Rose's Cantina

View image | gettyimages.com I nearly wept this morning reading Robin Sears' scathing analysis of the current state of politics in Ottawa and Ontario. Sears used two examples to demonstrate why voters, old and young, are so cynical. Example A: Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne's chief of staff is fingered by the province's Chief Electoral Officer for trying to bribe a hard working Liberal to stop him from running against the preferred candidate. (Criminal charges pending.) Example B: The well-coiffed son of a former revered prime minister accepts sloppy seconds from the Prime Minister. Mucho gusto! As a voter, I'm loving it. I find day-to-day politics exceedingly boring, and I frankly don't care where John Baird hangs his hat. I'm here for the dirty stuff. Ontario never, ever, disappoints. And we have David Peterson to thank for all of it. Peterson is the Canadian version of Kevin Bacon. All the shenanigans -- and people -- can be all tied bac...

View image | gettyimages.com Family Day is the stupidest holiday ever. It only makes sense to skiers and provincial civil servants. Teachers, maybe. But for the rest of us, Dalton McGuinty's legacy is nothing more than a huge pain in the ass. You can't buy groceries. I hate any time I can't buy groceries. You can get your mail delivered, but you can't get your drink on. The kids are off school, but you have to work. It's a babysitter's dream; a parent not so much. Those of us who work on Family Day can't get anything done. In my case, I work with doctors and their associations from across Canada. The doctors are at work, a lot of them, but the associations have the day off -- in Ontario. I can't take the day off because the rest of Canada doesn't have the day off. So it's a kind of damned if you do, kind of holiday. Aside from the huge inconvenience, Family Day falls on one of the coldest days of the year. That means it...

View image | gettyimages.com Former Conservative pop tart Eve Adams is working closely with her arm candy, Dimitri Soudas, on a plan that will prove to Oakville Liberals that she is indeed "Oakworthy". We have learned here, exclusively, that the love birds, who are now being called DimEve by affectionate Liberals, are in talks to put a strip shopping mall on the very site of Dalton McGuinty's failed gas plants as an olive branch to the well-heeled folk whose mansions buffer the stink fest that is Lake Ontario. The mall will be aptly called All About Eve and will include many exclusive boutiques where Oakvillians can get their hair and makeup done at ridiculous prices and have their cars lovingly washed and detailed using Argon oil and sea sponges while they wait. It's not just for the ladies; there is also a Hair Club for Men! Eve's campaign headquarters will be run in a prominent piece of real estate in the centre of the mall, proving once again...

View image | gettyimages.com As a woman, and as a sometime Liberal, Justin Trudeau has just stepped on my last nerve. By embracing Stephen Harper's sloppy seconds, Eve Adams and Dimitri Soudas, and bringing them into the Liberal fold, he has created a party that is both undemocratic and a laughing stock. Libs are well known for parachuting in tainted meat as a cynical means to an end. (Who can forget Jim Coutts?) It seems to be the inherent right of the leader to step on and over people who have worked hard to get a nomination. But this. This is beyond anything I've ever seen before. It's not like Eve Adams was a prized catch. She and her little henchman were turfed from the party they claimed to dearly love for electioneering regularities. Plus, her Diva behavior, disrupting the lives of little people who just want a bit of gas cause her car wasn't clean enough, I mean...imagine what she would be like as a CABINET MINISTER! Justin, I need a bigger c...

Let the eggs be cast. It's bad enough that NBC anchor Brian Williams "misremembered" the fact that he wasn't riding in a helicopter that came under fire.  But he couldn't even manage a sincere apology to the people who were there. I have questions, so many questions. How is it even possible he was allowed to fib about his whereabouts for a decade, particularly considering the event took place with witnesses everywhere? When he first told the story, didn't he think "hmm, maybe I'll be called out for bullshit?" And as he continued to embellish, going from a passenger in the follow helicopter to the pilot, didn't he think "well, maybe that's stretching the nose a bit too far"? Evidently, his hubris and delusion knows no bounds. Clearly, Williams can no longer find the demarcation line between the truth and a lie which is an odd landmine on which to sit if you're trying to be the voice of reassurance and trust. Maybe...

My childhood friend, Sandie Bergen, died two days ago, the victim of a drive-by set of brain tumors that she only learned she had three weeks ago. The neurologist had concluded that she'd only recently developed three massive and horrible tumors in the days around Christmas. Those tumors plumped up her brain and caused her to forget things and to fall down, and that is the reason for her visit to the hospital, her Green Mile visit which involved MRIs and, ultimately, a biopsy which resulted in a brain hemorrhage from which she never recovered. Sandie, for her part, had been optimistic going in. "We're going to fight this," she told her husband, Charlie, the love of her life, the former Vancouver volunteer Fire Chief. The kids put up a friendly wall hanging in her room. They knew it wasn't good. They prayed for the best. But shit happens, as Sandie might have said. Shit happened, indeed with a tumor that burst taking away her from her life, her family, he...

My son Nick came home yesterday after an exhausting day dealing with jerks and morons who are salivating over the deals they are expecting as Target Canada closes. "I came up with a good line," he said, whipping off the Target badge that will soon be memorabilia. "Adults can only be served if accompanied by children." He and his girlfriend both work at Target. They lost their jobs a couple weeks ago and, in spite of that, are still being good soldiers, showing up on time, not calling in sick. In turn, Target has rewarded them by giving them work loading and unloading trucks because the heavy lifting staff has been let go. They have been told if they don't show up for work, they'll be let go with no severance. It is, after all, up to Target to determine when the axe will fall on their poor young heads. Some of the managers at Target walked away with a cool $11,000. Others will get nothing. The worker bees will get nothing except for the scraps the...