The Left Wing Redneck

Well the leaves are falling, but signs are springing, another election, Yay!  Alberta Conservatives got their well deserved comeuppance a few months ago, and now it is time for the Federal version to walk the plank. So what's the major issue that will determine the outcome of this election?  Based on the latest media reporting, it appears that what will determine the election won't be the economy, or how Canada will stop global warming, but what ladies are going to be allowed to wear on their heads. Hmmm.  The Left Wing Red Neck has managed to make it through life more or less safely by following a few simple rules for survival, one of which is telling ladies what they should or should not wear is a really bad idea. Following an exhaustive 15 minute google session, the Red Neck has determined that the apparent objection to head covering is focused on ladies of the Islamic persuasion.  It seems that Islamic ladies are being forced to cover their ...

Yesterday I stopped in at the Jeep dealership to look at the new Cherokee.  The attractive young sales person told me that this car can, park itself (!), the cruise control will automatically slow to match the speed of the car ahead should it be going slower than what the cruise control was set for (!!) and that it would automatically steer its way back to the lane it was traveling in should an inattentive driver allow the car to wander out of it (!!!). This is all very cool, and this technology will almost certainly become standard equipment in all cars, along with already standard ABS, mostly standard traction control, and 'fly by wire' indirect control of engine speed, and all the other digital stuff that is taking over all of our mechanical servants. I don't consider myself a luddite, but every time new tech comes along that takes away something I used to be able to control myself and puts it into the hands of a mysterious black box I wonder about where we are goin...

The whole Trayvon Martin Zimmerman thing ends with not guilty for George Z, but IMO it was the state of Florida that should of been put on trial for criminal negligence re their goofy gun law.  If Tray and George had met anywhere else than the new old south the result would have been a fat lip or a black eye for one or both of these idiots.  I wasn't there, nor did I follow the trial, where it is the job of opposing lawyers to present anything but the truth, to obfuscate the whole truth etc. etc., but I do remember being 17 as well as 28 despite being into my sixties now. When we were 'youth', we were bad and we knew it, and in case we forgot, were constantly reminded of it.  We grew our hair and wore strange clothes, we had our own music that only we liked. That it pissed our elders off was a bonus.  Nobody wanted us hanging around.  We had our own culture and sub cultures.  The high school had two major gan...

There was a time, before  nanny government inserted their big feet into unfettered free enterprise, when it was possible to derive commercial benefit from your children, as opposed to paying through the nose for their care and maintenance.  A mere 150 or so years ago you could have sold your six year old to a chimney sweep, one of a class of tradesman always on the lookout for small and agile assistants.   Charles Dickens made an excellent living describing the various ways minor children could be turned to useful employment, but now in the so called free world, the labor market has been severely restricted from capitalizing on the unique capabilities of children. There still remain some opportunities,  Mr and Mrs. Lloyd and Dorothy Bridges were able kickstart young Jeff's career at a mere four months of age, but clearly, there was an element of nepotism involved, what can a parent do if they are not themselves a movie star?  In Canada, the canny parent seek...

thanks wikimedia! When I was twelve or so, I used to hang with a group of neighborhood kids, we would play Cowboys and Indians in the local woods, and when we got tired, we would sit around and ask each other stuff, like 'if I see a color as blue, how do I know that you see it as blue? I mean like, if you saw blue as red, but your mom and everybody told you that color you saw was blue, but you saw it as red, you would say red was blue!'.   One of us, I forget who, proposed that for all he knew, we were all in one of his dreams, and that when he woke up we would all be gone,  I think he got that from a Twilight Zone episode. We all knew this could not be true, unless of course, we were the dreamer.  Ethics received attention whenever we were playing baseball on the vacant lot two doors down, these discussions were often resolved with someone taking their ball and bat home. We wondered why we were here and what was the point of it all.  Then somebody shared their ...

  I just came across both a funny and slightly disturbing book called The New Bride's Guide to Training her Husband , by Emily and Ken Addison.  I thought it was going to be a joke, but no, these people are serious (either that or I missed the punchline). It isn't even the only husband training book out there, but this particular book's thesis is that men need to be dominated, and that women are better suited to manage a marriage and husbands,  and therefore, should be in charge of both. I grew up in the Dick and Jane era, when "Leave it to Beaver" and "Father knows best" were not reruns.  Then in my late teens, the bras were burned, white and male Dick's role was to be forever typecast as the perennial "Don't Bee"   screw up in every elementary school post structuralist morality play. Reading the New Bride's Guide got me reflecting on something that has been bugging me for a long time.  In the post WWII "Mad Men" e...

If you hate taxes you will love this guy . Death and taxes,  the only two sure things in life.  Is this really true?  I will let you know on the death part later, but is it possible to run a country without taxation?  Zero income tax, sales tax,  property tax?  Well as it turns out, the answer is yes indeedy, one country has managed to pull off this magnificent accomplishment, tax free since 1974.  The people's utopia of North Korea .  Next question. Perversely, that the DPRK has no taxes may be the best illustration of why taxation is a good thing.  There are a handful of other countries that do not have to rely so much on taxes for revenue, such as some of the  oil rich nations, or the countries  that get their revenue for providing international loopholes for banking, gambling, corporate registration, flags of convenience and such.  The thing  most of these countries have in common besides low taxes is low democ...