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9/13/2016 0 Comments What Has Happened to LinkedIn?
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4/1/2016 0 Comments A Kudatah in AlbertaIn Alberta, there is no political middle ground. There is no center. There may be a centrist party, but it will probably never get elected because the vast majority of people in the province identify as either right-leaning conservatives or left-leaning progressives. And so it was on that May day in 2015 when the only real alternative to the 40+ year old, tired, lumbering dinosaur Progressive Conservatives won the election. Since that time, the NDP has been blamed for everything under the sun that has gone wrong in the province because, well because they are an easy target. Never mind that the seeds for the economic downturn and the fall in the price of oil were sown under the PCs. Never mind that the policy changes the NDP brought in months after they had taken office had the ink still wet on the documents. Nevertheless, the right wingers (as they usually do with their shoot first and ask questions later mentality) in their warped politically-motivated minds, blame the NDP for everything, including their cable bill. All it usually takes is for one of them to make an outlandish, false accusation or statement and it is repeated as fact and brainwashed down the line until the youngest still in its mother’s womb is repeating the lies. And so it came to be in Edmonton, the capital, where these people gathered to protest the inhumane, third world conditions that they thought the NDP created for them in just over six months. Some of these tortured souls brought signs with them.  It’s good she had her back to the camera. I’d be embarrassed if my children found out I failed spelling in grade four.  Now wait a minute, this is getting redicul…. I mean ridiculous. How old are you lady? Did you commission your two year-old to make that sign? It was from people of this ilk (you know, that can’t spell) that the now-famous Kudatah came to be. In a rant on social media about overthrowing the NDP government of Rachel Notley (after one of his genetically modified cohorts made more sinister threats) and not knowing how to spell coup d’etat, this chromosome challenged person wrote it phonetically, ending up with Kudatah. Ta da!  This sign is probably the most disturbing sign I have seen in quite some time (and I’ve traveled in rural BC and seen pictures of aborted fetuses on highway billboards). I wonder if the mothers and fathers in this picture (after they packed up their misspelled signs) went home and sat down with their children and explained that the six-month-old democratically elected government in the province in which they are free to live is equal to a monstrous, evil, hate-filled regime that exterminated six million people. The scary thing is that some will say it is much worse.
This is the ignorance, the brainwashed, the head-in-the-sand mentality that people equate with Alberta. People keep saying how times have changed in this province and how progressive it has become. Think again. Alberta just can’t seem to shake this image of a wild west, puritanical, riding-in-the-back-of-a-pick-up-truck-with-shotguns-mob,don’t-take-my-gun-from-my-cold-dead-hands, fear-of-anything-new-so-we’ll-just-hate-it-whatever-it-is society that gets its roots from the fire and brimstone days of Social Credit. Hate and ignorance are still fueled by fear in Alberta. Entitlement: the feeling or belief that you deserve to be given something (such as special privileges).
When the word ‘entitlement’ or ‘entitled’ comes up in a news report, the most likely subject matter of the article are politicians. In Canada (I don’t know about the rest of the world), our politicians seem to think that just because they were voted in (or in the case of our wonderful trough of a Senate, appointed) they have every right to pillage and plunder the public purse for their own personal gain. They may say that they are doing whatever they are doing (trips overseas for trade, trips across the country to “connect” with the minions, stays in 5-star hotels that include $12 glasses of orange juice), for ‘the good of the people or the country’, what they are really doing is breaking into your house and stealing money from your purse or wallet while you sleep as you try to keep nightmares of your mortgage at bay. I’d love to be a fly on the walls of their brains as they silently snicker and think that they’ve pulled a fast one over on the people who elected them. Drivers, expense accounts, posh hotel stays, $12 glasses of orange juice, bloated salaries, over-the-top pension plans, cushy houses, no mortgages – Canadians pay for every nickel. Once politicians get used to this lifestyle, something happens to them: they become entitled. They think that they should get everything for free and invent circumstances to get even more things for free. Guess what? These ‘things’ are not free. WE pay for them – not you. You work for us. We don’t work for you. The problem with entitled politicians these days is that they have it backwards. We are in the age of the entitlement. It is not a generational thing. It crosses boundaries and professions. Politicians are the most infected. A lot of young people are infected too – the next generation of politicians, so watch out. ‘I deserve such and such because my daddy is so and so’. ‘If I scream and stamp my feet long and loud enough, I’ll get a new iPad’. Old people are infected as well. I just read an article about an old woman who had a letter sent back to her because there was insufficient postage on it. She had the nerve to have a hissy fit on a postmaster at a post office. ‘I deserve to bleed the post office dry of their income because I’m old’. Give me a break lady. If the post office shoved through every short-paid letter, not only would postage BE sky high, but there would be no letter mail delivery period. Get over yourself and stop blaming others for your own mistakes. If it’s not old people or young people with bloated senses of entitlement, it is the everyday driver who carelessly changes lanes without signalling or just generally drives like a moron. ‘I’m driving an Audi so I own the road’. ‘I work in the oil patch and drive a monster truck that should only be allowed on farms, so I have a right to drive like a maniac while putting people’s lives in danger.’ ‘My daughter has a heart condition so that justifies me smoking, eating a bagel, talking on my cell phone and putting on lipstick while I swerve in and out of lanes and run red lights.’ ‘I never got enough hugs when I was four-and a half so I have a right to drive 100 in a residential neighborhood.’ It’s scary out there and not just on the streets and highways. It’s scary walking around. It’s scary standing in line at the grocery store. It’s scary filling up your tank at a gas station. It’s scary cycling next to a dog park. It’s scary going to the mailbox. You just never know what kind of an entitled person you’re going to encounter or to what degree of entitlement they have. Entitlement is a disease and as of right now, there is no cure. 7/4/2015 0 Comments Things the Conservative Party Could Run in the Next Federal Election in Any Calgary Riding and Still Win: The List
7/3/2015 0 Comments Things the Conservative Party Could Run in the Next Federal Election in Any Calgary Riding and Still Win: CommentaryFor decades, there have only been right-leaning political parties that have elected members to the Canadian Parliament. You would have to go back before I was born before you could find another a different political stripe that has represented a riding in Calgary – and I don’t even know who that would have been because it has been so long. The Progressive Conservative, CRAP and Conservative (read CRAP) Parties are the only parties who have represented ridings in Calgary since the early 1970s.
It makes no logical sense why this has continued to happen, with the stunning migration trend from other parts of the country. Surely they all can’t be conservative? It all comes down to a few important factors: voter apathy (the Conservative candidate will win so why bother voting); voter stupidity (my vote won’t count so why bother voting); the old-folks vote (they always vote and vote conservatively); and voter manipulation. Voter manipulation is the biggest factor. For decades, Calgarians have been brainwashed, manipulated and beaten over the head by the media, the business community and their own family members and friends by the National Energy Program (NEP) of Pierre Trudeau. These people still wake up in the middle of the night with night terrors, kicking and screaming, drenched in sweat, flailing their limbs and screaming: “Pierre Trudeau stole my oil! Pierre Trudeau stole my oil! Pierre Trudeau stole my oil!” Get over it. That was over 35 years ago. Stop living in the past. No wonder there are so many bad drivers in Calgary: they spend each night having night terrors about Pierre Trudeau and how he allegedly stole their oil so much that they can’t function as they drive to work every day. On their deathbeds, their last words are always “Pierre Trudeau stole my oil!” They can’t let it rest. It’s all they talk about, these old people and they talk about it so often that it becomes lore in their own families which causes normally clear thinking people to vote Conservative in the federal election. They go into the polling station looking for change but once they look at that ballot, the old “Pierre Trudeau stole my oil!” bleating blares in their heads and instead of voting for inclusion and human rights, they end up voting for door knobs like Rob Anders. One of these days, some truly visionary candidate from another party that is not the Conservative Party will win a seat in Calgary. I just can’t believe that with the changing demographic in Calgary, that it is not possible. Perhaps one day, the ridiculous bleating of “Pierre Trudeau stole my oil!” will eventually cease. |
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