Author: Quiet Mike

Absolute Power Corrupts Conservatively

After five long years and two election victories with minority governments, Stephen Harper won his first majority last May in surprising fashion. Despite having numerous unpopular social policies, Harper managed to win an additional 23 seats guaranteeing full control in the House of Commons.

The election brought down Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, who even lost his own seat, and formally resigned the next day. In Quebec, BQ leader Gilles Duceppe lost his seat as well and resigned as support for the Bloc Quebecois completely vanished. The only shining light…

Riding the Lightning

With the emergence of Rick Perry in the race for the Republican presidential nomination and the fast approaching day of execution for Troy Davis, the debate revolving around the death penalty has begun to heat up yet again. The practice of capital punishment has been used by virtually every society since the dawn of civilization and continues on in modern times, but why is this ancient act of social revenge still present in some of our so-called “civil” societies…

9/11 – Keeping the Fear Alive, Ten Years On

Ten years after that fateful Tuesday morning in September 2001, the world continues to mourn the tragedy that saw four hijacked airplanes take the lives of nearly three thousand innocent people from around ninety different countries. The terrorist attacks on the United States have been marked every year with memorials, the reading of the names and of old news coverage of the events to go along with a new credible imminent terrorist threat. While a tragedy of such size and sophistication is always worth remembering, it is more important to reminisce…

Israel: Losing Friends by the Hour

The Israeli Government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu seems to be on a one way ticket to oblivion. His right-wing hawkish stances are jeopardizing peace in a region where the Arab Spring is still going strong heading into autumn. To make things worse, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been protesting Israel’s socio-economic problems. The UN recently released its report into Israel’s raid…

In All Seriousness, Politics Can Be Funny

Anyone ever notice the only news we get exposed to these days is filled with fear and misery? 50% of the stories are either about people dying (accidents, natural disasters, wars, etc.) or people lying (politicians, businessmen, lawyers, etc.). The other 50% are filled with nonsensical gibberish about some celebrity’s affair or fashion sense. So depressing. Unfortunately Quiet Mike is no exception. As much as I try to get people to wake up, think and question the status quo, I do have a tendency…

Rick Perry: The New Mouth of the South

When Rick Perry announced he was running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States on August 13th, he did so with much publicity and fanfare, he even managed 700+ votes as a write in candidate in the Ames Straw Poll that same weekend. He was instantly dubbed as a man with charisma, a man of action, and a man who isn’t too shy to let his voice be heard, kind of like a George Bush that can speak English. Perry has deep corporate pockets and will be a formidable foe for the other conservatives aspiring for the top job, but…

Ames Straw Poll: Who’s the most conservative of them all?

We are just a mere fifteen months away from the 2012 elections and the answer to the question of whether or not Barack Obama will be a one term president. With the conclusion of the Straw Poll in Ames, Iowa this weekend and the Fox News Debate that preceded it, we still have no idea who Obama will be up against but we do have a good notion of what type of person he or she is likely to be…

AA+: The Debt Ceiling Revisited

The other day Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s credit rating for the first time in its history, knocking it down one level from AAA to AA+. The downgrade happened despite an eleventh hour deal between the Republican controlled House of Representatives and the Democrat controlled Senate to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, the deal was signed by President Barack Obama early last week. The deal brought an end to months of bickering by politicians over spending cuts and tax hikes. The battles that raged in Washington over that period of time came across as a battle of good and evil and not just differences of opinion…

The 27 Club: Does Winehouse Deserve such Exclusive Company?

Seeing as how I’m on vacation this week, I thought I would take a step away from the world of politics for once and write about my second passion; music. When I saw on the news last week that Amy Winehouse had passed away, the first thought that ran through my slumbering brain was, who gives a shit? Unfortunately, hardly a second had passed before they announced she had passed away at the age of twenty-seven, turning my thoughts of “who gives a shit?” to just “oh shit!” I knew right away that this troubled woman…

Right Wing Nuts & Bolts

It’s hard to believe that a country as tolerant as Norway can produce such a rotten apple, but even in peaceful, progressive countries like Norway, Sweden and Denmark hate and fear can still exist. Emotional and political acts of terrorism aren’t all that surprising in countries like the U.S., where much of their culture and history comes from the intolerance of others, but it just goes to show that even in the most tolerant of societies like Norway there can live a misguided, hateful and racist man…