National Unity my Ass

I was going not going to post anything until the trip posts were finished, but I just cannot keep it to myself.

We come back to Canada and I find the Gomery inquiry is putting out new scandals every day. Catching up with this info leaves me sick to my stomach. Today I read that 20 Quebec lawyers who wanted to be judges worked for the Liberals, on the understanding that was what was required to get on the bench. So far almost half on that list have been appointed. Is this Canada or some South American banana republic?

Remember Chuck Guite said a few months ago when he testified that the Sponsorship program was all about national unity? How does paying some ad agency $50k to hand a cheque to someone else help national unity? Oh, wait, it doesn't. But it sure helps the Liberals when that guys gives $49k as a donation for the next election.


But Paul Martin didn't know anything about it. Bullshit. A senior, or the senior, minister from Quebec and he was not aware of the pipeline by which money would "magically" appear if people were short during an election? He either knew, or knew enough to know someone was up to no good and decided to keep away from it. Just about everyone has seen this sort of thing somewhere, like at work, and knows how it works. If you are not involved, you either keep your head down and ignore it, or you try to put a stop to it. We know he did not try to stop it, so he either willfully ignored it or was involved.

Then he has the gall to go on television and say "let Gomery do his work, and then I will call an election". The only problem is he already called an election before Gomery did his work.

Anyone who votes for the Liberals in this next election should have their head examined. If I was a Liberal MP, I would be ashamed to stand for election for that party.

Asia Honeymoon (7) - Cu Chi Tunnels

22 March

We meet our guide, Chong and the one other person on this portion of the trip, an older Australian woman named Susan.

The tunnels are very interesting. We start the tour with an old VC propaganda film, which is such a bad piece of propaganda it is funny. Our guide warns us about it. The tunnels are a small section of a vast tunnel system near Saigon. In 1965, the Americans actually built their first military base over the tunnel complex and did not discover it until a few months later.

I can only make it through the first 100 meters before claustrophobia sets in. The tunnels were not made for 6 foot, 200 pound westerners. Although not over commercialized, the place is set for tourists. The tunnels were restored and opened when the government realized western, especially American, tourists would fly to Vietnam and pay to see them. You can buy various knickknacks and take your picture in an "authentic" communist underground meeting room. I have the wife take a picture of me beside the VC flag and a picture of Uncle Ho. hopefully this picture never gets out or my political career will be over, just like John Kerry. I'm kidding, but more on Kerry in a bit.

The best part of the tunnels for me is the examples of VC traps. They are very ingenious and very nasty. It is not the kind of thing I would want to face in battle.

Overall, the tour is very good. Not really polished, but I am not here for polish, a la Disneyland. I thought it would be very political, filled with communist BS, but it is not. As I said, the only propaganda was the initial film, which is so obviously propaganda as to be funny, and probably very interesting to those who study that sort of thing, or perhaps marketing executives.

If you vists Saigon, you must see the Cu Chi Tunnels.

Asia Honeymoon (6) - Ho Chi Min City

21 March

It is late when we land. No problems getting through passport control. Once we get out of the airport, I have to go to work dealing with people. Our guidebook says a cab to the hotel should cost about $5 US. The cab we get says he wants $20. Since it is midnite and there are 2 of us with luggage, I agree to $10. I may have made a mistake, as when we get to the hotel and I give him $10, a huge grin comes across his face and he reacts as if it was $1 million and takes off like a thief in the night. Did he mean 20 thousand Dong (Vietnam's currency)? 15 thousand Dong is one US dollar, so 20 thousand is about $1.33 US. That can't be right.

Our hotel is 3 stars. I was worried about what we would get and if this would be comfortable enough. The wife doesn't really care about fancy hotels, but to me, this is a vacation. For years my job had me living in the woods so when I go on vacation I don't what to be going without showers and wiping my ass with leaves.

A 3 star hotel includes your own shower, bathroom and TV. I am satisfied. The biggest difference I can determine between 3 and 4 stars is a pool at the hotel. Since this portion of our trip is all about sightseeing, 3 stars is all we need.

Finishing the Trip

Well, we are back. I was unable to put up more posts for the rest of the trip. Part of that was just having the time. It takes me about 30 minutes to do up a short post, and 1 hour for a medium one. This can be alot of time on a vacation.

However, the main reason was cost. The first few posts were posted on Phuket, Thailand, where I found the cheapest internet access, at 1 Baht per minute. About 40 Bhat equals 1 US dollar, so this is a good price. In Singapore, our hotel charged $6 Singapore dollars for the first 20 minutes. This is about $3.75 US and is on that crappy TV access with crappy wireless keyboards. The ship was a bit better, but they charge $1 S for 3 minutes. That is ten bucks even for a short post like this one. And the access is by satellite, which was not very smooth.

Therefore, I decided to wait until I was home to post the rest. I have not heard any complaints, and since you are getting this for free, I do not expect to get any.

Anyway, the rest of the trip will be posted over the next week or so, a few posts each day.

I have renamed the first few posts with the title "Asia Honeymoon" and a number. This will quickly identify which posts are on the honeymoon and ensure they are in chronoligical order.

Enjoy.

Asia Honeymoon (5) - More Airports

20/21 March

Hong Kong

Nice airport. Don't ask me about anything else, because that is all we see. We have about 45 minutes before our flight to Ho Chi Min City. I officially start the vacation by taking the first picture.

Asia Honeymoon (4) - What day is it?

20/21 March

Thirteen hours on a plane and a 16 hour time change including crossing the international date line doesn't do much for ones sense of time. Our flight is as pleasant as can be. They really take care of your on Cathay Pacific and I would recommend them. I try to get upgraded to first class by subtly mentioning at the gate that we are on our honeymoon. They flight agent knows exactly what I am going for. No dice. The plane is full.

The flight is otherwise uneventful. The food is good and they have those in seat LCD players with a wide selection of movies. The wife gets to watch Sideways, a movie I have no interest in and I have been actively preventing her from renting. I watch The Incredibles about 4 or 5 times during the trip. Well, not really. I watch it once and just leave it on while I drift in and out of sleep. Remember, yesterday was my wedding night and I only got 3 hours sleep.

Asia Honeymoon (3) - Vancouver Airport

20 March

Our first real married fight takes place in the Vancouver Airport, less than 12 hours after we are married. If you could call it that. The wife finally looked at our itinerary in detail. Monday is our first day in Vietnam and is also a travel day. Once we get to Vietnam we are supposed to spend the rest of the day touring on our own. We are arriving in Vietnam at 11 pm on Monday (which is 7:30 am next Friday in Edmonton, or something like that). This leaves us with no time to tour on our first day. Instead of two days in Vietnam, we effectively have one. Guess who she blames for this.

You are correct if you guess the only other person in the Vancouver Airport that she knows. I bet the guy sitting behind us on the airport bench while we "discussed" the issue never gets married.

As an aspiring political junkie, the most disturbing thing about this trip was being unconnected and unable to keep up to date on various political goings on. Fortunately, the Vancouver Airport stepped up to make me feel at home. Vancouver International is very clean and modern. Despite this, the first washroom stall I use has only one piece of graffiti, which, in true West Coast, pot smoking, hippie fashion states:

BUSH = HITLER

BOYCOTT US GOODS

Don't you think if Bush is as bad as Hitler we should be doing more that boycotting Coca Cola? Imagine that, if after Hitler invaded Poland we had said, "Bad Germany, Bad! We will no longer buy your schnitzel".

Take that Hitler.

Asia Honeymoon (2) - International Airport Tour 2005

20 March 9:14 am

We are just starting our decent into Vancouver.

We flew Air Canada on this leg. The wife is looking forward to the next leg, from Vancouver to Hong Kong. We are flying Cathay Pacific. Everyone says they are excellent. I am planning to ask the Captain to marry us on the flight. We want to get married in every country we visit, so why not in international waters?

Maybe we can get an upgrade to first class.

Asia Honeymoon (1) - For Better or Worse

20 March

Well, we did it. We had planned to get married on our trip to Asia. However, due to the bureaucratic problems of getting married overseas (guess who got blamed for that), we decided to do it before. So, as I write this, my left wing girlfriend has become my left wing wife.

Thanks to all the advice from those who read this blog. Some of you suggested I think twice. The truth is, I knew about three weeks after we met that I was going to marry her. That was 2 1/2 years ago.

On Thursday night we decided to get married before we left. Fifteen minutes at the registry office and we were done. I love Alberta. There are almost as many small registry offices here as liquor stores. Makes it easy to get married or renew your drivers' license. It is actually easier to get a marriage license than it is to get proof there is no impediment to your getting married. To get married you have to swear there is no impediment to your marriage. To prove that there is no impediment to your marriage you need a database search, and a bunch of other stuff that is much more expensive than a marriage license. If it is cheaper, might as well get married.

As I write this we are just about to leave for the airport. It is 5:30 am and we have had about 3 hours sleep and been married for just over 12 hours. We have fought only 3 times since the wedding, all about packing.

It is going to be a long rest of my life.

Blogging the Trip

I am a bit behind in posting on this trip. I will start to post as much as I can from now on, trying to catch up before the end. All the posts will be in order, but read the dates on the posts to get the true time of what hapened when.

Enjoy.

Put your tinfoil hat on

Dana at Canadian Comment finds this funny (which it is). However, I also find it a bit disturbing.

I grew up in the 70's, and was a big fan of shows such as Sesame Street. I do not think I ever saw this show, which appears to be British.

Just about every sentence that comes out of every character is a double entendre. It must have been planned that way. It makes you wonder if the show had some other purpose then just entertaining kids.

Now I am going to be watching everything I do to see if it I am being controlled by Sesame Street.

She's cheating on me.... with my Arch Enemy Part II

It seems I have stirred the Three Headed Dragon. In this post, my Gf's ex talks a bit about me. Note the first line:

Here's an entertaining post from one of my e-girlfriend's
fiance.

Now, perhaps it is just a typo, but to me there is a big difference between an ex-girlfriend and an e-girlfriend (which could be considered to be an online girlfriend). You may laugh, but these things happen. My uncle's wife left him for some guys she met online. This was about 10 years ago, so it was very unusual at the time.

Am I being too suspicious? Or not suspicious enough?

She's cheating on me.... with my Arch Enemy

The Gf has an old boyfriend who has a blog here.

Stop!

Do not go there!

I don't want to increase his traffic.

I am always coming upstairs to see her writing emails to this guy or looking at the lame links he sends. This guy lives in San Fran and is a typical left wing, Bush-hating moonbat. During the US election I had to put up with all manner of anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Republican jokes that he sent her. (I got the last laugh).

Now, I am not the jealous type, but isn't it a bit strange to be taking to some guy who was your ex-boyfriend 10 years ago? We are soon to be married, and I think a certain someone should be focusing on a certain someone and not talking to another certain someone. I don't have contact with any of my exes.

This guy is sabotaging all my work. All that time and effort to convert her to the light side of the force and here she is dipping her feet in the moonbat pool when my back is turned. He is directly counteracting my evil plan(tm).

Does anyone know how to use the parental controls to filter out socialist, left wing crap?

P.S. Note that he has chosen the same blogger template. How weird is that?

So you say you want more military spending?

Thanks to Babbling Brooks and The Files of the Phantom Observer for bringing this to our attention and making it into a graphic for easy comprehension.

It is good to see that, at the height of deficit fighting in Canada we actually spent more inflation adjusted dollars on defence than we will in 2006.

So much for commitment to the military.

Life and Rights

I have always struggled with certain social policies, such as abortion and euthanasia. As a libertarian-leaning conservative, I do not think we should be preventing people from doing things to their body. If someone wants to kill themselves or take drugs, who am I say no? I do not agree with those actions, but it is their body. Does another individual, or even a group of individuals, know what is right for someone else? Even if they do, do they have any right to coerce that person into doing it?

This view is a bit harder to muddle through when discussing abortion. In one sense, a person has the right to do to their own body as they will, but, as libertarians say, your right to punch me in the face ends where my face begins.

What about those that cannot stand up for themselves? Does a woman's right to control her body trump the rights of an unborn child? How can a country that will not execute the most heinous of criminals condone the death of an unborn child?

Good questions all.

However, as Different River and The Hobbesian Conservative point out, this is going even further.

Peter Singer wrote in 1995 an article entitled "Killing Babies Isn't Always Wrong" in which he argued that there should be a ceremony some time after birth where the child is officially admitted into society as a person. The child could be killed before that and it would not be the same as killing a person. Among other things, he states that killing a seriously defective newborn is not wrong. Seriously defective is defined as one that can include lifelong medical treatment, but does not preclude one from living a productive and pleasant life. Is asthma a serious disability?

I bring these points forward to push for public debate on when life begins. The Europeans are already at this point. Should we define what our society is going to be like, or just leave it to some "experts" to decide?

I would be interested to see what The Monger has to say on this issue.

"They're fighting in the car again."

Now, don't get me wrong, I love the Gf.

When we met, the first thing to come out of her mouth was a Simpson's quote. I was hooked right then.

Before we met, I had some trouble connecting with woman. I love to argue and can be aggressive when making my point. The Gf is the first woman who can stand that quality about me. Not to brag, but I like to think I am smart. Not book type, 200 IQ smart, but I like to think I can recognize a logical position and reason out an argument. Not very tech minded though.

The Gf is the first woman I have met who is like me in this respect. Most women are either not smart enough to reason through an argument, or don't care enough about the argument. Most of the ones I met who do, are humourless.

I don't know if I was made for her, but she was definitely made for me. No one else has been able to stand me for this long.

However, at times she can really piss me off. Inevitably, this always happens when she falls back on what I call the Moonbat Debating Rules. Anyone who has visited the Democratic Underground has seen these in action. They generally follow these rule:

1. Make the most outrageous statement you can think of
2. Insult your opponent
3. Cover up any lack of evidence with wild conspiracy theories

Example: Bush=Hitler, you are a racist, the war was only about oil for Haliburton

I am used to her using these rules when we talk politics, but we she starts using the rules on me, I lose it.

Lately we have been fighting about money. We are looking at purchasing a business from a friend. It is a home business, so it would include buying their home and moving just outside the city. All these things we have discussed and it is something we both want to do. However, I am concerned that the price is too much, and the fact that it is a package deal (home + business) makes it difficult to sell in 10 years when we will want to move on. In addition, the house is missing some features that, although I can get by without them, will effect our ability to resell it and thereby make my exit strategy more difficult.

So, I have been the one dealing with this. I have visited the lawyers, real estate agents, banks, talked to friends who know something about business, dealt with the seller, etc.

I was in favour of the idea in principle, else I would not have started looking into it. However, after some research, I am not as convinced it is a good deal based on the price he wants and my ability to execute the exit strategy.

She says I am lazy and I never follow anything through.

Any big decision, I take my time. It took me 6 months to buy this computer. I never rush into these things, and this decision is big. We are talking about taking on debt load of 5 times the value of our present house. This is not something you rush into. If this doesn't work, it could wipe out all the financial gains I have made over the last 8 years.

I don't mind her disagreeing, I want to discuss it with her. We are a team. But when she starts saying I am lazy, and never follow anything through because more research makes me think the deal is not as good as we thought, that is below the belt.

So, I put a poll up in the sidebar. Vote and tell me what you think.

Update: The Gf put up a rebuttal in the comments. It's only fair to read here points before you vote.

Wow

Just as a get on to RightThinkingPeople, they put out this.

The above post is probably the best I have seen that sums up the main problem that "conservatives" face in Canada.

If you agree with what Pianoman is saying, true conservative government is a long, long ways away.

Great post.

Does the Prime Minister know our national anthem?

The Gf told me that while she was watching the live memorial service for the 4 RCMP officers on the CBC, she noticed that, during the french portion of the national anthem, Paul Martin stopped singing and resumed singing when the english portion started again.

She noted that he looked flustered and had a "I wish that camera was not pointed at me" look on his face.

I did not see this myself, so I cannot comment. Did anyone else notice anything like this?

A few to add to the roll

I wanted to bring your attention to the following blogs:

Kate at small dead annimals

Although I may not always agree with her, she says what she thinks. Also, I think one of her latest posts is being misrepresented in the comments.

Don't let them intimidate you.

Also, RightThinkingPeople

I just recently came across this blog and was inpressed by the analysis on various issues. I think they have caught the mood/feelings of some of the conservatives in this country.

The Freaks Come Out at Night

or at least for Senate Committees.

On Monday, the Senate Committee on Defence was in Edmonton to solicit advice from Canadian citizens on the composition of the Canadian Forces. Specifically, they were looking for ideas on the size, capabilities, equipment and role of the CF.

I used to have no respect for Senators and the Senate. I saw them as a bunch of unelected, lazy, patronage appointments and I wondered who's ass I had to kiss to get such a plum job.

Well, the above may or may not be true, but they sure have some patience. Of the approximately 20 presentations, about half were pro military, the other half I will refer to as "nutbar".

It seems that whenever the government asks for the opinion of its citizens on a subject, such as defence, the people take it as a cue to come and complain/comment on just about anything.

I won't comment on the pro military presentations, as it is the nutbar ones that were most interesting. The first guy to get up was all about the evil things CSIS has been doing to the Muslim community. He had no evidence of these "atrocities" except to say that CSIS agents were (gasp) calling up and talking to Muslims. What, no torture, beheadings, etc? Just talking? Surely he could have some up with something better that that.

Then there was a string of aging hippies/peaceniks (and believe me, they looked the part) who talked about how the environment/BMD/Bush/America/ was the biggest threat to Canada and how the Canadian Forces should be used to help people, etc. I got the impression they felt the CF would be best used giving out food and teddy bears to people, or shoveling snow in Toronto. Some had shiny, fancy documents that laid out their great plans for the Committee. There wasn't a coherent argument among them.

I will give the Committee members credit. They sat through the whole thing and treated each presenter seriously, no matter how wacko.

My favourite presentation of the night: The woman with the sign protesting the Official Secrets Act and how it was treating immigrants. Kudos to the Senator who, during his question, pointed out to her that what she really wanted to protest was Bill C-36, since the Official Secrets Act deals with what the government and government workers are allowed to release to the public (I believe this legislation has been replaced).

Most delicious piece of irony: One presenter made some comment towards Tommy Banks about lazy politicians, to which the chairman replied, "Tommy Banks is the most hard working Senator". This may be true, but it is up there with being called the smartest idiot or best politically informed Hollywood actor.

Damn them with faint praise.

Note: Laurie Hawn, an ex-airforce major who ran for the CPC in the last election and lost to Anne McLelland, was there giving his 2 cents.

Update: I forgot to add this point to earlier to this post. One thing I did notice was a certain question asked by the committee members. After most of the "peacenik" presentations, some form of the question "should Canada even have a military" would be asked. Everyone this question was put to answered yes. even the guy you wanted to cut the military budget by 90%.

Mark my words, this point will be made in the final report with some sort of statement about how the vast majority of Canadians support the military.