My time with the Teamsters Union

I only spent long enough with them to find out what unions are all about.  Not all unions are created equal.  Some are bad, some are worse, and some are more like professional associations. The Air Canada Pilots Association comes to mind.

To the Teamsters I was a scab, or what good regular people call a part-time employee.  This was when I lived in Ottawa and I was in need of a summer job.  I was 20 or 21 years old and National Grocer agreed to take me on.

National Grocer is a warehouse company that receives all manner of goods and distributes them to the various grocery stores under the Loblaw banner like Superstore etc...  I never had any trouble with management and I enjoy shopping at those outlets across this country to this day.

The actual job wasn't so bad.  I had to drive one of those fork trolleys around and they actually go pretty fast.  The whole object was to fill a pallet with all the goods on your scanner and deliver them to a waiting truck.  The better you can stack them, the faster you could go around corners. The pallets couldn't be too tall or they wouldn't fit the trailer either.  It was a bit like playing Tetris.    For an extra 25 cents per hour I opted to work in the freezer at -18 Celsius.  No sweat, literally.

The very first thing our trainer said to us the very first day on the job was "October 1st, our contract is up and we go on strike."  Uh-oh I thought, meanwhile the other trainees cheered.  It was a bit weird but I realized I would be back in school by then so it didn't matter.  

"The president of this company makes a million dollars a year!"  My admiration for my millionaire patron was interrupted by jeers from my fellow new hires.  I distinctly remember one kid, not a bright one, yell "I want to punch that guy in the face!"  Not kidding.  This is exactly how my first day went.  Barely clearing our first hours on the payroll, my fellow trainees were calling out for violence against the company's president.

My jaw dropped.  The trainer was having a grand old time.  Evidently the dim kid had the inside scoop on union behavior.  Thinking back it wouldn't surprise me at all if they picked the dumbest tool of the lot to yell out like that to set the tone from day one.

Not a big deal maybe but think about new hires at your workplace acting out like that and being encouraged to do so.    Imagine new hires being indoctrinated by employees who can't be fired and are openly plotting to hold your company hostage?

Take a look at this Teamster skinhead in the US roughing up anti-union protesters.

Are unions the only ones allowed to march?  There are tens of videos like this.  You only have to look back at the G20 on our own soil to see union handiwork in action.  They supplied the buses and signs and bodies for arrest.

I'm less concerned about private sector Unions.  It wouldn't be the first time that greedy Unions have run their employers into the ground.  Faced with true unemployment, (not the taxpayer funded vacations some trades have become entitled to) even Unions will cut their own pay to survive.  Private sector Unions also encourage employers to share their profits with their employees and provide competitive benefits lest they invite wasteful and destructive Unions into their operations.

Public sector unions on the other hand are not constrained by economics.  Governments are seen to have limitless resources because of their power to compel money and property from their citizens.  When unions force their demands on the Government, they are forcing their demands on you.  You are powerless.  You are not at the table.  Politicians aren't acting in your interest normally but in their own interest.  They are disconnected from your wishes as a citizen until election day and can be coerced far and above what is reasonable for a private company.  A politician only fears elections.  Private companies fear extinction.  

Add to this that both private and public sector Unions intervene in politics by making donations to political parties, running their own adds during elections, busing protesters to planned events that have nothing to do with their professions but are simply anti-government.  They even hand out signs.

This has got to stop.  I propose three options to curtail the powerful Unions and their insidious lobbies.  This should in no way affect workers who's welfare the Unions have abandoned when they engage in politics.

First would be to enshrine in law the freedom of workers to opt out of Union dues or membership at their discretion as well as readmission without consequence.

Second would be to impose a Union tax or fee to recoup the cost of their disturbances to the taxpayer.  Taxes could be collected on dues or a simple per member registration fee required to legally exist. 

A third option would be to ban Union activities that do not directly support their own members.  Each expenditure a Union makes should be tested with the question of whether it directly and unambiguously supports their own workers and fined if that test fails.


Unions were a necessary evolution of workers rights and staved off socialism during the cold war.  Today they are actively working toward socialism and exerting unprecedented control over our democratic institutions.  They do this selfishly without regard for worker, citizen or nation and their designs should be permanently curtailed.

S.E. Cupp on Atheism and Penn Jillete on S.E. Cupp

S.E. Cupp breaks the stereotypes that have been foisted on both atheists and conservatives.  Here she takes questions on atheism from her viewers on the 5th hour of Glenn Beck's Insider Extreme.  She's conservative first and atheist second.  She doesn't define herself by her atheism and neither do I.



Social Conservatives think they own Conservatism, and Leftist think they own Atheism.  Both untrue.  S.E. Cupp can speak for us atheist conservatives any day.  We have a place in the big conservative tent and we also pull out the stakes of the left wing tent.   Their perennial fear mongering about the evil and powerful religious right hidden agenda melts away before us.  Only the right, home of libertarian ideals, truly defends the right to our own freedom of religion and self fulfillment.


Incidentally, I stumbled across this Penn Point Video where he also discusses Cupp's atheist conservatism.  Penn has got to be my favorite Libertarian and atheist.


I think I know what to ask her next week: S.E. have you seen this Penn Point episode?  Do you have any comments and will you be having him on your show any time soon?

Move over Jack Bauer, Bob Rae is tracking Jihadis

Bob Rae calls the PMO staff "25 year old Jihadis."  I have to give him a tiny bit of credit here.  At least the Bobo isn't calling them Nazis or Satanists.  The left has cried wolf on that count so many times now that it has the opposite effect.  

Here is my latest value added video of Bob Rae's violent rhetoric.

Never mind that he is supposed to be the Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic.  Never mind that he is supposed to know what a Jihadi is.  Never mind that he can't wait to bring a real Jihadi like Omar Khadr to Canada to set him free and give him $10 million of your money.  Never mind that he wants to blame the torture of real Jihadis on our troops and our government.  Never mind that he flew directly to his UAE buddies, an Islamic dictatorship similar to that of Mubarak and Qaddafi, after they ended CF landing rights that supported our mission in Afghanistan. 

Never mind all of that.

When the PMO doesn't pay any attention to the NOT thing that happened 2 years ago, they are controlling Jihadis.  Yes, he's a moron and a leftard, but this latest slur was in response to NOTgate (or NOT scandal, or whatever you want to call it, its just NOT).  The mere fact that the NOT thing was kept in Bob Rae's back pocket for that long and is now resorting to ridiculous name calling is very telling of its veracity.  -Very telling indeed.  Shame on Bobo Rae, shame on Liberals, and shame on all left wing media activists desperate to edge back the Conservative Party.

I'm starting to think this Government should hold out as long as possible.  All these faux scandals are having the boy-who-cried-wolf effect.  The more they scream and shout at nothing, the less effective any of it becomes.  It is to laugh.

Does Stephen Harper's Band Take Requests?

One of my favorite News papers has an article written by one of my favorite writers today that has me wondering if Stephen Harper's band knows any Rage Against the Machine?

Have a great Weekend!

An S.E. Cupp-date

I promised I would keep you posted on the cool stuff coming out of Glenn Beck's Insider Extreme.
Last episode S.E. Cupp showed us her speech at CPAC.  I think she is going places.  Good sense is universal regardless of your identity and she has plenty.  Take a look.

Her show is getting better too.  The first one was a little rocky but she is growing into her role and the production is also improving by leaps and bounds.  At this rate, I could see her show getting syndicated by SUNTV News one day.

Update: Todays show was a step back as far as production value.  Thats ok they'll get better and its the personalities that make it worth while anyway.

NOT-Gate

 Not-gate: the appropriately named faux gaffe created when Bev Oda declined $7 million to a religious group by writing "Not" on a funding approval document.

Let me first congratulate Bev Oda on the cut itself.  Thank you and well done.  I'm looking forward to more and larger cuts in fact.  Keep up the good work.

Perhaps she should have written "void" on it instead or perhaps torn it into little pieces.  Someone suggested (can't remember who) that we should hand out Government of Canada 'NOT' rubber stamps.  Imagine the good each of them could do with one of those. 

In fact, here is a digital NOT stamp.  Its transparent, so just overlay it on any opposition document you like.

Here is the Liberal-NDP Coalition Document of 2008.  Iggy signed it and gave it to our Head of State.  Its more official than your own birth certificate.  Canadians told the losers what they thought of that one.  NOT!

What about Iggy's book.  Does that survive the stamp?  NOT!

And finally the CBC.  Is their annual billion dollar bailout worth going into debt for?  NOT!

My First Encounter With A Progressive

A couple of weeks ago I was scandalized but not surprised to read about a Quebec child that was punished because his parents put his lunch in a plastic ziplock bag.  It’s the expected result of the eco-religion’s ascension but no less frightening and appalling for being so easily predicted.  Hysteria coupled with righteous zeal is not new after all.  We’ve seen it again and again, from dogmatic institutionalization and oppression all the way to rejection and rebellion.

It reminded me of my own experiences with progressives growing up in a Catholic school in Ontario.  None of it was earth shattering or newsworthy, but it stands out to me like a first kiss.  It was my first encounter with progressive social engineering.  

I was your average kid.  I loved taking books out of the school library.  There was a book about volcanoes that I must have taken out six times.  It had some amazing pictures of billowing smoke and fire.  Most of them were picture books with at most a paragraph of explanation on each page.  It was a kids library after all and I was in the first grade.  

It was the time of the “save the whales” craze.  I used to wake up at dawn on Saturday mornings to watch Oceans Alive.  I can still hum the theme song and I knew all about whales.  Killer Whales especially.  They were on par with sharks being fearsome, deadly and impressive.
 

One day we were talking about saving the whales in class.  We listed off all the whales and I was jumping out of my seat to say my favourite one.  Finally it was my turn.  “Killer Whales,” I shouted, being very pleased that I had also found a way to shout killer in class.  

That was not going to fly in Mrs. Progressive’s Grade 1 class.  There was no such thing as a Killer Whale. 

I was dumbfounded.  Teachers know everything.  How could my teacher not know about Killer Whales?  I had been to MarineLand.  I watch Oceans Alive.  I’ve read the books in the library of this very school!  Now the ‘smart’ (obedient) girls are shaking their heads at me while I describe a Killer Whale.

“That’s an Orca,” Mrs. Progressive corrected, feigning ignorance.  

No it isn’t and I said so.  I refused to accept it.  I told her she was wrong and I would prove it.

I went to the library at recess and found the appropriate book all about Killer Whales.  That might have been the title of the book in fact: Killer Whales.  I brought it back to show her and she wouldn’t look at it.  She would not accept the animal’s name.  She told me the book was wrong.

I knew better, but I stopped thinking about Killer Whales.  I tried to figure out Mrs. Progressive instead and I think I got it.  She really liked whales.  She wanted to save them and didn’t want to think they were mean killers.  She was trying to change the truth so that I would act differently. 

This blew my mind.  My dad thought it was funny.  She told the whole class a lie to save whales.  She tried to trick us into saving the whales when we would have all been happy to save them, even the killing ones (they all kill).  

That was my first encounter with a progressive.  I didn’t know what they were back then and she probably didn’t either.  She probably would have been offended.  I also remember the day Brian Mulroney was elected.  She sat us in a circle and announced it as if the Pope had passed on.  That was also the first time I’d ever heard of elections and I asked if that was a good or bad thing that Mulroney had won.  She wouldn’t say, which meant she thought it was bad.  She would have said it was good if she thought so.

How many years have we lived with people like this?  -People who lie for their interpretation of the greater good.  –People who work their way into the bureaucracy and into public office so that they can shepherd us poor dummies around and look after us.  We can’t be trusted with our own money or we’ll spend it on beer and popcorn and end up homeless.  The facts?  Oh no.  We can’t have those because we’ll make the wrong conclusions.  

They constantly think they are smarter than the free market, that billions of minds processing their micro-economic decisions in parallel are less efficient than just a few powerful elites.  What arrogance.  What ignorance.    What great folly is the progressive worldview.  Progressivism is an enabling fallacy, a delusion, that allows people to pretend they are smarter than the masses and necessarily rule over them and overrule their dreams and hopes.

The good news is that the truth eventually gets out, especially the truth about nature and culture.  The Killer Whale incident kindled the flame of skepticism in me.  I knew from then on that some people will lie to themselves and everyone else to try and make a delusion real.  The poor kid whose parents committed an eco-sin, will remember that forever.  So will countless kids who don’t make the newspapers.  Nowhere is the green brainwashing stronger than in the schools.  They will all grow up ashamed of killing the world and they will rebel.  One fine sunny day they will cast aside the false guilt and fear.  They will laugh at the hysteria of their elders because it really is hysterical.  They will be free.

Atheist Conservative S.E. Cupp Joins Glenn Beck’s Insider Extreme

I was pleased and surprised when Glenn Beck announced that S.E. Cupp is joining Insider Extreme for a daily 1 hour segment.  I was so pleased in fact that I signed on for a month to see what its like. 

A Google search for ‘Conservative Atheist’ will inevitably lead you to a C-SPAN interview of S.E. Cupp.  I saw this interview a while ago and it has left me on the lookout for news about S.E. Cupp ever since.

This week’s S.E. Cupp show is live from CPAC (Kapak! She likes to say).  She interviewed many interesting conservatives but during the conversation she confirmed that she was indeed still an atheist.  It takes some guts to declare yourself an atheist live from CPAC.  I can safely say that I got my money’s worth just for that day.

Not only do you get 3 hours of Beck daily, but you also get an hour of S.E. Cupp, one hour of the other 2 guys (Pat and Stu, sorry guys but you know the score), and a whole bunch of documentaries and other special shows. 

Hooray!  Its like SUNTV News came early.  If you want a model for an online current events channel, here it is.  There is plenty of free stuff to sample at Glennbeck.com and if you don’t feel like spending money yet don’t worry.  I’ve been eying insider extreme for months before signing on.  I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve prepared a short video from the C-SPAN interview and the S.E. Cupp show dealing specifically with her atheism.   Freedom of religion and worship includes the freedom not to worship or be religious at all.  Only libertarian ideology truly protects atheists from the collectivizing tendencies of the leftward end of the political spectrum.  

Metaphors, Similies, Analogies, and Colloqialisms do not Incite Violence.

Not to get too serious on a Friday, here is something you can find at Glenn Beck's Insider Extreme.  Brian Sack pokes fun at just about everything, and this time its Political Correctness run amok.



For the record; hatred incites violence.  Hatred, who's symptoms include chanting: "Death to America."  That incites violence.  Using common metaphors, similies, analogies, and colloqialisms have never incited violence.  They are simple tools of our language to enhance the communication of abstract ideas with familiar concepts.

This idea stems from the progressive discipline of Political Correctness.   It is simply a method of control over speech that creeps in when high emotions are involved as was the case in the aftermath of the Tuscon shooting.

I used to have as my slogan: "puts the cross-hairs of reason on spinners and spin."  Yes I caved and changed it to reticle but reticle of reason sounds better.  -don't you think?  Besides, microscopes, telescopes, cameras and viewfinders of all kinds have reticles.  They aren't found strictly on firearms.

Nothing I can do about assassin though.  LOL  Only losers play progressive games.

Iranium. See it. Tell it. Stop them.

Never has a picture of evil been so clear cut as in the case of Iran.  These guys make the Nazi's look like gentlemen.  Seriously.  Did the Nazi's sacrifice their children clearing mines?  Did they so boldly and routinely call for mass murder?  Even the Holocaust was a Nazi secret.  Iran makes no secret about finishing the Holocaust. This film is required viewing.


This movie is terrific and terrifying.  It's no wonder the Iranian agents in Ottawa tried to shut it down.  It exposes the single minded hatred and insanity of the Iranian regime since the Islamic Revolution.  It reveals the murderous nature of a theocracy that has marched their own children into minefields to die.  If they do that, what won't they do?

My girlfriend, who is a vegetarian animal lover and a teacher, was appalled at how they abused and murdered children especially.  "Why can't they use cows," she pleaded to me in pained incredulity.  What could I say?  They are beyond reason.  They are absolutely evil. 

They have sponsored terrorism around the world and actively seek to develop nuclear ICBMs.  They are pledged, not only to the destruction of Isreal, but the annihilation of all infidels and themselves as well.


The leftists, who are obsessed with phony and mundane threats like Global Warming, are calling the film "propaganda."  They don't say why of course.  We all know that everything say about Iran is true.  They shout it to crowds on national television.  They indoctrinate it into little girls.  We see their cruel murders on film.  There is no doubt whatsoever.  Iran is the ultimate evil.

Its just counter to the leftist narrative.  That is why this film is so important.  We are living quietly next to an existential threat to all of civilization and all the lofty minds can talk about is the global average temperature rising by a tenth of a degree!  Its astounding.

When the movie was over I told my lover that I can't live in a world where Iranian dreams are ever realized.  No one can.  She completely understood and agreed.  She is the most peaceful person I know, but she isn't stupid.  To simply standby while your self-proclaimed enemies plot the destruction of everything we love is inhuman.  Knowing what we know, we can't be excused from our moral responsibility to defeat Iran.

Joint News Conference of Canada US Border Talks

Stephen Harper and Barack Obama held a joint news conference on Friday.  The portions of their speech and comments pertaining explicitly to the shared border negotiations have been spliced together in this video.  The parts related to Egypt have been removed.  The parts in french are exactly the same as the english and have also been cut.  The full video from CPAC can be found here.  Enjoy.




Joint News Conference of Canada US Border Talks

The People win Egypt if the Army wins.

I don’t believe the Egyptian situation will get out of hand in the short term.   The situation is firmly in the hands of the army.  They are capable and willing to impose order if necessary and have so far shown restraint.  They even rescued a CBC cameraman from a mob yesterday.

Nobody will win unless the army wins.  It’s an army that is well funded by the United States.  $1.5 billion goes to Egypt every year from the US alone.  I don’t believe they will allow themselves to become involved in the Muslim Brotherhood’s war on the west.  That would see them cut off and targeted, if not attacked at some point in the future.  As supreme as the Egyptian army is over a mob, armies of the west would similarly dominate over Egypt’s army. 

Why would they get involved in all that anyway?  Healthy economies live in friendly countries.  The economy is the whole problem.  The people are angry about food and oil prices.

Egypt makes plenty of money off of Suez traffic. This traffic hasn’t stopped.  Egypt also makes plenty of money in tourism.  That has stopped but if the pyramids could wait out the Romans, they can wait out a mob.  The mob can also wait out their current government while the electoral infrastructure is built and the constitution rewritten. 

Its become clear that the “Pro-Mubarak” protesters were infiltrated and inflated with plain clothes police and army.   It’s a not so subtle hint to the “democracy” protesters.  They have won.  There will be elections.  Now its time to go home.  At some point, all that will be left are radicals who want to fight the army.  Perhaps that is why cameras are being confiscated from balconies and smashed on the streets.  The army will clear the mob at some point. 

There is very little chance that this will affect the flow of oil except through fear or an expectation that oil will be scarce.   The market already isn’t buying into it.  Jeff Rubin even said that oil will skyrocket and the recovery is finished, which gives me great confidence that it’s all going to be fine.    

Chaos is the thing to avoid.  A velvet revolution would be a beacon to peoples like the Persians in Iran.  Egypt would become the first self initiated Muslim democracy in the Middle East and it would look great on them.  For the first time in a long time things would be looking up in that part of the world.       

Happy Groundhog Day!

Climate Scientists predict muted Global Warming Hysteria will soon end.  Every February 2nd, alarmists emerge from their holes to see if Global Warming is true.  If they see their shadow they scurry back under ground to ignore the evidence for 6 more weeks.  If its cloudy the alarmist will proclaim he end is nigh and seek funding very soon.

Today, there is no need to test alarmists experimentally in the actual outdoors.  This computer generated model, shown here below, proves without a doubt that Global Warming Hysteria will indeed return to familiar levels. 

In fact, it may already be too late.  Governments should immediately shut down their economies and submit to global socialism to save the planet.  The debate is over.  Success is failure.  Only through slavery can one be free. 

An Interview with Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada

This is a really good interview in case you missed it.  Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney confirms the end of stimulus programs, the importance of private sector in creating jobs, that the US is "reclining not declining," the need for Canada to expand to new markets, and the importance of making sure no private institution is "too big to fail."

Mark Carney Interview
I've left it as it originally aired because there is nothing for me to add to what the Governor has to say.