Lisa will Save
Hockey 

Come on Lisa, think of th Holy Economy

How convenient that when the greedy Billionaires locked out the greedy millionaires at midnight Saturday, Lisa and the rest of the Harper Government(tm) were already planning to start a session of Parliament Monday morning. Otherwise Lisa would have had to ask King Steve to call an emergency session to deal with the NHL Labor dispute.  I have no doubt that Ms. Raitt will be as quick to cure this danger to Harper's Prosperity(tm) as she was with Air Canada and the Postal Service. After all a good argument can be made that the NHL disruption is more damaging to the economy than temporarily losing one choice of air carrier.  I would imagine more people would be watching NHL games on TeeVee and the advertising that sponsors it than fly anywhere. So right off the bat jobs and revenue will be lost at CBC (which makes Harper happy), ESPN, TSN and SportsNet not to mention at the various advertising agencies.

But the biggest hit will come to the seven Canadian cities and the thousands of people with jobs that will become redundant without forty-one games, not counting possible playoff cash cows. Parking lots will be empty downtown at night, sports bars will seem like some small town legion and all the non-playing staff for the team and the arenas will find themselves on the unemployment line, but find themselve disqualified because they will be out of work due to a labor dispute.

I'll even go so far as to try to anticipate what Lisa will do, based on past performance since the Harper Government(tm) managed to cobble together their coveted majority, in spite of the fact about three quarters of Canadian voters didn't vote for them and it still isn't clear that they didn't steal the election as much as Bu$h did in 2000 and 2004, using many of the same techniques (and operators in some cases)

Before the end of the week I expect there will be legislation before the house containing these relevant highlights.

1. Since the players are perfectly willing, indeed anxious, to play under the existing agreement as long as genuine negotiations continue apace the owners will be given 72 hours from the time the legislation becomes law (and the Harper Government(tm) can act fast when they want to, and probably will have no opposition, indeed this bill might get a everybody to zero vote to end the lock out and let training begin and the pre-season/regular season games to proceed.

2. Of course this will only apply to the seven Canadian teams, though perhaps Buffalo should be invited since fans from Ontario follow them and Buffalo is certainly one of the more depressed cities in the Northeastern US. For much of the US no NHL games will have a very minimal effect economically, people will just be able to afford to go to more NBA and NFL games. The Red Wings being from another depressed city could be offered the eighth slot should Buffalo decline or even the Wild.  With one of these teams the 2012 NHL could sport two four team divisions, east and west. With Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg making up the western conference.

3. If the owners don't comply each owner will be fined 1,000,000 dollars per day. Some of the richer teams, like the Habs, Maple Laffs and Canucks might not notice the sanction for a few weeks, but Ottawa, Edmonton and Calgary might fold sooner. The Leafs might hold out all year, because by not playing at all they would have their best season in decades.

4. Then again, Lisa could just determine the details of the settlement, as she has done for other disputes and declare that until further negotiation and a new contract is hammered out the revenue will be shared 50-50.  But I guess Billionaires might be too greedy to go halfsies, that's why they are Billionaires.  Maybe this would satisfy Lisa's sense of equity and fairness, because only the Millionaires would be giving up anything - though not as much as the owners are after.

What should be part of any new agreement is some kind of revenue sharing like the arrangement that helps not only make the NFL a monster money machine (with so few games per year, but big venues) but allows small market teams like the Packers, community owned for jebus sake, not only compete but actually win the Super Bowl.

So if this comes to pass, remember you read it here first, but otherwise it is parody, or April Fool's Day in September - got it?

Christy - Milk Carton Girl

I just have to throw in my nickel's worth (two cents worth is being "deprecated" - a programming term, and since your're on the inter-toobz you can look it up if you don't know what it means) about the Romneyesque performance of our non-elected premier who not only has refused to hold an Autumn session of the Ledge, but has also gone the extra miles across the Strait of Georgia to get away from the wild tribespeople of Vancouver Island, but not before insulting them as much as possible without using "dirty" words. Even the ever so timid next to "power" Evan Solomon and the august propaganda sheet the National Post and many other BC LIEberal sycophants  have found this abrogation of the people's work worthy of criticism, though they try to remind us "they all do it."

Of course this Spring a whole bunch of incomplete legislation was shoved through the house at the end, with the assurance that the details would be filled in during the fall session. So much for the removal of the HST, that won't be gone until the day before an election, if then. But I guess everything is going so good in B.C. the government should just get out of the way and let B.C. lead the nation in child poverty yet another year, let the forest industry die completely, poison ever more water in the quest for shale gas that is hardly worth bringing up much less processing and shipping, and then there is all them cuts to environmental protection, navigation and safety on our west coast to deal with thanks to her Tim Horton's Hockey bud Harper. What will we do when an oil tanker in Burrard inlet collides with a Cruise Ship under the Lion's Gate, it ain't Stephen's problem.

 Earlier this year around the time they decided to vacate Victoria the Clueless one stated:

"When the House rises at the end of [May], you're never going to find me in Victoria, I'm going to be traveling the province for the next year.

"I try never to go over there. Because it's sick. It's a sick culture. All they can think about is government and there are no real people in Victoria, and you get captured by  this insidethebeltway debate, and it's really unhealthy."

There is so much wrong with the two little paragraphs above I hardly know where to begin to eviserate the stoooooooooooooooooooopidity! And my " pen pal and bunk buddy" Grant, (well according to the sewer where dwells the king of libelous insults) and the Mound of Sound both have informative and entertaining posts contrasting the above with other diametrically opposed statements from Princess Precious over the years, so I won't bother with that.  I will say though that if Mittens "Montgomery Burns" Romney decides to go fundie Mormon and move to Bountiful, Christy might be well advised to apply for the job of second wife. I would drive all the way over to Creston, not all that far and I do have friends there,  just to watch them gymnastically flip flopping together, sort of like a cross between synchronized swimming and gymnastics, while Anne brushes her horse named "$70,000 Tax Credit." I'm confident that Treason Steven will be as accommodating as possible in helping the Man from Bain with his "tax management." 

Christy (Christy now, not that other Christy that "said during the Liberal leadership race that she would like the legislature to sit more") is of the opinion that time spent in the Peoples House is a waste of time, though how she would know, seeing as of the piteous 47 WHOLE days the House was in session, the Queen BeeBonnet was almost conspicuous by her absence physically (photo ops and Asian junkets being so much more, um, constructive. Even when her bloated and ill looking body was there she rarely seemed engaged beyond pounding the desk when her pal Ding-Dong or Foghorn Kreuger scored a zinger on the opposition by creative fabrication and revision of history and an ongoing informal inquiry about the nineties, apparently the most significant decade in BC history. 

I'm not feeling masochistic enough to do the math on some of these piggies at the trough, especially her Cluelessness and Cabinet, and calculate some day rates at their bloated salaries, not counting perks. I know that MLAs "supposedly" do important stuff away from the Ledge, but lets face it, their constituency staff do most of the heavy lifting and much more regularly than 47 days a year. The other "thing" they do is talk with constituents (especially those in the 1%), but hey, guess what, I speak with constituents of my riding daily, it's called life in a community, and I don't get slightly south or much north of $100K for doing it - I guess I'm self-employed (and self compensated).

Well I couldn't help myself - using a simple $100,000 per year which is a bit more than some backbenchers and a lot less than those with a portfolio or other perhaps meaningful title (only two of the current caucus) and dividing it by 47, yields a pay rate of $2,127.66 per day. But hey you say, many of them have to travel, especially those in the north or my neck of the woods, but oh yeah, we pay their way to work and back by plane, helicopter, chauffeured limo or whatever mode of transport necessary to assuage their sense of entitlement. Then if they get hungry, we buy their lunch and not a five or ten dollar special at the drive-thru. If it is too hard to go home at night after each of 47 days of work, we rent them a place to stay. Ida Chong has us pay her expenses and she effing lives in Victoria, though maybe she will follow Christy into hiding over the fall and winter doing important stuff away from those assholes "inside the beltway." I haven't been to Vickytown for awhile, I guess dem BC LIEberals had some road builder friend that talked them into building a 3P beltway - after all, Washington DeeCee has one.  

(super irony alert) Besides, who in hell is Christy gonna talk to in the rest of the province that ain't Vancouver Island. Maybe seniors, toddlers, and prisoners, because everybody else is too busy working thanks to Christy's super successful jobs programs. She will provide a certain amount of employment for security firms, because her and her cohorts should be nervous out here in the Wild West. The last time Campbell visited my area, even the mayor of the town didn't know about it until he was safely on his way back to safer locales, or that's the only reason I can think of for sneaking into town, meeting with sworn supporters and then leaving before anybody else knew he was here - and compared to Christy his was Canadian Idol at the time, though really falling in love quotient hereabouts, as I am fortunate enough to live where people generally don't elect Cons or BC liaRs, with one four year "mistake" when only Joy and Jenny had to go to scary Victoria for the NDP.

Christy, get over your snit and come out of hiding and act like a leader and call a sitting of the Legislature, hold in in the Robson Square theatre like space if Victoria is too much, or maybe you can use the arena in Nelson - or Chilliwack.

I DARE YOU!