One thing I learned this week from the Conservatives:

Tired of Liberal corruption? Frustrated with independent women not towing the line? Then join The Conservative Party of Canada:

Alienation. We know it.

Mind the Independence

About the confidence vote:

I think it's great that this came down to independent votes -- voting on party lines doesn't seem as genuine as someone with no real party affiliation, who reasons through what is best for his constituents first -- before toeing his party's interests.

[via grrrl meets world]

About Belinda...

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out. Assuming all Conservative MPs vote with the party (an assumption that is now questionable, I guess), it really is coming down to one swing vote.

Whatever the outcome of the Gomery inquiry and what it will say about the current Liberal government, it's beyond me why someone would want to cross the floor to the Liberals at this stage.

[via The Eagle & Child]

Hospice is a gift to the professionals that open themselves up to the gifts of end of life care... to living each day as if it were a lifetime.

[via In Our Own Words]

...people ask me all the time why I give them money when I make a living caring for people dying from cancer. My response is that "I'll be the happiest person in the unemployment line if they cure cancer." If the mega corporate high pressure hospice marketers put me out of business, I won't be smiling, but between now and then I can smile knowing that I have refused to treat hospice as anything other than a ministry to dying people and their families.

[via Hospice Blog]

Confrontation reminds us that, more often than not, logic does not prevail over raw emotion. It reminds us that, because of that fact, innocent people can get hurt for no apparent reason at all.

Being nice can be a way of blending into the background and disappearing; of being so sweet, so complacent and passive that we are too ineffectual to be considered a threat to anyone. It is a way for us to stay safe. For some it can also be away of deflecting attention so that they can fly below the radar. They never draw enough interest as to be questioned. In both cases it becomes a way of disengaging from other people. A way of becoming self absorbed, safe and anonymous. Underneath it all it also breeds a rage so potent that it smolders just behind the eyes at all times. It is fueled by every injury unaddressed, every snide comment left without an apology to accompany it and every theft of dignity, real or imagined, that ever happened. That kind of rage will lash out and surprise even the person in whom it lives, but most of the time one can temporarily recover from the inconvenience by being extra nice. So the cycle continues.
Being nice is evil.
I seem to be pretty good at it.

[via Milestoned]

Those who condemn all politicians outright are really making the same kind of generalizations that are responsible for racism and bigotry, e.g. all Indians are lazy, all Irishmen are brawling drunkards, all farmers are aid=seeking whiners. Can you doubt that some corruption, major or minor, was and is present in almost every government that has ever existed? The main difference is that it was kept hidden and quiet, though often suspected, in the past, and still is in most of the world,...

Thus though we now see and hear more news of corruption than ever before, there is probably less of it in total.

-- from Interesting tidbits found while spring cleaning by Terry Chamberlain in the Saskatoon Sun

As Revenge of the Sith Comes...

Somewhere in the fifteen years between Return of the Jedi and these Prequels George Lucas became rich and famous. It would seem that his perspectives changed. People no longer cared about the little guy on some obscure planet saving the universe, or about a scoundrel with a heart of gold and a charming personality, or about terrifying Evil Dictators that cannot be stopped by anyone and hold in their repertoire lines that you want to quote over and over. NO. Now it's about arrogant Jedi who don't plug into the force that pervades the cosmos, but are born with it in their blood (?) and have no clue how to have a normal conversation with one human being they encounter. And it's about droids having more interesting conversations with each other than any humans have in the whole show. And it's about being scared by a guy named "Dooku" (oooh terrifying). Lucas has obviously surrounded himself with yes-men who do all his bidding without thinking or stopping him with, "Umm...George...this scene makes absolutely NO SENSE."

Let's face it: Anyone who's seen the original movies more than twice could have come up with better plots and dialogue than Lucas. And where is the awe and the mystery? It has disappeared. Both were found in the first Matrix and permeated the Lord of the Rings, and Lucas must of thought he had inserted them into his latest creations. He was DEAD wrong.

[via ~Scottyd]

Man, I thought I was cynical and jaded about relationships...apparently not so much.

Crutches:

The things that fall away at the wrong time

or

The things that we fall away from without even thinking about it