Baby Gets Its Bottle

Even though I wouldn’t be surprised if there were Conservative MPs who were using the stimulus program in order to try and secure funding for their riding in order to look good to their constituents, I have a real problem believing that every one of the 304 Members of Parliament aren’t trying the exact same thing. The idea that this government is engaged in profligate spending only in Conservative ridings sounds a little far-fetched, and at the same time it’s also a little ridiculous to enumerate government spending in this way. Trying to evenly allocate funding to ridings across Canada according to the same proportion of elected representatives ignores the fact that Canada is not divided into political solitudes by party affiliation.

This same kind of nonsense is creeping into other areas, too, such as the suggestion that Tory ridings are receiving the H1N1 flu vaccine first. Or in the case of Winnipeg MP Pat Martin, that the Olympic Torch relay is being manipulated to hit Tory ridings and miss opposition ones. On that file, the NDP MP has since apologized:

Manitoba MP Pat Martin has now apologized for accusing the Conservatives of turning the Olympic torch relay into a partisan romp through their own ridings after he learned the Olympic flame will hit his downtown riding.

[...]

The news placated Martin, who earlier this week called federal Sports Minister Gary Lunn and the Conservative government “crass” and “petty” when a list of Olympic torch relay events released was heavy on Tory ridings and light on opposition turf.

Overall, 126 Conservative MPs were on the list compared to 21 Liberals and 26 NDP and 18 Bloc Quebecois.

In Manitoba there were six Conservatives and one NDP on the list.

Martin went ballistic in the belief the list meant the torch wasn’t going anywhere in Winnipeg except Conservative MP Steven Fletcher’s riding in Charleswood-St.James-Assiniboia. He fired off an angry letter to Lunn, accusing the Conservatives of using the torch relay to promote Conservatives.

Mr.Martin went on to accuse Mr.Lunn of avoiding opposition ridings, describing it as “cheap, petty, and offends the Olympic spirit.” But after learning that the torch would, in fact, be arriving in his riding after all, Pat Martin changed his tune considerably.

The apology now is all well and good, after the fact, although Mr.Martin shifts the blame in his own apology by explaining that he didn’t realize that a list provided for the torch relay were mostly an accounting for which MPs will be asked to deliver speeches at celebration events, and not specific ridings the torch will go through. Which is another way of trying to blame the government for not holding him by the hand and explaining it to him before he went and shot his mouth off.

Mr.Martin might have done the right thing this time, but we know it won’t be the last time the Conservatives get accused of pandering solely to their own ridings. So where is the accountability from the opposition when they’re wrong? When they accuse the Conservatives of sending body bags to native communities? Or when they accuse them of manipulating the 2010 ice hockey team’s logo? At a certain point they leave themselves open to being willfully mocked for their faux outrage and childish bellyaching.

Friday Photography

I know it’s Friday, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. I’ve worked two 13-hour days in a row, and tomorrow we go back at it again. While I don’t have time to write, I do have time to unwind and post up some beautiful photographs. Enjoy!

It would appear that this edition of Friday Photography is very nearly entirely a German one.

1. Connemara, Ireland

2. Forest near Nuremberg, Germany. By Dirk Eidner

3. Lake Abraham, Alberta. By Darwin Wiggett

4. Hotel Post, Walgau, Germany. By Ernst-Wilhelm Sträter

When I saw the above image I was surprised because my aunt lives in Walgau. It isn’t far from Mittenwald, my mother’s hometown, and I worked in a “Hotel Post” that looks very much the same as the one in Walgau back when I was 22. Working and living in Bavaria was an experience that prepared me for the kind of appreciation of the beauty of mountainscapes and glacial lakes that exist here in British Columbia.

5. Lake Kochel, Bavaria, Germany

6. Sunset on a field outside of Nuremberg

7. Untitled

8. Untitled

Working Overtime

I don’t really have time to write today, but I did experience something else pretty interesting. Toronto CFRB1010 The Ryan Doyle Show interviewed me about this article in the National Post today during the 8:35pm time slot EST. If I can get the recording, I’ll share it here.

Since I will probably be on overtime hours tomorrow as well, I’m not sure I’ll get anything posted up. But I’ll try.

Update: Thursday, November 5, 8:45 PST

13 hour day today and it was a disaster. We’re well behind schedule now, and I’ll probably have to work Saturday and Sunday for 12-hour shifts. Time for dinner and bed.

2010 Olympic Killjoys: No Beer Garden

Despite all the complicated stuff, Canadians are actually pretty simple folk. We like our brief summers and our coffee hot, and our ice hockey and our beer cold. Canadians drank 68.3 litres of beer per capita in 2004, good for 19th best on the planet. And if you’ll notice, almost all of the countries who beat Canada in that consumption are going to be showing up in Vancouver for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

Unfortunately for drinkers with a sporting problem, the “roaring success” that Holland House’s Beer Garden has been in every Olympics since Barcelona 18 years ago might not make it’s way to Vancouver over our obsessive red tape. Holland House is a hospitality event the Netherlands [15th place] Olympic Committee and Dutch government hold every Olympics with a simple idea: They set up a nightly beer garden with international beer company Heineken supplying the beer. They bring their equipment, cook Dutch food and delicacies, serve beer and bring in Dutch nationals to throw a party and bring a little bit of authentic Amsterdam to Vancouver’s Olympic Games.

Only problem is, Canada isn’t having any of that fun stuff:

Let’s start with the City of Richmond.

It initially welcomed Holland House, hoping to make it a centre of celebration around the Olympic Speed Skating Oval. But with about three months to go before the Games begin, the city is suddenly insisting all of Holland House’s equipment, from high-end European kitchens to draft beer taps, be approved for use in Canada. That could take months, if ever.

It’s also insisting Holland House meet all building codes if it puts up a few walls in the arena, even though such rules have been waived for other Olympic venues. The city is even demanding the Dutch start putting in permanent plumbing and gas lines for a three-week event. (I don’t know about you, but I think the people who have dikes to fight off an ocean will be pretty reliable on the plumbing.)

It gets even more bizarre at the provincial level. Holland House succeeds because it brings thousands of people into one place every night for a massive party. The plan in Richmond is to create a space for about 3,500 people in a hockey arena.

But the B.C. liquor control and licensing branch wants to squelch the party by reducing the crowd to 1,500, essentially creating a half-empty room while thousands line up outside.

Finally, there’s Ottawa.

It’s insisting Dutch organizers must prove no Canadians are losing out jobs to the 330 Dutch citizens coming in to run Holland House. Ottawa wants all the jobs posted for two weeks, to see if Dutch-speaking Canadians might apply. (Do the feds have a secret plan to raid Dutch Pancake Houses across the country?)

Richmond, fail. B.C., fail. Canada, fail.

Building codes? Permanent plumbing? Gas lines? Come on people, it’s a beer garden. You drink beer, eat food, engage in drunken revelry and then fall down. It isn’t complicated. Germany has been leading the way on this file since the eleventh century.

And while I appreciate the idea of saving Canadian jobs [Dey took yur job!], I think we can handle the outsourcing of this little project to our blonde-haired friends in the little European country of cheese and dykes [of both kinds].

Ah well, this is pretty much what we’ve come to expect from these Olympics and their red-tape-for-thee-but-not-for-me rules. Oh and as for all that projected economic activity we’ve heard so much about being generated by these Games, they’ve been significantly downgraded from $10.7 billion to $4 billion. And that’s a best-case scenario. Something tells me turning the taps off on this Beer Garden is a prime example of why. The Olympics haven’t been allowed to simply go with the flow and spirit that the organizers talk so much about because of regulations, restrictions, registrations, and red tape.

Lock Away This Depraved, Evil Man

There are so many things wrong with this crime that it’s difficult to find a more heinous betrayal of trust. Gerard Baumgarte, a 57-year-old man in Alberta, had fantasized about his crime for two weeks before he kidnapped a 16-year-old girl. The accused pleaded guilty to six charges in court, including the impersonation of a police officer and sexual assault:

The girl, who cannot be named, was driving home at about 9:40 p.m. after taking a quick trip to a nearby convenience store in Penhold.

Posing as a police officer, Baumgarte pulled the young driver over just outside her home. His car was equipped with red and blue flashing lights.

He told the girl he was going to write her a ticket because the licence plate on her vehicle was expired.

Baumgarte asked the girl to get into the car. Once inside, he pulled a knife and cut her cheek, Yereniuk said.

He tied her up and also put ski goggles, which had been painted black, on her face.

Baumgarte then put the girl in the trunk of his vehicle and took her to his residence in north Red Deer.

She was confined for two days and during that time he sexually assaulted her several times, Yereniuk said.

This poor girl never stood a fighting chance. We teach our children from the day they can talk to trust and obey police officers, that anybody would have done the same thing in the victim’s position. For this reason alone, the accused should spend a very long time behind bars. The betrayal of trust to this teenager is an unforgivable offence, and the nature of horrible crimes that followed should be weighed consequentially to that betrayal.

The sad part of this story is that I fear they will not hand down the maximum sentence he deserves, of life imprisonment.

Crucifixes Banned In Schools In Italy? No seriously, Italy?

If you thought the Canadian Human Rights Commission came up with some ridiculous ideas, just look at the European Court of Human Rights. They have said that the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools violates religious and education freedoms in the heart of European Catholicism. The response from the Catholic Church in Rome has been swift and angry. The reason for the ruling:

The ruling could force a review of the use of religious symbols in government-run schools across Europe. Saying the crucifix could be disturbing to non-Christian or atheist pupils, the court in Strasbourg rejected arguments by Italy’s government that it was a national symbol of culture, history, identity, tolerance and secularism. The Italian government immediately said it would appeal, with one minister saying the court should be ashamed and a conservative senator calling the ruling “absurd”.

Italian bishops said they were perplexed by the ruling. “The multiple significance of the crucifix, which is not just a religious symbol but a cultural sign, has been either ignored or overlooked,” the Italian Bishops Conference said.

I have to agree with the church on this one. The crucifix, while a symbol for Christianity, is also evocative of two thousand years of European culture and history, and it would be ridiculous to ignore this aspect when making decisions about removing the cross from schools. Indeed, what often united the fratricidal fiefdoms throughout Europe’s bloody history, was their link to Christianity. The celebration of Christian calender events, cultural festivals, and observation of holy days are all commonly shared within the European continent.

It’s more surprising because it’s happening in Italy, the country which hosts the Vatican in Rome which has guided Catholic theology and culture since the first century. One can only imagine the reaction in Mecca to the Saudi Arabian Human Rights Court decreeing the Islamic Crescent as violating religious freedoms.

Liberals Attempt To Capitalize On H1N1

Liberal Party President Alfred Apps

You can’t spell pandemic without the panic. The Liberal party has taken it upon themselves to attack the Conservatives in the House of Commons surrounding the H1N1 flu pandemic, leaving Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq to repeat the same reassuring message over and over in Question period:

“Mr. Speaker, six million doses were produced ahead of schedule. As soon as they were available and authorized they were transferred to the provinces and territories for their roll-out. We will see thousands more this week and one million more next week.”

It’s no surprise that the Liberals are questioning the government surrounding the vaccination rollout, and the news is full of stories of long lineups, shortages of the vaccine delivery, and prospective seekers of inoculation being turned away after waiting for hours. It is important to get such answers from the government, and it would be irresponsible of the official opposition not to ask these questions.

Having said that, it seems rather opportunistic, and perhaps even a little bit desperate, that the Liberals are trying to make a flu vaccine shortage into something larger than it actually is. While some Canadians, including myself, have expressed dissatisfaction with clinics turning people aside, and the media for overselling the necessity of the vaccination, the entire affair seems to be proceeding about as normally as can be expected when a sudden demand exceeds a given supply.

It isn’t as though Canada is the exception to this shortage, as the United States is also struggling to manage large crowds with panic and anxiety. The American Medical News reports that many physicians down south are trying, without apparent success, to find vaccines or local alternative sources for their patients.

“People are scared. People are frightened. And they’re feeling like, ‘Oh my God, I need the vaccine and it’s not available,’ ” said John Sage, MD, a family physician and medical staff president at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Ill.

It’s been no different in Europe. This is, as the World Health Organization has explained, a global virus that will attack the northern hemisphere this flu season. It isn’t a localized phenomenon, like an Earthquake, or a Wildfire, or even a Hurricane and a flood. That hasn’t stopped Liberal Party President Alfred Apps from circulating the news that the Canadian government response to this crisis is like Hurricane Katrina, the event that is said to have lost President Bush’s popularity with the nation:

The attached article “The Broken Contract” was written by our leader Michael Ignatieff in response to the Bush government’s utter failure to rise to the obvious challenge to public security, order and health presented by Hurricane Katrina. Is the H1N1 pandemic the “Hurricane Katrina” of our own laissez-faire, fend for yourself government? Read the attached. Reflect on the analogous situation we face. Consider the priorities and values that underlie our own government’s response to the threat to public health that this pandemic represents. Recognize that Mr. Harper’s government has utterly failed to stand with Canadians and for Canadians in a matter of clear and unequivocal public duty.

Whatever happens, let us fervently hope and pray that the threat to general health and the risk of loss of life flowing from this government’s incredible irresponsibility is contained to the absolute minimum.

This sort of hyperbole is unwarranted, and in context with what is really happening in the vaccine delivery, a very inaccurate comparison. The government is struggling with the demand, and citizens have a right to get upset and urge a faster response. But this is not a crisis on a level anywhere close to the devastation of Katrina, nor do I think any rhetoric to that effect will have any sway with average Canadians. The comment “laissez-faire” is even reminiscent of Stephane Dion’s attempt to link Stephen Harper with the unrestrained forces of the invisible hand last October when he urged voters not to fall for Mr.Harper’s “laissez-faire I don’t care” attitude.

We should, by all means, continue to watch for signs that the government is stalling in vaccine delivery, but I don’t think we’ll have to wait for very long. The government has a vested interest in responding as quickly and as efficiently as it can on this file, and under the circumstances I think it’s doing a competent job.

The Next Generation Of Dirty Hippies

You’ve got to like the final word in the video: “If our children knew the facts we do, they’d take action.”

Well, I’m certain if you propagandize like this, a future encounter with the police is probably inevitable. Don’t worry.

Snipping Away Our Liberties

I’ve written another op-ed for Gerry Nicholls’ libertarian blog. A snippet is included below, with a link to the full article. But I did want to clarify something about the content matter. While it’s true that I bemoan the loss of civil liberties in the attempt to infiltrate terrorist networks, I understand the need for balance in security matters and some leeway in pursuing persons of interest by our intelligence agencies. But that needs to be tempered by the rule of law, and if not interpreted to the very letter, then it should at least be guided by the spirit of it.

Libertarians feel strongly about protecting the inherent rights of a society because we’ve seen how easily they can be suspended when it is deemed necessary for the “public good”.

Take the fight against terrorism.

Most, if not all, of the laws curtailing civil liberties were passed in the years after September 11, 2001, an event I like to call “time zero” since many of our foreign and domestic security policies stem from the repercussions of that horrible day.

Continue reading…

Possible Light Posting Ahead

It may sound silly to say, given that I churned out about five long posts over today, but it’s true. The Pacific Rim Fairmont Hotel downtown is under deadline to be opened by January of 2010 in time to accept Olympic visitors, and there’s an entire row of panels to install on the Northeast aspect of the building after they take the material hoist out. I do know my boss has been given some insane timeline of installation to do it, however, in the range of about 40 floors in six days. At six panels a floor, and 240 panels to the top, we have to install 40 panels a day. An 8-hour shift can usually produce 21-27 panels installed, so 40 panels a day, barring any unforeseen glitches, could result in 12 hour days. Or more.

If that happens, I’ll obviously be forced to merely sleep and work, work and sleep. There will be no writing. The overtime should go a long way toward shoring up the recessionary shortfalls I’ve been experiencing with sudden unpaid days off to keep from being laid off. So if all goes well, I’ll have my own little “hell week”, but surviving that I should be back to regular business on the week following. And, of course, given the nature of construction, all of this could be canceled tomorrow and it’ll be business as usual.

Having said that, just in case I don’t have time to share my stockpile of links I have for future blogging, I’ll simply divulge them now.

Liberals continue to close fundraising gap despite woes

Way to put a positive spin on what is essentially a story about the Liberal ship taking on water and sinking under Captain Ignatieff. The only way they could accomplish this in the news story was by comparing their current fund-raising efforts to those under the previous steward, Stephane Dion. This sentence in the article may prove the most salient: “Liberal fortunes have been in a downward spiral since Leader Michael Ignatieff vowed in early September to defeat the minority Tory government at the earliest opportunity.” All of this again points to Iffy as being the main impediment toward Liberal traction. It’s back to the drawing board for the Liberals sooner, rather than later.

Radical Somali-Canadians potential threat: RCMP boss

Islamic radicalization of Canada’s Somali community is becoming a national security concern according to our intelligence agencies. Success in countering the dangers will involve, and I would think this goes without saying, “[putting] more terrorism cases before the courts and more terrorists in jail.” That means arresting people involved in the trafficking and use of Afghan heroin, a major source of Taliban revenue, and then charging them under Canada’s terrorism financing laws. Sell heroin, go to jail for supporting the Taliban. Makes sense to me. As for the Somalians, one wonders whether we’ll soon witness a repeat of the Tamil fiasco as the Somali-Canadian community grows while their roots to the Horn of Africa remains strongly connected.

How to regain your confidence – The Metis Way

A brilliant piece of prose-poetry by Metis-blogger Darcey Jerrom:

I could have been just another slovenly bastard prick lapping at the big milky breasts of mother gov but peace be upon me I pushed myself to slap those moose hides back on the muddy lips of a crevice and began to knee bend my way back up.

I succeeded but only in the physical sense and lived life through the motions but wasn’t living my life. There was just one more thing I needed to do. I needed to reclaim me.

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