THANK YOU, AMERICA!!

The election has been called!

Joe Biden is the next President of the United States and Kamala Harris is the next Vice President!

Time to bust out the champagne and drink that down with a little sweet Holly Cole. Hallelujah!

I Can See Clearly Now - Holly Cole

Four Years Later. And the Meaning of Remembrance Day.

Heroes fight fascism. They don't equivocate. They don't both-sides-it. They don't groom it with curated language to make it palatable enough to shove down our throats. 

They fight it. 

This Remembrance Day, after a hellish four years of supporting and encouraging my American friends not to succumb to the fascism that was at their door, the bravery of those heroes is suddenly, vividly, clear to me. 

With the strife boiling now in the USA some are asking if the fight is worth it. So let's begin with Tommy Douglas who defines our enemy beautifully:

 "Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."  -Tommy Douglas

Tommy Douglas is voted The Greatest Canadian - Learn Why

It's breathtaking how the lies they spouted back then are the same lies they spout now. Taxpayers have the right to determine where and how their tax dollars will be used and have a say in their destiny. Which upsets fascists. How many decades do we have to hear the lie before we realize we already know the ending of this movie?

The past four years have taught me that comfort, peace and security has its dangers. Complacency is the enemy. As long as they keep chipping away at our democracy, the more we have to remain alert and active to hold onto it. The USA has prevailed. This time. We have to learn from their experience. Do your research. Challenge what you're told online. Look things up. Get the history behind the issue to see the full picture. Above all, test what you've heard or read by examining the fruit of the declaration. Did it lead to a better life for people or did it cause harm or did it stall the progress of the majority for the benefit of the minority? Ask! Don't take my word for it. 

And at the end of the day, when you feel overwhelmed by the clanging gongs on social media, watch this:

Henry V - St. Crispin's Day Speech

Heroes gave everything to fight fascism and win for me a soft, comfortable life. I owe it to them to wake up and fight in my corner for the generation to come. 

Suit up. Swords at the ready. 

My Favourite American

Beau of the Fifth Colum

"A southern journalist who's tired of the lack of common sense in the world."

He's all that and a bag of chips.

That is all. 

Facebook shows its Evil Side

My love for Facebook is zero as many of you know.

Since it was unleashed on the world, young people have suffered increasingly from depression and anxiety levels have shot up in adults. It is not a fun, benign platform for folks to share pictures of their pets doing cute things. It is a frequently nasty cesspool of misinformation, hate speech and trolling fertilized by unbridled corporate greed.

But hey, that's just my opinion.

When I was blocked from joining due to my last name, I decided to make no attempt to appease the Great God Zuckerberg by sending his minions my personal identification. If he's too fucking stupid to program his AI to recognize the Doolittle name, then he doesn't deserve my eyeballs or my data.

Speaking of data....

This arrived in my inbox this morning from Friends of Canadian Broadcasting:

Dear Nadine,

As you and I concentrate on our families' health and safety in the midst of this pandemic, a small news item popped up under the radar: Facebook is suing the Canadian people. Maybe they thought we weren't paying attention.

Here's some background. Last year, Daniel Therrien, Canada's privacy commissioner, ruled that Facebook broke the law when it allowed our private information to be sold to Cambridge Analytica without our consent. That's the firm which led Donald Trump's misinformation offensive online.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, his lackeys, and his lobbyists have decided that the Privacy Commissioner, an officer of Parliament, shouldn't be allowed to tell them how to treat Canadians' private information. So they're going to court to sue Canada – you and me – for having the nerve to govern our own country.

This is just the latest example of US tech companies pushing us around. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix: they don't follow our rules and they don't pay our taxes. So while you and I band together to ensure that Canadians make it through this crisis in good health, these outlaws are suing us so for the right to keep screwing us.

We can't let Facebook and other foreign tech companies decide what our laws should be. We must stand up for our values and our sovereignty.

Facebook and Google have decimated our media. They've claimed the content of Canada's journalists and creators as their own. They take it, for free, and make billions of dollars selling ads. Meanwhile, Canada's creators, artists and journalists are going bankrupt in huge numbers.

Enough. It's time for Canada to stand up for itself, and impose stringent regulations and taxes on foreign owned tech giants.

Send a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau now

By sending your message now, you're making it clear that you want Canada to stand up for itself. Thank you.

Best regards,

Daniel Bernhard
Executive Director
FRIENDS of Canadian Broadcasting

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Zuckerberg is an asshole, but I'm not going to write PM Trudeau about this when he has enough to deal with right now. And battling the false information being distributed through Facebook about COVID-19 isn't helping matters.

But I will post this as a Public Service Message to my fellow Canadians. When you find yourself reading ripped off news items on Facebook, just remember the lawsuit your nation is facing in the middle of a pandemic because of this billionaire asshole, and conduct yourself accordingly.

What can you do?

Don't click on any ads you're shown. That cuts right into Zuckerberg's revenue by driving advertisers away when they realize Facebook doesn't produce a return on investment. Use the platform to connect but give away as little information as possible. Don't take any surveys. It's like having a private conversation on a crowded train. Talk, but in a lowered voice.

And if you can, delete your account and liberate yourself from the swamp. Your mental health will thank you. Lots of people function brilliantly without Facebook. But if that's not possible, resolve not to give them a penny in clicks or links or the content they crave.

If 19 million Canadians (the number of Facebook users in this country) abruptly ceased to use the platform and profits tanked, Zuckerberg would get the message.

Don't fuck with us. We are not that nice.

Day 20 of Social Isolation

How is everyone doing? No matter how tough it is for us, it's a hell of a lot tougher for those on the frontline. We have to pull our weight to make their jobs easier.

From our girl, Alanis Morissette's Thank U, Chris Mann has created an ode of thanks to all the hardworking men and women out there who are keeping us all alive while we self-isolate.

Chris Mann Thank U Frontline (Alanis Morissette)

And after you've done that, if you're in Canada, head on over to flatten.ca and log in your COVID-19 data. This resource is being used by doctors and scientists in the country to figure out where we are headed.  It took me about three minutes to plunk in my info.

FLATTEN is a not-for-profit organization platform for collecting and providing real time information regarding the spread of COVID-19 in your local community and around the nation.

Stay home. If you must go out, wash your hands for 20 seconds with soap before and after you return. Don't touch your face! (hard one to remember). And practice two metres of social distancing when you're in public.

The sooner we flatten the curve, the sooner we can get outta here.

Flatten the Curve!

Happy Friday, my fellow social distancing Canadians!

It's hard to believe that a mere two weeks ago on Friday the 13th, we all raced out to stock up on supplies and hunkered down in our homes to FLATTEN THE CURVE.

It's working, guys. Maclean's posts updates in a handy graph which I check somewhat obsessively:

https://www.macleans.ca/society/health/coronavirus-in-canada-these-charts-show-how-our-fight-to-flatten-the-curve-is-going/

The green line on the world graph is bending. That's us. We have to stay the course to beat this mutha, give our healthcare workers some breathing room, and soon we'll get our lives back on track.

If we get impatient, piss around and act stupid, we'll lose the battle and wind up back in the trenches economically and physically. Crawling out at that point will be really fucking hard.

So take a breath (because you still can) and settle in for another week with books or journaling or painting or learning a musical instrument or a language. There are so many things to do that we couldn't do when we're working full time. Seize this opportunity!

Tune into the good news stories and tune out the voices that say this virus is no big deal and none of this is necessary. It is necessary and we will pay the price of losing this battle in prolonged economic hardship and death.

We're going to flatten the curve with social distancing, 14 day voluntary quarantine, frequent handwashing, and limiting our trips to stores. We are not going to get sick through stupidity or carelessness.

This affects all of us. Every Canadian from the newest of the new to those who can trace their ancestry on this land back thousands of years.

This is a war and we are warriors.

Coping with Coronavirus

Going stir crazy already? Maxed out your credit card on toilet paper?

Race on over to Smashwords and pick up free or deeply discounted ebooks to get you through the next couple of weeks. Why not use this time to read out of your comfort zone? With a giveaway this big, you can load up your ereader with every genre under the sun. 

And if you must go out, follow the instructions below, smile at the people who serve you, and do your bit to flatten the curve. We will get through this!

Thanks to the generous designers at Canva for the graphic below. 

  

Harry and Meghan

Harry and Meghan gave this a lot of thought and made the difficult decision to step back from their royal duties to live as private citizens.

Y'all who complain--remember when Princess Diana, Harry's mother was killed by insane, immoral paparazzi who hunted her down for a photo? I watched with increasing anxiety as the same thing was happening to Harry and Meghan.

The anxiety is real. It's no joke. When Princess Diana died, I cried like I'd lost a family member and I wasn't the only one. She was a young mother at the same time I was a new mother. She was vulnerable and didn't pretend she wasn't. We loved her.

Harry's mother was dubbed the People's Princess because she was one of us and never made us feel we were 'less than.' To many of us, she wasn't a celebrity, she was an honorable person who was making a difference.

I support her boys, their privacy and their decisions. The Queen's statement on the issue demonstrated what a true ruler looks like. We need that level of sanity in these batshit crazy times.

So this is my message of support and welcome to the young family. Just in case they google their names. 😊

Media pundits, relax. This is not the Royal Family's first rodeo. We're all going to be just fine and baby Archie will have his mum and dad for a lot longer than Harry had his.

Peace out.

Copyright: Copyright zz/KGC-178/STAR MAX/IPx 2020