Charles McVety the Stooge

Oh, HAPPY HAPPY DAY.

While this is old-ish news to some of my fans, I just discovered today that "Reverend" Charles McVety had his TV show canceled, earlier this month. For those who don't know, McVety is basically Canada's answer to Pat Robertson: an overzealous bigot, claiming to be devoutly Christian, who often tells lies to attack anyone who isn't a straight, white, God-fearing conservative Christian (hence why he was voted the Dishonurable Mention in the 2010 Douchebag of the Year awards).

Anyway, what started all of this is that back in December, he said on Word TV that (among other things) gay pride parades are sex festivals that promote pedophilia. Needless to say, this is not true -- and someone complained to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, seeing as this is against their rules. The Council agreed, and the show was suspended for a couple of days.

Of course, McVety and his supporters have claimed that this was political persecution, despite providing no evidence whatsoever that their claims about homosexuals and transgendered people are correct.

Several weeks later, the television station in question (Crossroads Television) -- a right-wing Christian station, believe it or not -- announced that Word TV would be removed permanently from their schedule, because McVety refused to change his behaviour. Sure enough, McVety is ONCE AGAIN claiming to be persecuted, and is suing his former employers.

Charles, maybe no-one ever explained it to you, but when you play a particular game, you're supposed to follow the rules. You clearly are not. You are going to lose.

(and besides, McVety is in a hell of a place to complain about being censored, given some of his previous crusades)

Of course, McVety STILL isn't getting the message -- just this morning (Feb. 8, 2011), he was on AM 640 (a Toronto talk radio station), crying that the sky is going to fall, because the Harper government is considering recognizing the legal rights of transgendered people. Admittedly, this is rather surprising, given that Harper tends to obey social bigots like McVety all the time, but anyway... What's McVety's main concern? Well, other than claiming that (like gay marriage) this will destroy society and pave the way for legalized pedophilia (um, right...), he's concerned about his daughter showering with what is technically a man, at the gym or pool.

As I've already stated, I would hope that any transgendered woman showering around a child would have the courtesy to show SOME modesty around them. In any case, he would appear to either not know or not care, that there are plenty of female sex offenders in North America (you could pretty much flip a coin, to determine which it is). Besides, how does McVety know that his daughter is any more comfortable with showering around strange women? Or, for that matter, that she's comfortable with Dear Old Daddy dragging her into his crusades (and thereby involuntarily putting the mental image of his showering daughter into the public consciousness).

If there is a God, this guy's time has come and gone, and before very long he personally will be gone forever.

G20 Aftermath

STFU, Charles McVety

Health Reform "Coverage"

Obamacare

Health Care and Shona Holmes

Much fuss has been made lately, about Barack Obama's plan to give Americans universal health care. Conservatives -- being the greedy little shits that they are -- are so adamant about stopping this, that they're resorting to an interesting propaganda move to discredit it. They enlisted Canadian citizen Shona Holmes, who claims to have had a brain tumor that was nearly fatal. She further claims that because of a six month wait for treatment, she had no choice but to mortgage her house, borrow money, and otherwise scrape together $100,000 to get treated in the U.S. According to her and those who want for-profit health care, this is a sign that our health care system is a disaster waiting to happen. Guys... go fuck yourselves.

Now that may seem harsh, but there's a reason I'm saying it. For one thing, the so-called tumour was in fact a Cleft Cyst on her pituitary gland, which is not life-threatening at all. Furthermore, there are countless Canadians who genuinely do have cancer, and yet manage to get quick treatment without much of a problem. I don't deny that wait times and coverage blind spots are a problem in our health care system, but as far as anyone can tell the issues described by Holmes simply don't exist. Try being disabled, a senior citizen, or having a rare but deadly illness in Ontario and THEN you can complain about OHIP's shortcomings.

If I may inject a personal story, I can tell you first hand that our hospitals are actually pretty well on the ball. Over a year ago I fell head-first into a sidewalk -- a very similar injury to the one that would later kill Natasha Richardson, so needless to say there was a lot of reason to be concerned. Within two hours of my fall, I was in an emergency room, examined by the doctors, given a clean bill of health, and discharged. The point is, if a need presents itself, our system will bend over backwards to meet it -- all without charging huge fees, I might add.

At the risk of sounding a bit like Michael Moore, it's no secret that the current system in America is the bigger disaster -- millions of Americans can't get health insurance, and the ones that do, often get their claims rejected because some bean counters think that things like heart surgery and tumour removal aren't critical procedures. Private insurance companies are after one thing alone: making a profit, and they don't care if people die to give them that. Frankly, it's my belief that the people who support private health care, just want to legally kill the lower-middle class.

If you still want proof that this whole story from Shona Holmes is a crock, think about this. Even though she hates Canadian medicare, even though she took it upon herself to raise the money to get treated abroad, she's still suing the Ontario government for her health expenses. Yeah, she really sounds like a noble person, doesn't she. Enough said.

Patriotically Ignorant

Later this week, the Canadian Parliament will be re-opening, following a truly stupid move by Emperor Harper that nearly tore this country apart. Instead of doing something constructive about the economy, like he said he would, Harper and the Conservatives decided to gut funding to progressive interests, as well as the opposition parties. This would effectively bankrupt them, and Harper knew it. So, not surprisingly, the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc were outraged, and joined forces to all but boot Harper out of power. Knowing that he was in trouble, that little chicken shit talked the Governor General into suspending Parliament for a couple of months, and here we are. While some of the initial dust has settled, it's still amazing that a lot of Canadians actually supported Harper over this.

When Canadians were fighting each other over this thing, in December, a poll was taken, which revealed that over half of the people in this country literally had no idea how our system of government works. This would certainly explain some of the comments I heard, which I'll get to in a minute. The thing that's really astonishing, though, is some of what they got wrong; for instance, most Canadians seemed to think that we actually vote for the Prime Minister directly, but anyone who's voted in an election knows that this isn't true. This leads me to wonder, how many of the people who are calling the coalition undemocratic, or illegal, have ever actually voted in their lives?

You see, Canada's government is what's called a Parliamentary Democracy. In plain language, this means that when elections are held, people don't vote for the government, they vote for a particular person who will speak for them in Ottawa. The government is made up of the party with the most seats, not necessarily the party with the most overall support, which is why the Tories are now in power with less than half of the popular vote. Therefore, the government is only in power, as long as most of Parliament votes for whatever they try to do. Once the government loses a major vote, such as the budget, that's called a non-confidence vote -- in other words, the government is fired on our behalf. When that happens, the result is either an election, or a coalition government made up of two or more opposition parties -- look up the Canadian Constitution, if you don't believe me. The point is, the alliance formed by the Liberals and NDP is not only completely legal, but it is actually a more accurate reflection of how the public really voted.

But, you'd never see a bunch of control freaks like the Harper government admit to that, so they been spending the last two months lying to the public about it. In addition to the bullshit about it being illegal, they claim the coalition is un-Canadian, given that it involves the separatist Bloc Quebecois. Now, leaving aside for a minute that our current government was formed partly by a Western separatist party, I should point out that every government since the Bloc's creation -- including Harper's -- has consulted the Bloc on several matters. Harper's hypocrisy about the coalition is even more interesting, when you consider that on September 9, 2004, he actually formed one himself, when he was in opposition. By the way, guess who one of his partners was? The Bloc Quebecois!

So Canada, when the government tries again to force its lies down your throat, keep in mind that they are, as usual, saying one thing and then doing another. For instance, one of their ministers, John Baird, recently stated that he thinks the Conservatives can just ignore the rule of Parliament -- so who's really undemocratic here? He also stated that the Conservatives can go over the head of our real head of state, Governor General Michaelle Jean -- who's really being criminal and un-Canadian, especially since that's very close to High Treason? Finally, who really isn't up to the job, when our so-called Prime Minister literally has to be threatened into helping his countrymen? People, we must stand on guard for this country, and each other, otherwise all of the freedom that we supposedly stand for, means nothing; Canada would be anything but glorious and free. Enough said.