Chan's Personal Blog

I came across this article entitled, "PETA Killed 95 Percent of Adoptable Pets in its Care During 2008." For those who are unfamiliar, PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA's slogan is "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment." The organization focuses on four core issues: factory farming, fur farming, animal testing, and animals in entertainment.

From the article:


I'm sure people pick on PETA because they probably rub some people their wrong way because they're usually perceived as extreme and/or militant. I mean, if you look at PETA's website, their leader wants the meat from her body to be used for a human barbeque to highlight that eating meat is wrong. This is also the same organization that launched a PR campaign, telling people that we should call fish, "sea-kittens", in hopes that people would stop eating fish if they thought fish were cute and cuddly like kittens.

I came across this article at Yahoo News entitled, "Fox News jokesters forced into retreat over Canadian military jibes."


This video shows the clip from Fox News that's causing quite a stir in Canada:



And here's a response from the Canadian Defence Minister, Peter McKay:



For me, I'm definitely not impressed by this Fox News guy's comments, especially since the base I worked at was one of the launching pads for Operation Apollo, which was part of the opening act in the War on Terror. If you look at Canada's contribution to the combined NATO operation, Canada has taken a higher proportion of casualties. This is because our forces operate in the most dangerous area which is the south. Other countries have actually disallowed their troops from operating in that zone because of the danger.

Well played Fox News. Way to make friends with your allies.

(For the record, I'm not some partisan hack that only hates Fox News. I also hate MSNBC with a passion. I find both these media outlets way too partisan, ideological, and in some cases, extreme.)

With each passing day of this recession, I find myself increasingly annoyed by these bankers and money men of Wall Street who basically ruined the economy for the rest of us. The latest outrage of course is A.I.G. trying to pay out $165 million in bonuses to its executives.


It's just infuriating that a company who recklessly bet the house on housing mortgages and failed could even consider rewarding its executives with bonuses.

I think it's also quite remarkable how the mistakes of this sector has such massive ramifications on all of us. I mean, a lot of us did nothing to deserve this, yet somehow, I find my salary being frozen because businesses are in cost-cutting mode. I see round after round of layoffs from companies all around me. I have friends struggling to get enough work in order to pay the bills. A quick look at my retirement and investment accounts will reveal something synonymous to a large impact crater. I looked at my savings account, and interest rates have come all the way down to 1% which makes holding cash a pretty poor return on investment, even though it's one of the few safe havens left (it's practically a disincentive to save). All of this is happening to everyday people, and yet we're rewarding those who engineered this financial disaster.

And so, I salute Wall Street for creating such a glorious housing bubble, and making off with a ton of cash, and then having the balls to pat themselves on the back with bonuses after they burned down that house. Kudos.

/end rant.