When I first saw it, it had enormous meaning for me.  That said, whatever that meaning might have been, the clarity of it escaped me for some reason.  Notwithstanding that, I knew that I was viewing something exceedingly poignant.

It’s not my intent here to get into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict currently raging in Gaza.  I do have thoughts on the topic, but that’s something I’ll leave to others for now.  For me, I just wanted to get at how this photo made me feel, and maybe, help me discover the essence of my reaction.

Two weeks ago I saw a photo in the media.  It was taken by a reporter/photographer who was tasked with capturing the conflict as best he could, from the Israeli side of the battle lines.

I don’t know if it’s a lack of education or just a product of a poor one, but the number of people out there flying the Canadian flag inappropriately is breath-taking. I’m not counting the Trump-pumping, convoy-loving malcontents that display the flag as a protest symbol in this criticism. Those people are too far down their rabbit holes to be appealed to about anything. Likewise, those flakes that think they’re patriotic Canadians and that anyone disagreeing is treasonous? They’re not part of today’s thing either.

Today it’s about people who fly Canadian flags that, maybe not intentionally making a protest point, nevertheless do not give the national flag the respect and decorum it’s entitled to and ought to be expected when coming from assumed well-meaning people.

Sometime last week at a political town hall in Iowa, someone in the audience asked Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley how the Civil War got started.  Haley was caught off balance, kind of giggled nervously, and remarked “Sure, ask me an easy question,” as if to say the question was, for some reason, difficult.  Well, for her it is, because she’s a former governor of South Carolina, one of the Confederate states that quit the federal union, an act that was the final spark to ignite the war.  Why that’s a problem is that most die-hard Republicans, especially Trump MAGA Republicans, hail from states in the American south, and a lot of these folks have some pretty bitter memories, even after all this time, of how the Civil War came about and the ensuing Confederate defeat.

What Haley couldn’t do is tell the truth, because that wouldn’t sell with the MAGA Republicans, people she’s going to need when she really runs for president in 2028.  She needs the Trump folks on her side, a major reason why she and Ron DeSantis refuse to criticize Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primaries.  So, she paused, then said what any self-respecting Southerner would want to hear.  “State’s rights,” she said.  Because that’s what southern revisionist history scholars all say, that it wasn’t about slavery, it was about a state’s right to choose to be in the Union or not.  In short, an absolutely dishonest response.

We get that a lot out of Republicans these days, and apparently she’s no different.

In thirty-four sections, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms lists and describes the rights and freedoms that are held to be inviolate in our Canadian democracy.  Of these sections, the most important is right at the beginning, Section 1, also known as the Reasonable Limits Clause.  It states as follows:

“The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

What this means is that every right, and every freedom, is potentially subject to some form of limitation so long as that limitation is deemed to be “reasonable” by the Supreme Court of Canada if and when a law infringing upon that right is challenged in court.

So what does that mean, then?  A right is a right, isn’t it?  And aren’t rights supposed to be absolute?  The answer to these question are yes to the first, and no, not necessarily to the second.  So how would the Supreme Court arrive at a decision that allows a law that limits in any way a right or freedom?

Many of us will remember Deena Hishaw well.  That would be Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health during the COVID pandemic.  Her almost daily briefings were viewed by not just Albertans, but by Canadians right across the country.

The reason for this is important.  Dr. Hinshaw gave daily updates on the status of COVID within Alberta, calm, informative, reasoned, and reassuring at a time of fear and uncertainty as a previously unknown virus attacked us when we were virtually defenceless against it.  It was a pandemic, it had already claimed hundreds of lives, and would go on to claim tens of thousands more, causing our society to buckle under its spread and impact.

While there was a positive blip in polling support just before the Christmas holidays, the numbers since indicate an affirmation of what appears to be an undeniable trend, that the popularity and support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals is on a downward trajectory.

A recent Abacus poll has indicated that, while the Liberals caught some positive wind at the expense of the Tories in December, they’ve now dipped back down to where they were before, with 24% of voters indicating they would vote Liberal if an election were to be held right now, compared to 41% for the Conservatives and 18% for the New Democrats.

Worse still are the approval ratings that Canadians gave to the government as a whole, and to the prime minister in particular.  A robust 54% of those polled indicated that they disapproved of the Liberal government, while 59% claimed to have a negative view of Justin Trudeau.

“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me.
“And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA [National Rifle Association]. That’s not a threat – that’s a public service announcement.
“We will not let you lay a finger on President Trump. Frankly, now is the time to cling to our guns and our religion.”  Kari Lake

Yesterday, after what was, for him, a horrible day in court, Donald Trump warned of bedlam ensuing if he is found guilty and convicted of the several charges arrayed against him. Now, I don’t know what bedlam might look like in Trump’s mind, but this is a guy who felt his ginned-up attack by supporters on the Capital January 6 was nothing more than a tourist excursion by some very nice people, people he happens to call patriots. I’m not sure I can recall a time when tourism was equated with patriotism, but there it is. What bedlam might entail when compared with that, something that was a full-on insurrection with violence and threats of hanging, is nothing short of mind-boggling.

In other words, if you convict me, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The following is an article I came across recently. Seems I’m not the only one who has a problem with people disrespecting the Canadian flag. I post it to share, but also because I feel I need to keep harping on this after seeing some dummy in a Dodge Charger, complete with an official looking police light by the driver’s side mirror, who had a Canadian flag draped across the front of his grill where it would capture all the shit thrown up by anyone in front of him. Total and intentional lack of respect. From someone who obviously has none for himself.

I’m sick of this shit. I gave the wannabe cops some good Letterkenny chirping with some of my very best outdoor words, and it feels good to fight back, to fight for my country’s flag, and to take it back from the fringe.

The graphic displayed on top of this story has been crafted into a car flag of my own. Anything to piss off the FREEDUMB crowd sounds good to me. So ferda, boys! Let’s take back our flag!

And just as an aside, where do you think I might be able to order tin foil hats? Maybe have a Covidiot barbecue and hand them out to eligible dummies like The Charger Twins who like to play pretend policeman.

So I’m cruising down Veterans Memorial Boulevard the other day, the morning after a fairly significant snowfall.

In my side mirror I see a vehicle approaching from behind, actually gaining on me even though I’m doing the speed limit, maybe even a little more.  The car is absolutely packed with snow save for a small clear spot on the windshield that would be about where the driver could see out, that is see out straight ahead.  Any kind of peripheral vision forward is impossible, because the rest of the windshield is caked in snow.  In fact the whole car is caked in snow.  So the only visibility for this driver is straight ahead.  All other directions are a blind spot.

This guy closes on me from behind, then, needing to be somewhere, urgently I suppose, swings out to pass me.  I’m doing around 60 km/hour, so this guy has to be doing at least 70, maybe 75 km/hour.  Once by, he pulls back into my lane, this time in front of me, and washes my car and windshield with all the shit coming off his car, or her’s for that matter.  I’ll generously give some credit here, for whoever they were, they did at least signal their lane change to merge back in front of me.  Wouldn’t want a failure t signal charge on our driving resume, now would we?

Do I really need to say anything here?  Are the myriad of dangers not obvious?  Is this person so goddamned self-absorbed that they don’t realize what a freaking menace they are to themselves and everyone else, pedestrian or vehicular, in the near vicinity of where they happen to be driving?

Either that or they just don’t give a savoury shit.  And to me, neither of those scenarios are acceptable.

Is it laziness?  Maybe.  Is it negligent?  Sure.  Dangerous?  Hell yes.  Stupid?  You bet.

It’s snowing like crazy outside right now.  Tomorrow morning will find vehicles across the region covered with 20 cm of snow.  And sure as hell, these arseholes, male, female, otherwise or in between, will be back out in force, driving their vehicles by way of a small peephole that they’ve managed to carve out on their windshield, probably horribly inconvenienced by having to do that.  Who knows?  Maybe they’re sucking on a smoke and pounding back some coffee with the stereo blasting for good measure.  And why not throw some kids into the backseat to achieve the pinnacle of idiocy.

The things that make me want to say “fuck.”

God Made Trump.

Okay fine.  If you’re a Christian, you believe God made each and every one of us, and that Donald Trump is just proof that God has his tough days too.

But I can’t imagine anything more breathtakingly ridiculous than Trump’s latest video release on his Truth Social propaganda site.  Regardless of anyone’s belief in a higher being, it’s absolutely inconceivable to me that a higher moral authority, aka God, would send a charlatan such as The Donald to grace the lives and ensure the salvation of God’s people.  Unless God has a really perverse, even sick, sense of humour.  Or did he send Trump because, well, plagues, floods, pestilence, and locusts were getting boring?