BC Liberal Minister 
Speaks Truth

 Rest of BC gasps and goes into shock!

Sorry excuse for a provincial environment minister, Mary Polak, behaved strangely for any BC LIEberal during the crisis when it appeared a Russian container ship might run aground on the west coast of Moresby Island in Haida Gwaii. She said the incident showed that BC certainly didn't have a world class system in place to protect the coast now, much less when 200+ mega-sized bulk fuel (or bitumen to be more precise) carriers began to annually traverse even more treacherous waters of the Hecate Strait and Douglas Passage as Stephen Harper's petro-sheik wet dreams desire.

Usually ministers in both the Harper and Crusty Clark governments say whatever they think they can get away with on any occasion and truth and/or facts have nothing to do with it.  For example when nurses in BC and elsewhere made formal complaints that they were not being trained or equipped to deal with a possible case or cases of Ebola if it should arrive in Canada or our fair province. Both Terry Lake, BC's Health Minister (who operates when out of government in a "privatized" field of medicine, veterinary medicine), and Rona Ambrose, Harper's chieftess of assisted suicide for Canada's current form of socialized medicine. almost instantly responded to the nurses' concerns with a poo-poo followed by bragging about how ready we were for such an occurrence. 

Ms. Polak even came close to complete agreement with the president of the Haida Nation who said:

CHN President [kil tlaast’gaa] Peter Lantin said Friday afternoon that the possibility of an impact with land is their worst fear coming true. Lantin said the amount of time the response was taking casts doubt on the Northern Gateway pipeline project's promises of world-class oil tanker safety.

"There's nothing world class about it. The fact that 20 hours is the earliest estimated time of arrival for anybody just reinforces what we have been saying all along," Lantin said in a Skype interview from Haida Gwaii.

"The systems in place are not adequate, and it's a joke. It's a joke to think they could ramp up the amount of tankers through our territory and convince us that there's world class systems in place to respond. We're scared. We're scared about what this could mean. It's the worst scenario possible."

The simple facts are that the Harper Government, instead of building "world class" marine safety systems has been reducing both budgets and personnel for the coast guard on both coasts, and is actually totally un-prepared for any threat to our Arctic coast or its sovereignty. Indeed sometimes it seems that Harper won't be happy until our entire marine navigation and rescue operations are run by two or three guys monitoring screens in Regina.

As it turned out it took almost two days for a tug capable of actually towing the Simushir under storm conditions to arrive on the scene and it was just dumb luck that that tug was available as close as Prince Rupert to begin with. Of course Fisheries Minister Gail Shea responded that "luck had nothing to do with the situation." But then isn't that pretty well what one would expect her to say. Between the Harper and Christy Clark governments it is difficult to imagine more overpaid and unqualified people pretending to run things.

Nathan Cullen, the NDP MP for Skeena-Prince Rupert was much more accurate when he said:

"......only good fortune prevented a disaster before help could arrive. Local fishermen say the usual wind patterns following storms in the region are westerlies. 

"If that had happened like it normally does, that ship would have run aground and we'd be having a very different conversation this morning,

If dodging a bullet doesn't wake you up, I don't know what will. It's important for Canadians to understand how close this was."

Some Words
from the Professor
 

 Don’t Ask The Canadian Media.

By Robin Mathews
June 15, 2014

What Is The Significance Of The “Eurosceptics”? The European Union Haters? Don’t Ask The Canadian Media.

There have to be reasons for the downright, fundamental badness of present Major Media work in Canada. People still go to CBC – and to CBC Radio especially – believing the fiction that there they will get some real reporting and real analysis. It isn’t so.

In the parlous state of Western democracies and Western economics – and, by extension, the parlous state of the rule of law and malfunctioning parliaments – Canadians should be hearing sharp analysis that sets them on their heels and makes them think and act. Especially from the National Broadcaster.

Take this very Sunday and Michael Enright, host of the long Sunday Morning show (that has the opportunity to be the most important broadcast in Canada and never, never is.) The problem is not, for a moment, a matter of budget. Radio has the wonderful ability to interview and hear from top intelligences at almost no cost. The problem, rather, is of sell-out, of complacency, of buddy-hunting, of wanting to be part of The Canadian Establishment, of “Pay, Perq’s, and Privileges”.)

The subject today was the sudden appearance of parties and people in Europe who are enemies of The European Union, “Eurosceptics” – who have won a place in the European Parliament. In Canada there are, perhaps, a hundred people who could address that matter with clarity, with responsibility, and who could relate it intimately to the politics of Canada now.

And so Michael Enright went to Bradford University in the United Kingdom to interview Paul Rogers (whom he calls my friend) who is (what is called ) a specialist in “Peace Studies” there. As Winston Churchill once said what followed was “the bland leading the bland”.

Worse. What followed was a rather slimey suggestion that anti-semites and dirty fascists are waiting in the wings to grab power in Europe and to do … well … to do … well, we know what they do.

In fact, there are in Europe many Right forces which are anti-European Union. And there are, doubtless, slimey fascists who would love to get hold of power in Europe. What’s new? They are even effectively at work (and in governments) in Canada – but that subject is too unpopular with the Canadian Establishment for Michael Enright to go anywhere near it ... ever. They are there. But they are not the real story. They are the product of the real story. In Canada as well as in Europe.

Michael Enright – as if popping out of 1954 and McCarthyism – asks, you know, like, what about anti-Semitism in Europe? What about old Nazi Germany? Like, what about Xenophobia? Like what about all those awful things that that we know spell the advent of Nazism, Fascism, brute repression? It is as if he is saying: “Okay everyone, support repression of legitimate, even parliamentary opposition, learn to hate it because it is fighting the huge global corporate power that is taking over the European Union and turning it to profit, profit, profit for corporations at the expense of the people of Europe. Fight those nasty people who are running in elections and winning seats in the European parliament - and upsetting the entrenched thieves and fraudsters.

The story of Right Forces in Europe is NOT the story of the anti-European Union people on the Right, in the Centre, and on the Left in Europe. The story is about what has happened to make people in Europe increasingly anti-European Union ... now, and sure to grow in the future.

That is the story Michael Enright and the CBC should be tracking carefully and brilliantly. Instead, it is the story they are determined not to tell. The story they are determined to cover up. The story they will not go to the hundred Canadians to hear told. But will go to the University of Bradford in England to find someone to do a cover-up job on the story (even if Paul Rogers doesn’t know how he’s being used).

It isn’t – the story – complicated (though it’s intricate) – and we can ignore the intricacies because it is a pretty straight-up story of dirty tricks and power-grabbing.

For instance, when the Soviet Empire collapsed, the U.S./NATO moved in with Shock Economics Advisors and helped bring Russia to its knees for years, helped create the oligarchs of Russia and their gigantic theft of Russia’s wealth, and moved NATO closer and closer to Russia’s borders. (No financial assistance to a Russia on its knees. No help with slow transformation of State-owned enterprise to mixed and private ownership, Crown Corporations, etcetera.) The NATO West DIDN’T attempt to bring Russia into a cooperative, collaborative, consenting freely influenced and influencing community. It helped set up everything that was bad.

And now the West faces a rather truculent Vladimir Putin. Ungrateful wretch that he is!

To Europe:

Put the matter simply … for it is, in effect, a simple matter….

In the late 1950s, thinking upon the incredible brutality and destruction of the Second World War, some men and women decided Europe had to do better. It had to collaborate. It had to build ties and relations that would make it impossible for any single European nation to set about a mad program of repression and conquest and destruction of European civilization. It had to make a “European community”, a cooperative, collaborative, consenting, freely influenced and influencing community.

And since the late 1950s it has worked on that program. Except ….

Except there are immense riches at stake and there for those who can grab them if they can pervert the idea of the “European Community” and make it something very different.

THAT is what is behind the emergence of “far right and far left” forces in the recent European Union elections.

Here we have to introduce a few ugly factors. The International Monetary Fund (with Headquarter in New York, USA) has used its power to pauperize European countries. The European Central Bank has generally followed the lead of the IMF. The mad explosion of huge financial failures (credit swaps, etc. etc.) in the U.S. was exported to Europe to rob it of wealth. (Remember Goldman Sachs actively helped with the economic collapse of Greece). And more. That is to say European problems are not just local, by any means.

But they are local, too.

Europe has its own thieves and fraudsters. It has huge corporations who want cheap labor – if possible slave labour. It has organizations of corporate executives that lobby and lobby the European Union and buy and bribe legislators and civil servants, and work to get a Europe that is corporation-friendly ... corporation governed. It is probably fair to say they have recruited and/or placed the major officers of the European Commission. That is the semi-civil service, semi-legislating body that is not elected … and pretends it only “puts forward” ideas like the transatlantic free trade idea. It doesn’t legislate; it just provides intricate legislation to the legislators who have not, necessarily, asked for it.

It was those Civil Servants (?) who (working from the European Commission) cooked up a three volume New Constitution for Europe in 2005. Constitutions are usually – when long – a number of pages. This “Constitution” was three volumes long!! Because it was a “Constitution” some countries required a national referendum on its approval. The French media, mostly, rejoiced at it and recommended acceptance. (A lot of the media of Europe sold out from the start.) Other governments approved the New Constitution without referendum.

The French unions and some media people read the three volumes … and choked. It gave preference before human rights, social protections, and individual freedoms to the policies of large corporations. The French went to work to publicize the real story of the Constitution … and the French people rejected it.

 Then the Dutch people rejected it. And then it was withdrawn before the British people could also reject it. Victory for the people of the European Union. Except …

Except the European Commission went to work, wrote a treaty to be called The Lisbon Treaty, giving the corporations as much as possible from the failed Constitution, and got the treaty passed at Lisbon in 2007
by governments that didn’t have to consult their people in referendum. (They had to have a referendum on a new Constitution, but not on a Treaty!)

The picture is plain. The European Commission, the European Central Bank, the IMF, the U.S. government, AND MOST OF THE EUROPEAN NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS are now instruments of the big global corporations. England’s government, France’s government, Germany’s government – the powerful governments of Europe – are instruments of the corporations wanting to milk Europe and to oppress its population.

In Europe the attack is on against pensions, wages, education, health care, etcetera. France is a good example. A SOCIALIST president, Francois Hollande acts as a total lackey to U.S./NATO demands, and he supports almost all of the initiatives by the large corporations in Europe.

That sums up the problem and explains the anti-European Union, “Eurosceptics” winning seats in the European parliament. They are called “far left and far right” movements because the semi-Conservatives in power in Germany, the “Socialists” in France, the Conservative/Liberals in power in Britain all support the takeover of the European Union by large global corporations wishing to flatten the population of Europe, to ransack its wealth, and to oppress the working people of the continent.

Look at England, just for instance. Xenophobia? Hatred of foreigners? Screams for limits on immigration? Terrible? Not at all. The corporation/government alliance of Europe has opened up overall migration so that very low wage countries are now pouring out huge numbers to places like England where the new arrivals are REALLY threatening wage levels, really threatening social securities. So? So some of the English are asking for standards, for assurances, for limitations if standards of living are threatened. Some of them are getting elected to the European parliament. That is a simple, human demand for fairness.

Even Michael Enright and Paul Rogers touched on (very quickly, and then ran away) the fact that in England the chance to get low wages set is being exploited by corporations because there are so many near-destitute people “from away” willing to bring down wage standards.

The story is the global story. Global corporations are doing everything they can to replace governments of the people. They are bribing, brain-washing, and coercing governments to go along with the corporate agenda. Slowly … slowly … slowly populations are waking to the fact that their governments in power are selling them out – and are being assisted by national and international media in the sell-out.

Enter Michael Enright and Paul Rogers of Bradford University in England to talk about the “dangerous” people winning seats in the European parliament. But not to talk about why they have appeared and what has created them. Or to suggest that they may be the vanguard of a movement that has to take place to save the great ideal of a European Community.

the Illiterate
and Innumerate

I want all three halves of that pie!

Here we are approaching the halfway point in 2014 and this will be my first post since last December. It's partly because I've been trying to get other stuff done, be outside more and frankly I just grew tired of thinking about the same old crap continually coming around on the guitar, with the state of politics and the world in general just seeming to accelerate its rush to Hell in a Handbasket.

It would seem I'm not alone in this withdrawal from the blogosphere as some of my favorites like the Mound of Sound at the the Disaffected Lib or the always engaging fellow at the Sixth Estate have also either retired from active blogging or are at least taking a break. Heckfire (as RossK might say) even the self-proclaimed "King of Bloggers" has mysteriously disappeared from cyberspace, supposedly to build a new website (hopefully with the John Coltrane version of My Favorite Things this time) which I'm confident his followers both real and imaginary will expect to be Rolls-Royce quality, because it just doesn't take months and months to build a website, unless of course one doesn't know how.

Actually, I get depressed just reading the news, much less actually thinking about it and writing something about it. I mean, how many times does one need to hear idiotic ReThuglicans scream Benghazi, Bengazhi or listen to the idiocy of the furrin' born presidential aspirant Ted Cruz open his mouth and prove how dumb he is, while wondering how he ever got through university. I even want to kick my own ass when I hear the crap that comes out of John Kerry's mouth these days and recall that I voted for him and his adultrous VP p(r)ick in 2004 - of course the option was Dubya Bu$h and his baby sitter Deadly DickHead Cheney. Then I hear that 2016 might be Jeb Bush agin' Hillary Clinton and wonder when in the hell the U.S. became some kind of Kingdom ruled by two families. By the way Mr. Boner (the leader of the House) and Marvelous Marco Rubio, you don't have to tell me that you aren't scientists, yet are experts in issues regarding climate change and women's reproductive issues.

Then I get even stoopider and turn on the TeeVee and there's John MacAnus, the man who destroyed more U.S. planes than the Viet Cong and thought Caribou Barbie Palin was qualified to be one heartbeat away from the oval office yet again seemingly on EVERY Sunday morning talk show making up shit. I must admit though I do miss his girlfriend Lindsey Graham, ole Opie is at least always good for a laugh.

Here at home, Christy and HER FAMILY are still first and with her friends won't quit ripping off the province of B.C. until there is nothing worth stealing left. And the man with the weird looking hair is still befouling 24 Sussex although I dream of him being perp walked out of there in cuffs....but then the Royal Conservative Mounted Police are his honor guard, more and more like Adolf's SS and looking like soldiers from the Empire in Starwars more each day as conditions deteriorate and leaders more and more look to the police or military to protect them from the people they are supposed to serve.

This week for some undoubtably masochistic reason I actually bought and read two or three dead tree versions of the Vancouver Stun.  It is common and accepted knowledge that the news media of all kinds have gone so far downhill they would have to dig upward for days to reach the Dead Sea. They try to blame it on technological change but the fact is they are pushing propaganda and outright garbage and people have little use for garbage, unless it is organic and can be turned into compost, or can be recycled. Of course newspapers can be recycled, but one only needs so much kitty box liner, fish wrap or firestarter. 

I are eating!

Now I come to the reason for the title above for this post. Actually one of the papers I bought at the grocery store because there was a Pete McMartin column starting on the lower half of page one about the confrontation going on between the anti-intellectual Christy Clark (who never found a college she couldn't drop out of) and the teachers.  As per usual he feels obligated to pitch the dispute as equally the fault of both sides with the poor students and their parents as the victims. The fact that the BC Supreme Court has ruled against the crap Christy started in 2002 TWICE, yet she and her minions just either appeal (on our dime of course) or rewrite the same illegal crap in different words, an exercise that has now gone on for a dozen years. Christy, Gordo and Stephen all share a complete lack of respect for the law, or at least as it applies to them (it doesn't, apparently).

Anyhow, after telling how wonderful his educational experience was, in spite of having to take grade 13 twice, this professional (sic) writer comes out with this gem.

News flash, teachers, I don't know many in our modern economy who doesn't work hard......

Leaving out the ornamentation and getting down to the nuts and bolts or nouns and verbs we come up with "I don't know many.....who doesn't........." or a classic example of a pronoun and verb that disagree. I mean, we could have I don't know many who don't, or I don't know one who doesn't, but either he or his editor do a good job of mangling.  I make mistakes myself, hell, I made one a couple years ago, but then I'm not a pro, I don't get paid and I don't have an editor.

Then there is our man in politics, Andrew Coyne who in an article titled - "Bad Math shouldn't discredit policy," goes on to explain how Tim Whodat's million jobs plan that starts by firing 100,000 people is "
one-half wishful thinking, one half double counting" (actually multiplying by eight) and one half bad math. In other words Timmy the Tool's plan actually has Three Halves.......when I went to school, before the new math, we called those thirds.

   The disturbing part is that these faux-pas weren't committed by the poorly educated, poorly paid and inexperienced new journalists, but long time senior commentators.  Oh well, I guess I understood what they were both trying to say, not that I agree necessarily, but I find it jarring and know my English teacher in High School, much less university would have downgraded me for the one and I would not do very well in my math class if I divided anything into three halves.

BTW, the title of the McMartin piece is "The only victim in the war of the classroom." I refuse to link to anything behing PostMedia's paywall, but you are welcome to google either one.

Spiteful Steve goes
Fahrenheit 451!

Modern Day Library Burning as Serbs destroy the Library in Sarajevo 1992

There's little that modern day reich wing zealots fear more than science, data and facts that might stand in the way of their dreams of being blue-eyed Petro-Sheiks.  The most famous sacking and burning of a library in history has to be the famous library built in Alexandria, Egypt, before the birth of Jesus.  There is a great deal of disagreement about just who was responsible for the destruction of the largest repository of scientific, historical and mathematical knowledge in the ancient world, or known world at the time.

Mostly one hears that Christian zealots were the culprits, but the Catholic Church and other modern day X-tians vehemently deny this and everybody from Pagans, to Muslims, Romans and even the Barbarians from far to the north gets blamed, depending on who is doing the blaming.

Today in Canada a superb group of libraries in Canada, some as old as a century are being dismantled with the books being thrown away, burned or just left with the last scientist to have checked them out.
In this case there is no doubt who is responsible, and it is the Christian (so called) Zealots otherwise known and the Harper Government (tm). Not happy removing environmental protection and designation form most water ways and bodies in the country, degrading Stats-Can and its ability to understand Canadians and shutting down the world class Experimental Lakes Project.....all in hopes that no one will be able to claim that Slimey Steve and Oiley Oliver and the rest of the asphalt smelling piggies can't be accused of harming fish or water with their ugly mess in central Alberta.

An example of the type of debate that rages to this day regarding the Alexandria library and its most famous (though doomed to be brutally murdered, like an ancient example of what Malala has had to endure today, though she survived the attempt on her life) Hypatia is this cute little explanation of why he wouldn't want to watch the movie Agora by Alejandro Amenábar because Mr. Amenabar's version of the story the reviewer (w/o actually watching, of course) doesn't accept....I guess Mr. David B. Hart rounded up some eye witnesses to events that occurred over 1500 years ago......,yeah.

The occasion of my misery is the release of Alejandro Amenábar’s film Agora, which purports to be a historical account of the murder of the female philosopher Hypatia by a Christian mob in the early fifth century, of the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria, and (more generally) of an alleged conflict that raged in the ancient world between Greek science and Christian faith.......

Mr. Hart's teeth are put "on edge" by simply reading another writer's impression of the film and I will let Mister Hart continue display his ignorance.

 All I know about it is what I have read in an article by Larry Rohter in the New York Times. But that is enough to put my teeth on edge.

Not that I entirely blame Mr. Amenábar. The story he repeats is one that has been bruited about for a few centuries now, often by seemingly respectable historians. Its premise is that the Christians of late antiquity were a brutish horde of superstitious louts, who despised science and philosophy, and frequently acted to suppress both, and who also had a particularly low opinion of women.

Wow, if I just read the part that is in boldface, I would guess it was a movie about the Harper Government(tm) and the stooges he surrounds himself with in Cabinet and the PMO.  

There has been some good coverage of this tragic action by our Great Ugly Leader and his gang of hogs by Andrew Nikiforuk in the Tyee.....but true to it's maddening chickenshit style, all posts about this have the comments closed before anyone reads the post, is Mr. Beers afraid of hurting the feelings of our Great Ugly Leader?

Comments for this thread are now closed.

0

·         0 comments

 Shit like this and their mystifying moderation policies is why I disconneted their link from my blogroll and why I refuse to comment there.  Those  commenters who promulgate the BC LIEberal/PAB talking points are allowed to fill up acres of screen space with insults and stupidity, yet Mr. Hops and Barley cuts off G. West or Grant the Powell River Persuader at a moments notice. Sometimes I think I'm accidentally on the BC liaR's own website. 


In Secret Memo Casts Doubt on Feds' Claims for Science Library Closures  Andrew hammers both the policy and the sneaky way it is being done. 

A federal document marked "secret" obtained by Postmedia News indicates the closure or destruction of more than half a dozen world famous science libraries has little if anything to do with digitizing books as claimed by the Harper government.

Scientists have variously condemned the dismantling of the one of the world's finest aquatic libraries as a natural tragedy, a series of criminal acts and information destruction unworthy of a democracy.

"The fact that many materials were thrown away or given away is heartbreaking to those of us who are dedicated to this field of research (marine science and fisheries) and the history of science in Canada," says Peter Wells, a prominent marine environmental scientist at Dalhousie University.

In doing some research for this post I came across a brief description of Justinian the Great, who it would appear sent his DNA on down to Our Great Ugly Paunchy Leader, Spiteful Steve.  If the following statements don't make you think of the Spiteful One, you haven't been paying attention.

• he had two great commanders, Belisarius and the eunuch, Narses, who re-conquered large parts of the Western Empire from the Germans for him
• he codified Roman law (but himself ignored the rule of law—blatantly robbing friend and foe alike and encouraging his officials to extortion)
• he spent fortunes on building churches to the glory of God
• he persecuted Pagans and heretical Christians alike.

While doing all these wonderful things he forgot the proper management of the economy and did far more damage to civilisation than barbarians ever did. The empire was left ruined, its administration corrupt, the countryside abandoned and the cities full of beggars who waited in vast numbers for alms from the state coffers.

 I can't decide if Belisarius was an early model of Dean del Maestro, or Paul Calandra or maybe even Greasy Joe Oliver.  The eunuch, Narses is obviously an early proto-type for the middle aged virgin -Jason Kenny.

In an earlier piece Mr. Nikiforuk discusses the chaotic nature of the ongoing dismantling of over a century worth of knowledge and data. 

"The Department has claimed that all useful information from the closed libraries is available in digital form. This is simply not true. Much of the material is lost forever," reports one DFO scientist who requested not to be named.

That picture of a taxpayer-funded treasure trove of information laid waste emerges from interviews by The Tyee with half a dozen prominent scientists, many of whom asked to remain anonymous for fear that their funding or other government support could be hurt if their names were connected with the concerns they were eager to share.
Some of the research scientists interviewed questioned the legality of what they saw happening, accusing the Harper government of "libricide.

Not only has the Canadian public lost critical environmental and cultural baseline data more than 100 years old, but scientists have lost the symbolic heart of their research operations.

A DFO scientist told The Tyee, "The cuts were carried out in great haste apparently in order to meet some unknown agenda. No records have been provided with regard to what material has been dumped or the value of this public property. No formal attempt was made to transfer material to libraries of existing academic institutions." (See sidebar.)
One scientist after another struggled to make sense of the shuttering of libraries devoted to water and fish in a nation that guards the world's largest coastline and roughly 18 per cent of the world's surface freshwater. Most saw in the actions a political agenda by the Harper government to reduce the role of government in Canadian society, as well as the use of scientific evidence in making policy.

Shakey Math
from BS Bill

//

Bullshit Bill the only way he
should be allowed out in public

Back in June of this year, BullShit Bill Bennett the redneck asshole from Cranbrook manages to offend at least fifty percent of civilized folks he addresses said that a 26% rate hike for BC Hydro was unacceptable. In papers that used to be Canned Waste properties the headline read.......

Energy Minister Bill Bennett says efforts are underway to reduce potential 26-per-cent hike

Thus I found it cute this morning when Bluster Bill announced that the rates would be rising 25.5%, talk about finessing the  numbers rather than just outright lying, which is also a common BC LIEberal tactic.

Now when I went back to see what Crusty Clark and Boorish Bill were saying this spring and summer, I realized that initially the secret/confidential leaked paper from BC Hydro wanted the whole 26% in two years, I have to admit that this is a reduction after all, even though the quoted 25.5% is still really too cute for words. 

However, Bill's math still isn't all that good, because actually the percentage raise in each of five years comes out more like 28%, but hey, let's not quibble over a measly 3.5%, after all, I guess I'll also be having a $35 per month surcharge added next month because I don't want an effing dumb meter. I still don't understand how Ontario, a province that managed to lose a billion dollars on failed gas generating plants, managed to get three times as many dumb meters as we did for the same price. When you look at it that way the Ontario version of Libs is still over a billion dollars ahead of our business wizards.  

Just think how low our rates could be if we didn't have to buy Rape of the River IPP power and sell it for half or a third or less of what we buy it for. Or even better, if we didn't have to build an eight billiion (probably 30 billion by the time it is built) Site C dam so we can subsidize private energy companies to give away natural gas and maybe blow up Prince Rupert or Kitimat.  

I also found it interesting to learn that PEI built the Confederation Bridge, which traverses thirteen kilometers of sometimes pretty violent ocean that also freezes, for a quarter or so of the price of our ice bomb bridge over the Fraser and the Golden Ears white elephant bridge. I even watched a Frontiers of Construction documentary about the construction of that bridge and it was a colossal and challenging project (which apparently also works very well in most conditions other than hurricanes). 

Gawd almighty I hate the stooopid, greedy and slimey BC government...........

Hello Silence
My 'New' Friend*
 

Black Friday, Indeed

In thr fall of 1963 I was a freshman at the University of California at Santa Barbara, living on campus in Las Casitas dorms which were recycled from once was WW2 era officer's barracks (soon to be torn down). My custom in those days was to get up early and check Campus Cove for waves before breakfast at the Dining Commons across campus and catch a few glassy early morning waves if there was a good swell running. As a result of this it was common for me to have a nap between my morning and afternoon classes, if I had any afternoon classes.

On Friday, November 22 I was asleep in my room when my roomie Jack, always a joker, woke me and said the President had been shot in Dallas. Of course I didn't believe him no matter how much he professed he was telling the truth. Of course before long everybody else, including the radio was backing up Jack's story and it was like I grew up that afternoon. A few weeks before I had, as required, registered for the draft, little realizing how that would become a real issue involving an 11 year legal battle with the US Department of Justice (that I won in the end) and my dissallusion with my country when I found out things like US Attorneys would perjure themselves in court and the guarantee of a phone call if arrested wasn't necessarily so, among many other disappointments that would follow clear through to the state of politics in both Canada and the USA today.

The walk to dinner across campus that evening was dark and quiet as was dinner. Indeed the entire next few days were like a dark period while time stood still until sometime later the next week classes started and weekends became a time to party rather than mourn.

A stramge little example of ironic serendipity occurred years later. It was sometime in the mid-seventies an I was with my musical group playing in a coffee house in a small town in the Kootenays. I bought something that evening and among my change, even though I was in Canada, I received a Kennedy half-dollar. I hadn't realized until I was looking at the surprising coin in my hand that indeed that Friday or Saturday was actually November 22. It seemed almost spooky when I realized what day it was.......I mean JFK fifty cent pieces weren't all that common even in the USA, much less a little mountain Kootenay village.

* I used this title because just this morning, after fifty years, I learned (or maybe relearned) that Paul Simon wrote The Sounds of Silence on this day after he learned of the murder of JFK.

Thanks a Lot
But NO THANKS!

I  think I'll pass. It's bad enough having the NSA, the DEA, the FBI and the CIA, not to mention GCHQ in the U.K. and Israeli Intelligence reading my mail and intercepting my calls (if I had a cell). I don't think I want all those folks operating my computer at will as well.

I don't need no storage in the cloud neither (I know it's bad grammar, sue me!)

I'm Alright Jack!
cuz I've got lotsa jack

Dem poor job creating rich folk

Some people are doing okay these days- indeed WAAAAAAAY better than just okay. According to the Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress, Bryce Covert, the Wealthiest Americans Take Home Biggest Share of Income Ever Recorded. (Bold parts chosen by kc)

 The top ten percent of earners in the United States  took home more than 50 percent of all income in 2012, the highest amount ever recorded since data was first collected in 1917, according to an updated report from economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty.

While the wealthiest took a big hit during the financial crisis, they’ve almost fully recovered. Last year, income for the top 1 percent of earners “increased sharply,” the report notes, growing by nearly 20 percent, while the bottom 99 percent only saw money rise by 1 percent. “In sum,” the authors write, “top 1% incomes are close to full recovery while bottom 99% incomes have hardly started to recover.”

 .........

The U.S. suffers from particularly drastic income inequality. It is worse here than in  Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, the Ivory Coast, Pakistan, and Ethiopia

Of course anyone, especially a politician, who dares to mention such things is immediately accused of promoting "class warfare" and the politics of division (as if point at Welfare Queens, the gay couple down the street and what may go on in their bedroom, job stealing immigrants or criminally inclined black males is inclusive and inspires choruses of Kumbaya. Already Bill de Blasio, leader in the Democratic mayoral primary has been called out by his RePuke opponent for being a "class warrior."

 Lhota lost no time in throwing down the gauntlet to De Blasio, accusing the Democratic favourite of "class warfare" and of wanting to divide the city. "We may be five boroughs but we are one people, one city. The last thing we want is to send our people back to the age of fear and hopelessness."

 In a city with 25,000 residents earning more than $20,000 per day and 2,000,000 who have to live on less than that per YEAR, it is pretty obvious class warfare is almost totally over and won by obviously the side the Repukes represent. Warren Buffet is one of the few (if not the only) of the winners who admits what's happening and who's winning. 

De Blasio who is considered to have a good chance of becoming mayor would be the first Democratic mayor since Dinkins in 1993 and the first truly progressive mayor since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The NYPD or mental health authorities should be on the look out for the 5% of democrats that still voted for Anthony "Peckerhead" Weiner, who thankfully finished dead last in fifth. These people (Weinier's 5%) are obviously a danger to themselves and others!  Displaying his usual excessive "class" the Weiner was driven away from his concession speech exposing to the crowd a different part of his anatomy, of similar shape, and in his case maybe even larger than the world famous part, his middle finger.

 In a tear-filled concession speech, in which his wife Huma Abedin was notable by her absence, he said: "We had the best ideas. Sadly I was an imperfect messenger." He left in a flurry, and was pictured giving a one-fingered gesture of insult to reporters as he was driven away.

Meanwhile Speaking of Dipshits


There's a blog published by a somewhat challenged so-called Conservative in British Columbia that I read occasionally, especially lately since the King of Bloggers is on holiday, just to remind myself how little brains it actually takes to use a computer anymore and even publish crap online. This guy hates damn near everybody, at least that he bothers to write about and he is so busy writing letters of complaint to the CRTC, companies, networks, individuals and companies that you wonder how he can still find time to actually blog. But then, come to think of it, so many of his posts are little more than ccs. of his constant complaints. It would appear that even his fellow cons aren't that enthralled with him as they repeatedly refuse to nominate him for anything or elect him to party positions.


Like the Blogger King he also has (or creates) a flock of sycophants who make really stoopid, but repetitive comments, pretty much the same lame comments about the Media Party, or how disrespectful of King Steveie are all lefty retards. This gem's latest post is a copy of a complaint to the CBC about 22 Minutes' Shaun Majunder for publicly endorsing a, gasp, Liberal candidate for something somewhere.

I wonder if he is cool with BC's own Steve Smart, Legislative Bureau Chief for CBC radio and TeeVee in BeeCee while married to a lady who works for Premier Photo-op, Christy "clueless" Clark. Oh he probably hates that too.

A typical on the one hand, but particularly sad and mean comment on the Shaun Scandal post is:

  Just another CBC executive welfare case playing politics because he’s too talentless to work in the States 

There is so much that is sad, mean and wrong with that short piece of vitriol, I wouldn't know where to begin. But to the commenter who like the blogger himself who would probably love Canada the more it mirrors the Republican version of America the Empire.....why not just immigrate and leave Canada to those of us who like it the way it was before Harper turned it into something we don't recognize, just like he promised. I'm A Canadian by choice not chance and chose to live and work and raise a family in the Canada I found decades ago, when it was different than where I came from.   

Another example of the insanity to be found here in abundance is a comment on the most recent post. A post which is actually quite cogent about how Merv Tweed went from being an MP from Manitoba to big wheel at Ominitrax.

A registered lobbyist arranged a Parliamentary Restaurant lunch meeting between now former Manitoba Conservative MP Merv Tweed and the head of Omnitrax Canada Inc., which owns the Port of Churchill in northern Manitoba, seven months before the Omnitrax executive left his post and was succeeded in the job by Mr. Tweed. (see here)

Tweed’s new gig as President of Omnitrax (see here) just got a whole lot stinkier.

Very good, and even admirable as the blogger is even being critical of his own team, fairness in action and a lack of partisanship and all. But then one of the leaders of the sycophantic pack of real or pretend commenters goes on a  completely unrelated tirade about politicians who make a career out of politics, conveniently naming a Liberal, Ralph Goodale who managed to get re-elected in spite of phoney allegations cooked up between Harper and his Gestapo, the RCMP, during one election which just disappeared after the election. 

Some people seem to be instinctively able worm their way around and politics is the perfect medium for them, they use it as a springboard for personal gain. Rather than a short term of good service to the people who elect them for some politics has become a long term job with a pension at the end which is paid through our tax dollars. We all know some who keep running and getting elected, Ralph Goodale comes to mind as one example. Thee really should be limits put on how many times a person can seek re-election, career politicians biding their time to pension off are not in the best interest of the country.

 That a girl Liz, get your irrelevant shots in on a "libtard." The post in question was so obviously NOT about career politicians, but indeed a politician using politics as a springboard for corporate entry, perhaps by doing favors for the future employer. But don't allow any logic to slap you in the ass on the way out Liz.As a bonus by your irrelevant, and unrelated comment you avoided having to say anything or even appear to condone anything anti-con being said. 

I won't sully my readers or give this goof the benefit of a link (anyone with a brain can find it if they have a strong enough stomach and really surplus time on their hands - like me) - I'm not tired, I'm RETIRED. Besides his comment board doesn't work for me, oh wait, that's right, he did accept one comment from me, so he could tell me I was stupid. You are only allowed to disagree with him about fine details of Reich Wing Whackery and he still tells you you are stupid or he doesn't care what you think if you don't tow the sycophantic line.