For the Week of August 16-20th…
The summer is sure passing by at quite a clip. It was only yesterday that our umbrellas were crashing into one another in “balmy” June, no? LOL!
Nevertheless, it’s been quite a productive summer on a number of fronts and last month was this blog’s biggest month, thanks of course, to all of you who regularly appear with your pithy comments, biting observations and sometimes-gentle criticisms. Thanks very much to all 136,000+ visitors in July! And a particularly warm thanks to all my regular readers. Regardless of opinion, or differences we may have from time to time, you make this often trying endeavor all worthwhile.
So…this week, you can look forward to at least the following (in no particular order):
1) Michelle Obama and her Spanish Omelette: Plummeting approval ratings post-European vacation.
2) Why Wiki-leaks founder should be jailed for international mischief and soldier endangerment–sadly no such laws. How ’bout journalistic fraud?
3) Omar Khadr: His trial is delayed, but with more evidence revealed that he very likely killed a US serviceman, where are Bob Rae, Libby Davies and their disgraceful sanctimony now?
4) MMA: The writing is on the wall. It’s utterly barbaric and too dangerous. It should be banned–it really is human cock-fighting.
5) The Sri Lankan Boat People: I’ll bring you more revelations from inside the story, that you won’t read anywhere else, and tell you why these people must be expelled from Canada IMMEDIATELY.
6) Michael Ignatieff’s somewhat excellent adventure–yielding Dion-like results. After Tory missteps the Grits are STILL behind.
7) There should be no mosque anywhere near ground zero in NYC. I’ll tell you why and how over this last week the President of the United States lost the November elections far worse than previously imaginable. And it’s only August!
8 Gordon Campbell went to Sacramento to plead for California to change the laws in their state, so that buying ‘Rape of River’ energy form B.C. would be seamless. Question for the MSM media: Why are none of you asking the following questions:
a) Premier, you made an extraordinary trip to California to essentially plead with Californians to change their laws and buy power from IPP projects that the Utilities Commission deem an answer to a non-existent problem, Sir, considering that many of your friends and close political allies, campaign workers, regular donors and stalwart supporters are either owners or directors of the vast majority of those companies, has anyone of those IPP corporations promised you anything for your efforts after you leave govt?
b) After your retirement from politics, Premier, have you been promised a directorship with any of them? Do you or any of your family members have investments or interests in any of those companies, Sir?
9) Cortes Island, a much, much closer look.
10) Geoff Meggs: The Grand Architect of Hurt.
11) And a note from one of Kevin Falcon’s friends. The next Premier is, after all, going to have a ‘Beans n’ Jeans’ BBQ in September, and I’ve been cordially invited. But alas, I’ll be washing my hair…
All that, plus more from Victoria and LOTS more from Silly Hall at 12th and Cambie…
Enjoy the sun.
Be safe out there.
Lots of crazy-scary cyclists on the road….oh wait, that might have been redundant… 
“crazy-scary cyclists”. Sigh. Don’t get them started. Sure 136,000 hits is OK, but Chris Keam did like 70-80,000 of them.
At least they’re not Nazis any more. Those armbands make my biceps sweat right through the Italian Spandex.
Hard to know which is worse :You not going to a Falcon fundraiser and washing your hairs, I’m sorry I mean hair. Or going and setting it on fire.
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You’re hysterical. And that’s not hits. That’s individual visitors.
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Forget the hair Alex, we want you out at that barbeque!
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I’m not sure I’d be welcome. They were reacting to my report that they couldn’t sell enough tickets the first time. The reality is, it’s never been this late in the year and they really couldn’t sell enough the first go around. I heard that from people both in Victoria and Ottawa.
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Alex, you’d be as welcome as the flowers in May, they know Gordie is on the way out and they would like your approval and input on their next selection, and just your being there gives a certain cache to the whole morbid affair. (I mean, it’s not like they expect another party to appear out of nowhere, and the NDP is not an option to most of this province) And it’s a barbeque, no one can poison the meal in the kitchen and if you like we could send a taster, and being as it is outside there can be no assassins with knives, hiding in the arras!
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Way too funny!
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Re: MMA – Global replayed it’s fantastic piece on the life, victories and defeats of Sean O’Sullivan tonight. It could be used to defend the supporters of MMA who insist that regular boxing is far more risky to the health of the fighters than is MMA. Truth is, Sean has more character than the sum total of all the MMA fighters I have ever seen. Even when punch drunk, he’s a gentleman, not a carnival freak like the others.
( the possibility that I’ve spelled his first name wrongly, is great)
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We went to dinner at my parents place and I caught the 16:9 documentary (since 60 Minutes was also a repeat). I’ve seen the documentary on Shawn O’Sullivan before. He was one of my favorite boxers.
But it doesn’t bolster the thuggery of MMA. A majority of boxers walk away and have no issues. Most live productive lives and long enough ones too. MMA will NEVER secure a stitch of legitimacy while they are approving of fighters being hit on the way down and then after they’re out. That’s complete bullshit. You don’t do that–EVER. Plus, the example cannot be made to be like: MMA fighters have much shorter careers, if not for the relatively poor purses (so they leave earlier for other careers and endorsement to make a living–as they get older and some raise families) or they blow it all on the usual Mike Tyson prescription of hookers and blow. MMA is an sport obscenity.
And apparently, it’s really good at inspiring young Indo-Canadian thugs to perpetuate problems between their own community and gays, by urinating on your front door step, and then beating up on two completely innocent homosexuals after they’ve rightly objected to the public bathroom break.
MMA is the adrenaline for idiots.
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Absolutement! Couldn’t agree more, although it does have a certain disturbing attraction to it, it appeals to our darker side, and to dunder-heads, and moral castrates and both bullies and cowards (one and the same). It is a modern day equivalent of the Grand Guignol or the gross spectacle that was the public execution.
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1. 136,000+ visitors in July
Thank Bill T he put me and many others on to your site – and I appreciate the perspective.
2. Gordon Campbell went to Sacramento and apparently John Slater MLA for Boundary-Similkameen is going to accept the HST position because in his own words he is afraid of losing his job. (classy)
http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/top_story.php?id=287042&type=Local
3. I’ll be washing my hair…
We have roughly the same amount.
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1) I think Bill Tieleman is a tough guy to remain mad at. I had a terrific rapport with him when we were colleagues at 24 Hours and I think he’s done some exceptional work on news about battered women shelter cuts and, of course, his work on Basi-Virk deserves a Webster on its own. He does not suffer fools and when he’s not glued to his political brethren, he makes a fantastic writer. Then, there’s the flip side, when he got it wrong on the long gun registry and the war in Afghanistan. But give him full marks he runs a very good blog and hasn’t hesitated to go after his pals in the NDP when he thought they were offbase or offside. I admire that. And I appreciate you coming around too.
Funny thing, where I have hair on my head, it’s very thick, but for someone with southern Mediterranean ancestry, I’m not particularly hirsute. Lucky I guess.
2) Can’t believe Slater would say something so damned stupid. Oh, wait a minute…
3) I try to do mine one at a time. It prolongs the agony…
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Looking forward to your opinions on independent power cos. Former Monday Magazine reporter Russ Francis used to annually dig up stock holdings of Gordo and cabinet ministers.
You’re right to wonder if the industry will prove a green pasture for retired/defeated Liberal politicians.
For years two regular callers to Bill Good’s On The Ledge have warned that IPPs will prove the costliest boondoggle ever perpetrated by a provincial government. According to callers Brian and Mark, BC Hydro is obliged to pay any successfully built IPP project about three
times the current rate for electricity.
Depending on the number of run-of-river, wind or solar projects that come on line, BC taxpayers will be on the hook for billions over
the 30-40 year contracts.
Bill, Keith and Vaughn tend to giggle at the gloomy forecasts, while
lauding Campbell’s green policies. But Vancouver Sun energy reporter
Scott Simpson has basically confirmed this information. Still, 0no
mainstream media are publicizing the gaping subsidy we’ll pay if rates
throughout North America don’t triple in future.
h
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Which is my long-term point: If the Premier of this province has set up his friends for billion dollar paydays over the course of the next few decades–providing an answer to a problem that does not exist, then Gordon Campbell belongs in jail.
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Wow….the mere mention of the things that Gordon Campbell has done to this province actually increases my blood pressure – and has probably resulted in a similar hair style to Alex’s.
All I want for Christmas is for Gordon to still be our premier when the recall campaign can start in November. Please wait till then. First he needs to removed from his seat – then prosecuted.
Great – and now while I’m typing this comment, I can hear our garbage being rolled to the street (by my wife – but its my job)….I’m going to blame that – and the fall out of it – on Gordon Campbell as well
JB
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Speaking of Premiers.. It was around 22 years ago this week (August 1988), that Premier VanderZalm faced a rather irritated caucus, and preparations were started for the show down at the Pentiction Covention (a supposed vote on his leadership).
Went through some things over the weekend and sorted out about 35 news articles I saved from that year. Interesting reading about David Poole, Hope Rust and other characters of the day.
It only got worse the next year in 1989. (the start of the run of several by-elections each one of them lost by Social Credit (four of them should have been won).
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I did that about three months ago after a conversation I had with Bill. Interesting retrospective…
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Warning: off topic
Do you ever check out Garth Turners Blog? I’d like to hear your take on BC real estate and investing in general if you have something to say on the topics…
Garth’s Blog:
http://www.greaterfool.ca/
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Yeah, I met Garth in the 80s in Ottawa and have no better an opinion of him now than I did then. A massive, unjustified, overblown megalomaniac, who considers himself the man. Ridiculous. I read his posts on the housing market and it’s nothing newer than what I said on ‘The Sean Leslie’ and ‘The Bill Good Show’ in 2008: The current market in B.C. is being driven mainly by offshore, mainland Chinese money. And as soon as the interest rates rise (as they have) and the Chinese tap the brakes on their economy (which they have) the market will see housing prices drop like stones.
Case in point: The WHORES (read: real estate brokers–well, most of them are…) are always telling you the market’s “buoyant” or “moving.” But as we all know from having sat on the curb at 3am when our pal’s parents are trying to extinguish the last of the bush fire in front of their palatial shack in Dunbar, with the beer we didn’t drink–THE PARTY DOESN’T LAST FOREVER.
Now, investors that bought in and artificially ran the market up (bastards!) from foreign lands are stuck because their $4M home is worth only $2.5M. Or the $1.5M condo is worth $800K. No one listens. And wait until our economy double-dips into recession (by mid-2011, for sure) watch the market dump. It’ll be a feeding frenzy. But who’ll have the money to buy?
It’s why most people are moving to areas Asians find undesirable–Surrey, White Rock, Burnaby, Coquitlam, etc.
I’ve done posts on this before. I’ll do one again soon. If I forget to put it on next week’s roster, remind me and I’ll give you details. Frankly, if you want a good buy, go to Glendale, Tempe, Tuscon or West Scottsdale. You’ll make a killing. Or wait until California completely collapses early next year and run headlong into Palm Desert, San Diego (proper), Indio–you’ll make a killing.
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I’ve enjoyed Garth’s blog – no doubt he thinks the world of himself… but I’d probably vote for him given the opportunity.
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You scare me.
I’d vote for Tieleman before I’d vote for Turner.
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Just Say No:
Don’t you mean John Slater is going to “assume the position”????
Alex, re: MMA, and of course, its evil Father, the UFC:
I love Mike Smyth but have been sickened by his seemingly tacit support of the UFC and it’s MMA mouthpiece Dave, (today bolstered by a guy from the Sun who WRITES on MMA —shame on you, Kirk Lapointe, for appealing to the lowest common denominator. Even your own reporter who originally covered the event thought it was a bloodythree ring circus. Obviously, he has been replaced by someone more “UFC Friendly”!).
By the way Dave–nice way to lose it on the dignified Chinese male caller who had the temerity to challenge your rosy picture of this crap spectacle, and who called you for task for being said mouthpiece. Suddenly, in a nano-second the thin veneer of your fake joviality goes up in smoke in that one unguarded moment. A little touchy, there, boy?
Alex, I totally agree with your comments about the scurviness of a “sport’ that alllows it’s fighters, literally, to hit a guy while he’s down. WTF! When did we decide that kind of thing was sporting!?!?! That most of the mouth-breathers in their audiences get off on this display of brute force and crap tactics, pretty much makes me want to vomit. And it says too much about the “Afflicted” t-shirt wearers in the audience.
CKNW has had 3 or 4 segments in the last few days on this bs. UFC really has had it’s followers out in force during all the call-in segments.
It doesn’t help that Dr. Gillespie of the BCMC was woefully unprepared to stand up for the ban on the sport that his docs are supporting.
Here’s a few things he could have brought up, or one could ask of UFC suopporters:
1) i heard that UFC 15, the first sanctioned fight held in Vancouver, had 5 of its fighters go to St. Paul’s for injuries. If this is such a “safe” sport, why so much carnage? Is it normal for boxing matches to send a fighter from each bout to emerg? I understand that many of those injuries were head injuries—I think the emerg docs there have sounded the alarm about this issue from that first event.
2) What is the UFC’s policy on steroid or other performance enhancing drug use? If they don’t have a policy, why not? Who holds them accountable to monitor, test and censure those who flunk, if they do have a policy?
3) Isn’t it true that the average UFC fighter pockets a purse of around $10,000 per bout? This, from an event that made millions in its inaugral in Vancouver?
4) Isn’t it true that UFC head honcho Dana White exhorts his fighters to stay in the ring, past the point where they should tap out? What does this say about the “entertainment” value, not to mention that horiible word “morality”, about a “sport” that makes sport of that kind of pain??? The juiced up monkeys and pathetic frat boys in the audience that roots for more pain to be applied, either have a cartoon vision of what that means in real terms, and/or are verging on pathology that points to complete lack of empathy as evi
denced by one assault in particular, where members of the audience were calling for a clearly hurt contender to “get up, get up!!” and continue on. What next: throwing Christians to the Lions?
I suggest the knuckle-draggers who think that this is the penultimate expression of manhood, do something really useful, like volunteer for the Canadian army in Afghanistan.
Go help save some of the downtrodden, you creeps. Oh, I forgot—you would probably run screaming from that “theatre” in a nano-second.
Please, do us all a favour—DON’T BREED!
5) Dave and UFC supporters use the RIDICULOUS argument that UFC is “safer” than football, hockey and, god help me, CHEERLEADING.
Yes, people in those sports do experience injury, and sometimes death, due to misteps.
But not from deliberately holding each other down and beating the crap out of each other as the way to SCORE or WIN in their sanctioned, sanctified “sport”.
6) The argument that if banned, it goes underground–I say: BRING THAT ON! Let these amateur ass**les self-select and beat the crap out of each other (as they do most other nights of the week in the bars of Vancouver). I would be DEE-LIGHTED to see more wannbees Darwin-ize themselves into extinction.
The Mayor and Council were wrong to support this—and perhaps there is a movement afoot to rid ourselves of it as, as Dave so slyly tells us, the Vancouver Athletic Association sanctioned event. Well, as he knows, the VAA guy who bullied and lobbied the Cty was “booted” (how ironic!) last month.
Soon to be followed, I fervently pray, by Dave, guy from the Sun and the
whole of the UFC.
Don’t let the door hit you in the head on the way out, fellas!
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Let me tell you about all the proponents of UFC–they are bought and paid for–including Vision’s propagandist poodle–HE IS A PAID MMA PROPONENT.
And then let me tell you about the stats–UFC or MMA hasn’t been around for along enough time for a decent stat trend to flow. Meaning, that comparisons to boxing etc are bullshit.
Plain an simple. What ‘SPORT” allows a fighter to be hit while unconscious? MMA. What sport allows a fighter to be put into a submission hold and held there beyond consciousness? MMA. What sport allows a fighter to be brutally kicked in the head and then hit again while down? MMA. Let’s stop there.
MMA is barbarism. It is simply moderately regulated street fighting. There i no purpose to it other than to make it’s pimps rich and the promoters pocket wealthy.
Boxing requires technique and grace. Even Iron Mike had that at his height.
When I do my post, you will see how the proponents will look like complete fools.
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Well!!! That, I suspect, pretty much settles that. This Dave guy better hope he never meets Frank or Alex in the ring/pentagon, whatever! Of course, it is all about the money, always has been, and no one’s against making a little money; but at someone else’s expense? And the cost can be frightful – as someone once said :
Avoid the hearty and enhancing handshake,
The prefatory fib that leads to worse
(Like gladiators’ kisses, boxers’ hugs,
The formal overtures to violence).
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