The long, dark con

After seeing the above picture posted on Reddit.com, I wrote to the good people at http://www.answersingenesis.org who erected the billboard:

It's a historical fact that more people have been murdered in the name of Christianity than any other religion in the history of mankind.

If a person needs the fear of hell to keep them from murdering, stealing or otherwise breaking the law, then that person is deficient and flawed on a most fundamental level. The rest of rational society doesn't commit murder or thievery, or other crimes, because we simply know that it's wrong to do so.

The Christian bible is filled with genocide, rape, murder, adultery, bestiality, insanity and megalomania. It's the last text I would use to guide my life.

Even Christians, today, can't manage it, what with their seamless hatred of the poor, their "holier than thou" attitude toward pornography, hatred of gays, minorities, and their ubiquitous prejudice against anyone who is not of their denomination. That, I think, is the crowning turd of Christianity -- the unending infighting among its various sects. All proclaim to love Jesus Christ and serve God, and yet resent, hate and cluck their tongues at anyone who is not of their particular sliver of faith. How Catholics glower at Protestants, and how each Protestant cult sneers at the other. All the while, carrying out heinous acts in the name of Jesus -- whether it's killing abortion doctors, picketing soldiers' funerals, or sending the country's troops into foreign countries on "crusades" in the name of oil.

Or, better yet, those execrable televangelists: a shower of pimps, making money off the crucifixion of Jesus Christ like a Times Square hustler and his hookers.

And now Christians are placing billboards around the country attacking atheists who don't believe in fictional, invisible deities who speak to people in self-contradicting books.

Atheists are to be feared?

Tell that the people of Afghanistan. Tell that to the 1.4 million-plus people dead in Iraq. Tell that to the peasants of Honduras, who've been murdered in droves by monsters schooled by the good Christians at the School for the Americas.

I'll tell you, people don't call Christianity "the long, dark con" for nothing. To paraphrase the late comedian, George Carlin: Christians believe in an invisible man in the sky who sees and hears everything, but gives no indication of his presence, who watches and judges us, and if we displease him, he'll damn us to hell to suffer for eternity . . . but he loves us.

What utter, unmitigated, unadulterated bullshit.

Harper Government to spend $60 billion on new fighter jets for Canada

To a Member of Parliament who tends to respond to all communiques with a combination of Hallmark Cards and the Ministry of Truth:

Quick word game. Which word doesn't belong in the list:

Canada
Responsibility
Sound Research
Jet Fighters

I know you squiggled your mouse arrow over "Responsibility", but the correct answer is "Jet Fighters."

I understand the Harper Government Brain Trust seeks to spend $60 billion on jet fighters for Canada, while cutting $200 million from funding for research and monitoring of the environment. I'll bet those Tar Sands people sure find those environmental studies tiresome, and I'll bet those Tar Sands people are very generous contributors to anyone who can make tiresome obstacles in their path to the bank go away.

Now, I understand that the current fleet of Canadian fighter jets have seen a lot of action over the decades, what with the attempted Libyan invasion of 1972, the Lichenstein air power grab of 1974 over Labrador, Russia's famous and brazen sneak attack of 1977. And who could forget Cuba's numerous attempts to attack Canada by air: in 1981, '83, '87, '92, '93, '94, '97 and '99. Of course, this is not to forget the 1967 attempt by Greenland to overtake Canada with its fleet of walrus skin zeppelins, thinking we'd be too busy making merry over our Centennial to notice. Oh, but we noticed. And handed their Greenlandic asses to them -- via our superiority in the air, of course.

All these acts of aggression are ingrained in the Canadian psyche. Aside from worrying just how badly the Maple Leafs will do in a given year, Canadians are obsessed and terrified to think from where the next act of air aggression will come.

Thank goodness we've got the Harper Government -- always thinking, always working the angles -- to rescue Canadians from their anxiety, having the heart and fortitude to spend $60 billion of our tax dollars on a gleaming new fleet of fighter jets. Not even President-elect Michelle Bachmann would dream of attacking Canada knowing those lethal gems sit at the ready on our soil.

Thing is, I may have my history a little wrong. I might have remembered one or two too many attempted invasions from the past. I did forget to mention the FLA Crisis of 1970 and vital role Canadian fighter jets played in suppression that attempted coup d'etat.

I might have my history a little wrong, but I've got my present sufficiently sorted out to know that the Harper Government is subverting nearly every Canadian virtue in its relentless campaign to make Canada "America North." Whether it's bringing a Prison Industrial Complex to Canada and forcing these ridiculous, proven-to-be-ineffective mandatory minimums to courtrooms around the country, to handing over border security to the Americans (US Attorney General Eric Holder was recently lavish in his thanks for that), to the splintering and hobbling StatsCan and now defunding our research and monitoring of the environment.

(Right -- you insult and slap-down StatsCan saying its long form census questionnaire invades Canadians' privacy, and yet in your Bill C51, you want to monitor Canadians' every move on the Internet. Conservatives thy name is Hypocrite!)

What I don't understand is if Conservatives hate Canada so much, why in the world do you remain. There are tons of little breakaway republics around the world; little theocracies still living in the 12th century, where I thnk you'd be very happy.

The only consolation to the abomination of your governing is that you're quickly reminding Canadians why voting Conservative is just not an option; why your flavor of conservatism should go the way of Brian Mulroney's PC party.

Harsh words in court have legal experts pondering how accused survived

Canadian legal experts and court-watchers are in a state of shock and nauseated disbelief after a Windsor judge unleashed a seismic tongue-lashing on Ahmed Ahmed -- not to be confused with the other Ahmed Ahmed -- an offender who'd been caught by police with 3.9 grams of crack inside anus.

First, Judge Rawlins sentenced Ahmed to a staggering 30 days house arrest.

Next, Judge Rawlins compounded that devastating sentence with two years (24 months!) probation.

If this judicial one-two punch didn't already have Ahmed reeling, surely Judge Rawlins' coup de grace all but psychologically destroyed him:

The judge decreed that Ahmed is banned from entering Essex county for the duration of his probation.

Women fainted. Infants had to be rushed from the courtroom. Crown and defense attorneys brought their hands to their mouths as though ready to be sick. The bailiff -- suddenly pale and unsteady on his feet -- had to be escorted from the courtroom by his understudy.

This statement had other members of the court gallery reflexively reaching for the portable defibrillation device mounted on the wall. Others instinctively broke the glass on the wall mounts housing a fire hose and emergency axe. Anything to defend the defendant from this verbal onslaught, such a tide of venomous rhetoric that it was!

But Judge Rawlins was not finished with the spiritually diminished, quivering shell of a drug mule. She tersely added:

"What I want you to do is keep your drugs in Toronto. . . Detroit makes Toronto look like Toronto the Good . . . We don’t need to import people from other jurisdictions to bring drugs to Windsor. We have plenty coming across the border. Drugs, guns, we have it up to here."

"It was . . . too much," said Samuel Grimfall, a court blogger and advocate for criminals' rights. "Who could endure such a verbal assault? I believe Mr. Ahmed has a very clear-cut case for the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. I'll testify as his first witness."

"I think Judge Rawlins should be arrested and charged with crimes against humanity," said a visibly shaken Sheila Goodnightbridge, former Liberal MP candidate. "She should be hauled off to the Hague and given a tongue-lashing of her own! See how she likes it!"

Still other court-watchers wondered how Ahmed physically endured such a verbal barrage.

Canadian judges, known far and wide for holding the very fabric of civilization together with their supple, pink hands -- so great is their power -- have a reputation for verbal ruthlessness when it comes to reprimanding drug dealers, rapists, murders and child abusers. Words like "disappointed" "riff raff" and "unconscionable" are used with startling frequency.

The question is: how does a mere mortal -- a human being not averse to tucking 3.9 grams of crack cocaine up his second major orifice -- survive a verbal vivisection from one of Canada's judicial titans?

That question will be debated for decades to come.

The only consolation in this monstrous display of power came from Ahmed's defense attorney, Neil Rooke, who said of his client's acceptance of this stiff sentence: "He was content with that. [The ban from Essex County for 24 months] was not an issue for him."

Well, thank Gawd for that! The drug mule arrested with 3.9 grams of crack cocaine in his anus was content with the conditions of his sentence.

Could you imagine if a convicted drug offender wasn't content with the conditions of his sentence?

Could you imagine what message that would send to the criminal community?

Southwestern Ontario might earn a bad reputation among the province's underworld.

But crisis was averted -- Ahmed was content. That's all that matters.

Unfortunately, Judge Rawlins remains on the bench, ready to perform another verbal courtroom autopsy on another unsuspecting suspect.