April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

Archives for August 2008

Text from the Government: F*ck You!

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Harper and his band of scary men couldn’t even try to look like they gave a shit about Canadians on a small issue such as this.

But Prentice said in a statement Friday that after meeting with the two companies, he was “assured that customers charged for spam could contact their service provider to have the charges removed from their bills.”

“Given these undertakings by Bell Mobility and Telus, I would encourage consumers dissatisfied with existing plans to seek alternatives. The telecommunications market in Canada is dynamic — choice is available,” he said.

CBC

Choice is available, be sure to make the right one at the polls.

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Sheriff Joseph Arpaio Humanitarian

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Good old Joe don’t hold with no abortion rights, ‘specially if it means giving prisoners access to health care. Nope them there prisoners is gonna have thar babez.

“I don’t run a taxi service from jail to an abortion clinic and back,” Arpaio,

Ok well what about prenatal care, good prenatal nutrition, keeping an eye out for the umpteen conditions that can arise with pregnancy including depression?

Well considering that he instituted the first female chain gang, makes prisoners pay for their own food and serves green baloney chances seem pretty good he figures they should deal with pregnancy on their own then squat, drop and return to work.

Does it in any way ever occur to these fetus freaks that the fetus is directly affected by the mothers conditions? A poor prenatal environment for the mother is a poor prenatal environment for the fetus.

And hey all you fertilized eggs are people too types, don’t you want to argue that keeping fetii in prison ill cared for with no prenatal treatment is a violation of it’s human/constitutional rights?

A lawyer argues, “Louisiana law recognizes that prisoners should be given medically necessary treatment,” said Dorinda Bordlee, a pro-life attorney. “However, pregnancy is not a disease and elective abortion is not medically necessary.”

So that is where their logic lies. If you call pregnancy a non-medical condition you can rest easy with denying access to health care. And what better life for a babe to be born into than a prison, probable whisking away by authorities and placed in state care. But then once they’re born who gives a shit, eh?

http://www.lifenews.com/state3433.html

Paris for President!

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Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton
Paris responds to McCain with possibly one of the best political ads I’ve seen in some time. Who knew Paris would be the best presidential candidate. :mrgreen:

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pssst…Right wingers…over here

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Right wingers like to paint doomsday scenarios of Canada’s Health Care system. Pointing to our neighbours to the south they wail about personal responsibility and the way it should be. I’ve never understood personal responsibility and health care..you do get that catch a cold is just a phrase…right?

Over at the Apophatic Attic there is a post comparing the the Canadian and US health systems and guess what? You are actually paying fewer tax dollars and reaping more rewards under the Health Care Act. Bet that’s a kick in the head.

I never realised the US government pays for ANY health care, let alone 45% of total health care expenditures. I thought, due to my leftist prejudice, that the government just left sick people completely at the mercy of the private sector. So for a moment I was pretty impressed. But then math kicked in again, just as it did when I was contemplating Labour’s welfare reform plans.

70.2% of $3463 is $2431.03
45.1% of $6347 is $2862.50

What does this mean?

The US government already spends $431.47 more per capita on health care than the Canadian government.

Read it and be educated.

Rights, the Right doesn’t believe in them

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Can you afford your rights?
Can you afford your rights?
In April of last year I blogged about the Court Challenges Program and this quote;
Rainer Knopff, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, said the program was “a biased boondoggle that had gone well past its `best before’ date.”

The program only funded groups on “one side” of the political spectrum while “socially conservative groups never got any money. Not a penny, as far as I know,” said Knopff.
He also echoed then-Treasury Board president John Baird’s suggestion, made in defending the decision to kill the program, that it made no sense for Ottawa to spend public money helping groups challenge its own legislation.
“I don’t want to pay for surrogate litigants,” said Knopff, arguing public interest groups should raise their own money for Charter cases. “If they can’t raise the money – tough.”

Today CTV has a story about the further erosion of rights in Canada;

OTTAWA — A Montreal court may be about to make Canadian legal history in a case that could see offenders considered guilty until proved innocent.

A bail hearing at the court this week is believed to be the first involving so-called “reverse onus,” in which a defendant must prove why they deserve less time behind bars and why they should be released on bail pending trial.

This ‘test case’ involves gangs. Naturally one chooses the circumstance least likely to garner public sympathy to launch such an attack. It goes without saying that any argument to democracy and rights will be met with an allegation of supporting gangs and violence. It being the case, unfortunately that some cannot hold more than one thought in their mind at a time. This law may start out as being about gangs and gun crime but it will not end there.

Image via Wikipedia

Dave Schroder of Edmonton’s Guardian Angels network thinks the reverse onus rule is “long overdue.”

“When somebody has demonstrated their lack of respect for Canadian law, we do have the right to expect them to be put away,” he said.

We certainly do have a right to expect criminals to be “put away”, right after they have been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers.

I say this as someone whose life has been touched by violent crime. The criminals never even charged. While I still am affected by these crimes, I don’t believe the Canadian criminal system should be built upon whatever revenge fantasies I may hold.

Our rights and freedoms are being stripped away by those who value sound bite over substance, authoritarianism over democracy and big brother over individual freedom. It is time for us, all of us, to speak up before our right to speak is taken too.

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