Beer and Popcorn

We just got our first cheque from the government for procreating (ie. the universal child care benefit)

Time for some beer and popcorn!

(I know I've been neglecting this space and am coming very close to having an abandoned site...I will do better I promise.)

In the meantime check out Red Ensign Standard #44 at Nicholas' Quotulatiousness. This is a stripped-down guitar-band version for those of you that find link-fests too time consuming. Yours truly had nothing at all worthy this time around...

Daycare

It's such a blessing to be living in a country where the most important issue of the day - the one that has been manufactured to have SO MUCH critical importance to our lives - is state-sponsored daycare.

Not nuclear proliferation...

Not Israel-Palestine...

Not trade wars with the US...

But DAYCARE!

Mad Cows? Oil? Bah! Trivial stuff. The real fight is over who gets to care for your one or two-year old. (Don't fool yourself - Many have no problems with the preschoolers -3-5yrs- going to a good quality daycare/preschool. Most of the talk bandied about by "experts" refer to the "socialization" of one and two year olds, or the economic prison imposed upon women "forced" to stay home and care for the offspring they hatched. Last time I checked, parenthood was something people engaged in voluntarily. You don't want the responsibility - don't have children...The proposed programs of national daycare seems to be about indoctrinating our young and "saving" them from the clutches of all parents whom the previous government deemed incompetent to raise their own children.)

Full disclosure time: My wife has just returned to work and my daughters, aged almost three and four and a half entered a private-company daycare two weeks ago...So for us this is a top-of-mind issue, as the double-income wouldn't flow until we found spots for the little ones. Time on the waiting list: one month. So there were spaces available. Cost to have them in full time: $530/month/child or $1060/month.

I also have to disclose that my parents ran a private "Family Day Care" out of our own home from the time I was twelve to the time my mother fell ill and died from cancer almost ten years later. "Family Day Care" was a form of business that I believe is still allowed in which a private person can care for a preset number of children in their own home as a business subject to regulation (in the case of my parents' business it was the local Family Day Care Society, whose minions would drop by for a chat/inspection every month or two) so I've seen it from both sides. It is a form that seems to have fallen out of favour because of the regulations involved in keeping a normal house safe for lots of kids with varying degrees of discipline and stupidity (yes, my biased observation - you weren't there... some kids are just DUMB!) It's a job trying to childproof a home for your own kid - try seven or eight of the snot-nosed little hell-spawn (yeah, they got into my room and found stuff they shouldn't have and that I had to explain to Mom and Dad...)

But I digress.

This issue has been kicking around for 36 years (see CBC News INDEPTH: Day care in Canada). Every government promises it in an election - every government has broken its promise after they've gotten elected and people have moved on. I didn't see Conservatives fighting the 2004 election on daycare. I didn't see any Liberals wagging their fingers at their candidates shouting "You didn't deliver on daycare! You betrayed us!" when election after election came and went.

It's after the election. Why are politicians still talking about this? With the thought of going to the polls at any time now (potentially) the issue hasn't been allowed to die its normal post-election death with phoenix-like resurrection 5 years later - just prior to the NEXT election, when the same group of engaged parents from the previous election are no longer concerned: their kids are in school now so why should they give a damn about somebody else's children? - But with this minority government situation part 2, maybe a sitting government might actually have to do something, as opposed to the nothing of every previous government.

As a ruthlessly self-interested parent - sometimes you have to be - as a good first step I'd like to have something right now rather than this nebulous "perfect system" that's been talked about for 36 years and never delivered upon. The journey of a thousand steps starts with just one.

I'll take my $1,200 x 2 kids please. That's a 19% reduction in my costs versus a whole lotta nothing up to this point. Like I said: it's a start.

And I promise not to spend it on beer and popcorn.

Legal Minions unleashed

Great. I come back without blogging liability insurance. I wasn't away that long! Has it come to this?

Kinsella v. Ottawawatch.com and Mark Bourrie

Meet the new Boss

So while the blog was sleeping we supposedly had an election that changed the face of Canadian politics changed nothing.

Seriously though: the last time someone crossed the floor I got all huffy and name-cally...now I'm just a little despressed and deflated by the whole thing. Was everyone expecting that the Conservative Government would be all that different once the keys were handed over?

The interesting thing will be if the old Liberal trick of pissing everyone off early, followed by showers of Federal gold later to sooth the savage electorate will bear fruit for the Conservatives this time 'round.

While I was thinking about old Who songs my darlin' wife Rue revived the optimistic self-interested money-grubber in me when she asked if this effects those cheques that we're supposed to be getting in July...

Sometimes self-interest can be a comfort. And a government can break some promises without too many consequences as long as it keeps some of the big ones.

Surprised? I'm not

Svend's coming back



...and then supposedly lost his head and stole an engagement ring for his partner, turning himself in before the police arrested him ($64,000 rings usually have video security on them.)



Hmmm. Hopefully the propensity for thieving isn't.

And what of the supposed "mental health disorder" that was the rallying point that everyone who wanted to support "poor Svend" used as an excuse for THEFT. Some disorder if he could just go away for a couple of months and then return - ALL BETTER NOW - would I be a bad person if I questioned this? Would I be taking it out on the mentally ill if I pointed out that he will be under even more pressure upon his return? Pressure that might make someone without this "mental disorder" crack just as readily.

Why would he subject himself to this again?

Am I just a cynic in thinking that this is just the latest step in a plan that was hatched the second he realized that he couldn't get away with stealing something so conspicuous in April 2004? Will this plan work?

Sometimes you can count on the gullibility of others. Especially voters.

I wonder if Sheila's next on the comeback trail?

Live8

Aid concerts are usually about raising money and using that money to benefit a specific charity or charities. Live 8 doesn't seem to be about that.



Okay, so free tickets doesn't seem to translate into a lot of money raised. TV, advertising, memorabilia sales? Maybe that'll cover the cost...

So it's not about raising money for aid. Okay. So what are it's stated goals?

From the BBC:



Okay, this is a POLITICAL concert, now I get it.



Damn, I must be getting old, because I have had enough of the bloated self-importance that rock stars ooze from every pore when they tell us how relevant they are and how they are going to show us the way to solve all our problems because the profession of "rock star" allows one special, unique insight into geopolitics and international economics without requiring more education than the vaunted level of "high school graduate", but somehow impedes appropriate personal grooming and hygiene.

Can't any of them just shut up and play good music anymore?

Time to turn to the boring economists to figure out why this is all wrong-headed:



...and provides an incentive for those countries to renege on their debts. "You forgave country X. Why not us? We can be just as incompetent at spending this money as they were."

I'll just add, have you ever met anyone with staggering credit card debt? If they ever managed to get out from underneath that mountain, through negotiations with creditors etc. without actually paying what they owed, what's the first thing that they'll do with their hard-begged financial freedom?

Set a budget?

Live within their means?

Never do it again?

Or get more credit cards and rack those babies back up to the limit again?

Debt is a drug, and it's highly addictive.

So we forgive African debt without tying that forgiveness to any true democratic reform of those countries, because of course doing something like that would be talking down to them, wouldn't it? How dare we arrogant Westerners actually require some kind of permanent attempt to fix the problem? No, it's all our fault in the greedy west, isn't it?

What happens after debt-forgiveness when tin-pot African dictators come knocking on the doors of Western banks looking for loans for the latest "economic development" scheme (ie. the Army needs bullets to put down dissidents)? Do we loan them the money again?

"We're debt-free!" they'll say. "How can you not help us?"

If we don't loan them the money we in the West will be labeled cruel and unfair.

If we do, we'll be fools.

If we give them the money without political changes in Africa we're back to square one, and some future Geldof will be lecturing my kids about how it's their fault that Africa can't do anything economically right -- how starving children are the West's fault exclusively, and not how constant war, oppression, racial genocide, corruption, incompetence, mismanagement, absence of human rights and enabling-Western guilt-money (ie. foreign aid) had anything to do with it.

We'll be back here in this position again in twenty years, with septuagenarian baby boomers - who'll still have their bootheels on the necks of popular culture I might add - yelling at us about how the Africa of 2025 will need yet another round of debt-forgiveness.

Don't get me wrong. I think that third world debt should be forgiven somehow - but not without actual, real democratic and political reform attached, or it's all pointless.

STV sounds more like a disease than a cure

Lost in the Federal wrangling going on in Ottawa, the fact that BC goes to the polls tomorrow has been swept under the rug...

One of the things that will be voted on is the idea of the Single Transferrable Vote. I find myself being swayed against this idea:



Shamelessly copied without permission from Mike Culpepper's site.

Seems like a crappy idea to me. Read the whole thing.

I know how I'm voting.

Juicy Gomery info, all nude testimony*

*just a little lame humour...I'm bored, OK?


With the rumours floating around of penalties surrounding breaking the Gomery inquiry publishing ban some Canadian websites have become scared of incurring the wrath of our lords and masters in the judiciary.

For those of you visiting due to google search results, you may wish more of a background on the legal issues here. referencing my favourite Canadian news aggregator, nealenews.

Useless Publication Ban

Psst, buddy!

Wanna know more about that super-secret banned testimony that us Canadians aren't supposed to be talking about? The Gomery Commission stuff that would so damage our fragile little minds that Judge Gomery has decided that there is to be a publication ban that will protect our wee little souls from seeing awful sinful nasty things?

Too bad for the Canadian Justice system that they don't have jurisdiction over the Internet. Maybe they should've learned from all those ads that failed to convince Canadians that "stealing" satellite signals from the United States was "bad."

Anyways, not knowing the full legal implications of me publishing anything- I'm a Canadian, resident in Canada, but Raging Kraut is on an American server in Kansas of all places- I suppose if I convince a bored tech support guy from my ISP to hack into my blog and publish the items themselves, would that constitute a violation of the ban and would the Mounties bash down my door and haul me away in the dead of night? Anybody have comments about that? - I'm just going to give you internet-savvy surfers a heads-up if you want to know rumored details of the content that could very much bring down our current government and send to jail an ex-leader's idiot brother (among a whole bunch of other liars thieves and other politicians.)

[deleted by Ray on 4/4/2005]

Photo is of Justice Gomery: gotta like the smile - like the cat finally seeing a way to kill the canary...

UPDATE: Took the rhyming mystery clues down because of this: I have no interest in getting sued or thrown in jail. But if you're still interested you can google for the blogs mentioned. But don't tell them I sent you.

Where's that CPC membership card...

On Sunday mornings I usually watch Question Period, a political show that's meant to do a little recap of the weeks goings-ons in Ottawa and abroad. It's usually a show that pisses me off, because it usually has some government hack on to explain why the current gang of thieves that steal nearly half our paycheck should be allowed to continue because, well, someone has to spend our money better than we do.

But I have to watch it.

Of course now there's a new reason.

This week, while watching the typical grandstanding I happened to notice the hottie behind the opposition critic that no one's paying attention to (not even the cameraman I would think.)



Who is she?

Is this the new face of Conservatism? If so where the hell is my party card? I'll have to see if I can save it from the shredder...



She's definitely got that Bailey Quarters thing going on with the glasses.

Conservative Party of Canada readers: who is this woman? And why hasn't she been given a front-row seat yet?