Tag Archives: baby boomers

The Teeter Totter of Hell


by Roxanne Tellier

Oh America.  So many wanted to believe in the ‘shining city on the hill,’ and your declaration that your people deserved ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ‘ Millions of immigrants looked for salvation on your shores, and believed that the poem, etched on the base of that sacred icon, the Statue of Liberty, and a gift from a country that knew well what it meant to overthrow a tyrannical monarchy and bask in a newfound freedom, was a prayer and a promise written just for them.

But beneath the anthems, the ‘rockets red glare’ and the hands pressed to hearts, too many have learned that there lies a nation built on genocide, slavery and a slavish devotion to capitalism that has devolved into an insatiable greed and selfishness.

Now we know the dirty little secret of the United States of America;  all of the high flying words, the protestations of freedom, the claims that all were created equal, the vaunted checks and balances meant to assure the republic would remain a democratic country, were nothing but lip service. 

Well, at least according to FOX News, and trump and his henchmen. 

” On August 12, 2019, Ken Cuccinelli,, acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, revised a line from the poem to outline a new immigration policy that would evaluate potential visa/green card immigrants on the basis of income and education, stating: “Give me your tired, your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.” In a subsequent interview, Cuccinelli also interpreted the poem as referring to “people coming from Europe” (wikipedia)

The framers of the U.S. Constitution knew well that the people could one day be fooled by cunning con men and those seeking to enrich themselves by abusing power, so they created a system that co-equally divided the powers and responsibilities of three branches; the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judiciary branch. 

They also put into place a system of checks and balances, that, combined with the separation of powers, they hoped would guard against a tyranny  imposed upon the people, in the event that any one branch attempted to grab too much power.

But checks and balances only work when those charged with obeying them are men of honour with a respect for the laws and institutions that are the framework of a democratic nation.

As James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers,  “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

As prescient as the Founders were in their attempts to keep America from devolving to a monarchy or dictatorship, they couldn’t possibly have guessed that men like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, never mind the self-loathing white nationalists lead by Stephen Miller, would one day come to power, with an agenda designed solely to enrich themselves, while keeping the American people complacent and subjected to their will through fear, force,  and/or intimidation.

Those who fled countries under the thrall of dictatorship, or under threat of  physical or intellectual assault, believed that America’s shores would, like the Gates of Heaven, usher them into a life where all men had the opportunity to be free, and to seek to enrich their lives through a lifetime of hard work, and dedication.

Apparently they were wrong. 

“Dad, my sitting here today, in the US Capitol talking to our elected officials is proof that you made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family,” he said. “Do not worry. I will be fine for telling the truth.”

Even as those brave witnesses came forward in these last two weeks to testify to the crimes and corrupt behaviour exhibited by, not just the POTUS, but a cabal of his henchmen, in the Ukraine scandal, those witnesses were having their lifetimes of dedicated civil service smeared, and have since described harrowing incidents of harassment, threats and attack on their very lives, and the lives of their families.

So, no, Lt Col Vindman, you are not ‘fine.’ Your dad was right to worry. You won’t be fine for devoting 40 years of loyal service to your adopted country. Instead, the military must find somewhere to shelter you and your family from the wrath of America’s elected representatives, it’s president, and his cultist followers.

Lt Col Vindman, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, Jennifer Williams, former White House national security official Fiona Hill, and others from the former or current administration are being viciously attacked for daring to testify to the corruption and felonious actions of trump and his shadow government.

Whatever side of the political divide you may be on, this case is ridiculously easy to understand. Trump attempted to force new Ukraine president Zelensky to personally appear on the Sunday political edition of CNN’s journalist Fareed Zakaria’s program to inform the rest of the ‘free world’ that he (Zelensky) was about to open an investigation into potential misdeeds perpetrated in the Ukraine by Hunter Biden, the son of former vice president Joe Biden, who is currently a front runner in the Democratic presidential nomination in the run up to the 2020 election. If Zelensky agreed to do so, trump would release over $400 million set aside by Congress to aid in the Ukraine’s defence against Russia.

By doing so, trump would then hold enormous power over Zelensky for as long as either of them were in power, since this would be an act of corruption perpetrated by a new president, swept in on a platform of anti-corruption. 

It would also be a federal offence, as outlined in the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which was put into place after then president Richard Nixon impounded tens of billions of dollars, and refused to spend funds appropriated by Congress, particularly if the impounding of those funds would cause programs he didn’t like to be gutted.

This precipitated a constitutional crisis, as the Constitution, in it’s separation of powers, granted Congress the power of the purse.

And so the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act was created, in order to limit the powers of an out of control president.

Trump is a scofflaw, who believes himself above the law, and certainly that he is above such niceties as obeying federal laws, but that is precisely what he has broken. And he has compounded that felony with the impeachable act of attempted bribery, in order to solicit re-election aid from a foreign power.

In any other place or time, this would be an open and shut case, and trump would be impeached, removed from power, and indicted.

However, trump’s America is a BizarroWorld of GOP officials as corrupt as in any third world dictatorship, that is colluding with a branch of Justice headed up by an Attorney General who is himself implicated in the corruption, and aided and abetted by a cultlike following who are prepared to commit any atrocity in the service and name of their GodKing.

So, this is not the America that Lt Col Vindman thought it was. It’s not a country where those who devote their lives in service to their country can feel secure that speaking the truth will set them free. In trump’s BizarroWorld, only his truth is viable, and anyone speaking against it must be thoroughly punished to the full extent of his presidential powers.

Further, trump, in lockstep with the wishes of Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, wanted Zelensky to confess to a meddling in the 2016 elections by the previous government. This would then allow trump to ‘prove’ a debunked conspiracy theory, and to deny the conclusions of all of the American intelligence agency leaders, that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election, by shuffling the blame upon the Ukraine government instead. By doing so, trump could then insist that American sanctions upon Russia must be lifted.

“ What Trump demanded, as was made clear on his call to Zelensky, was that Ukraine lend credence to the Crowdstrike conspiracy theory. Not only did Trump make that demand, but Nunes and others have been attempting to support that claim during the hearings. And that is why Dr. Hill made her statement about Republicans not believing in Russian interference: They are actively working, right now, in concert with Trump, to “prove” that there was no Russian interference. They are no longer willing to admit even the things they admitted in that report they’re still waving around.

Every single time someone mentioned “investigating the 2016 election,” what they really meant was “exonerating Vladimir Putin and shifting the blame to Hillary Clinton.” And while it’s understandable that no one wanted to use their five minutes to unwind this ridiculous “Hillary hacked herself and hid the server in Ukraine” theory that Attorney General William Barr is chasing around the world, not taking that time allowed Republicans to pretend that they’re not actively working to clear Russia as well as Trump. When they are. They really, really are.“ (Mark Sumner, Daily Kos)

Yes … the lord giveth, and the lord taketh away. The last two weeks of witness testimony at the impeachment inquiry hearings have gladdened the heart of many who want to see trump’s iron grip on America’s institutions and justice system broken, and for him to suffer the consequences of his impeachable and felonious actions.

On the other hand, the American public are not united in their need to see an unbridled and omnipotent POTUS overthrown. There remains a firm 23% of Americans who will follow their president wherever he takes them, even if where they’re going is to hell in a handcart.

And the timing isn’t great either, when the American thanksgiving is right around the corner, followed by America’s most beloved holiday, the Black Friday sales. Christmas will follow, and then much of the nation will be dealing with inclement weather for several months.

Political junkies will follow impeachment proceedings as they occur, but for many Americans, lulled now into numbness by three years of constant tweets, executive orders, and ‘chopper talk’ pronouncements vilifying anyone against the trump juggernaut as ‘human scum,’ it may well be that trump slides into a second term handily, as have so many past incumbent presidents, and despite his crimes.

And if that happens ….. the rest of the world can only wish America ‘good luck.’ Because trump and his cabal have spent the last three years destroying any vestige of what was once the great white hope of the rest of the world. They have  murdered Captain America, and put a slavering, rapacious Golem in his place.

In time, the America we once thought existed will be a legend as outdated as tales of Atlantis.

A Crack in the Patriarchal Egg?


by Roxanne Tellier

At the end of the Montgomery bus boycott, Martin Luther King Jr famously paraphrased the words of Theodore Parker, American transcendentalist and pastor, when he stated,

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

There are many days when only that aspiration keeps me going. Some days, I’ll  find myself wondering if that’s a light up ahead, or just the headlights of an oncoming train …. but after this week, for a number of reasons, I’m liking the odds that it is truly a light. 

Three things happened this week to make me think that there might be some hope, and that, maybe – just maybe! we ARE gonna be okay. Maybe that arc really is moving in the right direction.

The first event was long in coming, but something I’d been rooting for; the investigation into Trump’s misdeeds has morphed into an inquiry. Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end of a shockingly corrupt and criminal abuse of power by America’s POTUS.

The way an impeachment works is regulated at the federal level, under the American Constitution.  First the Congress investigates, and then, based on their findings, the House of Representatives must pass, by a simple majority of those present and voting, articles of impeachment. Those articles will be the formal allegation or allegations of what are considered to be ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’

According to the Harvard Law Review “The majority view is that a president can legally be impeached for ‘intentional, evil deeds’ that ‘drastically subvert the Constitution and involve an unforgivable abuse of the presidency’ — even if those deeds didn’t violate any criminal laws.”

So we’re in phase two now, prior to, hopefully, phase three, wherein the Senate will be called upon to try the accused. Many have said that the Senate will likely fail to actually impeach Trump, but there is some hope that these investigations, and the live television transmittal of the honourable men and women testifying to Trump’s misdeeds/crimes, at home and abroad, will sway the American voters, and by extension, the Republican Senators who are in danger of losing re-election in 2020 if they continue to align with trump.

One big hope is that the Dems get their way, and voting is done by anonymous, secret ballot. If that were to happen, it’s guesstimated that at least 30 Republicans would vote with the Dems, thus ensuring impeachment.

Can’t you just hear the theme to Curb Your Enthusiasm playing right now?

Meanwhile, the POTUS is flailing as the truth emerges about his endeavour to tempt the new President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, into corruption. He dangled Congressionally approved military aid for the Ukraine, that would shore up the embattled nation in their war with Russia .. if Zelensky would just grant trump ‘one favour’ … 

“When Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine was almost ready to purchase American Javelin anti-tank missiles so it could better repel armored assaults by Russian-supported fighters, Mr. Trump pounced.

“I would like you to do us a favor though,” Mr. Trump responded, beginning a series of pointed requests. The president pressed Mr. Zelensky to use the help of Attorney General William P. Barr in opening an investigation of a company involved in the beginnings of the F.B.I. inquiry of Russia’s 2016 election interference. He also wanted a corruption investigation connected to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Democratic rival.

Both held the potential to benefit Mr. Trump politically. And in case Mr. Zelensky needed reminding, Mr. Trump was quick to point out that “the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine.”

Mr. Trump’s suggestion that American law enforcement be directly involved and in contact with Ukraine’s government marks the first evidence that the president personally sought to harness the power of the United States government to further a political investigation.”  (from the New York Times, Sept 25/2019)

Actually, trump wanted THREE favours …  from Vice’s coverage of the memo,

1. He asked Zelensky to “look into” Joe Biden

2. He asked Zelensky to speak to Rudy Giuliani and Bill Barr , while insinuating that Giuliani had the real information on corruption in the Ukraine, and smearing the American Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, saying, “The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that.”

3. He oddly asked Zelensky to investigate Crowdstrike

 “I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation,” Trump continued.

In a nutshell, trump sought to impel Zelensky, a new president, swept in on an anti-corruption platform, to agree to commit corruption in order to receive monies that had already been pledged to Ukraine, by the American Congress. Trump had NO right to a say in the over $400 million due to Ukraine, yet he behaved as though it were his personal money, bribe money to be used to get what he wanted … a public, foreign investigation into the son of his main opponent in the 2020 election..

“Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that President Trump is a businessman,” Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, told House investigators. “When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check.”

Except that this was not a business transaction, it was a diplomatic, Congressionally approved, transaction, Zelensky owed trump nothing, and it wasn’t trump’s own money. But since trump couldn’t take a cut of the millions, he took the opportunity to attempt to blackmail Zelensky, a move that would seem to be straight out of the Putin Playbook for “how to use kompromat to tie another country’s president to you in perpetuity.” (with at least one chapter on how to best preserve sheets used for golden showers by wannabe presidents.)  

There can be NO logical explanation or excuse that makes what trump asked of Zelensky anything other than an attempt at bribery, potential blackmail, an attempt to elevate a conspiracy theory that excuses Russia’s role in election meddling by placing Ukraine in that role, and a gross abuse of power, despite how many frantic and hysterical tweets he vomits up on Twitter.

Hopefully the Republicans will soon see that their desperate attempts to smear those who have the courage to testify is backfiring upon them. Or maybe they’re still too terrified of the ‘wrath of trump’ to realize that everyone around trump eventually winds up under the bus, no matter how good they are at sycophancy.

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The second event – la deuxième étoile ! – that heralded a sea change to our society happened, not when Don Cherry said,

“You people love, that come here, whatever it is, you love our way of life, you love our milk and honey, at least you can pay a couple bucks for a poppy or something like that,”  

No, it happened when Rogers/Sportsnet caved to the flood of callers who demanded that Cherry be summarily dismissed. That’s the Free Market that so many extol; in this case, it worked against those who have pedestaled their hero and that notion. The market/shareholders spoke, and Don Cherry, still refusing to apologize, fell.

Don ‘Sour ‘Grapes’ Cherry is 85, worth $14 million, makes $800K a year, and is still a miserable cuss. He plays to the mob, and relishes any chance to punch down at his targets.

Political correctness aside, Cherry was spewing hate and spreading misinformation on Hockey Night in Canada. That’s not free speech, it’s hate speech. As a public figure, and on a platform that reaches millions, his commentary targeted people already vulnerable, because Don Cherry and his fans feel free to look down upon people of colour, and of those who aren’t  ‘pur laine’, Canadians. 

And whether he liked it or not, he had a signed contract that prohibits certain forms of speech.

This kind of xenophobia and bigotry is unCanadian, even when it comes from a man who was once honoured by being ranked at number 7 in the 2004 CBC miniseries, The Greatest Canadian.

Cherry should have cleared the ice before it all turned into a gongshow.

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Event three – and one that, I’m gonna guess, huge portions of this column’s readers missed entirely, happened on Wednesday night, on a double episode of Survivor – Island of the Idols.  Survivor got #MeToo-ed.  

Survivor: Borneo

From the very first episode of Survivor:Borneo, in the summer of 2000, the reality series has spoken to a huge swath of Middle American viewers. In that first season, crusty Rudy Boesch, a 72 year old retired Navy Seal, and still the oldest contestant to ever play the game, kept a stiff upper lip as Richard Hatch, openly gay, and flagrantly arrogant, spent many hours parading around naked in an attempt to rattle the other players. Rudy and Richard became good friends over the course of the game, and when Rudy died recently, Hatch was one of the many mourners to pay him tribute. The Rudy/Richard friendship influenced how many viewers felt about people who, on the surface, appeared completely unlike themselves. The viewers learned that appearances and even long held opinions, could be deceiving. 

During these 39 seasons, viewers have learned a great deal about opinions, prejudices, and why it’s foolhardy to have preconceived ideas about any other person. Viewers have seen the game, with it’s motto of “Outwit. Outplay. Outlast,” change with the times, even as the definition of what constitutes normalcy, equality, and  ‘fair play’ changes as American society itself changes.

In 2003, contestant Jon Dalton told what host/producer Jeff Probst would call “the greatest lie in Survivor history” when he concocted a scheme to manipulate his fellow players by saying that his grandmother had died. She had not. Although ‘Johnny FairPlay’ entered Survivor history, he didn’t win the series, and his name became synonymous with UNfair play in the game.

In 2013, bread baking Mormon mama Dawn Meehan had not the slightest qualms about voting off her best buddy Brenda Lowe, despite Brenda having salvaged Dawn’s dignity by finding the missing false teeth Dawn had lost in a pond. It’s a game, and anything that gets you further in the game is by definition ‘within the rules.’ How you live with yourself afterwards is your problem.; if you win, you’ll have a lot of fans, and a million dollars to keep your warm.

In 2019, we are once again revisiting the idea of what exactly constitutes ‘fair play’ in the contest.   

Kellee Kim, Dan Spito

As the two tribes merged, contestant Kellee Kim, a 29 year-old Harvard grad and MBA student, realized that she’d once again have to deal with contestant Dan Spito, a 48 year-old LA talent manager who had a little ‘issue’ with his physicality when female players were near. Kellee had briefly dealt with him at the beginning of the game, and told him in no uncertain terms that she did not like or want him to touch her. Dan seemed to accept that, and fate sent the two players off in different directions for the first half of the season.

But since the two teams had merged and converged in one small area of the island, Dan’s hands were at it again, tiptoeing through the ladies. And Kellee was not at all happy with his presumption that her body and hair,  as well as that of other female contestants, were fair game.

“At the merge feast last night…. I feel someone wiggling my toes, and I’m like, I wonder who it could be? And it’s him.” said contestant Missy “It’s inappropriate touching. I’m not an object.”

In one of the segments, Kellee tearfully told team mate Janet that she found Dan’s attentions upsetting. Janet hadn’t really noticed that Kellee and several of the other young women were being targeted.  But she was ready to help, if she could.

But as Kellee told the camera, “It’s super upsetting, because you can’t do anything about it. There are always consequences for standing up. It happens in real life, in work settings, in school … and you can’t say anything because it will affect your upward trajectory, it’s gonna affect how people look at you.” 

The show’s producer, in an unprecedented move, broke the fourth wall, saying, “You know, if there are issues to the point where things need to happen, come to me and I will make sure that stops. ‘Cause that’s…I don’t want anyone feeling uncomfortable.”

A title card then appeared on screen, which read, “The following morning the producers met with all the players, both as a group and individually. They were cautioned about personal boundaries and reminded that producers are available to them at all times. Based on the outcome of those discussions, the game continued. In addition, producers met privately with Dan, at which time he was issued a warning for his behavior. Producers continue to monitor the situation.”

If that had been the end of the situation, as usually happens in our society, it would have been just another day in misogyny. But what happened next was a REAL lesson for Middle America; two of the other female players, Elizabeth and Molly, decided to use this moment to hatch a plan that would smear Dan while saving themselves, by making Dan and Kellee targets for elimination. Worse still, they abused the trust and faith of Janet to do so, knowing that Janet would see it as her place, as an older, mother figure, to do whatever it might take to help the girls.  

Elizabeth, Missy, Lauren, Aaron

In truth, neither Elizabeth nor Molly actually felt unsafe or uncomfortable around Dan. If anything, they thought he and his wandering hands were a non-issue, easily ignored.

Inevitably, #MeToo came up squarely against game strategy, and it was Kellee who was voted ‘off the island’ while Janet was left to understand that the other girls had willfully played upon her better nature to further their own game, at Kellee (and Janet’s) expense.

At a later tribal council, the women tried to defend their actions by calling it ‘game play,’ while a male player, Aaron, refused to believe that it had happened, because, “if it had, I would have known.” 

Jamal Shipman

Jamal tried to explain why Aaron was wrong, saying, “This whole idea that you would have known about it – that’s exactly what happens in the real world, guys. When a woman brings up a charge, and people want to negate whether or not it’s legitimate, they say, well if it was such a big issue, then she would have brought it up last year, two years ago, three years ago. We are not entitled to ‘know’ things just because we’re men, or just because we’re in power. “

As Kellee had said, “There are always consequences for standing up. ” For his pains, and his insight, Jamal was the next to leave the game.

As Jeff Probst later said, “Survivor is a microcosm for our real world. Situations just like this one are playing out in offices and bars and colleges across the country and the world. “

And that is, of course, sadly true. However, it was the enormous backlash against the two female players, for their deceit, and their ugly manipulation of Janet’s protective nature, that raged mightily across  social media on Thursday morning that really gave me hope. Is it possible – can it really be – that sometimes the right people will actually be punished for making the lives of others miserable, just because they can?

This is the week that #MeToo came to reality TV, big time, and Middle America got to see how it works, from all sides and angles. Anyone that watched the double episode play out is now in possession of all the information they need to make life better for 51% of society (that’s women, by the way.)   

The question is, will they? Can they be bothered? Or is life a whole lot easier when we just toss off the island those people who are only asking  to be treated like people instead of objects?

I will continue to hope that the light at the end of the tunnel really is dawn breaking somewhere.

Impeachy Keen – Full Speed Ahead


by Roxanne Tellier

Another week, another round of hysteria emanating from the beleaguered White House resident. With the impeachment inquiry picking up speed, despite the constant obstruction and spurning of Congressional subpoenas, the inquiry is still on track to finish as early as Christmas.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that Trump himself has brought them to this moment, stating that his actions are “a betrayal to his oath of office, betrayal of national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”

The first order of business is for all senators to agree on a set of rules that will be in place for a trial. While the Republicans have declared that the Democrats are behaving ‘unfairly,’ in fact the rules and procedures used are pretty much the same as those in place from former President Bill Clinton’s trial.     

The big question will be whether it is even possible to have a truly bipartisan process in the Senate, with so many of the GOP living in fear of possible Trump reprisals, should they display any disloyalty to him.

Hopefully, the use of electronic voting, rather than a roll call vote, will allay some of their fears. However Brian Babin, of Texas, has argued that Americans ‘deserve to hear from our own voices rather than from a spreadsheet on the Clerk’s website.”

He added that electronic record voting “shields Members from having to stand before their colleagues, their constituents, and the world.”  It could be argued that that is precisely why a large contingent of Republicans would prefer to vote anonymously.

Despite the talking point that Republicans have hammered incessantly, that the Democrats are attempting to overturn the 2016 election results, the real reason to move forward with this impeachment investigation and trial hinges on the Trump admin’s determination to topple democracy in America.

The Democrats (and a large portion of Americans) have weathered nearly three years of constant chaos and the overturning of norms, so the denial of election results is something that’s long disappeared in the rear view mirror. In fact, if anything, what is clear in the overt and covert actions of Trump’s cabal of AG Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Rudy Giuliani is a determined attempt to rewrite history, and overturn the established fact that Russia helped Trump to victory.

As far back as 2017, when Breitbart’s Steve Bannon was put in charge of national security, there was never any question that the Trump administration preferred to work outside of governmental norms. Bannon operated outside of, and with no input from, the National Security Council, like a shadow NSC, preferring an environment that allowed no dissenting opinions, and left no paper trail.

In the days and weeks since the whistleblower alerted the Select Committee on Intelligence of his ‘urgent concern’ about the president’s actions, it’s become very clear that the president has indeed authorized several of his colleagues and big donors to operate outside of institutional norms as yet more ‘shadow government agents.’  

Last month it was revealed that, since May,  AG Barr had been conducting an administrative review into the origins of the Mueller inquiry. At the end of October, the process had switched to a criminal probe, seeking to overturn the official conclusion that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election, with the intention of installing Trump as president. While the Mueller Report did not establish any criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump, it did not clear the president of obstructing justice.

Barr’s escalation of the ‘investigation of the investigators’  to a criminal probe has raised concerns of a Kremlin styled ‘justice department’ that can, at any moment, begin criminal proceedings against the political foes or dissenters of the Trump regime.

Meanwhile, as the GOP tells anyone who’ll listen that this is all Democratic sour grapes, and that the House needs to get back to work, the House has indeed passed over 400 bills that have been sent on to Mitch McConnell’s Republican controlled Senate. And there the bills languish, as Moscow Mitch crowns himself the ‘Grim Reaper’ of liberal legislation. 

Senator Tammy Duckworth recently had a taste of Mitch’s refusal to work, when she unveiled legislation to protect undocumented relatives of military members and veterans, allowing them to remain in the U.S. temporarily .

That bill will more than likely also die, on McConnell’s watch.

So I wonder – how can elected representatives who spend all of their time defending Trump’s criminal activities, indulging in illegal, harebrained schemes to slow down the pace of the impeachment inquiry, or actively engaging in the tearing down of the pillars of democracy, face their constituents when they return to home base? How can they expect to be re-elected, when there’s no proof that their time in office has actually moved the country forward, or helped their fellow Americans?

What do they know that allows them to continue pursuing a complete lack of accountability, while expecting to coast into a smooth re-election, that we don’t?

My fear, after three years of seeing the abnormal redefined as normality is that America is falling into a state of learned helplessness. The ‘Resistance,’ once vocal and widespread,  now seems more tepid than  red hot. A few boos at the president’s attendance of a sports game smells more like acceptance of a new reality than an organized front of opposition.

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Fans and friends of musician Ernest Lee were saddened to hear of his passing in September. On Sunday, November 10, we had a Celebration of Life for him, at the Royal Canadian Legion – Woodbine Heights Br. 22,  1240 Woodbine Avenue. (Just north of Mortimer Ave.) 

Here’s a little time line of the events, from organizer Robert Winter:

Controlled Demolition which features Ernest Lee Band drummer Mark Hundevad on vibes and drums, Ernest band alumni Jim Heineman on sax and Sam Heineman on drums and keys.

” We kick off at 2:00, music starts at 3:00. Food provided. Cash bar. We are at the Legion but since it is not a Legion event hats are allowed. Music features a set by Controlled Demolition which features Ernest Lee Band drummer Mark Hundevad on vibes and drums, Ernest band alumni Jim Heineman on sax and Sam Heineman on drums and keys. Special solo guest appearance by long time Ernest friend Steve Fever on acoustic. The Ernest Lee Band will play a set, with regular band members Mark Hundevad on drums, Russell Noseworthy on bass, Robert Winter on guitar. Jim Bish will be on sax. Jim spent time playing with Ernest many years ago and rejoined the band in 2019. John Fletcher, long time Ernest band alumni on guitar and bass, will be joining us on guitar. “

The Three Divas; from left to right – Mari Nicholson, Roxanne Tellier, and Marion Drexler

Featured singers for this set of Ernest Lee original songs and songs by others that Ernest put his stamp on were Marion Drexler, Mari Nicholson and Roxanne Tellier. A draw for 5 of Ernest’s CD Rhythm & Rhyme was held after the music for those who donated to Dixon Hall who have an excellent music program for disadvantaged Toronto youth.

The Past is Prologue


by Roxanne Tellier

… while those of us who DO remember the past, are doomed to watch those who DO NOT, make the same mistakes, over and over again….

One of the few benefits of getting older is having not only a lot of past to remember, but for some, the time to do so in a leisurely fashion, and with a philosophical bent. If we are lucky, and if we look back with clear eyes, we may actually begin to see where we’ve been, and maybe even to see how our past has impacted upon our present.

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time wondering how and why so much of the civilized world, and North America in particular, has been working very hard to turn back time and progress.  

if you grew up in the fifties and sixties, you remember fighting for civil rights, equal rights for women, abortion rights, and so much more. My generation had an enormous impact on society.

So what went wrong? How is it that the despots of today are being allowed to turn back the clock to the ugly world of before?

I guess it could be argued that not every one was happy with the advances we made – that in fact, there were misogynists, xenophobes, bigots and racists that weren’t very happy at all with those advances.

Are those the people hell-bent on returning us to those days?

Children of the fifties and sixties were shaped by the dramatic events of our time. Since we’d never known any other kind of world, it felt relatively normal to us. But it was the most explosive, impactful, and eventful time in modern history.

Bear with me now – cast your mind back.

In the United States, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy was shepherding a form of terror by government into place from the late 1940s through the 1950s, as ordinary citizens were accused of subversion or treason without any regard for evidence.  

70 years on we have replaced McCarthy with Attorney General William Barr, who has been stealthily ‘investigating the investigators’ of the Mueller Report, despite no evidence of impropriety.

Just a month after the United States tested the first atomic bomb, in July 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico, it used that same technology to obliterate Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A lot of us boomers had parents who’d been in WWII, or in Korea, and many of those parents brought back photographic images of the horrors on view in the destruction of occupied Europe and Japan. By 1949, the USSR had exploded it’s own atomic bomb, raising those stakes even higher.  It was only by a series of high level discussions, and the implementation of the  Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine of military strategy and national security policy that we brought to an end a nuclear escalation that could have  caused the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender in a nuclear war.   

Today, many countries are moving towards nuclear armament, including North Korea, where a very miffed Kim Jong Un has been testing his arsenal of approximately 20 to 30 nuclear weapons, now deemed capable of reaching Washington, DC.

Back in the fifties and sixties, we were being flooded with a new wave of science fiction movies and magazines tasked with the job of distracting North Americans, and soon we were looking ahead to driverless, flying cars.

Remember Them! (giant irradiated ants, ) X The Unknown (radiation run amuck in Scotland,) and a host of other films in which radiation and/or atomic fallout caused the ordinary to radically change into mutant monsters?

“Some of these films envisioned a terrestrial holocaust destroying or threatening humanity as a result of nuclear testing or war [World Without End (1956), On the Beach (1959), The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), Crack in the World (1965)]. Nearly all of the atomic films centered on the strange powers of radiation.

This kind of radiation causes Douglas Fairbanks Jr’s duck to lay uranium eggs in Val Guests’s Mr. Drake’s Duck (1950), makes Mickey Rooney glow in The Atomic Kid, puts Peter Arne seven and a half seconds into the future in Timeslip, creates geniuses or zombies in John Gillings’s The Gamma People (1956), shrinks Grant Williams in Jack Arnold’s The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), grows Glenn Langan in Bert I. Gordon’s The Amazing Colossal Man, revives a murderous native as a walking tree in Dan Milner’s From Hell It Came (1957), makes Japanese gangsters sentient slime in Ishiro Honda’s Bijo to Ekatai Ningen, turns Ron Randell to steel in Allan Dwan’s The Most Dangerous Man Alive and makes Tor Johnson into Coleman Francis’s The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961).” 

(read more here https://www.tru.ca/canfilm/essays/gargantuan_bugs.htm)

While titillating, these films really sought to make the impossible and the unreal – radiation, invisible yet deadly, that could change nor only our very own bodies, but the DNA of our flora and fauna; aliens, and future technology – into something we could accept as normal and even possible. 

These films turned what were real dangers – like radiation and the destruction of war – into the mundane, and therefore something that the average human could, with a little forethought and planning, survive. These movies didn’t challenge what was wrong with the politics of the countries that blithely obliterated millions of living creatures and their habitats, they instead focused our native paranoia and fear of otherness, by dehumanizing people and creatures unlike ourselves.

Or, as Susan Sontag wrote in 1964,  “Ours is indeed an age of extremity. For we live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters. For one job that fantasy can do is to lift us out of the unbearably humdrum and to distract us from terrors, real or anticipated-by an escape into exotic dangerous situations which have last-minute happy endings. But another one of the things that fantasy can do is to normalize what is psychologically unbearable, thereby inuring us to it. In the one case, fantasy beautifies the world. In the other, it neutralizes it.”  

Sound familiar? You’ve been soaking in entertainment that attempts to prepare you for your future in exactly the same way. The tsunami of zombie films are a representation of immigrants and refugees, displaced through war or climate change, who the fearful imagine as innumerable, insatiable, and unstoppable creatures that are coming for your land and your food.

All of the Sharknado films, Geostorm,  WaterWorld, The Day After Tomorrow ….those films present a world in which climate change is a survival issue. Luckily for you, Hollywood’s obsession with global warming has conscripted top movie stars to show you how these problems can be handled without messing your hair.  

And the Mad Max films, along with so many others that envision life after an apocalyptic event, are all meant to lull you into a false security about an uncertain future. All you’ll need is enough ammo to bully yourself into power, right?

But in truth, the sci fi films of my day, many of which focused on monsters actually CREATED by that fall out and radiation, did little to prepare us for October 1962, and the days of the Cuban Crisis. Even if you’d only seen posters of those films, or heard parents or older siblings talking about them, it was stretching credibility for those of us who were school aged at the time to believe that our little wooden desks would protect us from bombs and nuclear fall out.

And in all of the films – either of the past or today – that are subtly meant to prepare this generation for climate change, floods of displaced people, possible nuclear attacks by foreign entities, or a civil war in which families battle each other .. not a single one of those films points to what will actually be the salvation of those remaining, or the rebuilding of society.

It’s not sexy – real life rarely is – but the only sort of society that will allow mankind to crawl out of whatever viper pit they’ve managed to fall into in a dystopic apocalypse is going to rely on only a few things.

And weapons aren’t high on that list.  After all, if you’ve just lost a large portion of humanity, every soul will be as precious as those fetuses the religious radicals revere.  Only this will be for real, not for show.

What will save humanity will be empathy, respect and regard for every person. Whomever can work compassionately and equitably with others will be a leader.

That leader will need the sense to scavenge not just the physical things needed, but the information held by elders, and in libraries. You’ll need to redevelop agriculture, and, without those tools farmers use today, you’ll have little time to do much else than farm.

You’ll need to reconstruct the calendar, in order to prepare for the seasons and survival, and to be able to predict best times for sowing and harvesting. In time you will also need to figure out how to make soap, windmills, steam engines, and all the myriad necessities we take for granted today.

And then, dear reader, you will look back to today, and call these times the good ol’ days …

Nostalgia, Russian Assets, and Canada Votes


by Roxanne Tellier

If this column doesn’t actually get written, edited and/or published until February or March of 2020 …. don’t blame me.

NO ONE can resist the call of nineties arcade games! Remember Commander Keen,  Bio Menace, Mr Blobby, Duke Nukem and the rest of the Apogee Games? They’re back, baby! and as addictive as ever. I can’t believe this DOS dump of 2500 hot titles of the nineties .. the list is endless .. well, at least until you look for game 2501 ….

Here’s the link. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games?and%5B%5D=apogee&sin=

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Over the last few weeks, I’ve had to come to the conclusion that America’s POTUS is, in truth, a Russian asset. I know – now you’re laughing and want to throw me a tinfoil hat.

But bear with me for a bit. Take a look at everything that has been accomplished in Trump’s first 1000 days – does America look any better than it did before he was inaugurated? Are America’s lower and middle class wealthier, or indeed even happier, than they were before he arrived? Is the country more secure, better positioned, now that most of her allies have been driven away, and her strategic alliances have been irreparably damaged?

Is America’s farmland protected from the devastation of Trump’s trade war that has seen family farms go bankrupt, only to be snapped up by Russian and Chinese investment companies?

For that matter, with the flood of rollbacks of regulations and legislation that once protected America’s parks, wildlife and water … are you happy with the devastation that’s been allowed to happen throughout the nation?   

Or are most Americans sick to death of the constant flood of criminal nonsense flowing from this White House?

It begs credulity to not see the strong link between Russia and Trump; he’s repeatedly  insisted that all of the Intelligence Agencies, venerable pillars in American governance, are against him, and are wrong in their conclusion that Russia interfered with the 2016 election. He’s insisted over and over again that Russia needs to be back in the G7, since he believes that it was only Obama’s prejudice against Putin that resulted in the sanctions against Russia, that he’s tried repeatedly to remove.  And at this very moment, Trump has his puppet, Attorney General Bill Barr, traveling the world, in a totally bizarre attempt to prove those intelligence agencies wrong about Russia’s part in the election.  

Putin’s long term plan to bring down America as a world power has always been to destroy it from the inside, and that seems to have been what has happened. The nation is divided, there’s no progress being made although trillions of dollars are being spent on nonsense, this president may well be the first to be not just impeached, but imprisoned, and his supporters are threatening a civil war should anyone be mean to their fair haired, orange faced, tweetheart.

And then there’s this ….

Gee. That’s not suspicious AT ALL.

And is it just a coincidence that Trump gave Turkey the go ahead to besiege Syria, and to begin a genocide against the Kurdish fighters who’d saved America’s bacon against the rebels … on Putin’s birthday?

Here’s a portion of what the Kurds’ commander in chief says about America’s betrayal of Syrian Kurds.  

Turkish-backed Syrian fighters evacuate a wounded comrade

” We lost 11,000 soldiers, some of our best fighters and commanders, to rescue our people from this grave danger. I have also always instructed our forces that the Americans and other allied forces are our partners, and so we should always make sure that they are not harmed.

Amid the lawlessness of war, we always stuck with our ethics and discipline, unlike many other nonstate actors. We defeated al Qaeda, we eradicated the Islamic State, and, at the same time, we built a system of good governance based on small government, pluralism, and diversity. We provided services through local governing authorities for Arabs, Kurds, and Syriac Christians. We called on a pluralistic Syrian national identity that is inclusive for all. This is our vision for Syria’s political future: decentralized federalism, with religious freedom and respect for mutual differences.

The forces that I command are now dedicated to protecting one-third of Syria against an invasion by Turkey and its jihadi mercenaries. The area of Syria we defend has been a safe refuge for people who survived genocides and ethnic cleansings committed by Turkey against the Kurds, Syriacs, Assyrians, and Armenians during the last two centuries.

We guard more than 12,000 Islamic State terrorist prisoners and bear the burden of their radicalized wives and children. We also protect this part of Syria from Iranian militias.

When the whole world failed to support us, the United States extended its hands. We shook hands and appreciated its generous support.

At Washington’s request, we agreed to withdraw our heavy weapons from the border area with Turkey, destroy our defensive fortifications, and pull back our most seasoned fighters. Turkey would never attack us so long as the U.S. government was true to its word with us.

We are now standing with our chests bare to face the Turkish knives”  (ForeignPolicy.com)

By every measure, Trump’s treachery has resulted in the deaths of thousands more innocents, and his botched attempt at stopping the horrific wave of genocidal murders only gave Turkey’s leader everything he wanted .. and more .. since the validation of Turkey’s annexation of Kurdish land came with the stamp of approval of the American government.

 “The cease-fire agreement reached with Turkey by Vice President Mike Pence amounts to a near-total victory for Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who gains territory, pays little in penalties and appears to have outmanoeuvred President Trump.” (The New York Times)

“This is essentially the US validating what Turkey did and allowing them to annex a portion of Syria and displace the Kurdish population,’ the senior US official said. ‘This is what Turkey wanted and what POTUS green lighted.’” (CNN)

America’s president gave Russia quite the present for it’s leader’s birthday. It would seem that Putin’s work here is done.

Some Trump followers are lauding the withdrawal of American troops from Syria as honouring a campaign promise to ‘end endless wars.’ However, the troops that are currently abandoning the Kurds to a bloody fate are not going home – they are being deployed to Saudi Arabia to be a PAID military for the Saud’s own war. 

Trump has remade the United States military in his own image… now .. they’ll murder for pay. Once proud soldiers are now mercenaries. You have to wonder if that is what all of them signed up for.

************************************************************************

So .. is Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic presidential contender, also a Russian asset, as Hillary Clinton claimed? All things considered.. she’s certainly not much of a Democratic asset . I’m hearing so much back and forth on this today; on the one hand, people are scoffing at the very idea. On the other, well, Clinton has been right many times before. Can you really afford to just pooh pooh the idea?

The funny thing is – Hillary didn’t name Gabbard. Gabbard just immediately grabbed the quote and ran with it.

If we look at Gabbard’s voting record, it’s pretty easy to see a not so Democratic bent to many of her decisions.

“ From 2014 onward, Gabbard appeared regularly on Fox News to lambast the Obama administration for avoiding the phrase (“radical Islam.”) In one interview, she told the host that “the vast majority of terrorist attacks conducted around the world for over the last decade have been conducted by groups who are fueled by this radical Islamic ideology,” a statement that may be technically true due to the violence and instability plaguing Middle Eastern countries, but is wildly misleading considering that non-Muslims make up the vast, vast majority of terrorist perpetrators in both Europe and the United States.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in January 2015, Gabbard complained on Fox News that by “not using this term ‘Islamic extremism’ and clearly identifying our enemies,” the administration couldn’t “come up with a very effective strategy to defeat that enemy.” She told Neil Cavuto that “this isn’t about one specific group,” but about “this radical Islamic ideology that is fueling this,” and that it needed to be defeated “militarily and ideologically.” She characterized Obama’s refusal to “recognize” the enemy as “mind-boggling” and “troubling.”

Gabbard flirted with joining the Trump administration, taking an interview, and she also refused to denounce the appointment of Steve Bannon in the Trump administration. Breitbart, Bannon, and others quickly praised her. ” (The Daily Kos)

While Gabbard is basically a non-issue this election, I’d keep an eye on her performance over the next few years. It would be a shame for America to find itself with yet another Russian asset, next time around.

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Canada, you will have a chance to make a difference to your nation tomorrow.

On October 21 – VOTE to elect members of the House of Commons to the 43rd Canadian Parliament.  

And remember ……

Happy Thanksgiving! And It’s time to VOTE, Canada!


by Roxanne Tellier

I have only two things on my mind today …..

Freedom From Want – Norman Rockwell

First … Wherever you find yourself this Thanksgiving, on which ever day upon which you choose to celebrate the holiday, enjoy the moment.

I hope you are surrounded with people you love .. or like … or at least with people that you can tolerate, even if only in consideration of a nice, hot, three course meal at some point.

I hope that those that like turkey, get turkey and that those who like tofu, somehow enjoy that tofu. Probably with kale.

May your day of the giving of thanks begin with kisses and laughter, and end with more laughter, more kisses, maybe a little pumpkin pie, and definitely some Maalox.

Try to remember that it is a day for giving thanks – not a day to start a civil war. Kiss the cook. Kiss your mum. Hell, kiss everyone, and blame it on the after dinner drinks.

And most of all, remember to give thanks for your own gathering, and the people around the table. No one is guaranteed to be there next year, so love them now.

Happy Thanksgiving.

……………………………………….

Now .. get out there and VOTE!


Vote like your life depends upon it … because it does.

How Much for Your Soul?


by Roxanne Tellier

On the day after 4 million students from all around the world marched to protest their respective governments’ lack of decisive action on climate change, Bob Lefsetz noted that the photos and the chatter had already been pushed off the pages of both terrestrial and online press sites. 

Just a few of those crazy 4 million kids who marched for climate change

Today I noticed several cynics on social media, who found the very idea of kids marching for climate change laughable. Rather than admire the strength and courage shown by Greta Thunberg and her supporters, they wallowed in the belief that there is no point in fighting those in power.

It’s like all the marches, the sit ins and bed ins and hunger strikes of the sixties never even happened. As though the broken heads and bodies of civil rights activists were a myth. As if the peaceful protests of leaders like Ghandi just didn’t matter. 

Listen. If protests didn’t work, governments wouldn’t be always trying to stop people from protesting.

When the people finally stand up and find their voices, the people can change the world. We boomers did; we stopped a war. Maybe these kids can save the planet. Maybe we can help them.

If we don’t then we’ve proved that this is how the world works now. We gear up towards an event, take our selfies, and then we’re on to the next crisis. Even if we really, really care about that event – a political debate, our children marching to try and save the planet – there’s always another spike, another shock, another jolt, coming at us before we’ve caught our breath from the last. Which means we never actually get anything done.

It’s exhausting. And it’s getting us nowhere.

All week long I’ve been trying to put my finger on the overwhelming atmosphere of our political environment. It’s exhausting. It’s depressing. It’s like we’ve had our adrenal glands hooked up to a milking machine. Our supply of fight or flight hormones are running so low now that many people would barely blink at a sharknado.   

While we can certainly point to the Mango Mussolini as the main culprit who has conditioned us to expect multiple adrenaline jolts per day, the media also bears a lot of responsibility for having married our emotions to this stressful world of social media and nonstop ‘breaking news!’

When I was growing up, the news occupied a sacred place in society. At fairly regular intervals, the citizenry would be asked to pause in what they were doing, and pay attention to the news of their country, and the world. Some read newspapers, some watched their televised updates at 6pm and before bed, but overall, most people had at least a vague sense of how governments ran. Sometimes we were told that things were good, and it was time to celebrate. Other times, we’d be informed of battles and wars that needed our attention, and sometimes, that required the service and sacrifice of our fittest young people. But overall … news was for grown ups, and it was important.

However, it was also something from which you could take a vacation, and return to, without missing much.

Those were the days when channels still ‘signed off’ for the night .. often with beautiful, patriotic, or regional slideshows. Remember CITY TVs paean to the city of Toronto?

That’s Toronto … People City ….

Good times.

But then, somewhere along the line, some edgy television exec decided that every broadcast moment had to turn a profit. Overnight, the sanctity of a news hour was discarded for the glitz and glamour of the tackiest of game show stages. Every decade, another of the venerable newscasters whom we’d come to trust and revere, was either rehabilitated into a botoxed, liposuctioned fashion plate, or unceremoniously shown the door for a younger, prettier, sexier, news reader.

On June 1, 1980, Ted Turner launched CNN, the first 24-hour cable news station. Headline News followed in 1982, .and MSNBC and FOX News were right behind them. News had effectively been monetized, and the world would never again be the same.  

I have to keep reminding myself that political junkies are only about 11% of the population. How are we supporting all of those stations?

It just seems like there must be even more of us. But that’s because social media – and a disturbingly populist wave –  has narrowed our visions. Everyone’s got an opinion on social media. But that doesn’t mean that everyone understands what they’re being force fed.

Right now, we in North America are awash in the hopes and dreams of political candidates, all of whom wish to steer their ships of state or nations.

But it seems that quite a lot of politicians – primarily those with a bend to the right – are more comfortable playing ‘gotcha!‘ with their opponents. Apparently that’s way easier than presenting a progressive, doable policy their party can follow, and their electorate can agree upon.

And many, many, many people are very easily lead. Once seeds of doubt and mistrust have been planted, social media is happy to keep watering those misdeeds with liberal tears.

A friend messaged me the other day, with this anecdote.

Who knew I never needed a head? or a brain?

“I was getting my hair cut, and they were all talking about Trudeau in blackface. I listened for about twenty minutes. None of them had seen the photo, but they were horrified. One had a friend that called her, crying.  When I explained that it was a picture of him at a party, dressed as Aladdin, and that he had darkened his face and hands, they all said, “ahhhh.. well that’s not so bad.” Then I quoted him as saying, “I am really pissed at myself.” They were all lovey dovey again until one of them started reading from her phone on why any colouring of the skin is racist and they were all up in arms again.”

It sure doesn’t seem like denigrating and mudslinging a political leader makes people very happy. In fact, it seems to only add to the miasma of uncertainty that so many have in recent elections.

Voters are already conflicted. Too many choose to vote against party leaders, rather than FOR a logical, progressive plan forward. Keep on tearing down those the voters want to look up to, and you’ll soon have an electorate that just can’t be bothered to vote at all.

That works out great for those parties that can’t win fairly. Those who choose to use dirty tricks, gossip and innuendo to attempt to sway swing voters towards their own party need to realize that these ruses serve to make voters even more distrustful and cynical of whomever is currently in charge of their country.  

Today’s smearing of Trudeau is tomorrow’s smearing of Scheer. And while both parties wallow in the mud, and try to defend themselves against attacks, neither party is actually working to make the voter’s life any better.

Most people are happiest when their country is chugging along, doing well economically, and not hurting those who are already hurting. Most people rarely think about hurting other people, just because they can.

But there are some people who will put financial gain above all else.

Today, the news is full of stories about American troops being sent to Saudi Arabia, to be used as paid mercenaries – soldiers of fortune against Iran. Trump says that America must put their own military on the line to die for ‘the kingdom’ because “Saudi Arabia pays cash.” 

The Saudis also paid cash to the murderers who perpetrated the attack on the United States on 9/11. And surely, their own dollars paid for the brutal murder and dismemberment of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Can you buy a nation’s soul with cash? Apparently you can, in the United States. The Saudis ‘pay cash’ … so they’ve bought trump .. and America’s might and military.

Canadians will soon be asked to either reinstate Justin Trudeau as prime minister, or to choose another leader to fill that position. That next leader will have to work with the United States, both economically, and politically.

The question we need to ask ourselves is .. will  our next leader also believe that everything we hold dear can be bought? Our planet, our bodies, our morals – are they all for sale? How much for our country ?

The question we need to ask ourselves is which leader we believe we can trust to behave morally and ethically when they are asked to make decisions about our relationship with America and the other countries of the world.

How much for your soul?

It’s Good News Week!


by Roxanne Tellier

Hey there! are you tired of constantly opening your browser or newspaper and finding an unending stream of reports of mayhem and horrible tragedies? Are you tired of reading about how cruel and nasty humans can be to one another? Have you asked yourself lately, ‘why does the media never have anything nice to say about anyone?’ 

Well, be morose no more, because today I have decided to divert that river of unrelenting malice and instead provide your tired eyes with a little good news.

I’ll take Good News Week Potpourri for $200, Alex …..

First up .. now come ON!  Couldn’t you watch this delightful toddler reunion forever?

Just be careful if you decide to search youtube for more videos of  ‘toddlers hugging’ or ”babies hugging babies.’ You’ll find enough sweetness there to bring on premature diabetes.

Have you ever wondered what North America would look like without the intrepid explorers who opened up the “New World.?” Raise a glass and wish a ‘happy birthday!’ to the Venetian merchant and writer, Marco Polo,  who would be 765 today, had he been gifted with eternal life. (Tell him he doesn’t look a day over 750 .. he’s a little vain)

His book, The Travels of Marco Polo, written around 1300, gave Europeans of the time a first peek at how the Eastern World, including China, India, and Japan, spent their days. Eventually, it caused people like Christopher Columbus to try and find India to see for themselves how the other half lived. Sadly, Mr Polo is today best known for a watery game children like to play in swimming pools. 

Scotland’s own J.K. Rowling, author of the beloved Harry Potter books series, is back in the news again for more of her trademark philanthropy. She’s been ‘memed’ before for having donated enough of her hard earned dosh to charity ($160 million) to fall off the Forbes billionaire list, after having been the first author to even make the cut.

Now she’s making headlines for donating another $18.8 million to the University of Edinburgh, for the further success of the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic she brought into existence in 2010 with her first generous endowment.

The clinic was named after the author’s mother, Anne Rowling, who sadly lost her fight to MS at 45 years of age.

In a Twitter post that went viral around the world, Japanese photographer Yasuto Inagaki caught the magic moment when his son – a major fan of  locomotives – was approached by a conductor of one of the bullet trains at the Nagano Station platform. The conductor gave the boy his hat to try on, and then offered the boy a salute.

Growing up, I never really had that love of trucks and trains and all things mechanical like the guys in the ‘hood did. Just not my thing.

But it would be hard not to appreciate how much joy this train conductor brought to this little fellow when he allowed the child to wear his official hat. 

“While it may have been a small gesture, Ingaki said that it meant more to his son than meeting Mickey Mouse.”

Does it sometimes seem like we just can’t stop bashing our youngun’s?  Millennials often get a bad rap for being isolated and seeming emotionally fragile. The other side of the coin is how many of these kids actually appear to be focused on improving society.

Brittany Wenger of Sarasota, Florida, coupled a love for computer science with an interest in artificial intelligence to invent an AI system that could diagnose breast cancer. In 2012 she developed a program called Cloud4Cancer that is 99.1 percent sensitive in processing fine needle aspirate tests, using AI to find patterns that are far too complex for humans to detect. 

In 2013, 15 year old Suman Mulumudi used a 3-D printer to create a smart phone app and device to optimize stethoscopes. Not only was his new product, the “Steth IO” superior to manual stethoscopes in sound, it could also create a visual graph of the heartbeat sound on the screen. Mulumudi then went on to  invent further medical improvements having to do with procedures meant to clear blocked or narrowed arteries. He again used a 3-D printer to develop his LesionSizer, which helps cardiologists measure lesions without changing or altering their technique.

3-D printers also allowed Will Wagner, principal of West Leyden High School, to create an engineering class project that designs custom prosthetics for people in need—particularly children.  Because kids grow so quickly, parents in many developing countries are unable or unwilling to pay for a succession of prosthetics. 

” Since launching the program on both of their high school campuses seven years ago, students have made more than 75 prosthetics for children in need. Not only has the program helped students to learn about design, it has helped them forge real-world connections with other children around the world. According to Fast Company, Leyden students recently got to video-chat with a Syrian boy who had lost his hand in a war-related accident—and they got to witness the moment he tried on his new prosthetic for the very first time.”

People in the United Kingdom were cheered this week when word of a strange friendship between a dachshund and a baby porcupine made the news.

A zookeeper at the Cotswold Wildlife Park in Oxfordshire, England brought home a baby porcupine she had been hand-rearing after it’s mother rejected the little one. Her little weiner dog, Fig, took an immediate liking to Diablo the porcupette, and they have been BFFs and running partners ever since.

While I’m a big animal lover, my neighbours are not as fond of the local wildlife as I. I know, because they keep telling me. Despite their  pleas, I continue to feed and water the flora and fauna, because life is hard when you’re a small creature that has been forced from it’s habitat to accommodate the huge humans who want to build houses and stores, right where your tree used to grow. The least I can do is provide them with clean water.  

When this photo of a squirrel sniffing wildflowers went viral last week, amateur photographers all over the world rushed to duplicate the photo. It’s beginning to seem like it was the squirrels who invented that whole concept of ‘stopping to smell the roses.’ 

So – are you feeling any happier now, after our trip around the world? According to the 2019 Happiness Report, Canada is the seventh happiest place to live. (Finland is the happiest country, followed by Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The United States slouched into 18th place)

It’s said that the happiest people are the givers, not the takers. So often we forget how little it can take to bring joy into the lives of others. We’re living in ‘interesting times,’ and the days can be unsettling and stress-filled. Sometimes we just need a reminder that life is short, and that being kind is as much a choice as being unkind.

And sometimes it takes a squirrel to remind us that we too, should take a moment to stop and smell the roses while we can.

And I’m back!


by Roxanne Tellier

… with your Sunday political sermon, though it’s a day late. Time to catch up on what you may have missed over the last couple of weeks, and to get a sense of the direction we seem to be heading towards as Canadian election fever sets in.

In other words… where are we going and why am I in this hand basket?

Looking specifically to Canada, I’m getting very nervous about how Canadians feel about the parties from which they’ll choose their next leader. And one of those reasons is because of a lack of charismatic leadership.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a lifelong Liberal, and will vote for Trudeau again, because I agree with most of his stated policies. However, I’m unhappy about some election promises that were either not kept, or kept very badly … looking at YOU, new cannabis legislation… what a mess that is!

I wanted electoral reform, incontestably part of the Liberal platform in 2015, and that was off the table after the first year.

“The Special Committee on Electoral Reform was created in the spring of 2016, and it delivered its report in December. It proposed two things. The first was that Canada replace its traditional system of voting (the ­single-member plurality system known widely as the first-past-the-post model) with a proportional system of representation (where seats in the House of Commons would be allocated according to the proportion of votes each party received). Second, it recommended that the idea be put to a referendum.”  (reviewcanada.ca)

However …. On February 1, 2017, the newly appointed Minister of Democratic Institutions Karina Gould announced that the government was no longer pursuing electoral reform and it was not listed as a priority in her mandate letter from Justin Trudeau  In the letter, Trudeau wrote that “a clear preference for a new electoral system, let alone a consensus, has not emerged” and that “without a clear preference or a clear question, a referendum would not be in Canada’s interest. ”  (Wikipedia)

The Liberals never wanted proportional representation, so it’s not surprising that an excuse was found not to pursue it with the people. But I’m still angry that it was taken off the table.

Still, even the National Post, notoriously right leaning, had to report that “The Universite Laval’s Centre for Public Policy Analysis’s latest reading — updated since March — shows the Liberals have entirely fulfilled 53.5 per cent of their 2015 vows, partially lived up to 38.5 per cent and broken eight per cent.”

92% of promises kept. Unfortunately, the 8% not kept are the ones I was hoping to see fulfilled. Still – I’m just one Canadian, out of 37 million. Got to be a lot of people who did have their wishlist met.

I still say, when I”m looking to the other parties that are in the race, it’s the lack of a strong, compelling leader that stands out. At least to me. Your mileage may vary.

Andrew Scheer has the look of a Howdy Doody puppet, and the wooden emotions to go along with the image. He’s 3 parts Harper and 1 part the preacher from Footloose. The dimples and simper can’t hide his lack of connection to the actual citizens, that is, those of us who haven’t been living off the taxpayer dollar for the last 15 years, which is most of his life to date. This is a guy who has not paid for his own housing or meals in so long, he couldn’t tell you the price of a kilo of sugar if you stuck a gun to his head. His idea of transportation costs entails having the taxpayer fund over $2,035,886 of luxury travel, just in the time since he became an MP. This is your guy if a Conservative plutocracy is what you want for your government.

I voted NDP in the last provincial election, but I can’t say that I’m sold on Jagmeet Singh asPrime Minister. Remember when Margaret Wente gushed over his ascension to leadership? 

“Those turbans! That beard! He was just the kind of figure to make progressive folks feel good about themselves, their party and their prospects. GQ, the men’s fashion magazine, profiled him in rapturous terms, calling him “the incredibly well-dressed rising star in Canadian politics.””

Ah, but we were all so much older then – we’re younger and more racist than that now.

Elizabeth May, bless her heart, remains our Green Queen, and with climate change such an important issue top of mind right now, there are many who will put their X beside her name, just because there’s Green in the party’s title. Google the party’s platform to see what else the party has in mind for the country.

As to Maxime Bernier and his People’s Party -well, on the bright side, it’s looking like his main contribution to the election will be drawing support away from Scheer’s Conservatives.

Regardless of your preference, please remember that, unless you are a white male, someone fought for your right to vote. Someone may well have died, fighting for your right to vote, and it is important that you exercise that right. Because – your vote does count. If it didn’t, the bad guys wouldn’t be constantly trying to suppress that right.

Maybe you’ve already made up your mind, and made your choice, and are happy with it. If so, I’m glad to hear it. What worries me, honestly, is the voters who tend to vote ‘against’ rather than for; or those who vote their ‘gut’ without understanding the platforms of the party leaders. The time has long gone when you could just close your eyes and pin the tail on a prime minister, and tell yourself that it didn’t matter, because all parties are the same. They are not.

On the plus side, and whether you are into politics or not, our entire electoral race lasts only a few months, so there isn’t time to get too bogged down in nastiness and slurs. Well – unless you want to. Lots of people love to argue on social media. Have at it, if that turns your crank.

A few short months. Not like in the United States, where Trump officially filed his re-election campaign with the FEC on January 20 , 2017, the day of his inauguration. He didn’t want to miss a penny of the donations he could keep requesting, nor the adulation of his base, who could be relied upon to keep massaging his ego.  

We’re still fourteen months away from the next presidential election, and I’m already over it. Pretty sure Trump is too – after all, he called off his trip to Denmark because they laughed when he wanted to buy Greenland, and sent Pence to visit Poland  (“Congratulations, Poland! on the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion!”) so that he could stay at Camp David to ‘oversee’ Hurricane Dorian, and fit in a couple rounds of golf. And then he apparently cancelled a secret meeting that he’d planned to hold at Camp David with some Taliban leaders, to celebrate the anniversary of 9/11.  I’m beginning to think this guy just doesn’t feel like presidenting any more!

It’s a whole new world, isn’t it? I mean.. do you remember when we worried that impeaching Trump would result in a Pence presidency? Now we know that, no matter how low Trump goes, there’s always another abyss he’s programmed into his GPS. Worse =we’re all gonna get tweeted to death on the ride there.

This is the hell in which Americans now find themselves, looking down the barrel of fourteen months in which the average citizen can never really be sure that what they’re being told, by any of their leaders, or the heads of federal services, is true, or just what they’ve been told they have to say, in order not to contradict their Dear Leader.

It’s not even so much a flood of DISinformation as it is a bombardment of MISinformation, the likes of which no society can be expected to deal with gracefully. Like headless chickens, we can only bob and weave, ducking each new onslaught of lies and untruths aimed at what is left of our sanity. And even once the liars are gone, the bully pulpit power of those lies will continue to warp the minds of Americans for generations to come.

I’m hoping that Pelosi finally finds her spine and allows the Dems to begin impeachment proceedings, but I’m not holding my breath. In truth, it’s immaterial if the Senate won’t pass it; the point is to put the spotlight on all of the crimes and misdemeanours that have happened during Trump’s reign of errors and terrors, so that all Americans can see clearly what’s been going on in the halls of power since January 2017.

We have to accept that there is NO savior coming to America. We thought Mueller might be the guy to vanquish the goblin, but he didn’t, or perhaps he couldn’t, under paid lackey AG Barr’s sovereignty.

Right now it seems like the Dems are just crossing their fingers and toes, and praying that everything will be hunky dory if they can make it from here to Nov 2020 without Trump releasing a load of nuclear ejaculate in the direction of whatever country displeased him at breakfast.

I don’t believe that a lack of action is the right course to take, but I’m not running for anything, and I’m not American. I have my own Canadian election to worry about.

My bigger fear, like that of other countries around the world, is that not beginning impeachment proceedings now will lead to a second, third, fourth and for life tenure of his presidency, which, once he’s tired of playing Emperor, he’ll pass down to Ivanka. 

And that’s a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worse enemy.

Rounding It Up, Heading It Out


by Roxanne Tellier

Today’s column is a round up of ideas and issues that have zipped past us in the last few days.

Have you noticed that, the speeding up of events? In the last few years we have become accustomed to barely accommodating the horrors of a day before awakening to the new atrocities of the next. It’s exhausting, and it’s been taking a huge toll on the psyches of not only Americans, but of citizens in countries all around the world.

Apparently the Orange Warthog is officially on a two week holiday, but unfortunately, his fingers and tongue have not been disabled for the duration. And that means he’s busily doing —- well, pretty much exactly as he does every day that he’s NOT officially on holiday.

Even as he re-tweets conspiracy theories about the Clintons having murdered Jeffrey Epstein (because apparently the Clintons are magic who could somehow breach a high security prison under Attorney General Bill Barr’s protection) his head minion, Kelly Anne WrongWay is hitting the Sunday morning airwaves to confirm and abet Trump’s pell-mell race to full blown dementia.

It’s a full time job, defending the indefensible.  I hope it’s well paid, because eventually, even Kelly Anne will pay the price every other trump loyalists pays in the end; total degradation, a reputation in tatters, and a book deal.

On many days I find myself really disheartened with the thinking patterns of so many people – in America, yes, but also here in Canada, and around the world. There was a time when I wouldn’t have included Canada in that scenario, but the results of the last several provincial elections, and the prospect of what is to come after our next Federal election, has me utterly discouraged.

So many seem to be shielding themselves behind a combination of an innocent belief that the checks and balances of other decades will hold, coupled with a disbelief that what is playing out before their eyes is really happening. They are determined that “It Can’t Happen Here,” even as it actually happens here.

Exhibit A.  Was any kind of sense, common or otherwise, in play when this video pic was shot?  Witness these two lumps of flesh, who seem to believe they are Klansmen of 1819, instead of  police officers living in Texas in the year 2019, walking a handcuffed black man to the police station, as they sat astride their horses. Did no one think to check how many times these goons watched Django Unchained before assigning them horseback duty? 

It seems that what I strove to digest a day or two ago bumps right up against the poison we’re asked to swallow today. After the horror of not one, but two deadly mass murders last weekend, both seemingly instigated by Trump’s racist and xenophobic rhetoric, there actually looked to be a glimmer of hope that these latest deaths might lead to some small attempt at gun reform in McConnell’s Senate. 

Exhibit B...Our prayers for no longer fearing death by Wal-Mart Back to School Shopping were dashed almost overnight, when we were told that the NRA’s head, Wayne LaPierre, had already left a message for Trump while POTUS was out pimping for the cameras in Dayton (or was it Toledo?), warning that Trump’s base, whipped up by LaPierre, would be angered by any kind of scenario involving America’s gun fetish. 

Exhibit C … Even as LaPierre was leaving his bile-filled message, ICE squads were putting together the largest raid against illegal immigrants in US history. They went after two poultry factories in Mississippi, where they arrested 680 workers, many of who were not only legal immigrants, but who had migrated there over the last few years from – oh! El Paso! which had just suffered the largest slaughter of Hispanics in US history.

Rather than alert the local schools and nurseries, who were welcoming the little children of these workers to their first day at school, the raid took no notice of the kids being left to find their way home alone, unknowing of when, if ever, they’d see their parents again.

Fisher Price – My First Prison Camp!

Exhibit D … Acting CPB Chief Mark Morgan, on being asked to defend the timing and manner of ICE’s cruel raids, brushed aside the video of a little girl crying for her dad, by saying that the girl’s father was ‘a criminal,’ which Morgan seemed to think made the family’s suffering irrelevant.  

Truth is, in the American Justice system, a person cannot be branded a criminal, without due process, just because they’ll work cheap, often at less than minimum wage, and do the jobs that even the poorest American born citizens would refuse. This is a stunning pronouncement from a government official, who has no legal right to call ‘criminal’ any human being in the United States, under their own laws.

Tellingly, the executives at these factories, who knowingly hired the illegal workers, and had been successfully sued for discrimination and poor working conditions, have not been charged for their part in the ‘crime.’  Well, they can’t be, really, can they? Because if they were, what would that mean for Trump’s many companies, that are known to also use illegal immigrants for their grunt work, in his hotels and golf resorts?   

As conditions worsen for people of colour in the United States, the Trump supporters claims that they don’t like the man, but they do like the economy are beginning to wear thin.

There is no moral distinction between those who are excited by Trump’s racism and those who plead indifference to it, and it’s consequences. All the money in the world can’t put a pretty face on the horrific cruelty behind the wealth they are reaping.

And here’s the real thing – while the hordes of Democratic representatives pursuing the presidency storm the boards in Ohio and other politically important states, Americans need to realize that they don’t just need to vote Trump out of power next November, they need to think about how they will vote this era of ‘trumpism’ out of power as well.

Since November of 2016, everything we thought we knew about politics in the US and the world has been changed forever. As populist leaders lie their way into positions of power, flush with dirty money and the support of the wealthiest people in human history, their selfishness, and desire to overturn democratic norms, have badly damaged the pillars of society we need to move civilization forward.

The irresponsibility of overturning everything previous regimes have put into place is, sadly, not coupled with an understanding or ability of how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. 

The next POTUS will have to have a spine of steel to face down the crippling changes put into place during these four years of Trump’s incompetence. The GOP are going to fight tooth and nail to try and keep the legal and financial gains they made by executive fiat, and there are bound to be not only legal impediments brought by 45’s appointed judges, and his stooges in the Supreme Court, but from all of the other departments, offices, and agencies that vowed loyalty to Trump.

And while fighting that good fight, the 46th president is also going to have to face 45s millions of supporters, who pledged themselves to him because they thought he’d fix their lives, share his largesse, heal their addicted family members of opiate addictions, kick out all the ‘bad’ people, and maybe even cure their cancer.

Even though he accomplished none of those things, and indeed, has left the country battered and bruised at the core, these supporters are still just as filled with anger, frustration, fear,  and anxiety as they were three years ago. But they’ll be even madder that the next president couldn’t have given Trump just a little more time.. say four .. or six .. or eight .. or twelve more years to finally get them what they believe they are due.  

The inequality that faced them in 2016, still faces them now, in fact, for many, it’s worse. For the farmers, they lost $10 billion in agricultural sales in 2018, and another $20 billion in 2019. Now that China has found other places to buy wheat and soybeans, those billions are never coming back. What do you tell the farmers?

Those 50,000 coal miners who were told that ‘coal’s coming back!‘ and who therefore decided not to accept retraining in a more current field, have had to roll with the punches, as the country’s third largest mine filed for bankruptcy protection in May.  What do you tell those miners?

While those who watch media other than Trump sanctioned FOX News have been following the collapse of these industries, and holding our collective breaths as the GOP administration threatens to remove America’s social safety net, his loyalists continue to believe that it’s just a matter of time until they are all living in a land of milk and honey.  

Which is all to say that defeating Trump at the ballot box in 2020 will be just the first step towards pulling America back to the centre, and away from the far right where it now uncomfortably dwells. That fight will involve angry Republicans tossed from fat cat, lifetime terms in office, as well as a fight against every day Americans who can’t give up the Kool-Aid.

That may seem a daunting task, but another four years under Trump would be far more horrific and devastating to the planet.

Canada is inching up to it’s own appointment in Samara this fall, and I no longer feel I can say with any confidence that Canadians will do the right thing when they saddle up to vote federally in October. I can only hope that saner heads prevail than those that voted lately in Ontario and Alberta.

And now, I’m off to enjoy what remains of summer. See you in September!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-fQO5SJnmk