Within are faithful accounts of the important events in Palin’s life that led to this point – I will admit it leans heavily to the creative side, with only a little bit of politics thrown in, almost as an afterthought – this doesn’t, however, demean or decrease the enjoyment of being able to bask in the absolute genius that is Palin, and many of Palin’s innermost, most honest thoughts…
150 years ago today, Charles Darwin published one of the truly seminal and historic works in the history of mankind: On the Origin of Species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.
A mouthful to be sure, but, despite opposition from dogmatic demagogues, the work has served as the basis for our understanding of the development of all life on Earth, humanity included.
Who da man? You da man.
I wanted to take the opportunity to remind folk of the anniversary, and to re-post the link to all of Darwin’s work online. Despite the pathetic attempts by a has-been celebrity to distribute edited versions of the book, it is an uncomfortable truth that these delusional religious fanatics need to accept: Evolution is a fact. Let’s hope that adherence to religious dogma has ceased to be a ‘positive attribute’ for survival purposes, and that we can successfully breed it out of the human species. Let’s lose the superfluous hallucinations and find our true humanity – 150 years after it was first described to us.
Better late than never.
Note: Apologies to Briguy for borrowing the brackets.:)
I am disappointed that the Congressman would make public my pastoral and confidential request of nearly three years ago that sought to provide solely for his spiritual well-being
So intones Thomas Tobin, Bishop of Rhode Island on his decision to not allow Patrick Kennedy to take communion because of his stance on abortion rights.
No word on whether the Mother Church, or any other herd in the Christian “flock” for that matter, is planning to take any such a stand against politicians in favour of the death penalty or leading their nation off to war.
In addition, in a rearguard action against the march of humanity and common sense, Donald Wuerl, the Catholic Archbishop of Washington, signed the “Manhattan Declaration”, which indicates that it’s okay for Catholics and other Christians to commit acts of civil disobediance in defense of the Christian Rights’ stance on issues from abortion to the rights of homosexuals not currently clergy.
Remember how the Harpercons got elected? They took over the reins after the Sponsorship Scandal (rightfully) made pariahs out of everything Liberal. They convinced a large enough minority of voters that they were more honest and less corrupt than those other guys. Really, they convinced enough rubes that the pot has every right to call the kettle black.
It’s time to reconsider their level of corruption. These boys are every bit as dirty as Chretien’s crowd, and Mulroney’s before him. Get a load of the local shenanigans going on with the so-called Stimulus funds, as detailed by the always enlightening Tim Bousquet at The Coast.
City officials had previously decided on the four-pad project over the objections of a PC-connected group (including then-PC MLA Len Goucher) who were building a private ice surface on Duke Street in east Bedford. Goucher’s group “borrowed” (without repayment) $1.5 million from the previous PC provincial government. Their ice surface is covered by an inflated “bubble” purchased, used from Ontario—which, I’m told, raised safety concerns in the HRM building department.
The four-pad application went into Infrastructure minister John Baird’s Ottawa office and, contrary to Peter Kelly’s April assurances, was rejected—without documentation. “We don’t get anything in writing to formally tell us that they’ve turned down our application, or why,” HRM finance director Cathie O’Toole tells me. “It typically comes as a phone call.” The city had already contracted out construction of the four-pad, and so the entire $35.4 million cost will unexpectedly be shouldered by city taxpayers.
The very day the city broke ground on the four-pad, October 14, the federal Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, which falls under Conservative MP Peter MacKay’s oversight, announced that it was giving $2 million to Goucher’s Bedford arena project. I can still hear the “Fuck you, Halifax council!” echoing from MacKay’s office.
And its latest contestant is the former Miss California, Carrie Prejean – whose remarks on gay marriage made her a 9-day wonder, and managed the minor miracle of making me sympathize with Perez Hilton and agree with Donald Trump, has ended her lawsuit against the Miss America pageant without getting a thin dime. Why? Because of the standard celebrity screwup, a sex tape. Really, the best quote:
As the pageant lawyers played a DVD for Prejean featuring a naked woman in a porno film, she reportedly said, “That’s disgusting.”
But when the camera moved along that naked body to show her face, the words stopped. Fifteen seconds later, the lawsuit was dropped
Err – Carrie, honey? You’ve had the boob job for a while now, you really should be able to recognize them.
So, let’s see – Carrie Prejean, John Ensign, Mark Sanford, Larry Craig, David Vitter, Mark Foley – never mind Kevvyd’s idea of keeping kids away from Priests, shouldn’t we be assuming now that all Right-Wingers are perverts and warn the children accordingly?
This is a somewhat complicated question, and I’m posing it because I don’t know the answer.
A cursory reading of the various press outlets across the country paint the villain as the respective provincial governments, which is in my opinion absurd. The vaccination shortage is being reported country-wide (indeed worldwide), which indicates that this isn’t an issue of provincial health authorities ordering too few doses of the vaccine. Indeed, in Nova Scotia the provincial health authority requested 1.4 million doses of the vaccine (our population is ~900,000). Really, the provincial governments are guilty of poor communications handling, but they aren’t responsible for the vaccine shortfalls. If any governmental body is responsible, it is the federal government, which ordered up 50.4 million doses of the vaccine from supplier GlaxoSmithKline in August. Which begs the question: whose fault is it? Presumably GSK has failed to deliver on their $400M contract to deliver the requested number of doses of the vaccine. Was 50.4 million doses impossible for one company to produce in three short months? I hope not. Hopefully a company as large as GSK has the collective brains to calculate their own production rates and would sub-contract to other suppliers if their production capacity fell short. Wouldn’t they? Did the contract include specific timelines, and did GSK meet any specified goals? Was there a federal team from Health Canada supervising the production to make sure that the order was completed in a timely manner? These specific questions need to be asked and answered to get a clear idea of exactly who dropped the flu ball. Probably other questions, too, but smarter people than me can come up with those.
Well, congratulations are in order for obergruppenfuehrer Defense Minister Peter MacKay, who has ensured himself and his party a lifetime exemption from scrutiny by CTV News by becoming engaged to be married to Jana Juginovic, a producer. Unless, of course, history repeats itself, and she breaks up with him and moves to the CBC.
The future Mrs. MacKay should move into documentaries – they always say that to be a good documentarian, you need to empathize with and experience what others are feeling. At least now she’ll get a first-hand (?) experience of what the Conservatives are doing to the rest of the country.
Comments, dear readers, are invited – send your congratulatory messages through us, we’ll make sure they get passed on to the happy couple.
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