Rachel Maddow Gives 'em Hell

I don't have a lot to say today, nothing that isn't being said all over the internet by myriad pundits. After the angst of the early part of this week, it felt like a good day to take a step back. Tomorrow I am going to be at the Zoo for my second Volunteer Training day and I should come back refreshed and more or less content for a little while.

But I wanted to be sure I posted this amazing rant by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC here for posterity. If you haven't already seen it, please do give it a watch:

Here is the complete transcript of that video. It's pretty heady and courageous stuff, I think, and it speaks directly to the heart of the polarization issues in both of our countries:

A (Qualified) Sigh of Relief

The most "retweeeted" Tweet in history

America did the right thing last night. For now. It was touch-and-go there for a while, to listen to the pundits, but when it came right down to it everything broke pretty much as expected and Barack Obama was re-elected. Or Mitt Romney was put in his place. It's actually kind of hard to figure out which was the bigger part of the results last night. But I'll take it, no matter what the reasoning was. However, there were many things about the whole process that really don't sit all that well with me. It feels a little more like the States dodged another bullet than there was any tremendous progress made. Still, from my vantage point of having to live with the twin regimes of Rob Ford and Stephen Harper—each terrible and destructive in his own way—dodging a bullet seems pretty good to me right now. I'm a little bit jealous, to tell the truth.

USA's first openly-gay senator

Other than the results at the very top there were other encouraging signs to come out of last night's voting. Wisconsin elected Tammy Baldwin, who becomes the first openly gay Senator in the history of the USA. Hawai'i sent Mazie Hirono to the Senate, a Buddhist woman who was born in Japan. Illinois elected disabled war veteran Tammy Duckworth, who defeated Joe Walsh (not the musician) after his ill-advised comments about rape. More on that running theme later. In total, a record twenty women will join the Senate in 2013 and at least eighty-one are heading for the House of Representatives. In New Hampshire they outdid all the other states, electing women to fill the Governor and both Senator positions, the first time that has ever happened.

You Must Not Vote For Mitt Romney If....

If this is not the first time you are reading something political issued from my keyboard, then you probably know I will be approaching this piece from a position left of centre. I believe in full disclosure in these matters so let's be perfectly clear: I am not a Conservative. But then neither is Mitt Romney. The rise of the Tea Party in the States has led to a far-right Neo-Conservative movement which has so dangerously unbalanced the political arena—and not just in that country—that old-school Conservatives are virtual Centrists in the new ideology. If you live in the States and you vote Republican because all of your ancestors voted Republican back to the very top of your line, you really need to understand that the "Republican" representative on tomorrow's ballot bears almost no resemblance to those that your forebears supported. Therefore, "my family has always voted Republican" is no longer a valid defense for putting an "X" next to the name of a man who I feel may, if elected, be the worst President in the 236-year history of the United States. Bearing this in mind, today I am going to advocate something which ordinarily would go against all of my best instincts: if you absolutely cannot see your way clear to voting for Obama—and your ballot does not offer you a third-party choice—then I urge you to stay at home and not vote or, if you prefer, spoil your ballot. I have subscribed in the past to the "Anyone But X" theory of voting (which did not work particularly well in the last Federal Election up here in Canada) but this time I truly feel that an "Anyone But Obama" position could be potentially ruinous to the USA. I am not a particular fan of the incumbent, either, but he is at least an intelligent, sentient human being who is capable of making well-reasoned decisions. And Romney? Well, as I posted on Facebook over this past weekend, Romney has (or should have) alienated so many different factions of Americans that he should be running at under 10% in the polls right now. I just cannot understand how the math is working out the way it is: no woman, impoverished person or youth, to name but a few "groups", should ever vote for this man and that doesn't even begin to take into consideration non-Caucasians. Well, it begins to take them into consideration, I suppose.

But enough of the preamble. You know where I stand politically; this piece is about far more than that, though. It is about the absolute and utter inability Mitt Romney would have to run a country, completely aside from his political stance. He is one of the most profoundly unenlightened men I have ever seen reach his level of power in the States. Not all that long ago, he would have been running for a fringe party. Now he is neck-and-neck for the position of "Leader of the Free World". This cannot be allowed to happen. So I present to you:


"You Must Not Vote For Romney If......"

My Zoo Volunteer Training Has Begun!

My temporary badge

Today I was at the Toronto Zoo for the first week of my ten-week training program to become a "Weekday Zoo Volunteer". Each session (except the two weeks in the middle where we will be "shadowing" an experienced Volunteer on a walking tour) will be from 10-3 on Fridays, with a break of three weeks over Christmas and New Years. The intake group is very large this year—twenty-eight potential new Volunteers—because in their existing pool there are some members with increasing mobility issues who are unable to take on the task of a two-hour tour any longer. I believe there were a total of five new Volunteers last year (there may have been even fewer); that's quite a jump from one year to the next. It does appear that I came along at just the right time. It was pretty nice to sit in a room full of like-minded people, all eager to share their love of wildlife and conservation with young people, hoping to light that spark within each of them. I am very much looking forward to doing this for a long time.

Happy Birthday, Jill!

Jill at 21, having a drink with her old man

My beautiful daughter, Gillian, turned twenty-one today, meaning both of my children are now old enough to be recognized as "adults" no matter where they travel. It's a bit of an odd feeling, let me tell you. Also, this fall marks the first time ever that both of them, Jill and Tim, have been in Post-Secondary schools at the same time. After a couple of years dabbling in Science programs at each of McGill and Waterloo (and a year off working and rethinking her future), Jill surprised all of us last winter by announcing that she wanted to do a complete about-face and return to school in a field of study almost diametrically opposed to what she had been immersed in up to that point; as a result, she applied to (and was accepted by) the Ryerson Theatre School, in the Performance Production stream. She is loving her time there, as clearly evidenced by the joy she demonstrates whenever she discusses her long hours of work which she has already put in, and it clearly was the right choice for her to make. I think she was worried about my reaction when she told me of her plans, though; however, I merely had to think back to my own transition from high school to university and how I was talked out of my first love, entering the Music program at the University of Toronto, by my Dad and my Guidance Counselor, among others. I entered the Applied Math program instead and hated it; as a result, I never finished and have been held back by that failing ever since. The best advice I could give Jill this past January was to do what made her happy, but follow it through to completion this time. This year has really been one of the very few "difficult" times in our lives together, though, and it hasn't been all that "difficult".