Tag: News, Politics, Events

I Am So Proud…

…to be a citizen of a country where this happens. From the Toronto Star‘s unlinkable report:

The RCMP’s 125th anniversary in 1999 turned into an embarrassing waste of taxpayer dollars, Fraser said. Public Works contributed $3 million to a trio of ad agencies – Lafleur, Media/I.D.A. Vision and Gosselin – who were responsible for transferring the money to the RCMP. Those three agencies took a combined $1.3 million in fees and commissions and transferred $1.7 million to the RCMP for its anniversary celebration. Fraser’s audit concluded that the RCMP’s Quebec division received its payments through a separate non-government bank account, which violates the federal Financial Administration Act. The transactions were recorded manually rather than in the RCMP’s standard accounting system, and some of the supporting documents were subsequently destroyed.

Just to let Belize guy know, the RCMP is the national police who are supposed to investigate things like…umm…widespread breach of fiduciary duty by public officials. So, I’ll likely be voting NDP if only to give that crowd a kick at the slush fund as the other two crowds have eaten more than their fill. Seriously, how in God’s name can anyone say now that they would do worse.

President Kerry?

It would be facinating to watch if the wheels really came off the current US administration. This was slipped in the Toronto Star‘s article on Kerry’s wins yesterday:

One national poll yesterday put Kerry seven percentage points ahead of Bush as the president continued to be battered by the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq and his secretary of state seemed to express second thoughts about the decision to go to war. Perhaps more ominous for the sitting president, his approval rating had dropped to 48 per cent, the lowest of his presidency, according to the CNN-USA Today poll.

I would think that sending soldiers to a war which has had its primary ground – WMD – generally disproven is a biggie.  [Apparently Colin Powell thinks so, too.]   It feels like there was never a true buy-in to the Saddam-Osammy link. And the tighter security rules must discomfort – I don’t think this is a big thing at the border and security agencies will be security agencies but when you are checking up on what my kids take out from the library it gets a bit weird. But the main thing is the messed up budget. I don’t think you can have 20 years of being told that you must reduce government spending and reduce taxes only to have the shift to big spending and low taxes bought by the people. It used to be said of conservatives that they shifted the tax from rich to poor. This guy shifts it to no one…but money does not work that way. The loans from the Saudis and China mount. Who wants that dependency mounting?

The real question is, all in all, what has George Jr. done uniquely that another leader would not have done? I am not convinced the war on terror (remember that one?) would not have been taken on by anyone in the White House after 9/11. Others might have pursued it more diligently. Others soon might.

World Upside Down

Just watched Bill Maher on Larry King and heard the extraordinary statement from Maher – unchallenged by King – that on 9/11 President Bush’s father was having breakfast with Osama’s Dad. Is that right? The connections between the Bush’s and the Saudi rich are well documented and the spiriting of many of them out of the USA soon after the attacks a simple fact. If it is true, however, that they were having breakfast, it is amazing that this is not well known. If it was the case in the previous presidency, it would have been something you would never have heard the end of from Limbaugh or Brudnoy. Imagine Churchill’s Pappy having a snack with Adolf’s Dad in September 1939. We’d know. Michael will tell me if it is untrue.

In other mindboggling news I learned about today, I saw this story on local North Country NY TV news this evening:

St. Lawrence County’s Amish community can open the curtains once again. A Gouverneur man is behind bars, charged with public lewdness for allegedly flashing Amish households.

St. Lawrence County sheriffs investigators say 24 year old Timothy J. Thomas would park in front of Amish houses along County Route 10 in the Heuvelton area, jump out of his vehicle naked, flash the Amish, then calmly return to his vehicle and continue on to work. Investigators say Thomas is suspected of a number of such incidents but January 16th is when he pulled it off again, leading to his arrest.

Weather records for January 16th show the temperature that day hovered around zero, meaning Thomas risked exposing his extremities to frostbite by the time he hot-footed it back to his car. Thomas, of State Rt. 58 in Gouverneur was arraigned today on the misdemeanor count and jailed in lieu of $1,000 cash bail or $2,000 bond. Investigators say he may have targeted Amish houses because of their lack of phone service to summon authorities.

So much so wrong with the whole plan – let alone the journalists’ idea that being entirely naked is “flashing”. Why bother the Amish? There is actually a history of attacks on them [which they do not report on principle] despite theirs being a society of consent – even if unlike your average life at the mall.

“Western Alienization”

That is apparently what Belinda Stronach said.    Far be it from me to criticize a person misspeaking but if we wanted a Prime Minister who cannot speak a national language why didn’t we just keep Chretien who, after all, knew something about government before he got the position. Bels Strons, it appears, is looking like the new Stockwell Day already. She may also have a Deanish temper:

Stronach had blunter words yesterday about some of the media coverage of her campaign, saying she should be judged on her policies, not her appearance. Media focus on her hair, wardrobe and personal life sends the wrong message at a time when more women should be drawn to politics, she told reporters at an Ontario Progressive Conservative policy convention in Niagara Falls.

While this is true, what I think we are seeing is a corporate CEO who wants to be treated like one off the job – don’t analyze, don’t expect to be told and for God’s sake don’t presume that anything being done is your business. Front runner Harper to me has this nasty streak as well. What the Conservative Reform Alliance Progressives stand for appears to be this:

  • Alberta ought to be treated like a part of the country that more than about 10% of the population
  • Whatever is being done, do the opposite
  • Is it not the place of the press or ordinary taxpayers to question

The National Post, of course, plays it differently from The Toronto Star but still can only focus on the clothes, the supposed greater interest in her speech compared to a David Bowie concert and the apparent need to determine only if she is “sexy”. What an odd and depressing thing that overused adjective does. I remember George Grant in an undergrad class going off on a small rant twenty years ago on the sexification of society, making such questions sadly inevitable. It almost makes me sympathetic as I watch the wheels coming off so early in a foolhardy campaign – and one, really, only given credibility in the hope of creating some facade of a leadership race to justify what is more and more clearly the final defeat of the Progressive Conservatives by the Alliance.

Iowa

Not my country but what the hell. Ian’s comments as a Iowa leftie lad in NYC are interesting as are Michael’s, the Newf of Atlanta. Michael has pointed out the angry-man thing about Dean while Ian speaks of electability. I cannot for the life of me ever imagine an NDPer as US president – that is really what Dean is: early against the war, early pro civil unions for homosexual couples. Like Hollywood, Vermont is a foothold of Canadian infiltration of the USA. Good for us. Bad for Dean. Plus he looks like a Muppet extra, the guy at the other table not given interesting features, the guy with the fly in his soup.

Compare Edwards. No gaggle of techie dreamers around him either as “journalists” or groupies. He points out that he is electable in the southern states (key #1) and he speaks well (key #2) and he stands for being nice (…hmm…). The trouble with Democrats outside of the Brooklyn bench is that they do not know how to put the boot in because they stand for not putting the boot in. Edwards strikes me as a guy who can’t put the boot in.

Kerry won but he won’t win. Too many Kennedys.

So on to New Hampshire. For a election junkie such as me, the USA and its absolutely nutty voting system is a gold mine for graphical analysis of statistics which really come to nothing in themselves. Charts. Charts and talking heads. Wolf Blitzer saying things like “I don’t know anything about that, Phil, but I can confirm that CNN is predicting Dean will finish third. Dean will finish third” about 45 minutes after Dean confirmed he was finishing third.

Blackness

Another Black day? What other wacky puns can be drawn from the slide Connie finds himself on? Nicest new touch?

Hollinger International also launched a lawsuit claiming $200 million US against Black, his right-hand man David Radler and companies controlled by the two men.

I’d be all scowlly, too. Unlike most lives his hand has influenced, a relative of mine actually benefitted at one stage of his life amongst acquisitions of the yellow presses by Black. For that we thank you, Big Con, for the extra ale change and Thomas the Tank Engine budget. Few and far between in the case of an anti-capitalist like Black. A capitalist uses capital to create wealth. Where he made money, Black split and sold off capital, a scavenger creating his own carrion – a denial of the power of asset. Where he did not make money, he was running newspapers (now removed from him and soon in the hands of others maybe themselves of that ilk) and making himself the cartoon-like semblence of an important person he willed himself into being. Nothing illegal in any of that. Make yourself as you wish, I say, and answer to your Maker for your choices. He is in deeper water now, though, than just being thought pompous and tedious. What is he worth compared to the charges and claims he faces? This glory-days-era site has him as follows:

Conrad Black, chairman and CEO [net worth (1995): $302.6-million, making him the 28th richest person or family in Canada (Financial Post Magazine, January, 1996)]

I sure hope, but doubt on a net basis, that he is better off the noo compared to eight nine years ago as these law suits will be just beginning and a few hundred million Canuck will not go far if even these first claims are founded.   Why, by the way, do some Canadian media call him Lord Black anyway. It is a foreign title system in which we do not participate. Would we really call her Lady Thatcher? Lord Heath? Doubt it – well maybe if she were shouting at me. Well, good thing you can make a buck selling a title, too. He may need it all. Good luck to you, Connie! We’re all going to learn a whole lot about you over the next few years as the ugly spectacle of a breach of fiduciary duty by corporate director – or whatever is actually alleged – unfolds.

Windiness

For some time, Rob1 and I have been yapping about developing wind power on PEI. PEI is both fortunate and unfortunate in God’s selection of blessings, lacking for example the natural resources such as a forested hinterland and mining resources that other parts of Canada take for granted. As the weather reports over at Craig’s site remind, however, strong winds were clearly on God’s list when he created the place. Having some experience with electric utilities, I have a sense that for PEI with its draw of 180 to 200 megawatts and dependency on expensive power from elsewhere, it is possibly sensible to put up at least the 200 towers that would supply 100% of local need. At least it is worth the review.   Movement this way has been with them for some time.

What is disconcerting – as we find local politicians finding themselves on their road to Damascus all of a sudden, creating great excitement in those who get excited when local politicians deem a scientific and business idea great – is how the deal will actually work. PEI, like the rest of Atlantic Canada, loves the megaproject dream, preferrably run by a local monopoly on a contract not necessarily open to public scrutiny. As the statute books create a closed market for electricity despite all the unbundling and competition being seen in the eastern North American electricity market, you can bet a cornerstone of the deal is access to a few selected companies. Also potentially fascinating and yet worrying is the hydrogen aspect of it – they may be banking on a technology unproven in the market of using wind to split water to burn the hydrogen in various ways.  Having had their very own symposium, however, the local politicians may now feel they are all world-classy lab-coatists.  What would be easier is to see an open market of simple wind generation into the existing electricity grid with individual operators able to sell into the eastern North American grid. That would, however, require “wheeling” – use of someone else’s power lines to move power through an area – as well as denying someone a monopoly on generation. The harsh and illogical reception Irving got to a proposal for privately funding such a development, tactily supported by the local Tory government, speaks to the likelihood of the marketplace being involved in the development. Introducing hydrogen into the mix allows for mesmerification of the whole project.  

Given the problems the provincial government has had with things like arithmatic and the continuing tradition of state involvement in enterprise that would embarrass an disco-era East German, government control is not reassuring cornerstone of this still interesting development.   Will it turn out to be more cucumbers in Newfoundland?

To the Moon

It is good to hear that the US is heading back into space, aiming for Man on Mars just in time for me to retire so I can follow the whole thing from my jelly sofa listening in on my wireless brain implant.  Whatever it is, however, it is not quite “news” as this was the plan in ’89  and even back soon after Apollos were still dropping on the Moon.

Why now?   Maybe because China’s been eyeing the Moon for a few years.  The EU has also been poking around the Moon…as has  India…and Japan…and, oh, yeah, Russia buddying up with China…and with India.   What’s the rush?  China wants to do some military mining.    Private groups are looking to win the X Prize – even Romanians.   Seems like everyone has a space agency, even the Swiss.

So if you are the United States, its about time to get moving or there won’t be much room left.

Odd News

This is interesting news, coming from a formerly high-placed White House insider who would have to be an utter liar and nincompop if this is not true:

Jan. 10 — NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill charges in a new book that President Bush entered office in January 2001 intent on invading Iraq and was in search of a way to go about it. O’Neill, fired in December 2002 as part of a shake-up of Bush’s economic team, has become the first major insider of the Bush administration to launch an attack on the president. He likened Bush at Cabinet meetings to “a blind man in a room full of deaf people,” according to excerpts from a CBS interview to promote a book by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, “The Price of Loyalty.”

Odder still given the news about what the Danes found in Iraq.