Jon Stewart Vs Judith Miller

On the political spectrum, the safe bet is that I rank somewhere left of center. Even then, the demolition job Jon Stewart did when he handed Judith Miller her carcass at the end of a 20-minute interview two weeks ago made me a little uneasy.

Don't get me wrong - he was 100% right, he attacked with facts on things she wrote about and said, but being it's one of the two political issues he's most passionate about (with Veterans Affairs being a close second), he was versed in the subject matter as if he'd written it itself, and she never had a chance. She walked into a trap, except she was expecting a trap door and instead found a lion's den where the animals had been starved for a week.

Plus, with him having set his departure date to August 6th, he's leaving with a bang (interspersed with marshmallow-y small talks with long-time celebrity friends a couple of times a week; the he has circles to fill, and he looks like he won't leave any stone unturned.

If there was any time in History that Dick Cheney could be charged with war crimes, it seems like Stewart would want it to be now, and himself to be the perpetrator, like Hunter S. Thompson going after Richard Nixon.

It's beautiful and righteous, but it's also brutal and violent, calculated and without mercy. Good, because his opponents never pulled any punches themselves.

Canadian viewers can watch it here, American viewers can Google ''The Daily Show''.

Lest We Forget

I'm usually big on Remembrance Day (Veterans' Day for my American friends), a day in which I tip my hat to those who have sacrificed so much for the general ''us'' (and myself in particular), our freedom, our present. It's like a more honest Thanksgiving, without the turkey, and celebrated privately rather than with relatives.

But I'm not feeling it as much. Not that I don't respect it, just... the world we live in isn't all that great, for starters, especially towards those who have served their country:

But also in light of natural disasters such as today's Typhoon in the Phillippines, there are countless people who give or lose everything they have, every single day, with no one to benefit from their actions and losses.

Then comes the thought of all the unjust wars, both ones in Iraq starring in that role, but also Vietnam, and on a lesser scale, the Korean war - in which my grandfather served as a sniper - which, lest we not forget, pitted a communist government (North Korea) against a right-wing government (South Korea), and despite being less than a decade removed from WWII, the United Nations supported the right-wing, starting a spiral for North Korea that, with the help of blockades and embargoes, left them bitter, poor, starving, technologically impaired even to this day, and pissed off at the Western world - for good reason.

It takes a special person to be willing to sacrifice their life for their country, for their beliefs; it takes an even better soldier to go through with it despite disagreeing with orders, as many U.S. troops have since 2003. It takes a righteous person to serve as a means of defense rather than invasion or regime change, though.

More than all of that, though, I really despise profiteers pinning poppies to their suits when they use other humans - mostly kids and young adults yet to reach their prime - to unjustly invade another country for profit or territory after everything we know now. And to, at times, even poison their own troops while doing so.

Then there's the ''after'': those who come back perfectly healthy still struggle to find decent work; those who come back mentally scarred receive no help whatsoever; those who come back maimed and missing limbs being refused any type of disability claim, financial help, often having their insurances cut soon after their (first) hospital release.

The problem is those in charge see it as a mathematical equation: what will it cost, versus how much do we/some of us get back? I've heard time and time again, if senators, politicians and big company executives were to send their own children to war, would they hesitate at least a little more before pulling the trigger?

That's the wrong question, though. When a soldier's life is equated with his $30K salary and negatively evaluated as a three-year investment, how many can you spare in order to help Halliburton make billions? Where is the cut-off line where they would have to think twice about putting kids in danger? What if they made $100K a year, $250K? With a life insurance worth 5 to 10 times their yearly salary, would insurance companies warn not to risk losing them uselessly?

Unfortunately, that is the world we are left with today. Corrupt leaders doing a small group's bidding, sacrificing everyone they have to in order to keep going at it. I used to love the picture at the top of this post, the sacrifices of the past supporting our care-free way of life. Except more and more, it seems like their sacrifice was for nil, that the hell they're in transposed to the upper level, that the grass is no longer green, the future is bleak, the people are poor, starving, bitter and rightly pissed off, but it doesn't even matter, because the powers that be have us all in check anyway, throwing fake laws and militarily-equipped cops at us, restraining our education, our means of purchase, access to decent jobs, clean air, fresh water, natural fucking food...

I'll tell you what: I'm pretty sure that's not what my uncle Jean-Marc (late 1970s), stepdad Daniel (late 1970s), grandfather Raymond (Korea, later Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau's personal bodyguard), great-uncle Gérard (WWII) and the others I'd rather not get into at the moment had in mind when they joined the Canadian Forces, nor what Joseph, Jack, Kevin, James and John had in mind when they joined the U.S. Forces.

Thief-In-Chief

The more things change...

Ladies and gentlemen, the new mayor of Montréal, Denis Coderre, whose team incorporated all the leftovers from the previous deposed administration, on the grounds of corruption. They all jumped on his bandwagon because no one else would take their soiled asses, and who better to forgive (and help hide) than a man who was once associated with his own corrupt political party, on the federal (national) level...

Oh, the company we keep. Birds of a feather flock together - as do the tainted and easily corrupted.

Worse still, Michel Bissonnet received 72% of the vote to remain as burrough mayor of St-Leonard, despite his name being mentioned in thousands of court documents and hearings as part of a vast web of corruption, most notably in the construction industry but also illegal campaign financing.

And look at Coderre's wink-and-smile, he knows the fix is in and has been from the start:

Kind of makes you wish you could have voted for Peter Griffin instead...

Of course, everyone knew it was going to happen, and two-thirds of the city are almost happy that Coderre won with ''merely'' 32% of the vote, when polls were giving him a larger lead, perhaps even a majority. And that's why I almost made the following song my Video Of The Week yesterday (it's Catatonia's I Am The Mob):



And there is even more defeat in defeat: Luc Ferrandez was re-elected as burrough mayor for the Plateau - with a higher percentage than the first time around - which means the War On Noise (i.e. making downtown Montréal into a quiet suburb-like environment for condo dwellers while shutting down music venues and art galleries and fucking with every other remaining businesses' permit statuses in the heart of the city's cultural center) is still on.

Humans really are stupid creatures.

At least it'll be entertaining. With the Party that gave us 3 deposed mayors in less than 6 months still in power, office pools have already started about how high-up the first arrest will go, and what type of corruption it'll entail (electoral fraud, City contract assignment, over-charging for services to take a higher commission fee, no-bid contract at double the street price, etc). Kinda makes you wish all your mayor was doing wrong was smoking crack.

Calorie Wise

Who can you trust when it comes to labeling the calorie content of food? Who makes sure the labels are accurate? What constitutes ''healthy'' food?

Here's a 5-minute, unscientific demonstration:

A Liar And A Thief

Yes, I'm reminded of this Nirvana lyric (from Pennyroyal Tea) when I see the farce circus sideshow that has become the Lance Armstrong Admission Tour, where he's pretty much only sorry he got caught, and tries to justify it by saying everyone else was also doping (though many of them were forced by him and his team's bosses, or else they were kicked out), which, in turn, implies he was still the best - the best at lying, the best at not getting caught, and the best rider.

But this was particularly full of bullshit funny to me:



He's ''happier today''. Yeah, now that he has a clean fucking conscience and is trying to keep his millionaire lifestyle, looking for plea bargains left and right, having ruined the lives of hundreds of people along the way - just the list of people he sued into bankruptcy includes journalists, competing riders, sports therapists, members of his teams, sports federations and their leaders...

Yeah. Sleep well, Lance, Zen fucking master.

So If I Go To Barbados...

... everywhere I go, I'll see Rihanna, who spends her time between Miami, New York and Los Angeles?

On many of the hundreds of beaches, playing dominoes with the locals, riding horses, walking in trails?

She can be everywhere at once!

When Bigots Are Criminals

After my post earlier this week about Republican candidate Eric Bodenweister's indictment on 113 counts of sexual crimes came this story, about Christian/anti-gay lawyer/activist Lisa Biron: a member of the anti-gay Alliance Defense Fund, which has filed numerous lawsuits in opposition to LGBT rights nationwide, she has been arrested on multiple felony charges related to child pornography.

In fact, what she was in possession of was evidence of a sexual encounter she had with a female minor, which she took to Canada to film and fuck. So, all told, here's what happened:

FBI agents swiftly arrested Lisa Biron yesterday morning as she awaited a hearing on child pornography charges at Manchester’s district court. About 9 a.m. FBI agents entered the courtroom, told Biron to leave her belongings and took her into an adjoining conference room where she remained for several minutes before coming out in handcuffs.

Outside, Biron ducked her head below the backseat window of a white vehicle as it was driven away from the courthouse.

A few hours later in U.S. District Court in Concord, Biron, who is associated with a national coalition of Christian lawyers, was formally told of the federal charges against her: transportation with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, possession of child pornography and five counts of sexual exploitation of children.

So I guess in her opinion - a ''respectable'' one since she's a lawyer and all - same-sex sex is wrong, unless it's done with a minor, in which case I assume it's just ''experimenting''. I'm sure her God would agree, since he's the same one who is prayed to from pedophile priests and Republicans...

These people have no clue are the reason why folks no longer believe in the Institutions, public office, or anyone with power and/or authority. Their so-called morals shame them, and in turn, they try to ruin life for everyone else by trying to ban everything. That, and they keep putting themselves in positions of authority to gain access to their victims. Here's another charge that should be brought against people like that: being fucking assholes, worth three years in prison to be added to the rest of their sentence.

When Republicans Are Criminals

This one predates the (U.S.) election by a few days, and I just hadn't gotten around to it - I'm pretty late on a lot of things I've wanted to share/do/work on.

It's about a candidate for senate who had a hard stance on homosexuality, and as is often the case when those bastards try to regulate stuff that should be of no concern to others, he turned out to actually be worse than what he was against - he didn't just enjoy the company of males, he liked them underage, which I think is the only illegal/sinful thing in that sentence. Oh, and he wasn't just indicted on one count, either... 113.

It has been reported by delawareonline.com that Eric Bodenweister's indictment included 74 counts of unlawful sexual contact, a felony in the second degree. Also attached were 39 first-degree felony counts of unlawful sexual intercourse.

Yeah. Hypocrisy at its worst. Plus, his name sounds like a bad beer that claims it's the King Of Beers - another case of lies and hypocrisy. Should have seen that one coming...

Romitt Wouldn't Concede To Votebama

Almost 1AM. That's how late Mitt Romney held onto his illusions this morning, refusing to concede his defeat. It had been more than an hour since most media outlets had given Ohio to President Barack Obama, and almost two hours since Jon Stewart had declared Obama winner of the elections.

For a while, Romney led the popular vote but trailed the electoral College by a landslide; things went back to normal around midnight, with the President maintaining a fair advantage of electoral votes, but also winning the actual vote count, avoiding a repeat of (what History remembers of) the 2000 election.

In a predictable yet ironic twist, we now find ourselves exactly where we were before: same President and VP, the House to Republicans, the Senate to Democrats. However, perhaps the House will actually stop cock-blocking Obama now that their strategy of ''our job is to avoid a second Obama term'' has failed massively, and maybe they can ratify a few of his plans to get Americans back on the job market, which they were saying was their priority, although their actions proved otherwise.

Now that that's done, here's a cat being coy about trying to suffocate a child (or just being stubborn):

Binders Full Of Women

I'm sure Ann Romney must facepalm herself at least ten times a day, unless she's just enraged at how dumb her husband is.

At least his recent quip about ''binders full of women'' has created so much rage that many websites came a-birthing, including this photoblog.

Here's a hit (hopefully you get the Big Lebowski reference):

At least he sounds like the real Mitt Romney again... speaking of which...

Don't Do Drugs (Athletes Edition)

I've been sitting on this ''news story'' for two weeks or so and am unsure where I stand on it...

Former Los Angeles Dodgers closer Éric Gagné released a tell-all book where he admits (for the second time) using HGH (Human-Growth Hormones) during the last few (injury-prone) years of his career, claims 80% of his Dodgers teammates also did, and says he used the drugs to come back from injuries faster, hinting that he was clean when he saved 84 straight games  over the course of two seasons, one of which he won a Cy Young award as best pitcher for.

It looks an awful lot like ''I wasn't the most guilty'' and smells a bit like ''I may be hiding some other shit so I don't get sued for money I've spent a long time ago''. And it leaves a taste of ''I have a legacy to protect'', too.

The guy who was nicknamed ''Game Over'' says:

It was sufficient to ruin my health, tarnish my reputation and throw a shadow over the extraordinary performances of my career

No shit, Sherlock.

But the effects of HGH (and steroids, which I suspected him of taking in the first place when he  would tear muscle after muscle, year after year) were already well-known at the time, so it was a conscious decision of ''high reward in the present, high risk for my health soon enough, and permanent damage later''. The guy's just about my age, from Montréal like myself. He's lived through the Ben Johnson Olympic doping scandal of 1988, he knew many variations of them were illegal - but they were permitted in baseball; he also knew they weren't in many other sports, including hockey, which he is a fan of.

So I don't really care that he chose to put those poisons in his body. I drink alcohol, aspartame-infused diet drinks, sugar-filled energy drinks, eat microwaved processed foods, etc. Those are choices, to a certain extent, of poisons to consume.

I just don't like the bullshit, and despise the justifications. Just like cycling, where the main excuse for decades was ''if my competitors are juicing, I'd be doing myself a disservice to not do so too'', becoming part of the problem, instead of deciding to live comfortably and finishing in respectable positions and doing so ''au naturel'' and setting the example for doing things correctly.

Killing The Truth

The Republican Convention is over, and many will remember it because of Clint Eastwood's surreal stand-up comedy act featuring an interview with an invisible President Obama in an empty chair. It showed that, should Condi Rice not run in 2016, he could definitely pull a Ronald Reagan and become a two-term, senile, funny, everyday man in charge of the world's biggest economy and army. Would be entertaining, to say the least.

But that moment overshadowed the Republican presidential and vice-residential nominees' speeches - more specifically, the fact that they were full of lies, half-truths, and dangerous innuendos. Many of them were outed by the New York Times in this article, not surprisingly the most of them coming from Paul Ryan, who has made it his mission to see Barack Obama fail and has obstructed everything the President has attempted, even his attempts at compromise and Republican-friendly policies.

Here is but one example:

In his attack on the president’s time in office, Mr. Ryan said: “It began with a perfect AAA credit rating for the United States. It ends with the downgraded America.”

When Standard & Poor’s lowered the nation’s credit rating, it was in large part because of the standoff last year over the debt ceiling — which needed to be raised so the government could borrow money to pay for spending that Congress had already approved. The White House had asked Congress to simply raise the debt ceiling; Mr. Ryan and House Republicans balked at doing so without reaching a deal on significant spending cuts. The ensuing standoff took the nation to the brink of default.

In its statement explaining the downgrade, Standard & Poor’s wrote that “the political brinkmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policy making becoming less stable, less effective and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.”

That one's on the Republicans - not Obama.

For decades, politicians have exacerbated the population's cynicism by lying making deliberately false campaign promises, such as ''vote for me and I'll fix the economy'', or ''vote for me and I'll fix the roads / schools / system / healthcare'', and we accepted those because they were pipe dreams told by snake oil salesmen. We knew they were likely to try a little, but never completely succeed, and it's not like we wanted their jobs anyway.

But in the past 15 years, with negative ads becoming more and more prevalent, it seems the speech / ad writers feel the public has assimilated the ''personal attack'' technique and may be ready for the perpetual lying about the opponent's positions. Except that TV ads, usually paid for by a SuperPAC or a lobbying group of some sort, could historically be called out by the candidate it supported, who would just have to say ''I don't agree with what was said in there and apologize to my opponent'' while the message still got across; nowadays, the politician will spew the bullshit himself, live, in front of an audience (and the media), but for some reason, there isn't an entity who can put them back in their place, and maybe fine them (hit them where it hurts, their money).

I guess that's what you get for always demanding a smaller and smaller government: you get a free-for-all party of bullshit and fuckery, and may the meanest asshole win (and fuck up the country).

On Government Funding One Side Of The Bullshit

This is why they separated Church and fucking State in the first place: because of stupid partisan assholes who want freebies so much they can't see past their own schemes:

Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools.

“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday.

The Friendly Atheist pretty much says everything I could write about this, especially in his conclusion:

Rep. Hodges made the mistake of saying out loud what most conservative Christians only say to themselves to private: When they say they want “religious freedom,” they’re only referring to their own faith. Everyone else can fend for themselves.

But I'd like to add this:

Separation of Church and State is but one of the fail-safe ideas protecting the modern democracy. It is made to ensure that those in power keep preserving the interests of The People above all else, whether the elected officials do it out of evilness or stupidity.

Every time one of them overreaches the boundaries for his side's personal gain, for lobbies or self, to favour one kind of folk over another, they will always open the door to abuse on the other side. ALWAYS. Just because you don't feel like others could doesn't mean a fresh set of eyes won't see opportunities.

That's why quickly-spun-together, half-assed emergency laws should never pass. We have an example here in Montréal, a law written just after 9/11 about ''making believe a terror act is happening'', that the ministers who passed it at the time said was subject to ''common sense'' in its application, is being used for the first time ever, on four teenagers who allegedly released ''smoke bombs'' in the subway that were dissipated in less than a minute.

It's also why the conspiracy theorists and fear freaks go out of their minds when the government starts acting ''like fascists'' and restrict free speech, or sustain the right to imprisonment without the right to a lawyer or trial and start their ''Hitler'' comparisons: because 30, 50, or 100 years ago, society decided even one step in that direction should never be allowed, and yet loking back, we're more than halfway there.

''But we would NEVER''.

Uh huh.

One way to ensure that, is to just... NEVER go in that direction. Keep our safeguards in place. Treat everyone equally. Protect the innocent, the majority. Take care of the poor and unlucky.

Ridiculous!

Wolf Blitzer puts his pants on and calls Donald Trump on his bullshit. Trump has trouble making sense of reality, since he can't get Blitzer fired from his own show.

Truth: You Tell Me

Fucking politicians. Especially those who don't just lean to but are far into the right: fucking liars when it suits them, and predators the rest of the fucking time.

And assholes all the time.




We have cameras, motherfucker, and they're hooked to shit that stores whatever they fucking record. We have hard fucking proof of how much of a hypocrite you are in front of TV news crews compared to how bad a dick you are with your friends in your majority fucking government when taunting your opponents and trying to scare the voting public. Or the elderly among them, anyway.

There are probably more child molesters in your fucking Cabinet than there are roaming the streets of Canada. Sometimes I'm glad you're building more prisons, because we'll need the place to store all of you elected officials when we decide we've had enough. And if you bring the death penalty back, well... karma's a bitch, man.

The Erica Situation

(pictures were removed because they don't add anything to the story)

While I sort of alluded to her here before in The Jenn Fiasco, Erica was a beast all her own.

If you would ask her about the idiom that claims all men to be ''dicks'', not only would she agree, but she would seriously wonder what is wrong with that and would claim ''the more the merrier''. But first things first...

The Hollywood-esque Hook-Up:

Riding the subway on the way home after school in September 1994, I spot this really cute, tiny, red-haired, thick-lipped strawberry-nosed girl who looks younger than me - and she's eyeing me too. For two stations we look into another's eyes, smile, then people come in and out, she's so small I lose track of her.

At Vendôme, where I get out, I check to see if I can spot her - in vain. No sign of her whatsoever.

I get on the bus, a bit sad but knowing that - as always - I'll have forgotten it in a few hours' time. I'm sitting down, first seat next to the back door, listening to my Discman, reading the lyrics to the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head while they bang in my earphones, when I look up and see her standing right in front of me. Despite our clear flirtation earlier, having her so close in front of me when I thought I'd lost her made me nervous, and I looked away, always trying to steal a glance here and there until it's my turn to get off, hoping she doesn't do it first.

The street I lived on, Melrose, is between two stops (Wilson and Draper, respectively), and seeing as she's not getting off at the first, I wait until the latter to exit. As soon as I hit the sidewalk, I stare right back into the bus at her, see she's looking at me, and wave at her to follow me out. She makes this puzzled look but I repeat the gesture, and as the bus trails away, start making a run to the following stop - Madison. She exits at Madison and walks towards me until we're face-to-face, silent, shy, awkward but also excited, nervous, feeling a weird adrenaline rush that only hard drugs such as pure lust can provoke.

I suggest we sit on a park bench and talk - and we sit there for over an hour. at one point she asks me what I'm doing that night, and I reply with a confident ''NOTHING!, You?'' and she tells me about this after-school economics seminar she's got to go to - at which point I remember I'm going to the same one: ''Me too! I totally forgot! At Marymount Academy on Côte-St-Luc!''

Oddly enough, we were in the same grade at different schools, she was 3 years older than I was but had been held back because the education she had received in her native Portugal wasn't found to be equivalent to our system's, and we were both enrolled in the same after-school economics/entrepreneurship program. It was going to be great: I could continue hitting on her there - all night.

It turns out we were in separate groups, but at break time we'd always get together. Within the end of the month we were dating, meeting each other's friends, maybe even parents. I saw hers a lot despite having never seen another room in her house than the living room. Her mom loved me, her dad always gave me a look that said ''when I kill you, I will shit in your mouth then feed you to starving pitbulls''. Oddly enough, back in the day, those were typical parental reactions to my presence...

By Christmas, we had already each purchased tickets to one another's Graduations. In January she got pregnant, got aborted on Valentine's Day and by March I learned that she had, on average, cheated on me more than once a day. Close to 3, actually. Usually with her ex, Enrik, a fellow Midget-AAA hockey player also drafted by the Laval Titans - but also with guys who gave her rides home from school in exchange for blowjobs, cab drivers who would take her anywhere at any time for the same deal, as well as one fucktard she kind of actually started dating at the same time. They met after fucking in the bathroom at the old Madhatter's, when it was on Peel street. He had a stupid-ass last-name-as-first-name thing going on, something like Anderson, but maybe not; straight hair to his chin, wore wife-beaters... a real fucking douchebag. If he's still alive today, I'm sure his skin's fucking orange, he lives in Jersey and drives a red sports car.

Worse of the matter is she'd give me signs, too, almost all the time, but she was telling those stories as if they were happening to her best friend, who I'd met and had introduced herself as ''yeah, I'm Claudine, the slut from all her stories''. Needless to say, though, that when I learned the truth, I wanted nothing to do with her anymore. And I never spoke to her ever again, but she did write me from most major destinations when she went on a European vacation during the summer, a Tour Of Cocks, if you will, where she would either send me pictures of her with other guys, or just postcards with messages like ''I just got acquainted with a boatload of sailors here in Vienna, and I'm particularly fond of Austrian sausages now''.

I remember when I found out about her infidelities, and we had a long conversation about the ethics of a relationship and how humans, after all, are still fucking animals. She said: ''so what if on my way to school or work, I see someone I want to fuck and we stop and do it and continue on our merry way?'', and it was the very first time I'd heard a woman talk like the most macho man.

Plus, for some reason, I imagine with those guys it was a lot less clinical than with me, where most times we'd be spooning on a couch watching TV and she'd just lift her leg up, grab my dick in my pants and shove it inside her dry cunt, irritating the both of us until she would manage to produce juices. All of this in the quietest of silences. I was nothing more than the 10-inch dildo waiting at home for the nightly fill.

This Is Either The Beginning Or The End Of A Beautiful Story

What do 11 years get you?

Probably more good times than you can count on one hand. Hopefully.

But also, inevitably, disappointment. Lies, deceit. Betrayal.

People. Most of whom disappear eventually.

In the immortal words of Andy Wood: ''Time spent laying by her side / And dreams like this must die''.

New beginnings must start with honesty. It's imperative that the foundations be solid, so that the structure built upon it may be stable. A chapter ends and a new one begins - hopefully.

Let's see who makes it to the sequel.

As of now, I have no friends who fit in the categories of ''friends since the 20th century'' and ''whom I have seen more than 20 times in the past 5 years''.

Time to start anew.

Rick Perry, Model American

I hate these fucking ads, and I despise those who star in them even more - and those who make them the most.

Barack Obama wouldn't be ''President Zero'' if he didn't have to fight the Republicans every time he tries to corrrect the mess they've made...