It’s been almost thirty years since I moved tables in a restaurant after a woman, another patron, made a big scene about the cologne I was wearing.  Embarrassing to say the least, but also somewhat maddening given I wear my cologne tastefully and am the last person who would ever dream of trespassing upon another person’s quality of life.  But yet it happened, my wife and I already seated at Rialto’s, a North Bay restaurant that made the best burger I’ve ever experienced, something I still feel the same about today despite the place having closed long ago.

We were already seated and had placed our order.  Another party of six showed up that included the woman who, almost immediately, began to create a scene.

Continue reading “FRAGRANCE-FREE SPACES BRING CHALLENGES TO COMPANIES AND CONSUMERS ALIKE” →

It looked to be pretty uncomfortable there in the front row occupied by members of the U.S. Supreme Court during President Biden’s State of the Union address. In front of America and the world, Biden chastised the court for overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark case in American jurisprudence that for years stood as the standard for female reproductive rights and sovereignty of their own bodies.

Biden reminded the court that women are an electoral and political force. And with Roe v. Wade as a backdrop to congressional and senate elections in both 2022 and 2023, the Democrats surprised many with their robust success against Republican candidates saddled with the burden of defending the Republican-dominated Supreme Court’s decision.

Continue reading “BIDEN SCOLDS SUPREME COURT ON NATIONAL TELEVISION” →

They are people who are willing to put their own personal interests ahead of those of their country.  They lie at will, cheat at will, and want to see the end of American democracy as currently constituted.  They obstruct the work of government to create chaos in government, using an arcane and needlessly confusing political system in the United States to sow the seeds of disarray.

Two are convicted criminals who have been pardoned by a defeated president, himself the subject of nine criminal indictments and several lawsuits.  Several others have been found guilty of criminal charges, some related to the coup attempt on January 6, 2021, others for transgressions in their personal lives.  One is a pathetic ex-mayor of America’s largest city, now a sleazy caricature of his former self, a boot-licker eager to be close to power and a man who has destroyed whatever personal legacy and personal fortune he may have attained.  One faces an indictment related to the trafficking of teenaged girls across state lines for the purposes of sexual exploitation.  Two have personal lives that are an absolute mess leading to divorce, of which one has watched her immediate family disintegrate into a low-level crime family while she gropes a male friend in a public theatre.

Continue reading “THE FACES OF AMERICAN TREASON” →

Never in my experience have I seen so many people, otherwise normal people, become radicalized to the point where they’ve lost themselves in some sort of vortex of anger.

Continue reading “PATRIOTS VERSUS TRAITORS” →

If there was any convoy merch that this guy didn’t buy and slap on the back of his truck, it clearly wasn’t for a lack of trying.

I remember when I was a kid, any fascination with something would end up displayed on my pyjamas, my clothing, my bike, my glassware, and my lunchbox that I brought to school.

Batman, Superman, Sergeant Fury, my favourite hockey team, you name it, if I had a crush on whatever it was, it would end up all over the physical elements of my existence.  It was like this for most boys and girls, and it remains that way today.

We were kids and it made us happy.

We grow up to be adults, sometimes unhappy ones, but the markings of the things we like/admire tend to disappear from the public face of us, or at least become somewhat less obvious. But I guess some adults like to carry this need with them as they grow. Lord knows there’s no shortage of adult cartoon characters like Donald Trump out there selling merchandise for the disaffected.

I watch television, follow sports, have a casual interest in politics, and am generally still interested in things, some more than others.  But I can’t, for the life of me, see myself plastering my $100,000 truck with decals for any cause, much less one that reveals to the general public my lack of acuity when it comes to legal freedoms, public health, contagion, and what it means to be a responsible citizen.

If it makes this fellow super happy to display his anti-government sentiments, or more likely his anti-Liberal sentiments, then so be it.  I mean, really, he’s not going to be alone in that. And at least he’s not disrespecting the flag.

I wonder if his man cave is all decked out in a similar fashion.  Does he have the corresponding t-shirt, sweatshirt, and hoodie?  Did he name his goldfish “Convoy?”  Does he have the lunch box?

Not to be picky or anything, but to me, anyone driving around with a “fuck you, anything” decal in public loses a lot of credibility quickly and doesn’t seem to really give a shit about much, other than perhaps his own personal beliefs and the all-too-many others who believe similarly.  

Well done, dude.  Don’t let anyone or anything tell you what to do.  You’re your own man, not some fringe guy who can be ordered around. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.

Good for you.

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.

Continue reading “POIGNANT PHOTO DISPLAYS THE TRAGEDY OF GAZA” →

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.

Continue reading “MORE ON FLAG DISRESPECT” →

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.

Continue reading “NIKKI HALEY FLUBS CIVIL WAR QUESTION” →

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?

Continue reading “CANADIAN CHARTER ALLOWS FOR LIMITATIONS ON FREEDOMS” →