Apparently for real. Man, someone at One Yonge is having a bad Monday morning.

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Turns out the tale of Patient Zero – the Canadian flight attendant – was, as with many things, a lie.  Story here.

Reading this story reminds me of my Dad and my family, believe it or not.  Chances are our family knew about AIDS long before most of you did.

As I have related before, my Dad was an immunologist before he became a bio-ethicist. When I was a kid, I remember him coming home to tell us about a frightening virus that didn’t really have a name yet. Some of the doctors at the hospital, he said, were scared by the profound toll it was taking on three “H” communities – Haitians, homosexuals and heroin users. I remember him saying it was the most formidable virus any of them had ever seen. “If it does what we think it is going to do,” he said, “it will kill millions of people.”

It did. Every year, now, it kills about two million people. Many more live with it.  And my Dad mourned the loss of every single one of those patients he had, as he and others struggled to stop the spread of this terrible disease.

As the Star story suggests, it is wrong to associate complex problems with simple causes.  But that’s what the media demand, and so we go along with it.

We shouldn’t.  In any event, a fascinating story, and worth a read.

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Dude, yellow shorts? Seriously?

Sigh.  If nothing else, I predict the 2015 election campaign will hang more on visuals more than any other in our nation’s proud history.

(Oh, and advisors? Advise.  Don’t enable.)

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…well, over on Twitter, anyway. So sayeth this here Twitter app, which is as existential as it is useless.

More than a thousand of my just-about 12,000 followers are fakes! That hurts!

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My dad spent his entire adult life in them, but I hate them.

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The precise moment at which Thomas Mulcair became unfit to be prime minister of Canada is hard to pin down.

It arguably came in 2005, when his party adopted what has become known as the Sherbrooke Declaration — in which the federal New Democrats accept that is possible to break up the country with 50% plus a single, solitary vote. When the NDP’s own constitution requires two-thirds to be amended.

It may have come in late 2012, when the NDP leader refused to defend the flying of the Canadian flag at ceremonies at Quebec’s National Assembly. Instead, Mulcair sent out one of his crypto-separatist MPs, who snapped that the banning of the Maple Leaf was Quebec’s “own business.”

Or, it may have happened earlier this year, when Mulcair approved a move to rescind the Clarity Act, the 2000 legislation that governs the rules surrounding secession of a province. The federal NDP want to clear up unity “fairy tales,” he said at the time.

Most likely, however, Mulcair ceased to be a contender for prime minister sometime in April, when a book was published in Quebec suggesting the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada actually conspired against Quebec’s then-separatist government. In the book, La bataille de Londres, Quebec journalist Frederic Bastien claims Chief Justice Bora Laskin passed secrets to the Canadian and British governments on discussions between high court justices about the legality of constitutional repatriation.

Bastien also accuses former Justice Willard Estey of slipping confidential information to the British government in 1980. Never mind that an unprecedented Supreme Court investigation found no evidence whatsoever to validate Bastien’s claims.

Never mind that Laskin and Estey were not merely two great jurists — they were two of the greatest Canadians to have ever lived, and that they are not here to defend their good names. Never mind any of that. No, note this: When Bastien’s corrosive conspiracy theories were trotted out, Mulcair giddily seized on them, and demanded an inquiry. And, when he got one, he dismissed the results, because they favoured Canada.

Said Mulcair recently: “It’s a clear indication that the Supreme Court had no intention all along of ever dealing with this issue seriously.”

Take another look at those words. Those are the words of a man who aspires to be prime minister — smearing the highest court in the land, suggesting that it is lawless.

That it is engaged in cover-up. As I said at an Ottawa conference this week — as one of Mulcair’s most ardent defenders angrily sat beside me — those comments are beyond the pale. They are disgusting and despicable.

And they disqualify Thomas Mulcair to be prime minister.

Why did Mulcair — Angry Tom, as he is widely known — pursue such a reckless course? Why did he so irresponsibly seek to reopen old wounds and divide Canadians? Because he knows he will never be prime minister.

Because he knows that his current post, leader of the opposition, is the best he can ever hope for. Because he is always prepared to cut a deal with the separatists to advance his career, and to hell with Canada.

There’s been a pattern in Mulcair’s public life. At those points where history is watching, at those moments where he has been called upon to choose Canada or Quebec, he chooses the latter. At every juncture where he could have promoted Canada — with the Sherbrooke Declaration, with the Clarity Act, with the flag — Mulcair declined to do so. He put his partisan interest ahead of the national interest.

At a certain point in a politician’s career, a picture reveals itself. Mulcair’s portrait is one that depicts an angry, bitter old man, one who is literally prepared to put the country at risk to curry favour with separatists.

Mulcair is a disgrace. He isn’t fit to be a dog catcher, let alone prime minister of Canada.

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Being “positive” and not “negative” was an interesting theory.

It’s a theory that doesn’t ever really work, however.

Justin Trudeau, take note.

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Sid Ryan, the OFL’s “leader,” has been getting upset about a series of friendly inquiries I’ve been sending his way via the miracle that is Twitter.  I’ve been asking him good-natured questions – about his Israel-hating policies, about his bankrupting of pension funds, about the loss of members in OFL – but he keeps changing the channel.

Here’s the question I keep asking him, and which he refuses to address:

Will you ask Andrea Horwath to appear with you in public?  Why not, if not?

(Hint: she won’t go near him with a barge pole.  Because she’s a smart woman, and he’s a weak little man.)

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PCs up in polls ‘cuz opposition opposes. Labour fears PCs, pushing NDs to go along, so NDs down. OnLibs ∴ safe, gas plants notwithstanding.  #onpoli

140-CHARACTER UPDATE: Most compelling reason for Ont NDP to push for an election? Sid Ryan says not to.  Rule: always do what Sid says not to do.  You can’t lose.

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SFH got together in our new practice spot last night, and lamented the passing – coming up this weekend – of our long-time hang-out, The Shanghai Cowgirl. The Cowgirl’s been Queen West’s best spot for more than a decade, but it is to be no more, making way for an eatery that is more upscale.

To commemorate that, an SFH video filmed right next door, at the Bovine Sex Club. (The song is part of Julie Pacino’s ‘Billy Bates’ soundtrack, thus the clips from said film.) It’s a bit dated – we are, now, a happy trio – but a bit of punk rock fun. Here’s hopin’ the Bovine doesn’t go the way of the Cowgirl, and (from the looks of it) the rest of Queen West.  Yuppies, begone!

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