This week we heard one of those stories that just makes you shake your head (if it hasn’t already lowered in shame) and wonder how this kind of thing can happen.
Here’s the shocking story. An Aboriginal woman (there is a publication ban on her name, a typically Canadian thing to do, especially galling in that the woman is now dead) was severely beaten and raped by a local scumbag. During the preliminary hearing where she had to testify about what happened, she was somewhat incoherent in her answers, and sometimes belligerent. (The judge at one point called her by the accused’s name, which is enough to make anyone angry.) So, did the Crown attorney suggest she take a day off, or perhaps get her some help? No, it was her brilliant idea to send her to remand (that’s jail, by the way) because was a “flight risk”. The judge, incredibly, agreed, so off to jail for the victim. Yes, JAIL for the VICTIM. She spent five nights in remand, and more insults were to come. When she was taken to court, she was transported in the same van with the scumbag who attacked her! But wait, there’s more … she was taken into court in leg irons and handcuffs. Like a dangerous criminal.
How could this happen? How was there not one single person in the chain of command who said, ‘Whoa, this isn’t right’? I’m not one of those people who sees racism in every event, but to me there is no doubt that this would never have happened to a nice, middle class white woman. The government has apologized profusely and honestly, but that’s not enough. People should be fired for this. But they won’t. That’s not the way the legal system in this province works. Once you get a government job, no matter how egregiously you screw up, you’re set for life.
Utterly shameful.
The Comey Show is a hit
All of Washington stopped to watch the testimony of fired FBI director James Comey. I won’t go over the testimony here, because you’ve probably heard every last word of it by now. The takeaway is that Comey was invited to a private dinner with Donald Trump, and Trump said so many worrisome things that Comey made copious notes about the meeting immediately after the dinner. Comey had never done that before, in any meeting with anyone, including two other presidents. Comey says Trump asked him to go easy on the Russian investigation, without directly ordering him to. Comey said Trump lied about some things, and Trump retaliated by calling Comey a liar. Trump hinted in a tweet after the news broke that Comedy “had better hope that there are no TAPES” of the conversation. When Trump was asked by a reporter if he was hinting that there were tapes, he said: “I’m not hinting anything. I’ll tell you about it over a very short period of time….Oh, you’re going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer. Don’t worry.”
Huh? What does ANY of that mean? I agree with Comey, who told the committee “Lordy, I hope there are tapes.”
Trump’s base, made up of mostly incredibly stupid people, will no doubt side with him. The rest of the world, I’m sure, will see Comey as being truthful, and why not? His testimony was rock solid, completely honest and forthright. Trump can’t put together a fully truthful sentence. There was no bombshell that would have destroyed the Trump presidency, but the chances of Trump surviving four years grows less and less remote every day.
Theresa May’s boo-boo
British Prime Minister Theresa May rolled the dice in calling an election almost three years ahead of the scheduled date, and it backfired. Not completely, but enough to likely cripple her political career. May’s Conservatives went into the election with a healthy majority, and only called the election to get an even healthier majority, supposedly to strengthen the British position on Brexit talks. She also calculated that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was entirely unelectable, leading to what was supposed to be a historic electoral rout (I read a story when the election was called that speculated if the Labour Party would even survive the election).
So, how’s that turn out, Theresa? Turns out May was a worse campaigner than anyone expected (she turned down televised debates), and Corbyn captured the youth vote in a Bernie Sanders-like way. When the votes were tallied (which is such a slow process in England, I suspect they use Morse code to relay the results), the Conservatives were in a minority (or as they call it, hung) parliament, and have to depend on the support of a small third party to stay in power.
British politics is notoriously cutthroat. Unlike here, where a party leader is virtually unmovable, a British caucus can oust a leader. Hell, they did it with Margaret Thatcher. May’s days as leader of Britain, after this fiasco of her own making, can probably be measured in weeks, if not days. You can expect another election in Britain within six months, a year tops. This past election, by the way, was the country’s fourth major vote in as many years.
RIP
Adam West, 88, the only true Batman (TV series from 1966-68), a serious actor who kept his tongue firmly in cheek during the campy, hilarious Batman TV series fondly remembered by people like me. Batman was, in its own way, one of the great comedies of the 1960s. … Sam Panopoulous, 83, the Greece-born Canadian restaurant owner who created the Hawaiian pizza at his pizza shop in Chatham, Ont. in 1962.
In This Corner 
The British system of counting votes is not like here, that’s for sure. I spent time in the UK as a graduate student. Unlike here, where each poll counts the votes and phones the results in, the Brits take all the paper ballots in each constituency to a central counting point. That way, no busybody local party hacks get to pore over local poll results and figure out who voted for what party/candidate. In other words, a true secret ballot. Highly recommended if privacy is in any way a personal concern. Unlike here, where the politicos have a darn good idea of who voted for who and even decide which rural road gets paved next depending on results (provincially) anyway. How do I know this? My Mother worked with a guy who had been an MLA, and they knew everything about who voted for who. Bloody annoying, and surely a blot against the rhetoric of it being a secret vote.