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Oh the weather outside is frightful
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Posted:Dec 10, 2019 7:58 am
Last Updated:Dec 19, 2019 2:21 pm 20757 Views
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Dreary, wet, windy and thoroughly miserable weather in the UK so I figured a few peaceful, calming views from the Sun Yat Sen Chinese gardens in Vancouver were in order.
A real hidden gem of peace, order and tranquility in a pretty run down part of town but well worth a visit.
Also posted a few final views from Stanley Park taken just before we left for the airport.
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Bullshit --ALL OF IT
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Posted:Dec 9, 2019 9:03 pm
Last Updated:Dec 12, 2019 9:28 am 19783 Views
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FROM A BLOG POST BY ---Bruce Lindner
A summary of all the bullshit spouted by tRump supporters for the last 3 years.
"Swings & misses by the Washington Red Sucks:
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• Obama’s birth certificate
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• Fast & Furious
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• Benghaaaaaazi!
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• Uranium One
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• Solyndra
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• Emails
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• Pizzagate
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• Obama tapped the phones at Trump Tower
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• Comey lied
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• Mueller found no collusion, no obstruction
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• Strzok and Page secret texts
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• DNC server hidden in Ukraine
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• Joe Biden’s corruption w/ Ukraine
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• FISA Courts 1 (Nunes memo)
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• FISA Courts 2 (Inspector General Report)
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All of the above “scandals” have something in common: They were all either alleged to be true by the current president, propagated by either him personally, his sycophants at Fox News or in Congress, and/or promised to be confirmed just as soon as the Barr Justice Department cleans out all the cobwebs and corrupt Democrats leftover from the evil Obama/Hillary administration.
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Because the DEEEEEEEEP STATE has had total control for too damn long! But don’t you worry fellow bumpkins, yahoos, Moonbats and hillbillies of Team Red. Justice, REAL justice is just around the bend! Attorney General Barr is charging over the hill this very . The Inspector General’s report is gonna shine a bright light on those leftover librul cockroaches from the Barack and Hillary days. And then finally, the truth will be revealed long last!! And the Sun will shine down on us as Saint Donald owns the libs! 🌞
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Um. I’d like to draw your attention to that final bullet point. The one that says “FISA Courts 2 (Inspector General Report).” Yeah, that died about an hour ago. That was the one that was gonna set the record straight. Sean, Donald, Rush and Mark, they all promised... that was gonna be the BIG one. They had all their eggs in that basket. But alas...
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The Great White Hope is no more. 😢
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All of it: Strzok, Page, the FBI’s Hillary bias, the internal CIA “coup” against Trump, the “deep state,” Obama tapped his phones, Comey’s lies, McCabe, the whole ball of wax. All of it. All of it. ALL OF IT.
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Bullshit."
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More Canada pics.
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Posted:Oct 26, 2019 1:32 pm
Last Updated:Dec 10, 2019 1:06 am 18584 Views
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Just a few more pictures from Canada demonstrating the wonderful scenery. Round every corner there is yet another magnificent view.
Jasper and Maligne Lake provided some spectacular vistas and wildlife.
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Looking for serious and logical arguments.
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Posted:Oct 24, 2019 7:32 pm
Last Updated:Oct 28, 2019 8:06 am 18093 Views
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Republicans - here is a challenge for you. Put forward logical and coherent arguments which refute the post . It invites you make your case by stating a clear, reasoned case for one viewpoint.
Without resorting invective or empty rhetoric please state the opposition case and make a clear argument to refute the points made.
<<Randy Weir, Author, journalist, minister, radio personality:
I’m a conservative, but I tend to vote almost straight Democrat over most of the last 20 years. I’d absolutely love vote for Republicans again, but they do make it terribly hard. For what it’s worth, here’s what it would take for .
Honesty. At least within reason. The GOP has turned misinformation and misdirection try disparage the left instead of just being real. A few points on that include: all credible science supports the reality of climate change. The Democrats aren’t coming for anyone’s guns. Trickle down economics doesn’t work. Tax cuts billionaires don’t create jobs. Iraq did not have WMDs and did not attack us on 9/. Obama is a Christian born in the US and is an American citizen. And Trump is unqualified and is doing a terrible job.
Break from the hypocrisy. The right crucified Obama on a daily basis for things as ridiculous as his choice of suits and condiments. But Trump and GW Bush got a pass for everything. Don’t complain that people aren’t giving Trump the respect due his office when you spent 8 years pretending Obama was a Muslim born in Kenya.
Conserve something. Anything. Be “conservative”. Don’t waste we don’t have on tax handouts billionaires and corporations that have no ROI. Don’t waste on making our military times bigger than the rest of the world’s when times bigger is more than sufficient. Don’t waste human lives in needless wars. Don’t deplete our natural resources when there are better alternatives. Don’t let people die from treatable illnesses.
Be consistent. If you say you’re pro-life, be pro-life. Stop tolerating unarmed minorities shot dead on the streets. Stop tolerating poverty being a cause of death in the richest country in the world. do things that reduce the abortion . See hypocrisy above.
Be inclusive. You should want people participate in the process, even when they disagree with you. Stop trying to block people from voting and stop opposing laws that fight discrimination. Stop tolerating hate speech.
Get back to Christian values if you’re going to claim to have them. The GOP has abandoned the basics. Seek justice, love mercy, walk humbly; show love; speak truth. These are the basic Biblical values, and the Democrats are better at all of them than Republicans. All of them. All. Of. Them.
Participate in the process even when you’re losing. The GOP right now is the that flips over the Monopoly board when they’re losing. They filibustered more times during the Obama administration than in all previous history combined. McConnell refused to confirm Obama’s SCOTUS nominee because it was an election year (but says he would confirm one next year if given the opportunity; see hypocrisy above), and now he has over a hundred bills the House passed that he won’t let the Senate vote on, or even debate on, because his side might lose. Debate is essential to a functioning democracy! Republican lawmakers in Oregon recently fled the state to try to prevent a quorum so that they wouldn’t lose a vote. GW Bush came to power by fighting to make sure votes weren’t counted (after winning his gubernatorial election by forcing a recount; see hypocrisy above).
In short, if the GOP cared about anyone, and worked accomplish anything other than staying in power, they’d have a much better chance of getting vote. I think they need work on being a viable party for conservatives before they start trying win over liberals.>>
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Butchart Gardens
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Posted:Oct 24, 2019 4:29 pm
Last Updated:Dec 7, 2019 6:00 am 18712 Views
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Some pics from our recent visit Butchart gardens on Vancouver Island
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Republican desperation reaches new depths
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Posted:Oct 24, 2019 2:21 am
Last Updated:Oct 28, 2019 8:05 am 15625 Views
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Around a.m. Wednesday, a gaggle of conservative House members on Capitol Hill staged a “protest,” barging into the secure room — called a SCIF — where members of three House committees were preparing to hear testimony from Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary of defense.
Shepherding the demonstrators was Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of President Trump’s fiercest apologists, whose account live-tweeted the stunt: “BREAKING: I led over 30 of my colleagues into the SCIF where Adam Schiff is holding secret impeachment depositions. Still inside — more details to come.”
This was not a fringe move. Representative Steve Scalise, the minority whip, was among the sea of dark-blue suits that surged into the hearing room.
Chaos ensued. There were shouting matches. Some of the invading members brought along their cellphones, though they are prohibited inside the secure room. Ms. Cooper’s testimony was delayed, and Democrats called in the sergeant-at-arms for help restoring order.
Some time after 2 p.m., Mr. Scalise and several of his fellow protesters re-emerged to complain to the assembled media about the “Soviet-style tactics” of the inquiry.
The entire spectacle was a circus — which was the point. This was a publicity stunt aimed at delegitimizing the impeachment investigation that Mr. Trump and his defenders have portrayed as a partisan inquisition. If a few rules and national security precautions got violated along the way, so be it. Mr. Gaetz & Co. were happy to oblige a president who has demanded to be protected at all costs.
In fact, Mr. Trump is said to have given them a thumbs-up the day before. On Tuesday, he “met with about 30 House Republicans at the White House to talk about the situation in Syria and the impeachment inquiry,” at which time the members “shared their plans to storm into the secure room,” Bloomberg News reported. Mr. Trump told them he thought it was a good idea.
Why wouldn’t he? As more and more testimony is disclosed, it becomes clearer that the president’s only defense against impeachment is to distract from the facts and complain about how unfairly he’s being treated.
So many of the defenses he floated early on have crumbled under the weight of subsequent revelations.
The Editorial Board
New York Times
Added to this their actions were blatantly ILLEGAL. They deliberately took electronic media devices into a secure area. The penalty for such action SHOULD be removal of any security clearance they hold AND prosecution with the possibility of jail time.
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Black codes still in effect?
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Posted:Aug 6, 2019 8:11 am
Last Updated:May 5, 2024 3:33 pm 15404 Views
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Why racism in US is worse than in Europe
May 20
Racial aggression is part of America
News stories emerge almost daily in the US about police being called over black Americans doing nothing more than being black.
Writer Barrett Holmes Pitner explains why he thinks American racism is unique.
Last week in California, three black people - a Jamaican, a Canadian of descent, and a London native - were confronted seven police cars as they checked out of their Airbnb because a white American thought they were robbing the house.
Though they were not American, they were still subjected to racist American stereotypes - and being confronted with tense, potentially life-threatening altercations with police without ever committing a crime.
I've travelled a fair around the world, but America's racist status quo remains unique and alarmingly oppressive. American racism is entirely complexion-based and monolithic. One's nationality is immaterial.
Years ago during one of my trips to France, a woman at La Poste refused to me stamps because she thought I was African.
When she learned I was American, she apologised and sold me the stamps. The racism I experienced in France is totally unacceptable, but it provided an escape not afforded last week to these three visitors to America.
Is there a single step can tackle racism in US?
In France, nationality usurped race, and while can have its own problems, it was still very different from the racism back home.
When I was in London, I lived in Bethnal Green during the 20 riots, which started after London police officers killed Mark Duggan, a black man.
As teenage vandals looted and set my neighbourhood ablaze, I remember casually walking down the street during the chaos and having a London police officer politely ask me to return to my flat. There was no tense exchange, I was not arrested, and I never feared for my life.
During the week of the riots, Londoners openly discussed how black people might receive different treatment from law enforcement, but conversations focused on analysing policing techniques, discussing ways to keep teenagers off of the streets during the summer when they do not have school, and catching looters via CCTV.
In the American discourse, a supposedly inherent danger or criminality of black bodies would have been used to justify the police's killing of Duggan and present the riots as an inevitable -product of a "culture of crime". The killing of Michael Brown and the riots in Ferguson followed this all-too-familiar American script.
Racism towards black people in America has largely nothing to do with immigration or nationality. There is no home country for African-Americans to connect to. Instead it is essentially a status quo of domestic alienation, dehumanisation, criminalisation, and terror. European racism is bad, but it was still more welcoming than America's.
America's systemic racism starts with slavery and the various slave codes - state or federal laws created codified the inhumane practice of chattel slavery into law. The American South was a "slave society", not merely a society with slaves. However, following the abolition of slavery, laws similar to the slave codes continued to oppress black people.
Following the Civil War, these "black codes" had the explicit purpose of depriving newly freed black Americans of the rights they had won. Black codes varied from state to state, but their legal foundation centred on vagrancy laws allowed for an African American to be arrested if he was unemployed or homeless. They applied to countless blacks because housing and employment opportunities for freed blacks in the South were almost non-existent after the war.
Supporters of Virginia's Vagrancy Act of 66, one of these measures, stated it would reinstitute "slavery in all but its name".
White Southerners would report blacks for vagrancy, and law enforcement would arrest them and sentence African-Americans to up three months of forced labour on public or private lands.
The federal government fought against black codes during Reconstruction electing former abolitionists and freed blacks to public office, and creating laws and adding amendments to the US Constitution to protect the rights of black Americans.
But following the collapse of Reconstruction in 77, Southern states brought them back. Black codes became the bedrock of state constitutions. Poll taxes and literacy exams to prevent African Americans from voting soon became the norm. Jim Crow and racial segregation, which governed the South until the 60s, are outgrowths of those laws.
As black families fled the South in the 20th Century during the Great Migration, black codes followed them to Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and elsewhere. Black Americans - who were domestic refugees fleeing state-funded terrorism - allegedly brought crime, unemployment, vagrancy, and drugs. Police departments across America responded with more black codes and aggressive policing of black communities.
Black life has always been criminalised and dehumanised in America. During Barack Obama's presidency, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and countless other unarmed African-Americans were killed police, but with a black president many Americans felt progress was attainable. Social media raised awareness of these injustices and helped create the Black Lives Matter movement.
Under President Donald Trump, we have the same type of violence America has always had, but now we have, at best, an indifferent federal government, and at worst a racist president. Due to this change, more white Americans are emboldened to re-employ black codes.
Under Obama, social media championed our desire for progress, and today it documents our obvious regression.
Last week in New York City, a black lawyer and her -year-old were handcuffed and detained police after being falsely accused of shoplifting. During the same week, the police were called a white student at Yale University because a black Yale student was sleeping in the common area in their dormitory. In late April, an African-American family had the police called on them a white woman for having a cookout in a public park.
Following the arrest of two black men for sitting in a Starbucks, and the increased awareness of similar injustices, the world can more clearly see the racist applications of the law black people constantly face in America. Their arrest was black codes in 20, but without the three months of forced labour.
Trump's presidency has exacerbated the problem and social media has raised awareness, but employing black codes and masquerading oppression against black people as democratic justice and fair law enforcement has sadly always been America's status quo.
Barrett Holmes Pitner is a writer and journalist based in Washington, DC.
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The Republican party manifesto
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Posted:Sep 23, 2018 4:38 pm
Last Updated:May 5, 2024 3:33 pm 15740 Views
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This is taken word for word from the introduction to the REPUBLICAN Party manifesto in 1956.
Our great President Dwight D Eisenhower has counseled us: "In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people's money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative."
While jealously guarding the free institutions and preserving the principles upon which our Republic was founded and has flourished, the purpose of the Republican Party is to establish and maintain a peaceful world and build at home a dynamic prosperity in which every citizen fairly shares.
We shall ever build anew, that our and their , without distinction because of race, creed or color, may know the blessings of our free land.
We believe that basic to governmental integrity are unimpeachable ethical standards and irreproachable personal conduct by all people in government. We shall continue our insistence on honesty as an indispensable requirement of public service. We shall continue to root out corruption whenever and wherever it appears.
We are proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance —improved housing—and better health protection for all our people. We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people.
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We shall continue vigorously to support the United Nations.
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The Eisenhower Administration will continue to fight for dynamic and progressive programs which, among other things, will:
Stimulate improved job safety of our workers, through assistance to the States, employees and employers;
Continue and further perfect its programs of assistance to the millions of workers with special employment problems, such as older workers, handicapped workers, members of minority groups, and migratory workers;
Strengthen and improve the Federal-State Employment Service and improve the effectiveness of the unemployment insurance system;
Protect by law, the assets of employee welfare and benefit plans so that workers who are the beneficiaries can be assured of their rightful benefits;
Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of Sex;
Clarify and strengthen the eight-hour laws for the benefit of workers who are subject to federal wage standards on Federal and Federally-assisted construction, and maintain and continue the vigorous administration of the Federal prevailing minimum wage law for public supply contracts;
Extend the protection of the Federal minimum wage laws to as many more workers as is possible and practicable;
Continue to fight for the elimination of discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry or sex;
Provide assistance to improve the economic conditions of areas faced with persistent and substantial unemployment;
Revise and improve the Taft-Hartley Act so as to protect more effectively the rights of labor unions, management, the individual worker, and the public. The protection of the right of workers to organize into unions and to bargain collectively is the firm and permanent policy of the Eisenhower Administration.
My, my HOW times have changed!!
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