A lot of people were making fun of Stephen Harper hiding in a broom closet being guarded by MPs with hand-fashioned sticks last week.
There are memes all over the Internet about it.
Where was he supposed to go?
Have you been in that room?
There are no windows to jump out of, like in the Parliamentary Press Gallery's hot room. There isn't even a bathroom.
This was not a cowardly act, as some have suggested. You know what the flight attendants say. The big person should always put the mask on first in order to save the country.
That's what Harper was doing, making sure the big person would still be alive if his loyal foot soldiers with sticks had been unable to protect him.
Most of us would do the same thing.
He's our Prime Minister, for Goodness Sake, one of our great symbols of democracy.
So stifle yourself, Harper haters.
There was no need for him to come out of the closet.
Besides, I have no doubt the caucus would have done everything in their power to make sure that the Leader of the Free...Canada would have lived for another day.
Still, it makes one wonder if they'd been watching too much Game of Thrones.
Question: where exactly was the Prime Minister's detail? Shouldn't there have been at least one Mountie in that room if for no other reason than to protect Harper from any leadership contenders who might want to hoist him on one of those flagpoles?
It's just what I was thinking. I'm not making fun, truly, I'm not.
It is simply a good question.
Security learned a valuable lesson last week. Never let the Prime Minister out of their sight for even a minute.
Now he'll be lucky to go to the bathroom without armed personnel guarding his manhood.
And surely they'll be outside the door when he and Laureen get down to business.
It occurred to me, that during that whole crisis, the Americans were treating Canadians like some sort of damsel in distress, the Dale Arden to their Flash Gordon, the Lois Lane to their Superman.
Immediately, Barack Obama was one the phone to the broom closet offering American support.
We must thank our American counterparts for their help by sending in the really, really big guns in the form of Anderson Cooper.
It was only when some people saw Anderson Cooper that they knew we were in real trouble.
The FBI were also dispatched to comb through their records to find what terrorist cell was ultimately responsible and to vanquish it, while the RCMP were getting out the catalogue to buy themselves some weapons that could actually work against the terrorists. Batons and handguns might be useful for unruly drunkards and Japanese tourists, but they are no match for guys with semi-automatic weapons, bombs and hand grenades.
One global security expert suggested that the RCMP consider getting out of their cars once in a while, instead of listening to their radios.
I agree. They're dressed for it.
Besides, chasing down a bad guy who is on foot, in a car or on a horse, is pretty difficult particularly when there are stairs involved.
What have we learned from our so-called terror crisis?
Once all the conspiracy theories have been explored, it seems that the perpetrator wasn't a very big terrorist at all.
He was, in fact, mentally ill, a drug addict, a fellow who, according to his mother, played too many rounds of Call of Duty.
He was not, his mother said, a terrorist. He was mad at the world.
She is his mother. I believe her.
So before we get too ahead of ourselves and lock down the Capital, let's just take a moment to chill, shall we? Tone down the rhetoric.
No Prime Minister, we do not need to lock up everyone who has a bad thought about other people. Otherwise, we'd be locking up half of your caucus.
And we don't need more scary legislation, in the wake of this terrible crime, to put more people in jail and suspend their civil liberties.
What we need is to get these kids out of the basement, away from drugs and video games, and give them hope for the future. We don't need to fill up the Regional Detention Centre.
And we need better community and school resources to deal with these boys -- and they are boys -- who are shooting up their high schools and grow up to ultimately shoot up Parliament.
We can blame ISIS, or ISIL, or even the Internet all we like.
But video games have desensitized our youth and drugs have addled their brains.
The Tories and the police should spend at least half their energies shutting down the drug trade and injecting more money into community mental health programs. And they should stop encouraging people to buy and use firearms.
Tories love guns. Maybe they should rethink that position.
disagree with you on the guns part, but definitely agree on the Prime Minister and his security, of course he should have been in the closet, he's our PM. But the fact that he was there for 15 mins is disturbing, where the heck was his detail?
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