It’s Cocktail Time Again…
A round of Martinis to Mike Anthony and George Maroosis. One of the major issues of this past campaign was the tax increases North Bay property owners have been enduring. It looks like another increase that exceeds the inflation rate is on the way down the pipes. I’m not saying that the tax increases aren’t justified. No one likes pot holes, or sewage backing up into basements, and we know that the Mike Harris government downloaded a bunch of expenses on to municipalities… so taxpayers gotta pay taxes to get the services that they need. However, when a tax increase exceeds the inflation rate, it would be a nice gesture on the part of city politicians to decline their pay hike for the year. It isn’t big money, it is a symbolic gesture of understanding of the pain that taxpayers face. Let’s remember that Mike Anthony and George Maroosis were ready to go a year without a raise.
This is going to be really politically incorrect, but here goes. A nice big round of Molotovs go out to the poor Haitians who are about to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of the earthquake that destroyed their country. They are celebrating by having babies. Lots and lots and lots of babies. The birth rate in Haiti has tripled since the quake. Nice eh? Of course the world feels the plight of Haitians, and with the exception of the United States, which promised aid, and cash, but only delivered a self-serving military presence, the world has come to their rescue. The help has not been enough, but how could it be? The country was poor, corrupt, and a puppet of American corporate interests to begin with, and charity is not likely to change that fundamental fact. We understand that rapes which are horrifyingly common in the refugee camps, are driving up the birth rate. Our hearts go out to new mothers who have turned to prostitution in order to make some money. The fact remains is that the world does not need any more hungry mouths to feed, and Haitians are producing lots of them. Molotovs to the whole unfortunate country anyway. If the people there can’t avoid worsening their collective situation, then why should we bother?
If good is the opposite of evil, and evil attacks its opposite, and democrats are the only targets of evil freaks like this Jared Loughner, then they must be good… right? Here is a round of Martinis for democrats. They are the only ones receiving letter bombs, and they are the only ones getting assassinated, so they must be good. The opposite of the Democratic Party, would be the Republican Party which harbors that abomination known as Tea Party. I’d send some Molotovs in the general direction of the Teapublicans, but I’m afraid that they’d put me in the sights, reload, and return fire, and not in the figurative sense. Fundamentalists tend to be pretty literal. And when I say fundamentalists, I am really stressing “mental”.
Twitter gets a major Martini for challenging the United States government over its demand for personal information pertaining to Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir and 3 other people connected to Wikilieaks. Not only has Twitter decided to challenge the order to reveal the info which comes to them in the form of a “National Security Letter”, but they also violated the gag order that accompanied it. From the American Civil Liberties website: “The National Security Letter provision of the Patriot Act radically expanded the FBI’s authority to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies without prior court approval. Through NSLs the FBI can compile vast dossiers about innocent people and obtain sensitive information such as the web sites a person visits, a list of e-mail addresses with which a person has corresponded, or even unmask the identity of a person who has posted anonymous speech on a political website. The provision also allows the FBI to forbid or “gag” anyone who receives an NSL from telling anyone about the record demand. Since the Patriot Act was authorized in 2001, further relaxing restrictions on the FBI’s use of the power, the number of NSLs issued has seen an astronomical increase. The Justice Department’s Inspector General has reported that between 2003 and 2006, the FBI issued nearly 200,000 NSLs. The inspector General has also found serious FBI abuses of the NSL power.” This is disturbing stuff, and it is good to hear that Twitter is standing up for the principle of freedoms that we wouldn’t know are being violated, had not Twitter also challenged the gag order that goes along with this abuse.
