle? Why, in 2000 he worked on the leadership bid of Tom Long against Stockwell Day for head of the Canadian Alliance. Loiselle's team purchased Alliance memberships in bulk and put the names of dead Alliance party members on the memberships so they could vote multiple times. Yep, that's right -- they stole an evil tactic from a Simpson's episode.
No one knows for sure who was in on the scam, but Loiselle got the blame for it. He dropped quietly out of sight, until now.
By the way, many of Harper's new people were actually Mulroney's old people -- including our new ambassador to the US, Michael Wilson. Fortier and Loiselle are, too. Just as the US now has George Bush's son and Dick Cheney running things, Canada, too, has reverted to the worst pit of 1980s politics.
| This Is My Life, Rated | |
| Life: |  5.7 |
| Mind: |  7 |
| Body: |  4.7 |
| Spirit: |  9.6 |
| Friends/Family: |  3.8 |
| Love: |  0 |
| Finance: | 7.1 |
| Take the Rate My Life Quiz | |
Yep. That looks about accurate. Too bad every category is weighted the same for the overall total, though. I think "mind" and "spirit" compensate for a lot.
Writing
Is going very well, and I've made good progress -- though the massive revision is going to slow me down yet more.
Still, I'm way ahead of my November deadline for getting this publishable.
Politics
So what has Harper been doing while that Wormtail-to-his-Voldemort Emerson is hung out to dry? He's been having a lot of secret conversations with a lot of very important people, according to according to the Globe & Mail.
When I say secret, I don't mean that the conversations themselves are secret -- it's quite public they're happening. But we don't get to find out the contents of those meetings.
Indeed, there's never been so much secrecy in a government before this. I thought it was bad under Mulroney, Chrétien, and Martin, but Harper is far worse. Even Harper's own people didn't know Emerson was switching sides. Harper does nothing out in the open, which is not surprising.
Democracy only functions with a free flow of information, and as long as no one knows about Harper, he can play to the religious right, the libertarians, and the moderates, convincing all three he's one of their own.
Anyway, who's he having conversations with? Jean Charest and Bill Frist, among others. A day after his conversation with Charest, the Premier of Quebec announced that he'd be moving forward with a mixed public/private system of health care. I really don't think that's a coincidence.
Medicare is on Harper's chopping block, but he's being very smart about it. The Canadian population is aging, medical equipment is more expensive, and Medicare needs a massive infusion of cash to survive. Harper is plotting to kill it merely by denying that infusion, not by cutting it further or killing the Canada Health Act.
Worse is plan to regulate the so-called "fiscal imbalance" with the provinces. The "fiscal imbalance" is the difficulty that provinces have funding social programs while Ottawa is running supluses -- but Harper's answer to it to is to cut taxes so the provinces can raise it.
Theprovinces can already fund their programs if the federal government helps. The real con the Cons are pulling is getting the federal government out of social programs -- and out of a position to force accountability. The provinces, being more right-wing, won't raise taxes to compensate, and the program will die due to lack of funding -- or become such a desperate nightmare that it can't even adequately serve the poor.
Then there's Bill Frist. Those of you who don't keep up with American politics are probably wondering who Bill Frist is. Frist is the American Senate majority leader, and one of George Bush's shock troops.
Frist is an anti-abortionist, opposed to universal health care, and a promoter of abstinence-only and "intelligent-design" education. He also fought to against Clinton's appointment of an openly-gay ambassador to Luxembourg, and is expected to lead Bush's charge towards a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage this year.
Kind of makes you wonder what Harper and he were talking about, eh? I guess we'll never know.
(Frist is sometimes known as the "Cat-killer" in American political circles, after it was revealed that he'd purchased cats from animal shelters under false pretences, to use in medical experiments when he was in med school.)
Lest we be worried that Harper has forgotten us here at home, his party did make a couple of those wacky and crazy appointments of Pure Evil that they've become known for in the last 11 days.
Just in case you were jittery with Stockwell Day in charge of public safety, guess what? His assistant is a man named Scott Newark. You probably haven't heard of him. Let me introduce him with a few choice quotes:
"The linkage between human rights violations and not selling arms is typically wrongheaded to begin with. Let's face it, Myanmar, Zimbabwe and the Sudan are no doubt nasty places but we really don't need to be that worried about what they might get up to with French fighter jets or German submarines."Feel safer?
"Anything effective in law enforcement will inevitably be forbidden under the charter" of Rights and Freedoms. As we always say, the charter helps only murderers, pedophiles and judges."
And finally, let's not forget Mr. Fred Loiselle, the new chief of staff to the unelected minister in charge of much of our money, Michael Fortier.
Who's Fred Loiselle? Why, in 2000 he worked on the leadership bid of Tom Long against Stockwell Day for head of the Canadian Alliance. Loiselle's team purchased Alliance memberships in bulk and put the names of dead Alliance party members on the memberships so they could vote multiple times. Yep, that's right -- they stole an evil tactic from a Simpson's episode.
No one knows for sure who was in on the scam, but Loiselle got the blame for it. He dropped quietly out of sight, until now.
By the way, many of Harper's new people were actually Mulroney's old people -- including our new ambassador to the US, Michael Wilson. Fortier and Loiselle are, too. Just as the US now has George Bush's son and Dick Cheney running things, Canada, too, has reverted to the worst pit of 1980s politics.