2017-01-31

An Open Letter to Adobe Acrobat

Quebec City and the Bush Doctrine

I think we can all agree that Alexandre Bissonnette went at least a half-step too far.

But ironically enough, despite endless media portrayals about him being a "Trump fan", his "get them over there before they get us over here" philosophy is straight out of George W. Bush (pbuh)'s playbook.

In fact, the idea that we need to kill terrorists and terrorist sympathizers before they bomb our malls and storm our churches, which so clearly motivated Mr. Bissonnette has in fact been routinely stomped on by Donald Trump. He doesn't want to blow up their training camps. He just wants to keep them on the far side of the United States border.

The real estate mogul insisted the U.S. should have a lighter footprint around the world and slammed the Bush doctrines belief in nation building. Trump said he would prefer to spend our valuable resources domestically.
“I do think it’s a different world today, and I don’t think we should be nation-building anymore,” Trump said to the Post. “I think it’s proven not to work, and we have a different country than we did then. We have $19 trillion in debt. We’re sitting, probably, on a bubble. And it’s a bubble that if it breaks, it’s going to be very nasty. I just think we have to rebuild our country.”
Trump also questioned the need for the U.S. to continue its current role in NATO, insisting that American taxpayers are footing the bill for Europe.
“We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore,” the billionaire said. He also added later, “NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO, but we’re spending a lot of money.”
Republican President George W. Bush led America into a war to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but the GOP’s presumptive nominee continues to buck his party by refusing to support that decision. Speaking in North Carolina on Tuesday, Donald Trump exposed the folly of an Iraq war that turned Iraq into a breeding ground for radical Islam.
“Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, right? He was a bad guy. Really bad guy,” Trump told the crowd. “But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t talk. They were a terrorists. It was over. Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism.”
So while the debate rages about whether Alexandre Bissonnette really was a Trump fan or not, one thing is very very clear: his decision to make a preemptive strike against Muslim extremists operating in Quebec wouldn't make President Trump a fan of him.

2017-01-29

Star Trek puts the Klingon Negh'Var class ship in every TV finale

The Negh'Var class long-range torpedo ship (okay, it's not, but I've played enough Birth of the Federation that it's what I think of it as) is the largest Klingon ship (to date) ever shown on film. And by film, of course, I mean TV. It has never appeared in any of the films.

But what it does have is the interesting distinction, not well-published, of appearing in every Star Trek series finale.

The ship model was created for the final TNG episode "All Good Things..." where it famously curdled the USS Pasteur as the two Captain Picards searched the Devron system for an anti-time eruption that they actually caused even though it's supposedly all three Enterprises that generated it.


They got their commuppance however: it turns out the Klingons are no match for a super-powerful USS Enterprise with a giant laser cannon of death.


That much money spent on models can't just be wasted, however, and when the Klingons made waves on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine it was time to dust off the old prop and throw it on screen as the new Klingon flagship, the I.K.S. Negh'Var. Once the Dominion War was in full swing, the Klingons had a raft of them (the mirror universe Klingon-Bajoran-Cardassian Alliance had a giant one that it's best that we stop talking about because the later mirror universe episodes stunk to high heaven), and therefore when the Alpha Quadrant's forces leave Deep Space Nine for the final confrontation on Cardassia Prime in the clunkily named "That Which You Leave Behind", of course you'll see the Negh'Var four times at once. A barrel of bloodwine to the first man who steps over the rotting corpses of dead Cardassians!


A couple years later is was time for Star Trek: Voyager's final episode, the infamously bad "Endgame". In an alternate-universe "All Good Things" a super-powered Enterprise took care of two Negh'Var in the year 2395. "Endgame" takes place in an alternate-universe nine years later in 2404, and now somehow two massive Negh'Var warships are no match for an old woman, a shuttlecraft, and a ship inexplicably captain'd by Harry Kim.

There is no honour in being outmaneuvered by a woman driver

It has nothing to do with the Negh'Var mind you, but did you notice (as I didn't during my review) that at the end of Endgame there is an Excelsior, Galaxy, and Defiant class ship reflecting the previous TV series (or the movies, in the Excelsior case). It's a nice little nod-back, even though obviously the Enterprise-D has long since been replaced by the Enterprise-E, and it would at best be the re-renamed USS Defiant since the original was destroyed by the Breen, and Sisko is currently floating in some wormhole-alien aether right now. Still, nice touch.


So three series finales, three appearances of the same awesome Klingon warship. "But wait!" I can hear you exclaim, "what about the other series finales"? Well, you may not know it, but the Negh'Var makes an appearance in those as well.

Everybody remembers that Riker and the Enterprise-D appears in "These Are the Voyages..." (First TV Drama called the episode "Trip dies in Riker's holodeck"), but did you notice the Klingon warship they snuck into one of Connor Trinneer's big acting scenes?


But this is nothing new. Hell, they've been putting the I.K.S. Negh'Var in TV finale episodes since 1969.

2017-01-28

President Trump's first week of office


President Monkey is no more.



As President-Elect Donald Trump becomes President Donald Trump, it's time to take a look at his first week of office.

Not unexpectedly, Sean Hannity on his radio show was very excited about that first week. It was "refreshing", he said, that Trump was getting stuff done. The problem with President Monkey though wasn't that he didn't get things done, it's just that every thing he did was evil and horrible. Meanwhile, Scott Adams says that Trump the Master Persuader (there are lots of pros and cons about Trump in office, but hearing another 8 years of persuasion and hypnosis talk from the Dilbert creator has to rank up there in the list of cons) is winning his first week because he's doing so many things to outrage the far-left media that it exhausts the mental prowess of the average human being and leaves them unable to express any concrete emotions about what Trump has done.

Meanwhile, I think there's one U.S. pundit who did a decent job explaining why Trump did what he did: Ned Ryun told Brietbart News that it was good that Trump was going full speed on his legislative agenda because the left will hate him no matter what he does, so he might as well be aggressive.

This is a good point, and it's a shame that U.S. pundits don't pay enough attention to Canadian politics because had they done so, they'd know there were already strong precedents about this: specifically, the Rt. Honourable Stephen Harper (pbuh).

As I have mentioned before, the biggest problem with Harper was that he moved too slowly. His plan was to not spook easily spooked Ontario voters and CBC followers, and maintain a slow and easy centre-left agenda. His most radical move was abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board, which was hugely popular with most western farmers and really only negatively impacted a small number of leftist fake farmers. Everything else was pretty low key really. And what was the result of this decade-long experiment with slow sensible moves that were never more than centrist or centre-right?

The left treated him like Hitler and wanted to murder him.

Sound familiar? Yes it's interesting that Trump started his first day in office at the same level of lefist outrage that Harper accumulated by the end of his reign. But the end result is that there's nowhere really left to go. They're going to hate him anyways, so he might as well go full bore from Day 1. That's the lesson that Harper should have learned: the media and the left will never treat conservatives fairly, they will never like what you do, so you might as well go full power. That's what Rachel Arab in doing in Alberta. And it's what President Donald J. Trump is doing in America.

And to do one final balance with the Canadian political scene under Harper, I do have to say one major issue I have with both Trump and Harper's agendas (agendum?) is that while they are doing the right thing, they aren't necessarily doing it the right way.

Note: I'm not the only one to notice this. Small Dead Animals commenter "first timer" posted the following:
Agree that the right needs to be united, and it cannot be under the PC banner. This is what happened in Sask. If true conservatives end up in leadership (and that means mainly Wildrose people) it could be a viable alternative. (Heck, the residents of the local SPCA would be a viable alternative to Notley.) The difference between the last attempt at amalgamation under Smith is that at that time, the PC's would have been absorbing the Wildrose. It would be the other way now. But they need a new name, and they need a clearly conservative platform, and to purge any who espouse "reaching out" to the left end of the spectrum. Brexit and Trump showed us that true, honest conservative platforms can win. No need to worry what the prog media calls you - just be what so many of the people have been longing for, and what the economy needs.
But we cannot take another 4 years. Word on the street here is that citizens will vote for ANYTHING that smacks of honesty, to get rid of Notley & co. So all they have to do is get their crap together and quite trying to appeal to some imagined middle ground.
Unfortunately, that elusive "middle of the road" platform is only defined by media pundits. As the left moves further and further into utter whack job territory, the middle point between them and common sense (socially and economically) shifts to the left, too. Witness the federal Liberal party, who attempt to brand themselves as middle ground. They are further to the left than the NDP was 20 years ago.
Forget them all! Forget trying to look good to the socialist media. Be what you need to be - honest about true conservative, realistic policies. Let the snowflake heads explode - they will hate you anyway. Remember Farage and Trump!

Years ago, I criticized Harper for his use of omnibus bills to achieve his legislative goals. There wasn't a single part in the omnibus bills I disagreed with, however I thought it wasn't proper to use them. Instead, each item on his agenda should have been individually brought forward in Parliament to be voted into (perfectly reasonable) law.

The same issue arises with Trump: his use of executive orders to achieve his goals is disappointing, even if you agree with every single one of the orders (which, with the exception of the money to build the wall, I do). If Keystone XL is being held up by excessive government red tape (as even President Monkey agreed that it was) then the solution is not to use executive powers of the Oval Office to "cut through them". The solution is to enact legislation through the House and/or Senate (and then approved by the President) to permanently remove the red tape, or the agency responsible for creating it. Abolishing excessive federal oversight of private economic matters is more legitimate and more effective if done properly. Executive orders may save Keystone but it doesn't help the next project coming down the pipeline, nor the next, nor the next.

Trump has a rare gift: the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate are all in Republican hands. He doesn't need to take any action through administrative short cuts. In a way, it's the downside of having a corporate CEO type in power (especially one as hands-on as Trump is famous for being): when the boss wants something done, he's used to just ordering it to be done. It can work in a corporate scenario because the boss has some legitimacy as the boss. However, in a democratic country the notion of the President as "the boss" is an unhealthy one. Democratic government is supposed to be of the people. The People themselves have hired a whole raft of people to represent them in this capacity, and there are clear ways in which all branches of government can be used to push an agenda forward. Trump's agenda is aggressive, it's necessary, and it's sensible. There's no reason not to do the right thing in the right way.

The left will still hate him. But his agenda can still go forward, and send a powerful message that the President isn't supposed to have all this power. The office does have this power, but unfortunately Trump is going with his business instincts and using it. A Peter David Star Trek novel once said "the correct answer when asked where to draw the line is to refuse to pick up the pen in the first place". It's good advice. Now that Trump is President, it's shame he isn't following it.

Why faggots like Ellen and @mikesbloggity are the cause of mental illness

Last Wednesday was #BellLetsTalk day, where every use of the hashtag resulted in a donation from Bell Media to mental health causes across the country. $6.5M was raised for the 2017 campaign partially thanks to help from a celebrity with a mental illness herself: Ellen Degenerate, who has the mental illness where she is attracted to the wrong sex, brought up the campaign on her talk show.

Also with #BellLetsTalk comes a variety of tweets from people who have had friends and family lost to suicide. As so often happens, you'd be surprised (and by that, of course, I mean not surprised) that so many of them are queers.



Disclaimer: Mike Morrison molests 15 year old boys and tries to groom them into his disgusting sexual perversions.

The thing to remember about fags committing suicide is that the desire to sodomize other men is itself a major mental illness. If pillow biting predators like @MikesBloggity stopped endorsing this sick lifestyle choice, more poofters might chose to abandon their immoral urges and discover - shock of all shocks -- that it leaves them more mentally stable.