Rational Radical

The Toronto Star columnist ends the year nice and succinctly:

A year of stupidity, from inane to insane — (Rosie DiManno)

It was another year of living stupidly. From the inane to the insane, the follies and the jollies, sometimes tragicomic and often serially silly: Toronto yet again distinguished itself as the city where goofiness never sleeps.  In 2008, we were awash – as per usual – in hapless crooks, helpless mooks and hopeless bureaucracy.  Our judges were not so wise, our cops not so true in blue, our elected officials not so honest.

Doctors abused patients and psychiatrists flipped their ids, perverts ran amok and coaches were run out of town, the poor got needier and the rich got good lawyers.  Mayor David Miller further entrenched his power-of-one, creating an unprecedented fiefdom at city hall, but at least we weren’t Vaughan, where civic dementia reigns.

Conrad Black went to jail, Mats Sundin went to Vancouver and the TTC went on strike.

A court convicted Toronto’s first very own terrorist, a teenager who’d attended an “F- Troop” training camp north of the city. Another court threw up its hands over half a dozen drug squad officers charged with corruption.

And it was a particularly bad year for pooches – poisoned, abducted, hounded to death by the humane society.

Still, most of us made it through 2008 alive, if bruised and not amused.

So, as the clock ticks down, a backwards glance, askance, at the year that was in Toronto and hereabouts, circa ‘08.

SIU rules it was self-defence: Police shoot and kill 15 cattle that wander too close to Highway 401.

Rectum? Almost killed him: Cops find a moaning, middle-aged man with his pants around his ankles, impaled on a metal stake, halfway up a tree in a schoolyard, bleeding from the anus.

Withdrawal complex: A man who works in the financial district turns himself in as the alleged Exchange Bandit – believed responsible for 26 bank heists since 2003.

Full of Shih Tzu: Councillor Rob Ford is forced to apologize to Toronto\’s Asian community for saying “Oriental people work like dogs … they sleep beside their machines.”

IQ-negative: A judge insists an HIV-positive witness don a mask while testifying in his courtroom, then moves the case to a larger courtroom to create more distance between the witness and the bench.

Yolks on you: Toronto Sikhs are bilked of $3 million by a “Swami” scam artist who allegedly pulled winning lottery numbers out of cracked eggs.

Axes of evil: A Brampton court hears a youth belonging to a homegrown terror cell was so good at chopping wood that he was considered an ideal candidate to behead the Prime Minister.

Dog-gone shame: Rambo, a 10-month-old pit bull caught by animal control officers after escaping from his owner’s yard, is condemned to death by euthanasia under province-wide ban on pups of that breed born after 2005.

Terrier-ism: A 21-year-old breeder of Yorkshire terriers is punched in the face by two people who answer his classified ad.

Collared: Two teenagers face theft charges in connection with the disappearance of Huckleberry, a Rosedale-residing chocolate Labrador, after its banker owner arranges to pay $15,000 in ransom.

Death-defying bureaucracy: An insurance company blames computer error for demanding payment on a dead man’s policy – after a cheque had been returned by the bank marked “Payor Deceased.”

Pee-k-a-boo: An anonymous tipster leads police to seize a pinhole camera hidden in the women’s washroom of a busy Mississauga office building.

Sex, knives and videotape: A mother is charged with stabbing one of her daughter’s friends in apparent retaliation after a group of teenagers forced the 13-year-old to get down on her knees and apologize for a sexual betrayal, all of it captured on videotape.

Footnote: A burglar suspected in 40 east-end home break-ins – helping himself to food and drink – leaves behind the biggest clue: His red-trimmed running shoes.

Trash-talking: A citizen advisory panel calls for Toronto to recruit 15,000 garbage “ambassadors” to teach apartment and condo dwellers the virtues of reducing, reusing and recycling.

Abreast of the situation: The pregnant owner of a Newmarket swimming facility hires security guards – who arrive in bulletproof vests – as protection against a threatened protest by supporters of a woman ordered not to breastfeed in the pool.

This will not be countenanced: A Ryerson engineering student is charged with academic misconduct for participating in a Facebook study group.

Nappy-headed politician: Health Minister George Smitherman says he is seriously considering wearing adult diapers for a day to determine whether they are adequate for seniors living in nursing homes.

Grand larceny: A Toronto Symphony Orchestra veteran gets his prized violin back thanks to a bag lady who found the instrument. But the $1,000 reward goes to a couple who paid the woman $35 to give them the violin.

Hic transit gloria: Passengers on a TTC bus call police to report they suspect their driver is drunk.

Pitchman pitchforked: The Toronto actor who played a boorish Scotsman in a series of popular Alexander Keith’s beer commercials is sentenced to 21 months in jail for disseminating child pornography online.

One version of property settlement: A Mississauga former locksmith is convicted of deliberately blowing up his house in an “act of revenge” against his ex-wife.

Vandal scandal: Residents with Liberal lawn signs in St. Paul’s riding receive threatening phone calls, have their brake lines and phone cables cut, homes spray-painted.

Me, myself and I: Mayor Miller spends an extra $400,000 in public money on a newsletter mailed to every Toronto household, largely quoting himself.

Invasion of the body scratchers: Pest Health officials report a 1,000-per-cent increase in bed bug infestation calls.

Bummer: A suspected drug dealer is arrested with crack cocaine stuffed up his rectum.

Pot-pourri: The Kindred Café is busted for allegedly selling pot-laced milkshakes, hot chocolate and baked goods.

Stop the presses – newspapers increase circulation: The Salvation Army announces it will distribute jackets stuffed with newspapers to Toronto\’s homeless this winter.

Theft under … four feet: Six-foot-eight former Toronto police officer Richard Hanna – who sparked the City Hall corruption scandal – is jailed in the Cayman Islands for 15 months for stealing money from schoolchildren.

Hoarse play: Impersonator Suresh Joachim sets a Guinness World Record by singing Elvis songs for 55 hours.

The Sopranos: Nearly 400 women audition for the role of Maria von Trapp in Toronto’s production of The Sound of Music.

The Fired brigade: Leafs, Jays, Argos and Raptors all axe their skippers.

What a dump: Police raid a Parkdale basement apartment where up to eight men had been paying $10 a night for lodging – sharing a bucket in place of a toilet.

When justice is blind … In what was called the “largest police corruption scandal in Canadian history,” a judge stays charges against six Toronto drug squad officers over unreasonable delay and inept handling of the case by the Crown.

… and hearing impaired: After a preliminary hearing that took four years, three cops – including a son of ex-police chief Bill McCormack and the former head of the Toronto Police Association – are ordered to stand trial on 20 charges over allegations of shakedowns in the Entertainment District.

Dr. Horror and Mrs. Hide: A Brampton woman denies her husband is “Dr. Horror,” mastermind behind a massive international kidney-trafficking ring.

Terminal diagnosis: An RCMP study says there are 38 organized crime groups with members or associates working at Pearson International Airport.

Smooth operator: A surgeon who engaged in sexual acts with four women – including twin sisters – who came to him for weight-loss surgeries has his licence revoked.

Minority opinion, major offence: After Toronto trustees okay a black-focused school, a Barrie police investigator is removed from his post for circulating a “racist” email with the subject “Afrocentric Math for Toronto’s new black only school” to officers that read, in part: “Leroy has 2 ounces of cocaine. If he sells an 8 ball to Antonio for $320 and 2 grams to Juan for $85 per gram, what is the street value of the rest of his hold?”

Crash `n’ carry: A burglar uses a $120,000 backhoe to unbolt a change machine from a car wash wall.

Hocus Focus: Local witches picket for hours after a Miss Toronto Tourism Pageant judge is ousted for her Wiccan beliefs.

Kill fee: Ontario’s ombudsman blasts the “financial fiasco” of $1.2 million in legal aid for a veteran Toronto police officer convicted of murdering his mistress.

Hitting an optic nerve: At least five pilots attempting to land at GTA airports complain about someone on the ground shining lasers at their planes that penetrate the cockpit window and flash them in the eye.

Prose and con: Disgraced media baron Conrad Black checks into a Florida prison to begin serving a six-and-a-half year sentence – and probably write another book.

Heir-head: Jonathan David Black, son of you-know, is charged after a luxury car leaves the scene of an accident in the downtown core.

Gotta hand it to him: An armless man, for whom a local church had raised $37,000 to buy prosthetic limbs, is arrested at Pearson with $300,000 worth of heroin – 800 grams in his stomach.

Payoffs yes, playoffs no: A senior executive at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment resigns and five other employees are fired over “ticket irregularities” – allegedly extorting cash payments from season-ticket applicants.

Naturally, they’d all driven to work: TTC workers unexpectedly walk off the job at Friday midnight, stranding thousands of riders throughout the city.

A token gesture: Some 100 TTC riders drop their drawers simultaneously in Toronto’s first annual No Pants Subway Ride.

A toking gesture: Thousands smoke pot near the Legislature in the 10th Global Marijuana March.

And they want it back: The family of a mentally challenged woman claims she was released from Jane-Finch Hospital with an IV needle still in her arm.

Wheels of fortune: Police arrest the owner of a Queen St. W. bike shop after recovering more than 1,500 stolen bicycles.

Dead ringers: Office clerks and salespeople take over the graveyard shift at several cemeteries when gravediggers hit the picket lines.

Cheaters never prosper: Twenty years after his infamous race at the Seoul Olympics, Ben Johnson files a $37 million lawsuit against the estate of his former lawyer for allegedly looting his wealth and failing to protect future earnings.

Joint squad operation: Two Toronto police officers are among those charged with buying and selling properties to convert into marijuana grow operations.

B-arf: Two dogs die and four fall ill from antifreeze poisoning at an off-leash area in High Park.

It beggars belief: Toronto accepts a plan to spend $5 million on more social workers to curb panhandling.

Called to the bar: A Toronto lawyer whose conduct in a Brampton courtroom resulted in two mistrials for the same murder is cited with contempt because she appeared to be drunk.

Shock absorber: A 60-year-old Oshawa electrician is charged after allegedly rigging the shower taps to electrocute his wife.

Shut up already: Rogers Television pulls the plug on Speakers Corner, a Citytv mainstay for 20 years.

Hanging offence: A York University student is forced to remove her pendant – a five-centimetre Colt .45 replica on a chain – before being allowed to board a flight back to Toronto from British Columbia.

Lord’s preyer: A pastor who impregnated a parishioner he terrorized into a sexual relationship – threatening her with evil spirits if she didn’t acquiesce – is sentenced to four years in prison.

Thank you, CM, for this reminder of how much work is left to do to treat some of our more vulnerable individuals with respect and dignity, and to enable them to make the most out of their potential so that they too can contribute to society.

Casting a light on mental illness

OTTAWA — As a math student at Dalhousie University, Michael Kirby would spend long afternoons sitting in the “Roost,” the top floor of his fraternity house, working through differential equations. On occasion, he would know the answer after a quick glance at the problem. “I realize it’s going to take two hours to figure it out,” he would say. “But I can just tell by looking that the answer is x=2.” And usually, recalls his fraternity brother George Cooper, now a prominent Halifax lawyer, he was right. “He could just pierce through the central core,” says Mr. Cooper, “and tell you the answer before he had actually done the heavy lifting to actually be able to prove it.”

The ability to know the answer before others have even framed the question has marked Mr. Kirby’s tenure as the first chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada. The answer is clearer than ever, he says: People with mental illness need a system that serves individuals, not budgets, and a society willing to talk about depression and schizophrenia as openly as it discusses breast cancer. This year he took an important step toward what he sees as the solution: the creation of the country’s first national charity for mental health, modelled on the Canadian Cancer Society and intended to marshal an “army of volunteers” to raise money for research, even as their work raises the profile of mental illness in general. “We’re not talking about a problem that will be solved in two or three years,” he explains over coffee in Ottawa, where he lives when he isn’t crisscrossing the continent attending meetings and giving speeches. “So you’ve got to have something that’s going to keep the movement going, keep it alive.”

Becoming the country’s leading crusader on mental health may seem like an odd topper to a winding resumé: PhD in mathematics, Pentagon analyst, college professor, political strategist, constitutional adviser, senator. In this last post, he co-authored a groundbreaking report called Out of the Shadows at Last, which proposed an overhaul of mental-health services in Canada and led to the formation of the commission, with a 10-year mandate and a $130-million budget from the federal government. Last year, having retired from the Senate in 2006, he became the commission’s chair, declining a salary. “He has become the Energizer bunny of mental health,” says David Goldbloom, vice-chair of the commission and the senior medical adviser of education and public affairs at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. “He is making this a very public issue, getting governments to the table and continuously thinking what he is going to do next.”

Mr. Kirby, 67, who grew up in Montreal, has personal reasons for being passionate about the issue. The son of an Anglican minister, he watched his older sister, Elizabeth, slowly shrink away, consumed by depression in the 1980s. When she was hospitalized, he made his first visit to a psychiatric ward. “It was an eye-opener,” he says. “The first time you meet someone who is seriously mentally ill, you are forced to confront your prejudices.” The longer he spent navigating the system, the more he saw how people struggling with psychiatric problems are ostracized. “It’s hard to think of another illness in which your friends and family would be among the people who treat you the worst,” he says.

And it was only when his sister survived a suicide attempt that the system snapped to attention. Eventually, with the right medication and treatment, she got better. (She died from cancer in 2006.) But, her brother points out, “She had to go a long way down. There was nowhere she could go for easy help early on.” That’s the problem Mr. Kirby is trying to fix with the new charity and his work on the commission, which is focusing on removing the stigma, particularly among young people — “You can change kids,” he says — and in the workplace, where studies suggest mental-health problems are a multibillion-dollar drain on profits.

He always keeps in mind the stories he heard when the Senate committee first held hearings. In particular, he recalls a young woman from a rural community who took the microphone in Newfoundland and spoke about her family, who responded to her depression by telling her to “buck up,” and the long weeks when she couldn’t get out of bed. “The punchline was when she said, ‘I really wished I had breast cancer instead — I wouldn’t have lost my friends. I wouldn’t have lost my family. I wouldn’t have lost my job,’” Mr. Kirby recalls. “When you think of a young woman saying breast cancer is preferable to mental illness, that tells you a huge amount about its impact in people.”

The crazy Jackass phenomenon and all of its derivatives has been credited to (or blamed on) Canada’s own Tom Green (ex of Drew Barrymore).  I admit to finding the Jackass movies some of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, even though I was never really that much into Tom Green.  And I could never see myself lasting more than 3 seconds in a conversation with anyone from Jackass before poking my eyes out.

If you’re into these kinds of shows/movies, then you really have to appreciate how Kenny vs Spenny have elevated the medium to an art form.  No other program combines the craziness of these programs with the wit, creativity, entertainment, scripts, cleverness, twists, and “Holy Sh*t!  I can’t believe he just did that!!!” factor that Kenny Vs Spenny does.  Sure, in some cases you can see the twist coming early on, but overall this is perhaps the bravest program out there.

If you go to this link, you can see a bunch of their programs for your viewing pleasure.

Last night, after a long day of work, I unwound with a mini-marathon, starting with their latest competition, “Who Can Smoke More Weed?“  Have you ever seen anyone smoke weed for real on a “regular” TV program?  They made such fools of themselves but it was amazing to watch.  And I think it was a first for North American TV; it was definitely a first for Canadian TV.

For every episode, pay attention to things such as the music they play–genius.  Each episode, you’re going to want to punch either or both Kenny and Spenny, and/or marvel at Kenny’s evil genius (and shake your head sadly at how pathetic Spenny is).  And you’ll wonder why Spenny keeps agreeing to the Humiliations, even though many of the times Kenny actually loses (I don’t mean he cheats, which he does almost every episode, but he actually loses sometimes) and Spenny should know that and should thus check the footage before agreeing to do the Humiliation.

Anyway, watch how hard Spenny tries to go against his nature as he tries to see “Who Can Piss Off More People?”  And then watch how Kenny acheieves his goal.  What surprised me the most was how insane and funny they can make even the seemingly simplest challenge, such as “Who  Can Wear a Gorilla Sut Longer?” and how much they blow all others out of the water when dealing with things as simple as scatalogical humour in their “Who Can Wear a Diaper Longer?” episode.  Sure, in Jackass the guy took a dump in a display toilet in a hardware store.  But look what Kenny & Spenny do, and how they can develop an entire program–without a second of non-entertainment–around the concept.

If you’re not into this kind of program, please disregard this thread.  If you do enjoy some crazily outrageous humour, show your appreciation for two of the bravest and craziest TV personalities today.  I’m glad they’re getting their due, with TV writing credits in the US for South Park (the creators of which are huge fans of Kenny & Spenny) and other opportunities their show has opened up for them.

I’ve written before about my belief that people who cause automobile accidents should be held accountable for their idiocy, as you can see in this post.  Now Fantino is crusading to implement my suggestion (minus the physical violence…) against morons who don’t adjust to the weather.  Of course, our impotent and incompetent Premiere McGuinty isn’t backing the proposal as he should (at least not initially), since he’s a spineless and ineffective coward.  I really hope more people take up the cause and make this law:

OPP chief: Drivers who crash in bad weather should pay

OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino wants the Ontario government to enact legislation that would make drivers pay for accidents caused by negligence. Fantino’s proposed law would let insurance companies off the hook and make motorists pay for accidents in which they were driving aggressively in poor weather. The head of the Ontario Provincial Police says at least 40 per cent of crashes are caused by people driving too fast in poor conditions and not paying attention.

Public Safety Minister Rick Bartolucci is unavailable for comment, but his office says the ministry is not considering any winter driving amendments to Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act. No one in government would comment on the appropriateness of a top police official taking on the job of elected politicians and drafting a new law.

The offices of Premier Dalton McGuinty, Attorney General Chris Bentley, Transportation Minister Jim Bradley and Bartolucci all declined to answer questions about Fantino’s actions. Fantino says his proposal to make drivers pay for being careless and causing an accident mirrors laws on the books in almost every U.S. state.

Thanks CM:

Once again, as I’ve blogged about frequently (most recently in this post, which contains links to earlier related posts), the drug companies have their greedy, unethical, immoral hands everywhere.

Nobel corruption probe launched

Swedish anti-corruption agents are investigating allegations that pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca influenced the awarding of this year’s Nobel Prize in medicine. “I have formally instigated, or started, a criminal investigation,” Swedish anti-corruption prosecutor Nils-Erik Schulz told the Star in a telephone interview from Stockholm yesterday. Schulz’s investigation was sparked by claims in the European press that AstraZeneca’s sponsorship of two Nobel promotional companies – Nobel Media and Nobel Web – influenced the choice for this year’s prize in medicine. As well, two Swedish academics on the committee have close ties to AstraZeneca – one sits on the company’s board of directors, while the other was a former consultant to the pharmaceutical company.

Part of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded this fall to Harald zur Hausen, a German scientist who discovered the links between human papilloma viruses and cervical cancer. The discovery could be a financial bonanza for AstraZeneca, which holds the patents on ingredients in the vaccines used to fight the viruses.  AstraZeneca stands to make millions from Gardasil, made by Merck, as well as GlaxoSmithKline’s Cervarix, thanks to patents it holds.

I don’t know how he can even feign surprise; everyone except for our Finance Minister seems to have known what’s been going on.  Did he think it was better to pretend everything was fine?  Of course, this is the same trick Paul Martin and Jean Chretien used to pull every year, as I’ve written about.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty acknowledged for the first time yesterday that Canada’s economy and federal government finances are in much worse shape than he thought only weeks ago. Just three weeks after saying that the federal budget was on track for modest surpluses, Flaherty admitted there will now be a deficit of at least $5 billion next year.

“It’s quite clear on the basis of the forecasts and the continuing declines in the forecast that there will be a deficit,” said Flaherty in Saskatoon after meeting with his provincial counterparts at a brainstorming session. He also admitted for the first time the economy would suffer an outright contraction in 2009 – the first in 18 years. He said economic growth next year would decline by 0.4 per cent. In his November economic statement, he said the economy would show slight but positive growth of 0.3 per cent in 2009.

Speaking of finances, McGuinty is proving once again how unfair, unrealistic and impotent he is:

McGuinty admits property assessments are unrealistic

Municipal property assessments that were mailed to homes across Ontario this fall are “unrealistic” given the dramatic price drops in the real estate market, Premier Dalton McGuinty admitted today. Despite that, the province will not direct Ontario’s Municipal Property Assessment Corp. to scrap the 2008 assessments – the first in several years – and do fresh ones in 2009. Instead, McGuinty called on municipal governments to recognize that the assessments are out of date when they prepare local property-tax bills. “You would hope that municipal councils would act reasonably and responsibly given the circumstances and recognize that that perhaps was an unrealistic assessment,” McGuinty said at his year-end news conference.

A homeowners group and the opposition parties quickly blasted McGuinty’s comments as out of line. “There’s nothing municipalities can do; if it’s unrealistic it’s unrealistic,” said Bob Topp of the Coalition After Property Tax Reform. “Some people are going to have huge increases way out of line with what their properties are now worth. Municipalities are powerless to do anything about that.

Most university students–and all psychology students–have heard of the infamous Milgram experiment, in which the majority of people continued to shock somebody to the point that most or all of them must have believed he was dead or seriously injured.  Here is an update, found in the Globe & Mail (thank you, TP):

WASHINGTON — Some things never change.

Scientists said on Friday that they had replicated an experiment in which people obediently delivered painful shocks to others if encouraged to do so by authority figures. Seventy per cent of volunteers continued to administer electrical shocks – or at least they believed they were doing so – even after an actor complained that they were painful, Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University in California found. “What we found is validation of the same argument – if you put people into certain situations, they will act in surprising, and maybe often even disturbing, ways,” Dr. Burger said in a telephone interview. “This research is still relevant.”

Dr. Burger was replicating an experiment published in 1961 by Yale University professor Stanley Milgram, in which volunteers were asked to deliver electric “shocks” to other people if they answered certain questions incorrectly. Prof. Milgram found that, after hearing an actor cry out in pain at 150 volts, 82.5 per cent of participants continued administering shocks, most to the maximum 450 volts. The experiment surprised psychologists, and no one had tried to replicate it because of the distress suffered by many of the volunteers who believed they were shocking another person.

“When you hear the man scream and say, ‘Let me out, I can’t stand it,’ that is the point when the real stress that people criticized Milgram for kicked in,” Dr. Burger said. “It was a very, very, very stressful experience for many of the participants. That is the reason no one can ethically replicate the experiment today.”

‘Surprising and disappointing’

Dr. Burger modified the experiment – stopping at the 150-volt point for the 29 men and 41 women in his experiment. He measured how many of his volunteers began to deliver another shock when prompted by the experiment’s leader – but instead of letting them do so, stopped them. In the original experiment, 150 volts seemed to be the turning point.

In Dr. Burger’s modified experiment, 70 per cent of the volunteers were willing to give shocks greater than 150 volts. At one point, researchers brought in a volunteer who knew what was going on and who refused to administer shocks beyond 150 volts. Despite the example, 63 per cent of the participants continued administering shocks past 150 volts. “That was surprising and disappointing,” Dr. Burger said.

He found no differences among his volunteers, aged 20 to 81, and carefully screened them to be average representatives of the U.S. public. Dr. Burger said the experiment, published in the American Psychologist, can only partly explain the widely reported prisoner abuse at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or events during the Second World War.

“Although one must be cautious when making the leap from laboratory studies to complex social behaviours such as genocide, understanding the social psychological factors that contribute to people acting in unexpected and unsettling ways is important,” he wrote. “It is not that there is something wrong with the people,” he said. “The idea has been somehow there was this characteristic that people had back in the early 1960s that they were somehow more prone to obedience.”

I wouldn’t usually post such a message, but this one definitely belongs here:

Subject: An Obituary printed in the London Times

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years.  No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm; life isn’t always fair; and maybe it was my fault.  Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot, spilled a little in her lap and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents Truth and Trust, by his wife Discretion, his daughter Responsibility, and his son Reason. He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers: I Know My Rights; I Want It Now; Someone Else Is To Blame; and I’m A Victim.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

Poor telemarketer…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5z4Vs26-TI&feature=related

This link might bring a smile to your face–all three videos.  The first one is the one I can watch over and over and zen-zone out.

Obama’s nod to ‘bigot’ sparks backlash 

MARK AVERY/REUTERS FILE PHOTO

Pastor Rick Warren greets Barack Obama at the Civil Forum on the Presidency at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. in this Aug. 16, 2008 file photo.

Liberal Democrats object to choice of right-wing pastor as invocation choice
President-elect Barack Obama is dealing with an angry backlash from the liberal base of the Democratic party after he gave a prominent inauguration role to a well-known pastor who opposes gay marriage and abortion rights. Obama defended his decision to have Pastor Rick Warren, a best-selling author and minister at a California megachurch, deliver the invocation Jan. 20, but his choice marks the first head-on collision between inclusive politics and a disappointed base that worked for his November election.

The selection of Warren is particularly hurtful to America’s gay and lesbian community because he was an outspoken advocate of banning gay marriage in California. Voters chose to ban such marriage in the state under the Proposition 8 referendum, leading to mass demonstrations by gays in the state.

Warren has likened gay marriage to pedophilia and incest.

“It’s hard to begin a ceremony aimed at bringing the country coming together by giving the microphone to someone fresh off a campaign in which he was determined to take away rights,” said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry. The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights organization, said Warren’s opposition to gay marriage is a sign of intolerance. “Let me get right to the point,” campaign president Joe Solmonese said in a letter to the president-elect’s transition office. “Your invitation to Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) Americans. “Our loss in California over the passage of Proposition 8 which stripped loving, committed same-sex couples of their given legal right to marry is the greatest loss our community has faced in 40 years. “By inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.”

Warren has emerged as the nation’s best-known religious leader, becoming the self-described heir to ultraconservative James Dobson and his Focus on the Family.He is also a leading advocate for those suffering from HIV/AIDS and anti-poverty issues.

While Warren will give the invocation, the benediction on inauguration day will be given by Rev. Joseph Lowery, an 87-year-old legend of the civil rights movement who is a supporter of gay rights. “I think that it is no secret that I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans,” Obama said in Chicago. “It is something that I have been consistent on, and I intend to continue to be consistent on during my presidency.”

Obama does not support gay marriage but does support civil unions. He has said that “it is important for America to come together, even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues.” He recalled that Warren invited him to speak at his church two years ago even though their differences on gay rights and abortion were well known. “What we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere … where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans,” Obama said.

The liberal People For the American Way said Warren deserves praise for some of his work on climate change, AIDS and poverty. “But,” said its president Kathryn Kolbert, “he has repeated the religious right’s big lie that supporters of equality for gay Americans are out to silence pastors. “He has called Christians who advance a social gospel Marxists. He is adamantly opposed to women having a legal right to choose an abortion.”