Stories of a Life | 1974 | Cathy & Raymond’s European Vacation

August 28, 2021Jude and Megan, Stories of a Life, Video & DVDRaymond Tomlin

Traveling on a train across Europe, with a Eurail Pass, in the 1970s

In the summer of 1974, Cathy and I travelled to Europe for a three-month European summer vacation, BritRail and Eurail passes in hand, this was going to be a summer vacation to keep in our memory for always.

And so it proved to be …

On another day, in another post evoking memories of our cross-continental European sabbatical, I’ll relate more stories of what occurred that summer.

Only 10 days prior to the event I am about to relate, Cathy and I had arrived in Lisbon, Portugal, alighting from a cruise liner we’d boarded in Southampton, England (passage was only 5£s, much cheaper than now).

After a couple of wonderful days in Lisbon, Cathy and I embarked on the first part of our hitchhiking sojourn throughout every portion of Portugal we could get to, finally traveling along the Algarve before arriving in the south of the country, ready to board a train to Spain. Unfortunately, I developed some intestinal disorder or other, requiring rest and fluids. Once Cathy could see that I was going to be fine, she left the confines of our little pensão to allow me to recover in peace, returning with stories of her having spent a wonderful day at the beach with an enthusiastic retinue of young Portuguese men, who had paid attention to and flirted with her throughout the day. Cathy was in paradisiacal heaven; me, not so much.

Still, I was feeling better, almost recovered from my intestinal malady, and the two of us made a decision to be on our way the next morning.

To say that I was in a bad mood when I got onto the train is to understate the matter. On the way to the station, who should we run into but the very group of amorous men Cathy had spent the previous day with, all of whom were beside themselves that this braless blonde goddess of a woman was leaving their country, as they beseeched her to “Stay, please stay.” Alas, no luck for them; this was my wife, and we were going to be on our way.

Still suffering from the vestiges of both an irritable case of jealousy and a now worsening intestinal disorder, I was in a foul mood once we got onto the train, and as we pulled away from the station, my very loud and ill-tempered mood related in English, those sitting around us thinking that I must be some homem louco, and not wishing in any manner to engage.

A few minutes into my decorous rant, a young woman walked up to me, and asked in the boldest terms possible …

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

“Huh,” I asked?

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? That’s the filthiest mouth I’ve ever heard. You’ve got to teach me how to swear!”

At which point, she sat down across from me, her lithe African American dancer companion moving past me to sit next to her. “Susan. My name is Susan. This is my friend, Danelle,” she said, pointing in the direction of Danelle. “We’re from New York. We go to school there. Columbia. I’m in English Lit. Danelle’s taking dance — not hard to tell, huh? You two traveling through Europe, are you?” Susan all but shouted. “I come from a large Jewish family. You? We’re traveling through Europe together.”
And thus began a beautiful friendship. Turns out that Susan could swear much better than I could; she needed no instruction from me. Turns out, too, that she had my number, and for all the weeks we traveled together through Europe, Susan had not one kind word for me — she set about to make my life hell, and I loved every minute of it. Susan became the sister I wished I’d had, profane, self-confident, phenomenally bright and opinionated, her acute dissection of me done lovingly and with care, to this day one of the best and most loving relationships I’ve ever had.

Little known fact about me: I love being called out by bright, emotionally healthy, socially-skilled and whole women.

The summer of 1974, when Cathy became pregnant with Jude, on the right above.

Without the women in my life, Cathy or Megan, my daughter — when Cathy and I separated — Lori, Justine, Alison, Patricia, Julienne or Melissa, each of whom loved me, love me still, and made me a better person, the best parts of me directly attributable to these lovely women, to whom I am so grateful for caring enough about me to make me a better person.

Now onto the raison d’être of this first installment of Stories of a Life.

Once Susan and I had settled down — there was an immediate connection between Susan and I, which Cathy took as the beginnings of an affair the two of us would have (as if I would sleep with my sister — Danelle, on the other hand, well … perhaps a story for another day, but nothing really happened, other than the two of us becoming close, different from Susan).

J. D. Salinger's Nine Stories, an anthology of short stories published in April 1953

Danelle saw a ragged copy of J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories peeking out of Cathy’s backpack. “Okay,” she said. “In rounds, let’s each one of us give the title of one of the Salinger short stories,” which we proceeded to do. Cathy was just now reading Salinger, while I’d read the book while we were still in England, about three weeks earlier.

Cathy started first, For Esmé — with Love and Squalor. Danelle, Teddy. Susan, showing off, came up with A Perfect Day for Bananafish, telling us all, “That story was first published in the January 31, 1948 edition of The New Yorker.” Show off! I was up next, and came up with Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut. Phew — just barely came up with that one! Thank goodness.
Onto the second round: Cathy, Down at the Dinghy; Danelle, Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes; Susan, showing off again, De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period, “turned down by The New Yorker in late 1951, and published by the British Information World Review, early in 1952.” Me? Struggling yet again, but subject to a momentary epiphany, I blurted out, Just Before the War with the Eskimos. There we were, eight stories down and one to go.

But do you think any one of us could come up with the title to the 9th tale in Salinger’s 1953 anthology of short stories? Nope. We thought about it, and thought about it — and nothing, nada, zero, zilch. We racked our brains, and we simply couldn’t come up with the title of the 9th short story.

We sat there, hushed. For the first time in about half an hour, there was silence between us, only the voices of children on the train, and the clickety-clack of the tracks as the train relentlessly headed towards Madrid.

We couldn’t look at one another. We were, as a group, downcast, looking up occasionally at the passing scenery, only furtively glancing at one another, only periodically and with reservation, as Cathy held onto my arm, putting hers in mine, Danelle looking up, she too wishing for human contact.

Finally, Susan looked up at me, looked directly at me, her eyes steely and hard yet … how do I say it? … full of love and confidence in me, that I somehow would be the one to rescue us from the irresolvable dilemma in which we found ourselves. Beseechingly, Susan’s stare did not abate …

“The Laughing Man,” I said, “The Laughing Man! The 9th story in Salinger’s anthology is …” and before I could say the words, I was smothered in kisses, Cathy to my left, Susan having placed herself in my lap, kissing my cheeks, my lips, my forehead, and when she found herself unable to catch her breath, Danelle carrying on where Susan had left off, more tender than Susan, loving and appreciative, Cathy now holding me tight, love all around us. A moment that will live in me always, a gift of the landscape of my life.

The State of Cinema | Women, Misogyny and The Old Boys Club

August 27, 2021Arts Friday, CinemaRaymond Tomlin

From the earliest days of Hollywood, women were stage managed and manipulated by older men in powerful positions.

And it remains clear that, although Harvey Weinstein, Les Moonves, John Lasseter, Luc Besson and James Toback, among a host of other male predatory Hollywood executives have been outed, little has changed.

In the Hollywood dream factory, trauma surfaces as light entertainment.

In 2013, introducing the list of Best Supporting Actress nominees during the Oscar ceremony, comedian Seth MacFarlane quipped: “Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.” What was chilling in that moment was that no one got the joke.
The idea that female stars and aspiring actresses are required to accept the attentions, at the very least, of older male studio executives, producers and prominent male stars, is as old as the Hollywood hills.

Given the profile that the #MeToo movement has brought to sex discrimination, why does sexism continue to prevail in Hollywood?

According to San Diego’s State’s Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film, women made up only 7% of directors on the top 250 films of 2019, which was actually a 2% decline from 2018.
The San Diego State study found that while women made up higher percentages of other fields in the industry – 24% of producers, or 17% of editors, for example – they only accounted for 17% of the workforce of all the jobs surveyed. And that too, was a 2% decline from the year before.

The University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab (SAIL) revealed how sexism is embodied by characters on the silver screen. If female characters are taken out of the plot, it often makes no difference to the story the study found.

Men’s language was linked with achievement, while their conversations contained more coarse language and was associated with sex and death. “Writers consciously or subconsciously agree to established norms about gender that are built into their word choices,” Anil Ramakrishna, one of the San Diego study’s researchers, said in a Los Angeles Times report.

Upon analysis of 1000 scripts, the study found that there were 7x more male than female writers and 12x more male directors than women.

The biggest impact in counteracting the gender imbalance was if female writers were present at script meetings. If this was the case, female characters on screen was around 50 per cent greater, the study found.

Inherent in these observations of the film industry are powerful messages about what it means to be female.

In our “post-feminist” era, where we are frequently told the problems of girls are yesterday’s news — that girls are awash in the largesse of civil rights, and it is boys who really require our attention — it is worthwhile to consider the conduct of male Hollywood writers and executives.

Actress Geena Davis, founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media

The problem is so glaring that in 2005 actress Geena Davis, who would go on to start her own gender institute, commissioned researcher Stacy Smith, from the University of Southern California, to study the issue and help push the studios beyond the staid male-centred film industry. From 2007 through 2019, according to Smith’s ongoing research, women made up only 30.2% of speaking or named characters in the 100 top-grossing fictional films.

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media reports that films featuring women are financially profitable. “Guess what, Hollywood? Female-led films consistently make more money, year over year,” reported Madeline Di Nonno, the Institute’s chief executive, in a 2021 interview with Variety.
Hollywood actor Charlize Theron has criticized the movie industry for gender bias. Promoting her film Atomic Blonde, she told feminist Bustle magazine: “Fifteen, ten years ago, it was almost impossible to produce female-driven films, in any genre, just because nobody wanted to make it.”

A quiz that was designed to find out how sexist a film might be was developed by Alison Bechdel and Liz Wallace in 1985.

To pass what has become more commonly known as the Bechdel test, the film needed three positive answers to these questions: Does it have more than two named female characters? Do those two women talk with one other? Is that conversation about something other than a man?

The Hollywood Reporter applied the Bechdel test to the top-selling films in 2019, finding that only around half of the films passed the test.

The sheer scale of Hollywood sexism is daunting, the stories of what actresses have to put up with disturbing, the tales of pay inequity and pushing for more female-led stories instructive.

Actress Zoe Kazan (‘The Big Sick’) told IndieWire reporter, Kate Erbland, “There’s so much sexual harassment on set. And there’s no HR department, right? We don’t have a redress. We have our union, but no one ever resorts to that, because you don’t want to get a reputation for being difficult.”

In the lead up to this year’s Oscar ceremony, actress Emmy Rossum sounded off during a Hollywood Reporter roundtable about her experience with overt sexism in the industry.

“I’ve never been in a situation where somebody asked me to do something really obviously physical in exchange for a job, but even as recently as a year ago, my agent called me and was like, ‘I’m so embarrassed to make this call, but there’s a big movie and they’re going to offer it to you. They really love your work on Shameless. But the director wants you to come into his office in a bikini. There’s no audition. That’s all you have to do.'”

If the dynamic of older men and younger, submissive women greases the wheels of Hollywood production offices repeats itself on screen, it is not an accident, but the desires of the producers and directors who create these films played out on the biggest stage of all: Hollywood cinema, the world’s most effective propaganda machine.

Decision 2021 | Day 12 | #Elxn44 | The Ever Changing Landscape

August 26, 2021Decision Canada 2021, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Today, VanRamblings returns to the serious business of covering #Elxn44, after going on a bit of a lark in the column we published yesterday.
Twelve days into our current 36-day election, it’s still anyone’s guess as to how things will turn out come E-Day — Monday, September 20th.
That said, trends have emerged …

Support for the Conservative Party has risen sharply, to 34.7% — a consequence of the party’s traditional base deserting both Jay Hill’s Maverick Party and Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada, and coming home to support the Conservative Party of Canada;
Since The Writ was dropped on Sunday, August 15th, support for Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party has dropped — same thing happened in 2019. The Liberals tend to be slow out of the gate (Justin Trudeau is not a natural campaigner, nor a particularly enthusiastic campaigner. Unlike, say, a Donald Trump, or even a Bill Clinton, Mr. Trudeau doesn’t require the adoration of the electorate … he knows he’s loved by his wife Sophie, his children and his family, and has the support, and more often than not, the friendship of those to whom he’s been close his entire life, or who have come into his orbit in years most recent — no, generally, it takes Mr. Trudeau two to three weeks to rev up his campaign engine and give the campaign the inspiring leadership it requires from its leader, as it dawns on him that there’s a job to be done, and without any ego in the equation, that it is he who is best equipped to provide service of an outstanding humanity and caring to the Canadian people).
Yes, twelve days into #Elxn44 support for the Liberals is down — but, even now, if one was to take Alberta out of the equation, polls would show either a dead heat, or an undeniable advantage to the Grits.

Support for Jagmeet Singh is rock steady at around 20% — the Dippers could pick up as many as a dozen seats. With all of the internal bickering and funds dedicated to run an election being poured into legal fees to oust Annamie Paul, the Green Party is simply not a factor in this election. Meanwhile, support for Yves-François Blanchet’s Bloc Québécois has been in a state of flux — safe to say that they’ll lose at least 10 seats once all the votes have been counted at the end of the 2021 Canadian federal election.

Now, the reason you’ve arrived at the VanRamblings website today — a detailed provincial and regional breakdown of support for the political parties who’ve nominated candidates for office in the 2021 election.
Whether it’s pollster Quitto Maggi at Mainstreet Research — publisher of the provincial and regional polling you’ll find below, or Bruce Anderson and David Coletto at Abacus Data, Jenni Byrne at Jenni Byrne + Associates, David Herle with the Gandalf Group, Shachi Kurl at Angus Reid, Frank Graves at EKOS Research, Nik Nanos at Nanos Research, or folks at any of the other reputable polling companies churning out data on this election, on Day 12 of this Canadian election, the information you’ll find below offers an up-to-date snapshot of the support for the major political parties, and the probable seat count when the election is over. These are still early days, though — next Monday, we’ll be three weeks out from Election Day, and in all likelihood the pollsters and the rest of us will not be able to more accurately predict the outcome of #Elxn44 until after the Thursday, September 10th Leaders’ Debate, and where the polls and the support for the parties and the leaders moves in the last ten days of the election.

As VanRamblings reported on Tuesday, respected British Columbia-based political strategist Mike McDonald continues to believe that Justin Trudeau and the Liberals are on track recapture the 6 seats they lost in 2019 …

“What with raging wildfires burning across the province, and what looks to be the nascent beginning of a fourth wave of the pandemic, climate change and COVID-19 vaccines are two issues that are likely to resonate with British Columbia voters as they head to the polls in mid-September,” suggests McDonald. “Although those are national issues, they might play out in British Columbia more so than other regions. If that comes to pass, the advantage would go to Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.”

Child care is another issue much on the minds of British Columbia voters. Premier John Horgan was the first Canadian Premier to sign on to the Liberal national child care programme — should Erin O’Toole and the Conservatives sweep to victory on September 20th, you can kiss a federally funded national child care programme goodbye. Yes, the polling above suggests both a growth in support for the Tories, and a dip in support for the Grits. VanRamblings is willing to wager that once British Columbians become more acutely aware of what they’d be losing were the Conservatives to sweep to victory — a national child care programme, competent management of the pandemic, and oversight, funding and legislation that would create the safest seniors care programmes anywhere in the developed world — Liberal support will return, with more Grit seats.

If an election were to be called tomorrow in Alberta, NDP leader Rachel Notley would win in a landslide, so unpopular is Premier Jason Kenney.
Who are the most unpopular provincial leaders in Canada? Jason Kenney in Alberta, Brian Pallister in Manitoba — so unpopular that he recently resigned his office — and the incredible disappearing man (he ain’t been seen in 3 weeks), Ontario Premier Doug Ford. And why are Messrs. Kenney, Pallister and Ford so loathed by the majority of citizens in their respective provinces — easy answer that: their complete and utter bungling of the health care file during our current once in century pandemic. And what do these three gentlemen have in common? Yep, you guessed it: they’re all leaders of their respective Conservative parties, with both Mr. Kenney & Mr. Pallister having sat as Tory MPs and Mr. Ford a former federal Tory hopeful.
More successfully than any other jurisdiction across the globe, the Liberal Party of Canada has provided stewardship of COVID-19 and the economy superior to any country in the world, ordered and delivered more vaccine doses per capita than any other country, such that Canada is now the world leader in persons who have received one dose, or are fully vaccinated. What makes anyone in their right mind think that an Erin O’Toole-led Conservative government in Ottawa would perform any better than his provincial counterparts — particularly given Mr. O’Toole’s expressed support for a two-tier health care system, with first-rate, privatized health care for the wealthy, and barely up to standard health care for the rest of us.
And let us not forget, either, that Mr. O’Toole is the only national leader who has not mandated that his party’s candidates be vaccinated (Knocking at the door of a potential constituent: “Yes, I’m your local Conservative Party candidate. Have I been vaccinated? No. I think COVID is a hoax!” Why did she slam the door in my face?), and has repeatedly stated that he opposes Liberal legislation mandating that all federal and federally regulated employees be fully vaccinated, or risk losing their jobs — a federal initiative supported by more than 90% of the Canadian population.
Erin O’Toole & his band of troglodyte Tories protect us from the ravages of the killer fourth wave of the pandemic? Not on your life. No wonder seniors are deserting the Tories in droves, as are any other thinking persons concerned with the common good. Vote Tory? Shyeaah, and sign the death warrants of thousands more Canadians across the breadth of our land.

The Liberals look to reclaim their only Saskatchewan seat — held by former Liberal Cabinet Minister, Ralph Goodale, from 1993 through the 2019 election — while NDP fortunes are also looking up. Premier Scott Moe did Erin O’Toole’s cause no favour, after stating that his government will be privatizing parts of Saskatchewan’s health care system, an initiative fully supported by Mr. O’Toole (although just two days ago he said he was opposed to two-tier health care), and roundly opposed by Mr. Trudeau, who said if re-elected he would move to withdraw health care funding from the province should Mr. Moe move forward on a two-tier health care system.

Yes, at Erin O’Toole’s explicit request (and that of his political staff), Ontario Premier Doug Ford has gone into hiding, so as to not “interfere” with the federal election. Mr. Ford’s presence would do Mr. O’Toole’s cause no good.
Justin Trudeau and the Liberals began this election with the unbridled support of Ontarians, Liberal insider polling having the Liberals at 45% support, and Mr. O’Toole at a measly 27%. So, what happened?
Seems that the electorate in Ontario can’t put two and two together: Mr. O’Toole is a Conservative, and the despised Doug Ford is a Conservative. Does the voting population of Ontario honestly believe that an Erin O’Toole-led Conservative government in Ottawa would do any better job on the pandemic file than Mr. Ford has (mis)managed in Ontario? According to Abacus data, support for Mr. O’Toole remains at 26% (+5 since the onset of the election), while his negatives remain at 41%, for a net score of -15.
Jagmeet Singh enjoys a positive impression among 42% of Ontarians, with negative impressions at 24%, for a net score of +18 — which, if you look at the projected Ontario NDP seat count looks promising for the federal New Democrats, with an increased presence in Ottawa. Justin Trudeau enjoys a positive impression among 39% and negative impressions among 42%, for a net score of -3. The rub? At the time of the 2019 election, 69% of Ontarians wanted change, including 52% who felt strongly about it. Today, 71% of the Ontario voting public want change, including 44% who feel strongly about it. The desire for change seems to be driving the waning support for the Liberals — which is why this week, the federal Liberal party has begun a negative campaign targeting Doug Ford (which proved a very successful strategy in 2019), and will carry on with a well-devised multi-media campaign they believe will cost Erin O’Toole support among Ontarians, particularly those living in the vote rich 905. Politics: it ain’t for wimps. Look for Justin Trudeau’s approvals to climb over the next 24 days.

Premier François Legault and the people of Québec are saving Justin Trudeau’s vegan bacon in the 2021 election — Mr. Legault has not only become Mr. Trudeau’s new best friend, but has sought to help the Liberal cause in the province by not missing an opportunity to deride Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet, as may be witnessed in the Bloc’s plummeting support. Mr. Trudeau: hometown boy made good — not to mention that he’ll be handing over $6 billion scot-free, no questions asked.

Polling has been all over the map for Justin Trudeau since the election began. Polls at election outset had the Liberals sweeping the Maritimes, just as they did in a rout in 2015. On Monday of this week, the polls showed Mr. O’Toole set to win 11 seats, seven of them at the expense of the Liberals. Then, one supposes, the people of the Maritimes remembered when then Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper came to Nova Scotia, and called the people of the Maritimes “ne’er-do-wells and lazy bums.”

“There’s a dependence on the dole in the Maritimes, and hand-outs from the federal and provincial governments that breeds a culture of defeatism across the region,” Mr. Harper boldly stated during what turned out to be a truncated Maritime visit for the Prime Minister back in 2014, making so, so many friends among Maritimers in the process. Which lead, of course, to the Tories being wiped out politically in the Maritimes in the 2015 federal election. Little wonder newly-elected Progressive Conservative leader in Nova Scotia, Tim Houston, did everything in his power to distance himself from Erin O’Toole and the federal Conservatives during the recent provincial election. Memories: they die hard in the Maritimes.

Just like the people of Québec, the good-hearted folks who live in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Newfoundland are coming to the rescue of wrong-headed folks living in British Columbia, Alberta and the Prairie provinces and Ontario 12 days into the current election, folks who haven’t yet gotten their heads on straight, and realized what a disaster it would be for all Canadians to elect a mean-spirited, corporatist party of Trumpian right-wingers, who could give a good goddamn about any of us.

Come Election Day, it’s the seat count that matters — not party percentage popularity.

As the fourth wave of the pandemic grows, look for this election to become the election Mr. Trudeau wanted from the outset: a referendum on how the Liberal party has handled the pandemic over the past 17 months, keeping the public safe and the economy humming, versus the uncertainty of what electing an Erin O’Toole-led Conservative party government would mean for families across Canada, for our seniors population — and for all Canadians.
Look for the Liberal party, the New Democrats and the Bloc to hammer Mr. O’Toole into the ground on the issue of his lack of fitness and that of a Tory administration to govern — in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic.

The Curse of Politics podcast for Thursday, August 26, 2021.

Decision 2021 | Day 11 | Erin O’Toole Declares Early Victory

August 25, 2021Decision Canada 2021, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Reviewing the latest polling results, earlier today Conservative Party leader, Erin O’Toole, declared victory in #Elxn44. Despite the fact that the official election day is still 26 days away, the Tory leader stated that it is clear that his party — the new name of which, he enthusiastically told Canadians this morning, would be the Taliban Party of Canuckistan — would triumph at the polls, declaring the election over, and appointing himself as the “new head of state” of the new, independent republic of the holy state of Canuckistan.

Victory! | Erin O’Toole, the President of the new independent, holy state of Canuckistan

In his victory speech this morning, the once-and-forever President of the independent, holy state of the newly named country of Canuckistan, today “The Toole”, as he likes to be called, addressed loyal Taliban supporters …

“Today is a great day! The new, independent, holy state of Canuckistan will be returned to its rightful place on the world stage, standing side by side with authoritarian leaders and nations who share our values: Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko; Haji Waddaulah, the Sultan of Brunei; Xi Jinping, the President of China; Ali Khamenei; President of North Korea, Kim Jong-un; Vladimir Putin, President of Russia; Recep Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey; Losang Jamcan, Chairman of Tibet; and General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan, the once-and-forever President of Sudan; among a host of other authoritarian leaders ruling across the globe.

Mark this day on your calendar! Today, as my good friend, Premier Jason Kenney has done in the newly-named state of Albertistan, I am declaring that the COVID-19 pandemic is over! Today is a day for us all to rejoice! No more masks, ever! No more vaccines! No more lockdowns! The Taliban Party of Canada is bringing back your freedom and independence, a return to the life you so cherished before the declaration of so-called COVID-19 — I mean, did you ever really believe that there was such a thing as a “pandemic”? I didn’t. Quite simply, it was a government-inspired hoax!”

“Now down to the business of state: no more damn, dirty child care centres. A woman’s place is in the kitchen, barefoot, pregnant and entirely dependent on her husband! And because seniors have failed to support us in this election, we will retroactively move the retirement age to 80 — and eliminate the Guaranteed Income Supplement & all other needless supports for seniors. Decrease the surplus population, we say — if you can’t contribute to the economy, your time is on this planet is done!”

“Climate change? Ain’t no such thing! Drill, drill, drill baby. And while we’re at it, let’s revive the coal industry once and for all, and get rid of that damnable “carbon tax” & tax the communists who drive electric cars.”

“Gays, did you say, gays! We don’t like ’em, never have, never will — no wonder our party didn’t support the banning of God-inspired conversion therapy. And no more of those pervert, so-called “trans” folks in the military — just like our spiritual leader, the once-and-forever American President, Donald Trump, who had the U.S. election stolen from him — we’ll be rooting out those perverts, and sending them to re-education camps and, quite obviously, for much-needed conversion therapy.”

Yes, it’s a new and glorious day in the newly-named state of Canuckistan!
“The Toole” went on to assure Canuckistans that our nation state will adhere to the Darwinian “survival of the fittest” ethos; eliminate taxes for corporations and the wealthy; get rid of the Child Care Benefit (“If you can’t afford children, don’t have ’em”); reinstate the wrongfully-removed Canadian generals; repeal the Canadian Human Right Act; declare the country a republic; remove Mary Simon as Governor General and install Stephen Harper in the newly-created Canuckistan position of Prime Minister; dismiss the justices sitting on the Supreme Court of Canada; move toward the independence and separation of Québec (“We don’t like those Frenchies, anyway, don’t want ’em, don’t need ’em”); will charge Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh and Yves-François Blanchet with treason, and have them imprisoned with all possible haste, while welcoming Maxime Bernier into a prominent position within the new republican government.

In a three-hour speech, “The Toole” went on to tell Canuckistans that his government will serve the interests only of those who voted for him (“Everyone else is an enemy of the state. God help ’em, cuz we surely won’t. Donald Trump taught us that!”); get rid of the CBC (“Those communists! Not one ‘red’ cent will go to that treasonable crew of reprobates”); do away with the Census (“White people like me are the only ones that matter anyway!); remove all Muslims and other foreign enemies of the state and deport them with all possible haste; declare Canuckistan a military state, while declaring Joe Biden’s U.S. an illegitimate rogue state.

Hey, elections don’t matter. Vote any way you want — won’t make one bit of difference.

A new, halcyon day has been declared in Canada. Hallelujah & praise God!

The Curse of Politics podcast for Wednesday, August 25, 2021.