Crooked in Canada

What a stupid, stupid woman Denise Ogonoski is.

I agree there are more stupid men all over the political spectrum than there are stupid woman, but when a stupid woman does come along and does something really dumb, they tend to stick out a litte more. Ogonoski blew it in a big way when she participated in a Greenpeace protest, and she should pay a bigger price than the $287 fine she was handed, and a five year ban from the Shaw Conference Centre where she was arrested.

I support Greenpeace for what it stands for and I don’t always agree with some of the fights they take on, but my support mostly stems from the fact that Greenpeace is a better alternative to the Sea Shepherd Society when it comes to conservation.

As far as I’m concerned Sea Shepherd can go f**k itself, and Paul Watson is a massive dickhead.

Sea Shepherd Society would be a better conservation group without him at the helm. With Watson at leading the way the act like ’soft terrorists’ if there is such a thing.

A previous Canadian government knows what I’m talking about when it comes to Sea Shepherd Society, but enough about them, it’s Denise Ogonoski who gets to shine in Crooked in Canada today.

I think Ogonoski bit of more than she and her boss can chew, and I also think she might have already had a job offer on the table and didn’t give a f**k what her boss or everybody else would think when she decided that she wanted to share in the limelight of a Greenpeace protest.

She just couldn’t pass up dropping from the ceiling and unhurling a banner criticising Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach at a fundraising dinner. It was too good of an opportunity to make a name for herself. That’s my take on it.

For a woman Ogonoski certainly has a lot of balls to do what she did, but if it was my call, I would fire her ass on the spot, and I’d make damn sure that I sent a message to all my staff that that type of behaviour won’t be tolerated from anybody working for an elected member of provincial parliament.

When it comes to protests, there is a time and a place for everything, and the last thing I would do is disrupt anybody’s supper intentionally, unless I was a hitman hired to take out the Alberta Premier, or a terrorist wanting to make a statement.

Interrupting my dinner in such a sensational way wouldn’t go over too well with me, and if somebody was dropped from the ceiling while I was stuffing myself with good food, well anything could happen, especially if I happened to be armed and I was scared shitless.

What Ogonoskid did was a reckless act.

Ogonoski, while she certainly isn’t a killer for hire, could have been one and things could have turned out a lot worse.

Man, she could have been packing a whole lot of fire power and have a bomb strapped to her chest, or worse yet being unarmed as she was, somebody could have shot her. I’m sure there was armed security in and around the room she dropped in on, though it wouldn’t have been obvious to many of the people in attendance, never mind the two Greenpeace members dropping from the ceiling. Cooler heads obviously prevailed.

Lucky all the way around.

Clearly Ogononski abused her position to advance a cause, and perhaps score political brownie points with Greenpeace, and for that alone she should be banned from NDP offices across the province, never mind the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton.

It will be interesting to see what MLA Rachel Notley says and does in the handling of what should soon be Ogonoski’s former employer. She should be fired for her actions, no ifs, ands or buts about it.

I think it’s pretty easy for oil tycoons to figure out that the NDP is likely in bed with Greenpeace too, especially since they were more or less of accused of the doing same with the Stelmach when Ogonoski and a second party unveiled their banner.

Of course Greenpeace’s actions will do nothing to drive a wedge between the Alberta premier and oil companies.

I wonder how much money Alberta oil tycoons and Greenpeace contributes to NDP coffers in the oil rich province. Who contributes more?

It’s hard to say, but who cares about that, this is about the fate of Ogonoski, and perhaps even the fate of her employer.

Here’s how one newspaper described what it was Ogonoski did:

Denise Ogonoski was one of two Greenpeace protesters who snuck into Edmonton’s Shaw Conference Centre, dropped from the ceiling in harnesses and unfurled a banner that read, “Stelmach: the best premier oil money can buy.”

That being said, I bet there were a lot of people who were terrified when she and her co-defendant pulled off the little, but effective stunt. The latter doesn’t make her any less stupid by the way, but it might score her a job offer or two, if in fact she’s fired by Notley at all.

At the very least the staffer abused her position. She couldn’t have pulled off her stunt otherwise, and I think but can’t be certain, that her NDP employer might have had an inkling something was up sometime before the incident occurred and maybe turned the other cheek.

The smart thing for the MLA for Edmonton-Strathcona to do now is “Can her staffer and belt up when it comes to the media.” There’s no way she can weather this storm if she doesn’t. She needs to put as much distance between Ogonoski as she can, and deny, deny, deny if she wants to come off smelling like an Alberta Rose.

If she doesn’t fire Ogonoski, then some voters just might think that their MLA condones such protests and perhaps even had a hand in this one. They show their disapproval in a big way if that turns out to be the case.

Notley is pretty much damned if she does, and damned if she doesn’t when it comes to firing Ogonoski and that’s a tough position for her to be in. I can’t wait to hear what she does about Ogonoski and how it is reported. It will definitely be interesting to see how all this plays out.

Anyway, I hope for the MLA’s sake she’s got a back up plan for moments like these. Ogonoski better have one too. She’s going to need it.

By the way, I hope those in attendance at the fundraising dinner Greenpeace crashed brought a change of underwear with them, because I have a feeling a few diners shit themselves when they saw two people dropping in on them like that from the ceiling.

It’s a good thing it wasn’t terrorists dropping in on them. Man, that would have made headlines, huh?

Headline: Greenpeace demonstrator who crashed premiers dinner works for NDP