Gun control and the limits of flash-mob activism

Have to say I'm somewhat mystified by the American public's resistance to even the most cursory limitations on their "right" to buy guns.

Personally, I'm glad it's not as easy to buy a gun here in Ontario as it is in the neighbouring states. I've got two ex-wives, both of them feisty Irish Catholics. If you've ever been married to an Irish Catholic you'll know "feisty" is code for "highly emotional with a hair-trigger temper." Yup, if I lived in Ohio instead of Ontario I'd more than likely not have survived those divorces.

So at some level it was good to see Apathy Nation rise up and march for something, anything, yesterday, and the fact that they were marching for gun control, well, I guess that's something too.

They can't march for single-payer health care.

They're oblivious to the fact that their country is routinely killing kids just like them in at least half a dozen Muslim countries, and in numbers completely unfathomable in the American context.  No marches to protest US foreign policy.

They're ignorant of the fact that the oligarchs who run their country, including the one who funded yesterday's shindig, have foreclosed any prospect for a decent life for most of their generation.

But they're suddenly woke to the NRA's plot to kill America's children.

Circumstances around the school shooting that ostensibly triggered this outburst of activism would suggest that access to guns is only one facet of the issue. Yet no one is protesting big pharma's pushing of SSRI drugs, which almost all mass shooters seem to have been on.

No one is protesting the lack of a mental heath care infrastructure that could and should have flagged the shooter years ago.

No one is demanding resignations at the FBI, who obviously dropped the ball after receiving numerous reports warning about the extreme threat that the shooter posed.

But by golly, they're pumped to take down the NRA.

If Dog Lives Matter, the scourge of political correctitude must be pretty much down for the count...

Gotta admit that in my adventures in literacy BLM used to mean "Bureau of Land Management." That's the government bureaucrats who prevent redneck white cowboys from running their cattle on public lands for free.

I kinda thought that wasn't a bad idea, keeping private cattle off public lands, which made me a bit of a socialist at the time. If not a communist.

Then Black Lives Matter comes along and I have to do a double check on any BLM headline. Are they talking about this BLM or that BLM?

There's not a heck of a lot of common ground between the two BLMs.

The black BLM is kinda floating along on the winds of political correctitude.

The Bureau of Land Management, not so much.

 The other BLM has taken umbrage over appropriations of their slogan. White Lives Matter? That's disrespectful of black lives. Blue Lives Matter? That's beyond the pale.

But when pop-culture mega-star Axl Rose tweets that "Dog Lives Matter" we don't hear a lot of complaining from the Black Lives Matter campaign.

Why not?

Well, because dogs are dogs and cops are cops. Whites are white and blacks are black. Axl Rose is... well Axl Rose I guess, and as a pop culture superstar he has a license to say whatever he wants to say, without censure.

But it does seem to pencil in some limits to political correctitude... as in, you can transgress the boundaries if you are a bona fide star in the pop culture firmament.

Otherwise, you're a racist shit-bag.

Speaking of shit-bags, Mr. Trump sure hit the wall this weekend, did he not? That wildly misogynistic tape put him dead to rights, eh?

Well, I'm not so sure. Here's one of the left's (and I'm talking about the actual left, not the Clintonesque-Dem fake left that today finds itself to the right of the Republican candidate on practically everything) uber-swamis, Counterpunch grandee Jeffrey St. Clair, musing about the long history of senior pols on both sides of the aisle proving themselves at least as misogynistic as Mr. Trump.

I was surprised he forgot to mention Trump's fellow Manhattan billionaire, Michael Bloomberg.

Surely the virus of political correctitude has infected all parties on all sides. Just as the scourge of misogyny did before it.

But what bothers me is that our corporate media found copious acres of space available for Trump's alleged transgressions this weekend, which are utterly irrelevant, and absolutely no space for the thousands of Podesta emails that were leaked this weekend, which have an immediate bearing on the future of America should Hillary become the next President of the United States.

The Canadian way; busywork for bureaucrats

There's one thing that Canadians do really well. In fact, we're pretty much world leaders.

We study stuff.

Feasibility studies. Environmental reviews. Impact assessments. Canadians have more words for "studying stuff" than Eskimos have words for snow.

Since at least the 1970's various government ministries have studied the possibilities of widening Highway 7  between Guelph and Kitchener. Engineers have graduated, spent their working lives studying the road widening possibilities of this ten mile stretch of two-lane black top, and retired. In fact, there are engineering consultants studying the project today who can proudly state that their grand-daddy studied that highway.

Soon there'll be guys who can proudly state that they're the forth generation of their family studying the possibility of widening that road.

There will have been ten times more spent on fifty years of studies than it would have cost to hire a paving crew and add two lanes around the time they first started the studies.

There's a guy at U of T doing his Ph.D studying the studies.

When the bad news about the F-35 hit the fan this week, Canada immediately took very Canadian measures to correct the problem. They assembled a team of bureaucrats to study what went wrong. In Canada there's no problem that another level of bureaucracy can't fix, but of course they have to study it first.

Bloomberg reported yesterday that the Canadian government will review the sale of store leases from the American owners of Zellers to the American Target chain on the grounds that ownership of department store leases might impact Canada's cultural heritage or national identity.

That's right! One American corporation selling shopping plaza leases to another American corporation is a threat to Canada's national identity?

That's something we have to study. I'm pretty sure that a year from now, when at least a dozen six-figure policy analysts have had a go at it and numerous reports have been written, the conclusion will be that the transfer of leaseholds between American companies operating in Canada will have no significant impact on our cultural heritage or national identity.

But you can't be too sure.

Mayor Bloomberg visits Goldman Sachs to deliver hugs and best wishes

Mayor Mike went a-calling on Goldman Sachs today. Seems the banksters are a bit down in the dumps because of that nasty farewell letter one of their departing VPs got into the New York Times the other day.

In case you missed it, Greg Smith told the world what the world already knew; the folks at Goldman are more interested in their own bottom line than they are in yours.

I'm shocked that anyone on the planet thinks this revelation is newsworthy.

Then again, I'm a bit behind the spirit of these times.

I was shocked that Romney made it out of town without tar and feathers after that "corporations are people too" episode.

I'm shocked that anyone even considers voting for Newt Gingerich under any circumstances.

I'm shocked that Sheldon Adelson keeps shoveling good money into a lost cause.

And I'm shocked that Mike Bloomberg would want to go on the record as a Goldman Sachs fan.

Doesn't he have to be re-elected at some point?