FROLITICKS

Satirical commentary on Canadian and American current political issues

Jun 8

Children as Young as 9 are Attempting Suicide in North America

by bcurry

In Southern Ontario, the small town of Woodstock, with roughly 38,000 residents, had five young people 19 and under commit suicide since the beginning of 2016. Local authorities noted that another 36 teens were known to have expressed suicidal thoughts or attempted suicide in neighbouring communities. How can this be?  Where are we as a society going wrong?

Well, the issue of youth suicide is nothing new in both Canada and the U.S.  Indeed, according to a 2011 U.S. study by the University of Washington, children as young as nine years old are attempting to kill themselves every year. Nearly 40 per cent of those who attempted suicide first tried to kill themselves in elementary or middle school.  Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Canadians between the ages of 10 and 24.  According to Statistics Canada, 25 people in Canada aged 10 to 14 committed suicide in 2008. Girls are more likely to commit suicide than boys, and the proportion of girls dying by their own hand is increasing.  Depression was detected in 40 per cent of suicides. Cyberbullying may play a bigger role in youth suicide today than it did a decade ago.  These are not simply statistics, each number represents someone’s child.

According to recent research, teens who had a schoolmate die by suicide are more likely to consider or attempt taking their own lives than those who haven’t lost a peer to suicide — and the fallout can be longer lasting than once thought. That effect, known as “suicide contagion,” can last two years or longer.  Some believe that this form of contagion may have happened in Woodstock.

Whatever the causes, societies have to seriously begin tackling this issue. Resources have to be allocated to deal with youth mental health issues, reducing the daily pressures and stressors affecting young people, better educating the general population and instituting a comprehensive national strategy to address the issue.  Suicide prevention programs need to focus on elementary and middle school populations as well as high school populations.  The number of youth suicides, especially among girls, has been increasing in recent years. We cannot afford to continue to needlessly loose our children and adolescents to suicide.  The time for talk is over.  The time for action is now.

Health Care Mental Health Uncategorized Youth Suicide

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May 9

To Blog or Not to Blog, That is the Question

by bcurry

For about four years now, I have been blogging on a variety of issues within the blog entitled https://froliticks.wordpress.com/.  Blogging offers one an opportunity to express certain views on issues of the day, often in a satirical manner.  Whether they are read or not is often of little relevance as to why one bothers to blog.  If the writing is good and the subjects are current and interesting, one can only hope that its readers will enjoy the blogs and hopefully become better informed and willing to think about certain issues.

However, one must realize that there are thousands of blogs written every day. Besides keeping up on current events via print or on-line news sources, one only has so much time in a day to read blogs via the Internet.  For me, the frequent absurdities of politics in Canada and the U.S. make good fodder for any satirical writer. The current American presidential primaries are a perfect example of offering up plenty of comedic material for the likes of Saturday Night Live and late-night talk shows.  The total lack of real informed debate about serious issues is only one of numerous flaws in our political systems.  Both countries are among the wealthiest and best educated in the world, but have created leadership races involving mud-slinging and name-calling episodes worthy of the worst virtual reality television shows.

Select any important topic of current interest — be it the economy, climate change, inequalities among the sexes and races, national security, immigration, foreign policy, etc., etc. — and perspective candidates will respond with one-minute nonsensical sound bits. What is even sadder is the fact that voters and supporters continue to endorse such behaviour.  One would think that citizens would want to see well thought out and viable policies to deal realistically with today’s problems.  It was Otto Von Bismarck who said that politics is the “art of the possible”.  Moreover, it’s not necessarily about what’s right or what’s best. It’s about what politicians and governments can actually get done.

Listening to many of our politicians, you’d think that politics is the art of the impossible. Too many promises are totally absurd and lacking any grounding in reality and serious study.  This outcome has unfortunately culminated in the likes of Donald Trump.  Hillary Clinton is not too far behind.  Canada’s current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tends to be more of a stuntman than a statesman, too often immersed in selfies with his admirers. This political evolution provides an immense amount of amusing material for bloggers like myself.  As long as the current output continues, there is plenty of incentive to keep on blogging.

Canada Conservative Political Groups Justin Trudeau US US Politics

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May 2

Why Canada Should Get the Hell Out of Iraq

by bcurry

It was March 2003 and the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq. According to U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the coalition mission was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.  After 21 days of major combat operations, the loss of thousands of lives and the destruction of much of Iraq’s infrastructure, President Bush declared that the war was over.  At the time, I had many misgivings and was happy that Canada had refused to participate in this farce.  Remember, no weapons of mass of mass destruction were found and the war continued on for a decade.  Saddam Hussein was subsequently found and hung by the interim Iraqi government.  Iraq supposedly was supposedly on its way to discovering “democracy”— Western style.

Jump forward a dozen years, and where are we today? On April 30, 2016, thousands of protesters stormed the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and took over Iraq’s parliament. A state of emergency was declared in Baghdad.  President Obama’s plan for fighting the Islamic State (ISIS) was predicated on having a credible and effective Iraqi ally on the ground in Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.  Instead, we have a corrupt and paralyzed government overseeing an Iraqi society fractured once again along ethnic and sectarian lines, with Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish elements fighting for power, oil and territory.

Meanwhile, Canada has increased its military advisors on the ground to help train Kurdish fighters in the north in their battle against ISIS. However, the problem is that the Kurds are really fighting to eventually establish an independent state, separate from the current Iraqi regime.  Since ISIS is nothing more than a bunch of thugs who rely on fear and threats to maintain their occupation in parts of Iraq and Syria, fighting ISIS has become a “good feel” campaign for the West.  Recent ISIS-inspired attacks in France and Belgium have given an added incentive to the campaign.  However, there is the much tougher task of helping Abadi repair Iraq’s corrupt and largely ineffective government before a ground war can be won against ISIS.

Canada is caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, if it pulls out its advisors from Iraq, its allies and the hard-liners will argue that Canada is soft on terrorism.  On the other hand, if it continues with military assistance to Kurdish forces, the Shiite and Sunni factions will accuse Canada of supporting the Kurdish independence movement.  Iraq is becoming increasingly ungovernable and eventually the U.S.-led coalition will be left with overseeing the breakup of Iraq into separate political entities.  For the moment, the common enemy in ISIS has forced some form of sectarian cooperation.  If and when ISIS is effectively removed from Iraq, what will come next — another civil war?  Most likely.  Canada had better begin thinking about an exit strategy, sooner than later.

Canada Iraq Iraq and ISIS Iraq Today US

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Feb 29

Donald Trump and Extreme Narcissism

by bcurry

I’ve just finished a fascinating recent book by Dr. Joseph Burgo dealing with extreme narcissists. Guess what?  Donald Trump is given as one example of an extreme narcissist in the book.  Basically, narcissism is recognized in psychologists/psychiatrists circles as a mental illness, often referred to as “narcissistic personality disorder”.  People with narcissistic personality disorder are characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance.  They have a sense of entitlement and demonstrate grandiosity in their beliefs and behaviour.  They also have a strong need for admiration, are manipulative, but lack feelings of empathy.  If challenged, they often will bully and disparage those who would dare criticize them.  Sound familiar?

What’s interesting is that Sarah Palin, who once ran as a Vice-Presidential candidate in the U.S., was also described by Dr. Burgo as an extreme narcissist in his book. So here we have one extreme narcissist publicly endorsing another extreme narcissist, Donald Trump, for the Republican Presidential candidate.  Like two peas in a pod, both Palin and Trump have histories of making outlandish and irresponsible statements about American values, politics and policies.

Unfortunately, Trump is the most dangerous of narcissists in that he can attract a fairly large following by being outrageous and expressing the evident anger of some Americans against the so-called political establishment. He is very effective in using his celebrity and money to convince average Americans that he has simple solutions to all their problems.  Stop illegal immigrants by building a wall and have the Mexican government pay for it.  Prevent terrorists from entering the country by banning Moslems from entry.  Resolve foreign policy conflicts by bombing the hell out of everyone.  All with the ultimate goal to make America great again!  As Hillary Clinton has said: “Since when has America not being great.”

I can only hope that Americans, particularly Republicans, will more thoroughly research Trump’s history, both business and political, to really see his portrait for what it is: that of  an extreme narcissist.

U.S. Primaries US US Politics

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Dec 4

Help Me To Understand Mass Killings in the U.S.

by bcurry

Let me understand this.  The latest mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, which killed 14 people and injured 21 others, represented the 355th such mass shooting in 2015.  Mass shootings are usually defined as incidents in which four or more people, including the gunman, are killed or injured by gunfire.  According to the Reddit tracker, the number of mass shootings so far this year in the U.S. has already surpassed the total number of mass shootings in 2014.  At this pace, the total will be well above 2013’s pace, when a total of 363 mass shootings were recorded.

What is really difficult to understand is why Congress would block an attempt to ban the sale of weapons to persons on the American potential terrorist watch list.  According to the Government Accountability Office and The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, more than 2,000 terrorism suspects purchased guns in the U.S. between 2004 and 2014.  Democrats have repeatedly proposed closing that loophole, but the National Rifle Association and its Republican allies have apparently blocked those efforts, so it’s still legal.

In addition, just hours before this latest mass shooting, more than 2,000 physicians from around the country petitioned federal lawmakers to lift a restriction on research.  For nearly two decades, the restriction essentially blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting research on gun violence.  The doctors spoke about the need to view gun violence as a public health epidemic and research ways to solve it – as the country would with any disease causing thousands of American deaths each year.  The removal of the restriction would have in no way infringed on the rights of gun owners.

As in the case of other mass killers, the authorities discovered that the assailants had large caches of lethal arms and ammunition in their possession.  Police found more than 1,600 rounds of ammunition on or near the California couple, suggesting that they were prepared for a long siege.  Police recovered two assault rifles and two 9mm pistols, all legally purchased, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.  Kind of makes you wonder why such large quantities of munitions and the purchase of assault rifles wouldn’t have raised some eyebrows!

When one person dies in America every 16 minutes from a gun, people discuss an urgent need to talk about remedies.  Democrats, including President Obama, want to address America’s problems with guns.  Republicans talk about the need to address mental health. Both are right.  Society routinely constructs policies that reduce the toll of deadly products and activities all around us.  That’s what we do with cars (driver’s licenses, seatbelts, guardrails).  It’s what we do with swimming pools (fences, childproof gates, pool covers).  We often pre-examine and licence people (police officers, military personnel, drivers, pilots) so as to prevent persons with mental or other health issues from potentially endangering public safety.  Indeed, when it comes to improving universal background checks, recent polls have shown that a majority of gun owners would approve such an initiative.  So one can only ask why Americans aren’t ready to really deal with this issue?  I don’t have an answer or logical explanation.  Maybe you do.

Gun Control US

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Nov 16

Will the Paris Attacks Create a Backlash in Canada?

by bcurry

Already a fire was deliberately set at a mosque in Peterborough, Ontario.  Police believe that this may represent a hate crime.  Some prominent Canadians are increasingly questioning the Canadian Government’s stated intention to try to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year.  Critics are concerned that radicals may be allowed to enter under the program, despite the Government’s assurance that all potential refugees will be adequately screened. For the most part, they will be selected from refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.  Many will be families with women and children.  Remember that the horrible war in Syria has left more than 250,000 people dead and has displaced half of that country’s population.  Despite the hard work of numerous agencies, many refugees have been living in difficult conditions for several years.

Given the recent tragic events in France and elsewhere, including ISIS-related attacks in Lebanon and Turkey, this is not the time for “fear mongering” when it comes to providing humanitarian aid to these refugees.  It is also not the time for attacking Muslim communities in Canada, even if they are isolated events.  If this occurs, we are giving the radicals exactly what they want.  Such actions by Western countries will be used in ISIS propaganda as examples of why their so-called causes should be supported.  This in turn could very likely lead to a further radicalization of certain individuals who are already susceptible to such propaganda.

We need to work within our communities to ensure that inclusive policies and programs are in place to combat radicalization.  We need to be better informed about the complexity of the issues creating the Syrian situation and the general unrest in the Middle East.  We need to combat ignorance, extreme forms of backlash and xenophobic policies.  The best way that Canadians can combat extremism at home and abroad is by continuing to promote our finest traits as a caring, inclusive and diverse populace.

Canada Foreign Policy Iraq and ISIS Refugee Policies

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Oct 5

It’s Not More Legislation That’s Necessarily the Solution, It’s Also Enforcement of Existing Laws

by bcurry

President Obama has again referred to the need for more gun control legislation in response to the recent tragic mass shootings at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. As complex societies, we have legislation regulating activities throughout our two nations, including those dealing with public and worker health and safety, the environment, financial institutions, transportation, etc., etc. It would seem that we are well regulated already in most of our daily activities. Yet, terrible things keep happening in communities across North America — be it the mass shootings in Oregon and elsewhere or the train derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec that killed dozens of people in 2013.

Years ago in order to reduce so-called ‘government bureaucracy’ and reduce operational expenditures, governments began to introduce the concept of ‘self-regulation’ in a number of areas. This meant that industry had to ensure that businesses were in compliance with the standards found under various forms of existing legislation. It also meant that the regulators would reduce the number of proactive inspections and restrict their interventions to investigating accidents and incidents affecting health and safety, particularly where there were fatalities and injuries. In other words, in a much more reactive mode, enforcement primarily became targeted at violations committed by bad actors. Where violations are found, penalties are imposed in the form of fines and in fewer cases criminal charges.

However, all of this enforcement activity is performed ‘after the fact’. People become sick from unsafe food, water sources are polluted by hazardous materials releases, air quality suffers from high pollutant emissions from diesel vehicles, workers die in coal mine explosions, etc., etc. Fewer inspectors and administrators means less preventive and proactive regulatory activity. Having a registry of persons with mental illness or criminal records is meaningless if states and local authorities don’t provide much needed information to the responsible regulator in a timely and efficient manner. Without the effective enforcement of existing government requirements, more people are going to die at the hands of some mass killer.

Enforcement of standards and regulated activities has to improve in many areas involving societal oversight. Otherwise, more tragedies will occur affecting all of us in one way or another. After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Hopefully, politicians will finally recognize this.

Canada Federal Government Gun Control

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Jul 27

Could Donald Trump Become President? Sure, Why Not!

by bcurry

Donald Trump wants to be President of the United States of America. Well, maybe he’s not all that crazy. After all, Ronald Reagan was once a former actor whose greatest role was playing the U.S. President for real. He was said to have slept through Cabinet meetings and insisted on having briefing notes of no longer than one page in length. Apparently, this was to accommodate his short span of attention by providing script-like documents. Bill Clinton was well known for failure to keep it in his pants during his entire political career. George W. Bush invented new words or mispronounced actual words, thus becoming the butt of numerous comedians’ jokes. President Bush was given 9/11 as his legacy, and messed it up by invading Iraq under false pretences. Barak Obama became the first African-American President, although many Americans including African-Americans, didn’t think of him as really being black.

So why couldn’t Donald Trump become President? Trump leads all other Republican candidates in the polls at this time. He shoots from the hip, much like Reagan and Bush. His mouth often outruns his brains, not unlike former Presidents. Yet, he has come to represent a significant part of the American electorate that is angry with the state of their politics, the economy and society in general. He represents that portion of the population where the American dream has become a nightmare. He talks about issues like immigration which other candidates have tended to avoid by employing the usual cautious platitudes. He doesn’t rely on carefully-worded positions developed through focus-groups and well paid politically-savvy advisors.

Many Americans, like many Canadians, are frustrated with the current political scene. They feel that the powers that be in Washington and Ottawa do not reflect their real interests. In all truth, can you blame them? When you struggle everyday to make ends meet and good paying jobs are becoming fewer and fewer, you tend to target those fat cats in government and in the corporate world. However, despite Trump himself being a fat cat, he seems to speak for this disgruntled portion of the population. You may not like the things he says or how he says them, but you have to admit that his straight talk is somewhat catchy and to the point. If anything, he once again has become a media darling, which may in the end be his downfall.

Federal Election US US Politics

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Jun 21

Why Bother Arguing With Gun Owners?

by bcurry

More mass shootings in the U.S. and the resulting silence is deafening.  While their President may continually question the fact that his society is the most violent among industrialized countries, the onslaught continues.  The arms industry and its lobbyists rule the day.

Even here is Canada, statistically far less violent but increasingly seeing the use of firearms in homicides, there has been little real outrage over the recent weakening of gun control measures.  Some Canadian gun owners even argue that more gun control is a first step in the government eventually confiscating their weapons.  Sounds like arguments by militant militia movements existing both in the U.S. and Canada.  Remember folks, it’s the God-given right to bear arms!

When the number of guns in the hands of people outnumbers the number of people in a society, it would seem only inevitable that they will be used in violent acts of domestic terror and crime.  Indeed, some would argue that we are now in a state of perpetual war.  Local police are equipped with high-powered rifles, machine guns, armoured-attack vehicles, etc., etc.  As more police are unfortunately gunned down, authorities are becoming more and more like paramilitary organizations.  Can’t really blame them.

Getting guns off the street is a lot harder then it sounds.  Pro-gun groups continue to argue that each individual has the right to defend themselves if attacked or provoked.  It used to be that guns were primarily needed for hunting, target practice and sporting events.  However, we’ve seem for whatever reason to have expanded the need.  Sorry folks, given the political and financial clout of gun advocates, there isn’t really any reason to bother arguing for increased gun control measures.  There are no more excuses, no more rational thinking and no more political will.

Gun Control

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May 5

Low Birth Rates, But Who’s Going To Look After Me?

by bcurry

Seniors today are beginning to worry about the future of social security, health care and escaping the throws of poverty.  Birth rates in North America have been on the downturn for the last decade, and especially in the last five years since the Great Recession.  Studies have shown that the so-called millennial women are reproducing at the slowest pace of any generation in U.S. history.  The same is most likely true for Canadian millennials.  According to the Urban Institute in the States, birthrates among women in their 20s declined more than 15 percent between 2007 and 2012.

Now, I understand that younger women were delaying having children in the past because more were into careers and self-employment.  With the current tough economic times, even more women are delaying child birth due to serious financial concerns.  This is completely understandable given the high cost of raising children in this day and age.  Baby boomers never had to face many of today’s harsh realties, including high levels of unemployment, underemployment, housing costs and education-related debt.

On the other hand, we have an aging population, with those over 65 heading to make up a quarter of our population in the not too distant future.  Indeed, extreme financial circumstances are forcing many seniors to continue working beyond the normal retirement years.  However, once retired and with the forecast decline in the future labour forces, who is going to support all those existing social programs?  Due to a lack of retirement savings for many seniors, they have come to rely on government assistance just to make ends meet.  Furthermore, don’t count on your kids to look after you!  As it stands now, they need your help more often than not.

As a society, it would appear that we have to do a lot more to encourage young people to have families, and right away.  This may mean greater financial incentives and government assistance to do so.  We need to introduce more paid maternity and parental leave programs, affordable child-care services, tax benefits for each child, improved post-secondary education grants and loans, affordable housing, etc., etc.  Seniors need to support such initiatives, for to do so will benefit them as well in the end run.  Wouldn’t they like to become grandparents while they’re still alive?  The old saying that children represent our future has never been truer.  It’s time that we recognize and support policies that would lead to an increase in the birth rate.  Families contribute to society in so many ways.  Such family-oriented policies will certainly enhance all our futures, including those of the millennials.

Canada US

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