You either pay attention or pay through the nose. I would rather pay attention.
In a shocking revelation, Ontario Finance Minister under the Liberal McGuinty government came out this past week in support of Pro Life. Duncan has decided that teenagers and their parents have no choice in what they choose to do with their own bodies.
This reminds me of when the Canadian Medical Association did the same.
You were born in 1993. The world watched as you crawled along. Being all cute and everything while your teeth popped out one by one.
In 1995 your terrible two’s hit. The Srebrenica massacre in 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina showed you were still unable to control yourself as you stumbled and scraped your knee. So big uncle NATO stepped in to clean up the scrape and make it all better.
Over the next decade you had your typical growing pains. Financial ocncerns, 10 new members in 2004 and the largest trans-national election in history.
Then hit your teens and another growth spurt in 2008-2009. My how you were growing.
Then it started. The financial coughing. Mommy Merkel and Daddy Sarkozy tried their best. They gave you some cough syrup and told you it would be better if you stayed out of the cold. But you didn’t. The phlegm became blood in the streets of Greece. They tried to give you more medicine. But it wasn’t enough. Your cough became bronchitis and then pneumonia.
And now here you lie. A mere 18 years old. On the verge of death.
For tomorrow two elections take place. Greece will likely see a minority government that may take decades to work itself out. And it’s hard to believe that after decades and decades of deficit budgets, even France is going to move even further left if they toss Sarkozy out (which is looking to be likely).
And I am sure Germany is tired. Oh so tired. Many are longing for the Deutschmark to come back so they can stop giving unwanted medicine.
Is the EU in it’s final death throes? Is the EU OfficiallyScrewed?
Well I must say that although I knew the Curse of Michael Buble was strong and would prevent the Vancouver Canucks from ever winning Lord Stanley’s Cup, I never thought that it would be strong enough to curse the team so that they (a number 1 seed) would lose in 5 games to the lowly 8th seeded Los Angelas Kings.
I think my work this year is complete. And just so you all know what I am referring to, a year ago, in the Stanley Cup finals, when the only Canadian team left was Vancouver, Michael Buble told Canada to get their own team and that the Canucks were Vancouver’s team. Well this got my dander up so I cursed the Vancouver Canucks. i.e. the Curse of Michael Buble. So long as he feels the Canucks bandwagon is not big enough for all Canadians, the Vancouver Canucks shall NEVER win the Stanley Cup.
I gave this the good old triple curse.
First you take your index finger and touch the lid of one closed eye (with the other open) and you say “ACK ACK ACK”. This is the Malochia or Evil Eye. Then you give the Devil’s curse and say “SIX SIX SIX, number of the beast.”
This is all followed by the ultimate sports curse from the movie Caddyshack. This is simple in that you just say “Noonan!!”
Put it all together and you have a very powerful curse. In this case, the Curse of Michael Buble!!!.
“ACK ACK ACK!! SIX SIX SIX! Number of the Beast! NOONAN!!”
So were the Canucks cursed and so they have not won the cup for two years.
Beware the Curse of Michael Buble.
How does this fit on this blog? Because the Canucks are OfficiallyScrewed!!!
p.s. The only Canadian team left is the Ottawa Senators and although I am a Maple Leaf fan, I am cheering them on and am proud to say that their bandwagon IS big enough for anyone who wants to cheer them on. Go Sens Go!!
Last week the Ontario Auditor General released the report on ORNGE, the air ambulance agency that is deservedly under scrutiny. Here are some highlights to make you see red.
We noted in this regard that the funding Ornge received for air ambulance services increased by more than 20% between the 2006/07 fiscal year (Ornge’s first full year of operations) and the 2010/11 fiscal year. However, over the same period, the total number of patients transported by air decreased by 6%.
Nice eh? How about this one?
Ornge received $65 million to perform inter-facility land ambulance transfers, projected to number 20,000 annually. However, Ornge is currently providing only about 15% of the projected transfers.
Do the math on that one. To transport a patient, over land not air, was estimated to cost $3250 per transport. So if you were to be driven by Ornge from North York General to Sick Children’s Hospital, we were GOING to pay $3250. But instead Ornge took $65Million and only transported 3000 people. The math there is over $21500 per transport. Seriously???
Ornge management, with approval of its board, created a network of for-profit and not-for-profit subsidiaries and other companies with which Ornge has entered into complex financial arrangements to deliver air ambulance services. In fact, much of Ornge’s operation is being delivered by these other entities, which bill Ornge for those services.
And I guarantee each tier took it’s chunk of our flesh in dollars. How about the sweet deal below for some company. I would LOVE to be the landlord for ORNGE.
The building that houses Ornge’s corporate head office was purchased for $15 million using funding borrowed through a bond issue. Ornge then entered into a complex arrangement with some of the other entities it created to sell the building and lease it back to itself. An independent real-estate appraiser
we engaged estimated that, under its lease with a related Ornge company, Ornge’s rent payments are 40% higher than the fair-market rent. Over the first five years of the 25-year lease, this amounts to Ornge paying $2 million more than it would pay if the building’s cost per square foot were comparable to that of similar buildings in the area.
Can we say Chaching?? I am sure the landlord for ORNGE was saying it.
After buying 12 new helicopters for US$148 million, Ornge arranged to install seating for 12 people in two of them. As a result, these helicopters could not be used to transport patients. Ornge told us it was considering selling these two helicopters.
Sure…AFTER they got caught.
The report goes on and on. And after they take a big chunk of our tax dollars and blow it left right and centre, the top employees refuse to disclose their salaries on the Ontario government sunshine list of people who make more than $100K.
Ontario Tax Payers….Officially Screwed….again. Thank you Dalton McGuinty, George Smitherman and Deb Matthews.
This cartoon is EXACTLY why this site is named what it is.
Today while listening to CFRA, I heard that the Humane Society is warning about the dangers of leaving pets in cars during the heat of summer. Great. No objection here.
They also said that they have received over 100 complaints so far of people leaving pets in cars this summer season. Wonderful. I am glad people are observant and willing to make a call to help save a family pet.
Then they said that anyone caught leaving their pet in a car with the heat going will be charged. And they even said fines can range from $500 to 2 years in jail.
The agency maintains that if a pet must be rescued from a locked, hot car, charges will be laid against the owner.
Penalties can range up to $500 and a maximum of two years in jail.
The operative word above is “will”. They WILL be charged. Pretty definitive word.
Everything seems hunky dorey to me.
But wait. Did we not just have a case in Ottawa of a couple who left their month old baby in the back seat of a car on a 30 degree Celsius day while they shopped in an air conditioned Home Depot for an hour? And did that couple NOT get charged?
Yup. This most certainly did happen.
Even though they could under the Criminal Code, Ottawa police, unbelievably, are not charging a couple with the stunningly irresponsible act of leaving their infant alone in a vehicle Saturday for almost an hour in a humid, sweltering temperature of 30C while they were shopping at an air-conditioned Home Depot.
How the hell could they not have known better?
Not that first-time parents is any excuse, but they aren’t. They have several children.
How the hell can they not be charged by the police, one of whom saw the infant in the vehicle, broke the window, after which the infant was rushed to hospital by paramedics, and — luckily — found to be in stable condition.
The 30C temperature was outside.
God knows what it was inside the closed-windows vehicle.
The child had no say in the matter.
It was only a month old.
A human being.
This is simply OfficiallyScrewed. This comparison of the way two similar situations are treated with the only difference being the animal is treated like a human and the human is treated like an animal. It sure says something about how “humane” our society really is.
In 2006, he called it “a sign of leadership failure”.
He said it was a “sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay it’s own bills.”
And finally, he voted against raising the debt ceiling in 2006 and did not even bother to vote in 2007 or 2008.
But now that he is POTUS, Barack Obama wants to raise the debt ceiling.
Talk about being OfficiallyScrewed!!!
Supporting Link to National Review.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256199/obama-not-always-fan-upping-debt-ceiling-katrina-trinko
First he proposed changing the name of Robertson Rd. siting no objection after some polling of local businesses.
Then when businesses said they were never asked and the petition was started to keep Robertson Rd. as it is, he said he had the blessing of a descendant of Robertson to change the name.
Then when a different descendant came forward, he could not produce his key descendant to give the aok to the name change.
Now Captain Watertown, aka Councillor Rick Chiarelli says that Robertson Rd. will stay Robertson Rd. but an additional section that is Richmond Rd. will also change names.
The problem here is that the section of Richmond Rd. that will become part of Robertson Rd. is at the end of Robertson Rd. that starts with the number 1. This means every business along the existing Robertson Rd. will need to be renumbered.
One of the two main arguments for not changing the name was the fact that addresses would change, businesses would have to rebrand stationary, invoices, cheques, etc and inform dozens, hundreds or even thousands of customers and suppliers of the address changes. What a waste. These businesses are all being Officially Screwed and will have to do this now anyway. The solution to this problem is easy. Leave the street names as is and put up some clear signage indicating the street name change.
I mean, let’s get serious for a minute. The street changes names several times from Stittsville/Kanata all the way to downtown where it goes from Hazeldean to Robertson to Richmond to Wellington to Somerset. It’s been good enough for 100 years, it will be good enough for another 100.
But worse now for Captain Watertown is that Chiarelli must produce the descendant of Robertson or forever be known as a councillor who tried to deceive not only the existing City Council, but every citizen in the city of Ottawa. To not do so will scar his reputation forever.
Joe Canadian pays taxes to government’
Government hires and pays Public Servants.
Public Servants pay union dues to PSAC, the public servants union.
PSAC pays for advertising against Steven Harper and the Conservatives, making their advertising partisan. (I heard ads running on CFRA radio here in Ottawa this week.)
i.e. PSAC is laundering money from Joe Canadian to partisan politics.
Another way, we as taxpayers, get Officially Screwed.
After all the battling over the dispensing of crack pipe kits to drug users, the Provincial government of Ontario has bypassed the Ottawa City Council by expanding the decision making process to include appointees.
The new system will have 6 councillors and 5 appointees meaning a single city councillor can side with the 5 appointees on any issue and bring crack pipe kits or safe injection clinics to a neighbourhood near you.
Ottawa taxpayers…OfficiallyScrewed again.