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Our friends who live on the East coast seem to be clinging to a few anachronistic views about the autonomy of women and the spectrum of choice that should be available to them when it comes to reproductive services.
“Even though it’s a legal medical procedure, P.E.I. remains the only province where abortion services are not offered locally.”
The general notion is that because P.E.I is so darn small some medical procedures necessitate a trip out of province.
Doug Currie the Health Minister says: “There are many services that are currently not available on P.E.I. that Islanders do have to travel off Island for. Unfortunately, due to our limited resources here on P.E.I., being a small province, being a small population, there is just so much money to go around.”
Well Doug, I think it might be time to add one more service to list, call it expanding the economy or increasing your governments commitment to the people but let’s get all of Canada up to speed on its offerings of health and medical services.
I never thought I would be thanking Alan Scott for posting to my blog, yet here I am doing so. It is a momentous occasion deserving of much fanfare and revelry.
Thank you Mr.Scott, your Haluski suggestion was amazing. I finally got around to trying it out and it was FANTASTIC. It is everything I love about old world comfort food cooking.
“Haluski is a pan fried dish that both of my grandmothers used to make of butter, onion, cabbage and noodles. It makes a delicious main or side dish, whatever you’re in the mood for. I personally like to let my cabbage get a little brown, but adjust your cooktime as necessary to your preference. The serving sizes will depend on how you are serving it.”
Ingredients
- 4 cups wide egg noodles
- 1/2 cup butter
- 2 cups sliced sweet onions, about 1/8 inch thick
- 2 teaspoons brown sugar
- 6 cups cabbage, sliced thin
- 1 teaspoon caraway seeds (optional)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- pepper
Directions
- Cook egg noodles according to package directions, then drizzle with a bit of oil to prevent the noodles from sticking together and set aside.
- While noodles are cooking, melt butter in large deep skillet over medium-low heat.
- Add onion, sprinkle with brown sugar and saute, stirring occasionally for about 5 to 10 minutes, or until softened and just beginning to turn golden.
- Add cabbage to skillet, stirring well to incorporate with onion, and saute for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Stir in caraway seeds if using, then cover, reduce heat to low, and let simmer for 5 to 10 minutes.
- Turn heat back to medium, add cooked noodles, salt and pepper, and stir well until noodles are heated though.
- Adjust seasoning if necessary and serve hot.
I followed this recipe in general, but added a pound of bacon to the onions as they sauteed. It really is true, things do go better with bacon. This is a rich satisfying dish which leaves you with a happy heart and a round fully tummy.
Protesting the norm, the accepted, what is deemed credible will never be an easy task. Defenders of the status quo will defend their system with rationalizations that make sense to them and others in the system while dismissing outright, criticism and alternate points of view presented. This process of in-group/out-group friction is the being replayed throughout the world and across Canada. The protesters in Vancouver are being evicted after their case was heard by British Columbia’s Supreme Court.
“A man was arrested during an Occupy Vancouver march following a B.C. Supreme Court decision to grant an injunction, ordering an end to the five-week protest camp outside the city’s art gallery. Justice Anne Mackenzie granted the interim injunction sought by the city to have the campers’ tents removed from where they have been set up since Oct. 15.
MacKenzie set a 2 p.m. PT Monday deadline for the removal of the tents.
The ruling followed a three-day hearing in which city lawyers said the campers were trespassing, while lawyers for the Occupy movement invoked Charter rights of freedom of speech and assembly, and also said the camp was providing shelter for the homeless.”
The ruling in Victoria was more nuanced.
“Justice Terence Schultze said because of the protesters’ respect for the law and their recent good behaviour, police would be required to return to court on Monday for an enforcement order if any protesters refused to leave the site. The ruling comes after many protesters at the Victoria camp decided to pack up and leave voluntarily earlier this week, but protestor Anushka Radji still calls the ruling a victory ‘Not granting an injunction order goes to the fact that they recognize the peaceful nature of the assembly and criminalizing dissent, at this point, is not necessary,’ said Radji.”
Our courts are treading a fine line right now because they are making decisions that speak to our rights as citizens in our country. Dissent and protest are key parts of any democratic process and need to be safeguarded.
“The judge also said he was not allowed to consider constitutional arguments in the case and could only rule on local bylaw issues.”
So, so far no definitive constitutional judgment has been reached. The Occupy Canada movement still has life and a legal leg to stand on. Bringing attention to the disparities in our society is a herculean task, credit should be given to those who have found their voice and that have taken action to correct a growing problem in Canadian society.
Finding out that many religions are paradoxical is like making the discovery that there happens to be chlorine in salt. Looking at the basis of the christian god it is obvious that not one, but several paradoxes are required to make sense of who or what he/she happens to be.
Like many religious arguments that end with, “I feel it in my heart” or “I believe it to be true” the following needs be added to the lexicon of say nothing evasive responses -“OH, its supernatural…” Watch darkmatter 2525 probe the depths of this topic.
Tim Wise has many things to say on the topic of racism in America. His analysis is deft and competent, I reprint the introduction to his essay “Getting What We Deserve? Wealth, Race and Entitlement in America” for the benefit of the education of my readership. Educational purposes aside, many of the complaints/justifications that seem to come up in the comments section of DWR are mentioned in this essay, and are given a thorough rebuttal and explanation. I may dedicate a page to the entire essay for sake of easy reference.
Everywhere you turn, conservatives are bemoaning the so-called “mentality of entitlement.”
“To hear such folks tell it, the problem with America is that people think they’re owed something. Of course, income support programs, nutritional assistance, or housing subsidies have long been pilloried by the right for this reason — because they ostensibly encourage people to expect someone else (in this case, the government, via the American taxpayer) to support them. But now, the criticisms that were once reserved for programs aimed at helping the poor are being applied even to programs upon which much of the middle class has come to rely, like Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance.
Increasingly one hears conservative politicians and commentators arguing for cuts in these efforts as well, and critiquing those who rely on them for health care, retirement, or income in-between jobs. To the right, the elderly and unemployed apparently refuse to do for self. They aren’t far-sighted enough, one supposes, to invest their money in a high-growth (and high-risk) private retirement plan; they aren’t responsible enough to purchase good health care, and they’d prefer to sit at home collecting a couple hundred dollars a week in unemployment insurance than find a job that might support them and their families. In other words, there’s something wrong with these people: they’re lazy, have the wrong mindset, and need to get out there and show initiative, presumably the way rich people do.
Though this critique is not solely aimed at persons of color, there is little doubt but that the history of growing opposition to social safety net efforts — which were wildly popular among most whites from the 1930s through most of the 1960s — mirrors, almost perfectly, the time period during which black and brown folks began to gain access, for the first time, to such programs. While blacks, for instance, were largely excluded from Social Security for the first twenty years of its existence, and while very few people of color could access cash benefits until the 1960s, by the 1970s, the rolls of such programs had been opened up, and the public perception was increasingly that those people were the ones using (and abusing) the programs. So in large part, the critique of “entitlement” has been bound up with a racialized narrative of the deserving and undeserving, which can be seen, in many ways, as a racist meme.
But if we look and listen closely, what we discover is that the mentality of entitlement and expectation is far more embedded among the affluent and among whites than among the poor or people of color.”






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