"The 99%" Really Likes Their Heroin

The Occupy Canada "movement" has now experienced its third drug overdose in a week, this time in Toronto. It would seem that "the 99%" has a bit of a heroin problem. When the initial day of protest cleared and the comparatively normal people went home, those left behind pitching tents were not exactly the bright young minds of tomorrow. Maybe I'm just part of "the 1%" that does not enjoy shooting heroin, but they need to shut down this camping trip ASAP because it has become dangerous.

I'm sure there are some people at these Occupy protests who have good intentions, but what they have created is not what they intended. Some might say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, which is how I feel about extreme socialism in general. When the safety net becomes a magnet, the downward spiral is soon to follow.

Politicians Pre-Election Health Disclosure

Today's poll question; if a politician finds out prior to an election that they have a high probability of dying before the end of their elected term, do voters have a right to know? If you've been listening to (or watching) the Charles Adler show lately, this is a conversation that the boss of talk has been having often. It began with a controversial piece titled Dead man campaigning, and the conversation has evolved. When prostate cancer spreads, it tends to spread to the bones in the hip or pelvis. Once that happens, the probability of survival plummets to 10%. So if Jack Layton's hip surgery prior to the election was related to his prostate cancer, then he would have been aware of his odds of survival prior to defeating the government and forcing the writ. If Jack was willing to risk his health for the best interests of the NDP, that is his decision. But if he ran for Prime Minister knowing that he was unlikely to be able to finish his term, do you have a problem with that?

I don't want to disrespect anyone currently suffering from cancer. One of my sisters was diagnosed with cancer this week. I would ask her if she's interested in running for public office, but I'm pretty sure I know what her answer would be...

Should Fighting Be Banned In Hockey?

This has been a tragic summer for the National Hockey League as 3 "tough guys" who played in the league last season have died. It is starting to raise questions about the long term physical and emotional damage that the enforcer occupation can do to a human body. Today's poll question; should fighting be banned in hockey? I have always been a fan of the fisticuffs but I'm starting to wonder if I need to re-consider my position. Perhaps it is just an unfortunate coincidence that these 3 men have died this summer, or perhaps there is a correlation between years of repeated bare knuckle blows to the head and an early grave. Should I have a guilty conscious because I cheer for these players and I applaud what they do as the modern day gladiators they are?

Darryl Boogaard died by mixing alcohol with prescription pain killers while recovering from a serious concussion. Rick Rypien and Wade Belak committed suicide. One thing all these players had in common was that they fought, and fought a lot. Fighting legend Bob Probert, one of my favourite players of all-time, died at the age of 45 and his family donated his brain to science. The researchers found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. According to wikipedia:

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive degenerative disease found in individuals who have been subjected to multiple concussions and other forms of head injury. A variant of the condition, dementia pugilistica, is primarily associated with boxing. CTE has been most commonly found in professional athletes participating in gridiron football, ice hockey, professional wrestling and other contact sports, who have experienced head trauma, resulting in characteristic degeneration of brain tissue and the accumulation of tau protein. Individuals with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy may show symptoms of dementia such as memory loss, aggression, confusion and depression which may appear within months of the trauma or many decades later.

Should fighting be banned?

Green Party Fighting To End Wireless Internet

Look out WiFi, Elizabeth May is coming to get you! The Green Party is now fighting to end the destructive evil of wireless internet before it kills all our children and insects (those are the two demographics that Liz is most concerned about, children and insects). Today's poll question; should wireless internet be illegal? According to the World Health Organization electromagnetic frequencies are a "possible" human carcinogen. As a wireless internet user, I hope she's right so that I can sue the manufacturer for millions of dollars! While we're at it, we should also get rid of all cell phones and wireless devices. Your I-Phone might be killing butterflies. Let's go back to good old fashioned wires, stringing millions of miles of cords and cables throughout the country. Technology is evil. We might want to consider outlawing electricity, but I'm sure Elizabeth will take her crusade one step at a time.

Ignatieff Telling Lies?

For the first 10 days of the campaign, Ignatieff was travelling around the country saying "if you stop telling lies about me, I'll stop telling the truth about you", a line borrowed from American politics. After the Tories released their platform (which included no cuts to health care) Iggy started speculating that the Conservatives would make massive cuts to health care. Basically you have Iggy running around making accusations without any promise, indication, or historical evidence to support his conclusion. It is 100% speculative. What happened to telling lies versus telling the truth?

At least with coalition speculation, there is a written signed agreement which has yet to expire, and an on-air statement by Ignatieff that he's willing to lead a coalition government. There is at least a historical basis to talk about future coalitions. These health care accusations by Ignatieff are completely out of left field and smells like desperation.

Tories Borrowing NDP Ideas?

After watching a great interview with Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq on Power Play about the latest Tory health initiative to provide more doctors to rural Canadians, I couldn't help but notice the NDP claiming credit. Evidently this was one of Jack Layton's budget demands when he met with Stephen Harper last week, except that Jack demanded substantially more than the $40 million dollars pledged. Leona said that this initiative had been planned prior to the Layton-Harper meet and greet, though I'm sure that won't stop the media talking heads from speculating that the Tories are stealing NDP ideas.

Shouldn't the NDP be happy that something they support will be in the budget? I don't understand why they are saber rattling on this issue, but then again, a lot of what the NDP complains about doesn't make much sense...

World Food Prices Soaring

In a good news/bad news story for Canada (one of the largest food producers in the world) suddenly food prices are peaking again. There was flooding and other freaky weather around the world this year, significantly reducing food stocks. I'm sure Al Gore will blame this on climate change, but prices vary according to supply and demand. Reduce supply while demand is always increasing, and there will be price spikes. Impoverished nations that can't produce enough food to feed their large populations are going to have serious problems. Canadians shouldn't feel it very much considering the strength of our agricultural base.

If food ceases to become available in a number of hotbeds, we could have a very serious problem on our hands. We shall see how this plays out elsewhere.

Did You Get A Flu Shot?

Today's poll question; did you get a flu shot this winter? I don't bother with flu shots and this Christmas my whole family got sick except for me. I was certainly exposed to the virus, but it was never able to gain a foothold. I know lots of people who never get flu shots and never get sick, but I do believe that the people at risk of harm from the flu should be vaccinated. I have been vaccinated against polio, tetanus, hepatitis, maybe even smallpox, I just don't personally believe that I need flu and cold vaccine because I rarely get sick despite frequent exposure.

Certainly the pig flu has not been a story this year, but there have been a number of outbreaks of other bugs restricted to certain geographic areas that hasn't been getting much press.

Tobacco Warnings: "I see dead people"

Today's poll question; do you think we should be putting pictures of dead people on packs of cigarettes? I am in favour of discouraging young people from smoking, but this seems to be a step too far. The most effective way to discourage people from smoking is to do what they have been doing jacking up taxes on tobacco. A lot of people have stopped smoking because they just can't afford it anymore. Then again, as you make it more expensive you make black market cigarettes more profitable. I don't mind big warning labels on cigarettes, but I draw the line at dead people. I don't want to see dead people like the kid in the Sixth Sense.

What's next? Are we going to mandate that cigarettes be renamed death sticks and that they be sold in tiny coffins?

Should We Have Daylight Savings Time?

Today's poll question; do you think that we should have daylight savings time? It is fabulous to get an extra hour in the fall, but it really sucks to lose an hour in the spring. Benjamin Franklin is credited with thinking up the idea, but it did not become policy in the western world until after WW1 to save electricity. Does daylight savings save electricity? My friends and I were able to golf today thanks to the extra hour, but one of my friends argued that the negative effects of the spring forward on the human body offset any economic gains of an extra hour in the fall.

So should we even have it? Data shows that there is a spike in traffic accidents in the days following a spring forward. There is a belief that we do it for agricultural reasons, but why then does Saskatchewan, Canada's largest farming province not adhere to the north American standard practice?

The Iggy Flop poll will be coming out soon.

Healthcare

Today's poll question; what is the ideal distribution of the national health care industry? Should it be completely private? Should it be completely public? Or should it be mixed? As the United States has put itself of the road to the publicization of their health care industry, perhaps they require some feedback from Canadians who have long lived in a mixed public/private system? If you had a vote on the ideal system, what would it be? Dennis Miller talks about Obamacare as being "the DMV with open wounds".

Prime Minister Increasing Funding To Fight Disease

On Tuesday Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will address the United Nations to lobby for a substantial increase in funding for the fight against AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in the developing world. These are three of the most substantial viral killers on Earth and dollar for dollar fighting those diseases can save thousands, if not millions more lives than building an abortion clinic on every street corner. I wonder if the Liberals in Question Period will decry the PM for fighting AIDS, Malaria, and TB in Africa when what those Africans really need are more abortions?  I am proud to have Stephen Harper represent my country on the world stage, and I believe that meeting with the most powerful people in the world serves a useful purpose beyond what Liberals call a shameless photo-op.

Ujjal Dosanjh New Liberal Health Critic

“Assigning Ujjal Dosanjh, a former health minister and former provincial premier, I think demonstrates our determination to have a very real focus on health issues,” Mr. Goodale said. Here we go again! Every so often the Liberal Party likes to boast about Ujjal Dosanjh's 15 month tenure as Premier of British Columbia, before leading the BC NDP from majority government to a disastrous 2 seats. I would insert a joke about a socialist version of Kim Campbell, but I feel conflicted. I think that Kim was a far more competent politician than Ujjal, but like Ujjal I don't hold her tenure in any high esteem (it should be noted that the same voters who sent Kim Campbell to Ottawa have elected Hedy Fry 6 times in almost 20 years).

Lest we forget, in the last federal election Ujjy barely won his own seat by 22 votes after a recount. For a former health minister and provincial premier, you would think that he would perform better in local elections, where the people know him the best. This man is not held in very high esteem by the people he represents or by the general population of the Province he once led for 15 months. He was never elected Premier. He worked with the RCMP to overthrow his boss and was brutally punished by voters when he ran in an election for a mandate as Premier. His greatest accomplishment as a politician is that he managed to be Premier longer than Kim Campbell or Joe Clark lasted as Prime Minister. 

Ralph, I'm not sure you want to be crossing the country bragging about this guy.  Maybe he sells east of the rockies, where the voting public did not experience life under Ujjal's rule.

We Must Colonize Outer Space

The smartest man in the world has spoken and he has said that it is time to colonize outer space, or else mankind faces extinction. Where do I sign up? Let's start with building a tourist resort on the moon as a means of generating revenue for space projects. If it were possible for civilians to visit the moon, there would be a long waiting list. If you build it, they will come. It is Stephen Hawking, the man in the chair, who says this and I support him. Visiting outer space (preferably the moon) is on my bucket list and statistically I only have 20-50 years left alive. Others might not share my enthusiasm for this initiative, but as a fan of both Star Trek and Star Wars, my opinion is biased.

“It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth but to spread out into space.”

-Stephen Hawking

Helena's Maternal Health

I would like to wish former Cabinet Minister Helena Guergis best of luck with her new pregnancy, and I think it is completely wrong for her husband to accuse the Prime Minister of compromising her maternal health. Meanwhile it was her husband's poor lapses in judgment that contributed to her release from caucus, and by using her office to lobby government one could argue that Rahim is the one who has "compromised" her maternal health, not the Prime Minister. It is the prerogative of the party leader to decide who sits in Cabinet and who sits in caucus, and there is nothing in Canadian law forcing a full explanation as to why she was no longer deemed adequate enough to fulfill those responsibilities.

The Prime Minister has not wronged her in any way, and it is inappropriate to suggest that she would have or should have been treated different simply because she is pregnant. That is bad karma Rahim. Your wife's pregnancy should not be exploited to score political points in the media.

Waterloo Juiced

I have to admit that I'm somewhat surprised that the University of Waterloo football team has been suspended for the entire upcoming season for 9 steroid/doping infractions. This then raises the question, should we have steroid testing in Canadian amateur sports? The CIAU obviously has a testing program which caught these cases, but should testing programs be applied to high school sports? It is something which substantially increases performance while having serious negative long term health effects. There is significant incentive for young athletes to risk their long term health for short term gain, and it is something that should be monitored.

When I played high school football in Ontario, I never knew anyone who openly took steroids, but there were some people that many suspected may be juicing. One of my friends and teammates even went on to play for the Waterloo Warriors, though he was just a "pork rind eating lineman on the Scout Team" and never made "starting defense"...

Maternal Death Statistics

The statistic that I am seeing often repeated is that 70,000 women die in the world every year from "botched abortions"; ergo Western nations need to pay for the building and operation of abortion clinics in every nation of the world so that we can start saving lives. Because after all, saving lives is why this maternal health debate matters. Saving the lives of mothers, 70,000 of them every year.

How many die from breast cancer every year? According to the World Health Organization, 476,000. Ovary cancer kills 134,000 every year. Traffic accidents kill 1.2 million people globally every year. 137,000 people die every year from iron deficiency. Childhood-cluster diseases kill over a million annually. 4 million people die from respiratory infections each year. Tuberculosis still claims 1.5 million yearly victims. Syphilis murders 157,000 per anum. Cardiovascular diseases kill over 16 million people in one earth revolution around the sun. We must do something to save the 873,000 who die every year from self inflicted injuries. Diarrhoeal diseases kill 1.8 million.

I don't know how many lives they expect to save for each dollar spent on safe abortion clinics in Africa, but if we focus our attention on the things that kill the greatest number of people then we can really maximize the life saving effectiveness of our aid dollars. We can save hundreds of thousands more lives if we set up safe Diarrhea clinics across the globe. Because this entire debate started by the Liberal Party of Canada is all about saving lives. Isn't it?

60% Support Funding Foreign Abortions???

I am going to have to disagree with Harris-Decima on this one. The article in the Globe and Mail makes no mention of what proportion of Canadians are pro choice or pro life, and that is a statistic that needs to be included. Let's say that 65% are pro choice (which includes myself), then would 92% of pro choicers support funding abortions in Africa? We can hardly even treat pneumonia in Africa!  I am pro choice, and do not support my tax dollars paying for foreign abortions. The Globe article also does not state the specific wording of Harris-Decima's question, which is suspicious. They present the result with a lengthy analysis, but they don't say what the question was.

I know as an amateur pollster that the wording of the question can vastly affect the outcome. So, this article in the Globe doesn't say what percentage of Canadians are pro choice or pro life, and it doesn't say what the question was. Those are two red flags on information that should be presented. If I am going to believe that the vast majority of pro choicers want to pay for abortions in the Congo, I'd like to know how they worded the question and what results other polling firms have polled on this specific issue.

What I do know is that the people on the left want to get pro life people making statements about baby killers, to start a "culture war", divide families, and create a wedge issue that they can exploit for political gain. They are saying that 30% of people support the government on their position, down from 48% in March? For that to be true, a large quantity of pro choice people decided in the last 2 months that they suddenly want their tax dollars to pay for foreign abortions? Really? Something doesn't add up.

9 Year Old Boy Survives Plane Crash

This story belongs in the file of news of the unbelievable; a plane crashed in Libya killing 103 people, but there was a sole survivor, a 9 year old boy. A miracle amid tragedy that even had the insane Libyan leader Muamar Gaddafi proclaiming the survival to be "Allah's miracle". Even with this astonishing survival, any rejoicing must be tempered by the somber news that this child's parents and brother died in the crash.

It is eerily similar to the movie Unbreakable with Bruce Willis, except that this wonder child did suffer injuries. I can't imagine how it would feel to go through life knowing that you survived a deadly crash that killed every other of the 103 souls on board. What is the long term psychological impact likely to be? He has to live with the pain of having lost his family, and yet appreciate how he overcame impossible odds to live to die another day. I wish little Ruben the best of luck, though luck may be the one things he has plenty of.

Hurry Hard: Canadian Wheelchair Curling Champ Arrested For Fake Viagra

The curling news is reporting that Canada's men’s gold medal wheelchair curling skip is facing criminal charges for allegedly trafficking black market Viagra. It is unclear yet whether or not our Paralympic champion was distributing the Chinese knock offs; and who these replicas were being sold to. I would be inclined to empathize with him if he was simply distributing the happy pills in the wheelchair curling community, where our athletes live life by the motto bigger, faster, harder. In Canada, our elite wheelchair athletes have a vitality and virility of life. That's why we bring home the gold. 

Regretfully he admitted to authorities that his son distributed the pills at Vancouver nightclubs, so rightfully charges are warranted.  Father gets picked up by the cops in the United States, and sells out his son?  I am assuming this will lead to a plea bargain, because what prosecutor wants to take a man in a wheelchair to court because he had a dream of bringing cheap Viagra to the world.  Do you think men in wheelchairs should be afforded the constitutional right to access cheap Viagra?

The good news is that Jim Armstrong now has a title for his autobiography, "Hurry Hard! Life in the fast lane of wheelchair curling".