Clearing my mind, ignoring my hands...

Of course, the ideas come fast and furious when it hurts to type them out...

I hear this morning that the federal Liberals are now considering tax cuts. There must be an election coming. After all, for years now they've pooh-poohed the idea of letting us keep a little more of the money we've earned. But now that some reports have the surplus up around ten billion dollars, they want to buy your vote.
Funny thing, too, about that surplus. It keeps bouncing around, from $1.6 billion up to ten billion, depending on the political purpose of the person reporting it. Are there no accounting standards? Or is it just that the Liberals, as Canada's Natural Governing Party ("any other party is unnatural!") are above all that?

***

I'm sorry, I know I'm harping on a dead horse and mixing metaphors like mad. But I can't help it. Every time a child dies at the hand of his/her parents--whether from neglect or from something even worse--I wonder just what kind of monsters Family and Children's Services think we are. At least once a week, I'm confronted with three children thrown from a bridge, or a little boy starving to death in his own home, or children beaten and kept in cages (that last by adoptive parents no less!) and I can't help but mutter "...and they think we're not fit to be parents?"
Don't get me wrong--I'm okay with not being a father. What I'm not okay with, still, is being told I'm not suited to it. They may even be right--God knows, screaming kids set my teeth on edge--but I'd never dream of throwing a kid from a bridge, starving it to death, or keeping it in a cage.

***

What is going on with our climate?
The first hurricane of the year--Dennis--was also the most powerful ever seen before August. Since then we've seen three of the strongest hurricanes in the history of record-keeping and a plethora of lesser (though still nasty) storms. We're on the verge of uncharted territory: any further cyclones will take their names from the Greek alphabet.
I've been mulling this over for days now--it's just the sort of thing my mind seizes on and won't let go of. Let's say the next storm, Alpha, is a real ogre, and they retire the name, like they've done with Katrina, Mitch, and Andrew, among many others. What do they use the next time we exhaust the English alphabet? Hebrew?
And if they ever get to Hurricane Omega, just bend over and kiss your ass goodbye...

***

Toronto has recently been named the single worst Canadian city to do business in, by no less an authority than Canadian Business magazine. It cited crumbling infrastructure and crippling taxes as the two biggest reasons Hogtown ranked dead last among 40 cities surveyed.
Looks good on 'em. Given their police-hating, car-hating, progress-hating mayor and council, it really is no wonder. Toronto always considered itself the little brother of New York. Where's our Rudy Giuliani, I wonder?

***

There's lots more swirling beneath the surface of my brain, but I have work to do. Until tomorrow...