The Canada Primer series is to help all the non-Canadians I’ve picked up over this year’s blogging get some context as to what arm-flailing inanity our right-wing has picked up from your right-wing. It might also be a good place for fellow Canucks to catch up or review.
Covering this presents a challenge, dear readers, because I cannot possibly scrape deep enough into the lexicon of my loathing to adequately capture my response. If you could connect to my brain directly, it would simply be white hot pain manifesting behind your eyeballs with a backdrop of millions of fingernails dragged across millions of blackboards amplified through a megaphone.
What makes this different is that it isn’t merely the standard legislative process being used to beat queer and trans people into oblivion. This is a special kind of psychopathy, the kind that could only be treated with the judicious application of an aluminum baseball bat.
To recap, Governor Roy Cooper campaigned on a promise to repeal HB2, citing the law’s punitive nature against trans folk simply for existing as well as the implications for discrimination against cisgender gay folks. Despite the fact that North Carolina seems to have voted for Cooper at least in part on his promise to do this (despite the dirty dealing and breathless histrionics we could only expect of a party so unprincipled they couldn’t find the backbone to do anything about Cheetolini), North Carolinian Republicans have decided that they know better than their own electorate.
In an apparent deal to see HB2 repealed, Cooper coordinated with the city Charlotte to see its nondiscrimination ordinances, which included protections for trans folk, repealed. Shortly after Charlotte foolishly expected honour from the same party that just foisted a god damn serial rapist into the White House, a special session was called to repeal HB2.
Except that HB2 wasn’t fucking repealed.
The bill they’ve filed (SB4) does repeal HB2, including its restrictions mandating what bathrooms transgender people may use. However, it also creates a “Six-Month Cooling-Off Period,” in which no municipality in the state may pass any laws related to employment or public accommodations, specifically noting “access to restrooms, showers, or changing facilities.”
Meaning even if HB2 is finally put to death like the savage fucking mistake that it is, its consequences would persist for another six months. Then, North Carolinian Democrats, having said “wait a second, that’s not part of the deal,” torpedoed SB4. Meaning HB2 is still alive, if in spastic death throes.
Then these same fucking twits tried to set up Cooper for not adhering to his campaign promises!
So twice before the election Roy Cooper kills a repeal/Repeal Deal. Now after being against a repeal deal, after the election he was for it. Now he is against it again because the repeal simply has teeth, to make sure our “long national Nightmare is over.”
It is clear Coopers only motivation here is political, first last and always. And the people of North Carolina who support repeal should know Cooper sold them down the river with a wink and a nod, to radical leftists who were waiting for the repeal and start this destructive fight all over.
YOU CHRONICALLY DISHONEST SACK OF SHIT. COOPER SUPPORTED A FULL REPEAL, NOT THE BULLSHIT YOU’RE TRYING TO PULL NOW.
It gets better.
The Senate–holy fuck, don’t you love the Senate?–proposed an amendment to the bill that would EXTEND the motherfucking moratorium until the end of 2017.
I’m a writer, and I don’t have words. I would not permit these Republicans to lick the mud off my boots. Duplicitous, cowardly sacks of shit who have no qualms turning queer and trans people into political football for your asinine political fucking theatre. Fuck. Every. Single. One of you.
It’s time the football kicked back.
-Shiv
This post also appears on Modern Liberals.
The Science Post reports:
“We regret to announce that all 50 states are now reporting several cases of DKD” said CDC epidemiologist Mark Webber. “DKD is characterized as expressing or believing that one has vast and expert knowledge in a subject which they actually do not. It most often presents in the fields of medicine and science.”
There is currently no known cure for DKD, but scientists are hopeful with more education and isolation, it can be contained.
“We haven’t seen this level of DKD since Jenny McCarthy started spreading her vaccine causes autism bullshit” said Webber. “I fear the DKD level will continue to rise as more and more people with DKD have access to the internet, as well as there being several celebrities with the disease.”
Some say the worst part of DKD is that the carriers have no idea they are infected, nor how easily they can spread it to others.
Efforts by the CDC to combat this problem to follow. There are also early signs of it spreading up here in Canuckistan, though Health Canada has so far contained it to the Toronto area.
-Shiv
Mostly for the sake of my admittedly precarious sanity, I’m starting a Good News ____day series in which I will share positive news (or find positive news, if I have to).
Today’s issue of Good News blankday: Albertan government to expand affordable housing program by $18 million in partnership with the federal government.
Sigurdson made the funding announcement Wednesday morning at Bridgeland Place.
Owned by the City of Calgary and operated by the Calgary Housing Company, Bridgeland Place will receive $648,000 for suite renovations, replacing shut-off valves, a roof inspection and sidewalk replacement.
Similar projects will take place in more than 120 buildings in Calgary for seniors, community and special needs housing, owned or operated by 29 social housing providers.
Sigurdson noted that Alberta is one of only three provinces without an affordable housing strategy.
Coun. Brian Pincott, who is also chair of the Calgary Housing Company, said the repair costs are higher than they should be, as funding from governments hasn’t kept up.
He welcomes the injection of funds.
“For the first time, at the provincial, municipal and federal levels, we have government partners who are understanding that this isn’t really about bricks and mortars and how we build buildings, this is actually how do we support people,” he said.
The funding was made available through the 2016 – 2018 Social Infrastructure Fund, a two-year federal and provincial agreement to help Albertans in need of affordable housing.
Hopefully our provincial government will plug the gap in our senior/disability housing plans. Still, this is a much needed start!
-Shiv
9 confirmed dead so far in an attack on a Berlin market square along with approximately 50 injuries.
A lorry ran off road and into a Christmas festival on Monday night in Breitscheidplatz, Berlin, Germany. BBC reported the death toll at nine, while Reuters reports up to 50 additional injuries.
Police are still investigating to confirm the driver’s motivation. The driver is still alive and was arrested near the scene.
Kindly refrain from speculating at this point.
-Shiv
I love stats, although certain applications of it are a bit rusty on my end because it’s been a few years since I left university. Nonetheless, my stats say I’ve been steadily gaining regulars from the United States over the past year and received some fair feedback concerning my coverage of Canadian politics–chiefly that it’s a bit hard for outsiders to follow, and secondly that Americans don’t seem incentivized to follow it. Canadians don’t seem to need much incentive to click on these types of articles–y’all already do it.
I figured that as 2016 comes to a close that I would do a small series covering the background of some clowns politicians & lobbyists that even Americans might be interested in watching with me. If nothing else, many of you seem to enjoy my thinly veiled contempt for the reality-denying chucklefucks hanging on to the right-wing of democratic society like a gangrenous limb. Unlike a dingleberry like PBog*, whose inanity is largely painful only to those who are tragically exposed to it, a lot more is at stake if these people win or retain power.
So there are four objectives for the primer that I hope serve my readers:
For the most part, influence from the USA in particular tends to bleed into Canada, rather than the other way around. But if nothing else, appreciate the solidarity of knowing the USA does not have a monopoly on political parties composed entirely of clown cars filled with reprogrammable Randroids masquerading as people. Yay?
There’s also a secondary goal, which is to identify those actors in politics who bear nothing but contempt for democracy. While we can debate until we faint over which specific stripe of Authoritarianism is manifesting in any particular movement, I’d like to equip my readers with a few red flags when Canada comes to visit you. Depending on who is visiting, you may want to pay real close attention to what they’re saying, the way Alberta collectively needed a barf bag when Ann frickin’ Coulter came to town on Trump business. I don’t particularly care which breed of dickhead we call them, only that you recognize the necessity of resisting. Ideally peacefully**.
Posts on the Primer to follow soon.
Remember: You can’t take care of the Resistance if you can’t take care of yourself.
-Shiv
**Bearing in mind that there is a significant gap between what I consider ideal and what I consider realistic.
-Shiv
-Shiv
Everybody knows Republicans have the True Issues of America at heart, and nowhere is this more apparent than their dedication in the War on Christmas! Well, at long last, the fruits of their efforts have been reaped:
“We’ve been trying to bring this guy to justice for years,” Newman said Monday. “There’s no telling how many Christian soldiers have been brutally subjected to Atkins’ seemingly endless diatribes about separation of church and state and why Christmas should not be a national holiday. Survivors say the torture sessions would go on for hours and hours.”
The charge of genocide against Atkins stems from allegations he tried to systematically wipe out the entire known population of elves, an ethnic group best known for baking cookies in trees and making Christmas toys in Santa Claus’ workshop at the North Pole.
“When’s the last time you saw a real-life, bona fide elf?” Newman asked. “Not a midget dressed like one with fake pointy ears, either. The fact that they aren’t around supports claims that Atkins exterminated them.”
If convicted, Atkins could face a firing squad of a dozen Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot Range Model air rifles.
Good work, xians!
-Shiv
[Please note: This is satire.]
The world’s falling apart. But sometimes, for the sake of our sanity, we just need shit like this.
Watch out for moose who like to lick vehicles.
That’s a warning from the Alberta government for people visiting Peter Lougheed Provincial Park about 130 kilometres west of Calgary.
Alberta Parks says moose are on the trails at Chester Lake and Burstall Pass and are coming into the trailhead parking lots to lick salt off the sides of vehicles.
The government advises people to sound their horn to try to get the salt-lickers away from their vehicles.
It also warns to not try to push a moose away from the vehicle.
In Canada, a female moose weighs an average of 750 to 926 pounds and a male moose averages between 992 and 1,102 pounds.
Alberta Parks issued the warning Tuesday and ask people report any aggressive moose encounters to them.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-Shiv