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…
Category: Quiet Mikes Mumblings
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…
Rupert Murdoch: The Tabloid & the Damage Done
News of the Screws, Screws of the World, you can call Rupert Murdoch’s former weekly tabloid newspaper whatever you like. News of the World was the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world up until it printed its final paper last week, amid a high profile phone hacking and corruption scandal. While the world seems shocked at the depths of the allegations, I for one am not surprised. The 168 year old News of the World was bought by Mr. Murdoch and News International in 1969. At the time it was a regular weekly newspaper that covered actual news…
Time for America to Pay Off its Credit Cards
For the past few months the two American political parties have been in talks on how to handle America’s growing debt problem, and the ceiling that was initially adopted almost a hundred years ago in order to limit government borrowing and spending. In 1980 the U.S. federal deficit ceiling was a little less than a trillion dollars, and then America was introduced to Reaganomics; In Reagan’s eight years in office the deficit almost tripled to three trillion. Unfortunately the next two Republican Presidents…
To Gaza with Little Love
A year after the first freedom flotilla set sail for the Gaza Strip, resulting in the deaths of nine activists at the hands of the Israeli IDF, the world awaits the departure of Freedom Flotilla II. The flotilla of ten boats includes two cargo ships transporting nearly three thousand tons of aid, and eight other passenger boats with citizens of dozens of different countries. It was supposed to set sail at the end of June. Over the last week or so, it has been mired in sabotage…
Labour unions under attack
On Saturday, the House of Commons led by Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party passed back-to-work legislation in order to force urban postal workers to return to work. I’m not opposed to back-to-work laws in general; virtually all unionized public workers are susceptible to these types of laws when there is a prolonged failure to reach a bargaining agreement. However, I am a little bitter at the speed and manner with which it was imposed this time around…