Atwood Vs. Ford

 Doug Fords attempted beat down on Margaret Atwood reveals a lot. All the early statements are gone, but it maybe he really did not know who she was and did not even take the time to find out before making his statement.

It is incredible that a pint sized pol would insult one of the greatest living Canadians. Shame Shame Shame! Her book Oryx and Crake is one of the finest sci fi ever written by any author of any nation.

Taliban on the ropes

Picture by(isafmedia)

The mayor of Kandahar was assassinated, and the US ambassador to Afghanistan commented “this is proof we have the Taliban on the run, they are so weak all they can do is assassinate top level targets.”  Why do Politian’s continue to flog dead horses insisting they are only resting, and sure to win the race? Maybe its not that they think we are stupid it’s that enough people are stupid enough to accept these spin statements as reassuring. Looking at the debt ceiling battle in the US confirms this assumption.

Also confirmed is that the Karzai government will last about ten minutes after the Americans leave. So why spend another dollar, or lose another life in Afghanistan?

Montreal trip

Just about recovered from a three day trip to Montreal. I got a very cool souvenir from Ikea. I love to read sitting on the lazy boy like chair, but have never found a good light to complement the excellence of the other parts of my mancave. Well the LED from IKEA is fantastic, buy at least one.


I came to Montreal in a fully loaded cargo van in keeping with my parental responsibility to help my offspring move forward from first to second year at McGill. So my question is why did Montreal move against me. Every key intersection, interchange and even the highway was under construction. Traffic moved like Stephen Harper rolling a joint. Then just when the whole city was torn up and covered in orange detour signs the construction union took the annual two week holiday. Sincerely this is what I love about Montreal, the Anglo can go to the beach and the worker will be at his  or her side.


Move went great, nice apartment in a very funky neighborhood.

Harry Potter the Progressive Model

I just finished watching the last Harry Potter, and find it wonderful so many young people will enjoy this tale of a progressive turning his back on concentrating power at his center. Republicans will be burning JK Rowlings books very soon.

Why Chinese Canadians do not enlist in Military

Photo (stevendepolo)

Top Ten reasons Chinese Canadians don’t enlist

1)  No German made vehicles to drive, Chinese only drive German made.

2)  White guys never serve rice

3)  Way to much beer drinking, never see cognac

5)  Get very insulted at rife range when instructor says, “you can stop squinting now”

6)  Barracks totally lacking Feng Shiu

7)  Have way to much combat experience all ready from Team Fortress tournaments

8)  No business class on C5A(Transport Planes)

9)  Camoes are all generic brand

10)            No Armani dress uniforms

11)            Jackie Chan always fought without guns

12)            No Ninja units in Canadian Forces

13)            Know most Ammo comes from China and likely will not work when most needed.

In every other city in the world

Yes in every other city in the world they are spending to increase bike use for obvious reasons, in Toronto they are going to spend half a million dollars to take away bike lanes. Alice you’re probably in Kansas.

Crazy Airport Scheming

ThePickering airport would not only be a boondoggle it has chum deal written all over it. Looking at the map its clear the biggest beneficiary would be HWY 407 Inc.

Kuala Lumpur’s recent airport cost $4 Billion and has capacity for 25 million passengers each year.  Pearson airport occupies 1972 hectares. The Pickering site is 7350 hectares, I wonder who will get to buy the surplus and at what cost. Hamilton airport has 1852 hectares, so it begs the question why can’t Hamilton be expanded to equal the capacity of Pearson, thus negating the need for a new airport. That is if the exponential passenger projections have any validity. For far less than the cost of the Pickering airport an High Speed Train line from Pickering to Hamilton plus a Terminal could be constructed. This balloon reeks of chum.

Young Ziggy

I found this over at Dangerous Minds

Ziggy Stardust is one of my all-time favorite albums, and I was lucky enough to see the Bowie Serious Moonlight tour in Montreal at the old forum. In the back of my mind is a novel about a man who discovers an ancient starship and convinces the world he is Ziggy Stardust ruler of Mars. I appoint myself one of the spiders and use the advanced technology to produce a more perfect world.

Paying the Bills

Picture ( Stephen Oachs)

Looking at a list of countries tax revenues vs expenditures we see the USA has a 13% gap. So cutting spending by 13% would bring it into balance. However it seems every country spends more than it takes in? Even Singapore spends 3% more than income. Obviously this is not the whole picture. What is clear is the US has to close that gap. The question is will it. I predict no. The Republicans are so far out of touch with reality they may actually believe their own nonsense, or maybe they are Fight Club fans. It is the biggest game of political chicken ever played.  If Obama thinks he will own the outcome he loses, if the Republicans own the outcome he still loses, if he concedes he loses. I see a trend here.

Stop giving it away

There is a tectonic shift taking place in the world, supplyis running out and demand is ramping up. For Canada it will be a very good time, but who will get most of the benefits. Under our current rules oil companies pay less in royalties than we gain from the lottery. Our levels are less than in Texas. It is time to follow Australia and put a 30% extraction fee on all natural resources.

Right now a US Hedge fund is plotting to remove resources from a delicate area. Please sign the petition to stop them, if it must be done let’s make sure they pay the full price.

Flying Outhouse's last dump

Space the final frontier

The long nightmare of space exploration is nearly over. First launched in 1982 the go decider for the Shuttle program was Dick Nixon. It was supposed to be a space pickup, a DC3 for space. It was a brain dead decision from the start. The shuttle weighs some 239,8000 lbs., the biggest cost of exploring space is lifting mass into space. NASA is so concerned about weight that all astronauts must have an enema before launch. The Russian Soyuz capsule that will succeed the Shuttle as the sole means of supplying the space station first flew in 1967. The reusable part weighs 6000lbs. No matter how you run the numbers, every launch is putting 200,000lbs of useless mass into orbit. For comparison the Saturn V had a payload of 262,000 lbs. A shuttle launch costs $1.5 Billion, a Soyuz launch $80 million. The Ariane 5 lifts 39,000lbs for $120 million. There is no doubt the space shuttle program was a mistake if the goal was to lift mass into space. Stage two of this disaster was the mission for the space shuttle. The international space station will be complete in 2012, at a cost of $150 Billion or more. The shuttle was developed to service the space station and the space station exists as a destination for the shuttle. In excesses of $300 Billion has been spent on a project that really has no purpose other than saying we did it.  Sure there is some science about living in space, but nothing that MIR could not/did not do. All the experiments could have been done by robots. And that is my bottom line; if the $300 Billion had been better allocated man would be far far farther into the final frontier. NASA has squandered 30 years feeding three dumb decisions; first the Shuttle, second the International Space station, third the manned colony on the moon. Fortunately Obama seems to be putting  NASA back on a better glide path. NASA needs better tools to advance and that is where the focus should be in the short term. Without the space station and shuttle sucking up all the oxygen I look forward to big leaps forward.

Tea bag reality

Rob Ford is a teabagger’s dream.  He is an unexamined red neck who more or less inherited both wealth and political credibility. Toronto voters overlooked all of his flaws for his one perceived perfection; he was a tight wad with the public purse.  The antithesis of a policy wonk, Rob spent ten years at city hall cultivating a reputation based upon two pillars, never spending any of his expense accounts, and answering calls from not only his own riding but every place a call went unanswered.

Viewed as an organism the city has arteries that bring it water, veins that take away the waste, police that act as the white blood cells: and transportation that is the muscle. Rob Ford has already totally blown the transportation file. He was given a flawed but achievable Transit City, he will leave a transit system in shambles and a first world city with third world transportation effectiveness. The cost to Toronto, Ontario and all Canada will be in the Trillions. So hard to create, so easy to destroy.

For comparison look at a system created by experts and policy wonks. Singapore has a marvelous subway that yikes makes a profit. Geographically and even in shape Singapore is about the same size as the old metro Toronto. Singapore has a population of about 3 million and 129 km of track. In 1994 it had zero. Toronto has 68 Km, what is wrong with this picture.


Rob jumps the Quest for Excellence Shark. The goverment of Toronto does not manufacture a product, it is a service provider, idiot.

Goverment for the Corporation by the Corporation

Photo (Peter Blanchard)

Take a peek into the mind of madness.. The world food safety organization has mandated that Genetically Modified foods be identified. Canada will make it voluntary. Just a few years ago hydrogenated foods (transfats) were seen as harmless. Now we know they are a fatbomb. Because we are what we eat, it makes total sense to be extremely cautious about food.
Consider these scenarios:
just like antibiotic resistance has been created through agricultural use, insects before resistant to all pesticides and taste bad to natural predators
the food looks good tastes good but has little nutrient value, thus wasting all the energy and land that went into its production.
we become dependent upon these crops and some kind of super blight wipes them out.
 So why our government would not even let the consumer make a choice about what they are eating. To add insult to injury the company protected is not even Canadian. As we all know this is just the tip of the iceberg of corporate influence removing choices from Canadians. Ironically it’s the small government types that are always bellowing choice.

Enough of Will and Kate

Photo (Magnus D)

I refuse to believe the Canadian people are the easily amused buffoons projected by our media. This morning on Canada AM I heard a 5 min discussion on how earnestly Kate and Will look for each other while appearing in public. GEEZ. We don't care, we are unhappy that in these times of restraint, these two genetic lottery winners are taking real millions out of our treasury. This is not our future king, that is Prince Charles, so I sincerely hope we see no more of these freeloaders until Will is actually next in line.


What is behind the frenzy, Harper. Distraction, patriotism, are all part of the psych ops toolkit, and Canada is getting a royal going over.


Unbelievable they are riding around in an Airbus capacity 150 people instead of a Challenger. Cost difference thousands per hour.

Bitter Fruit

Photo(isafmedia)

Ten years after the tragedy of 911 the combat phase of the Canadian punitive mission to Afghanistan ends.  We had to go, but we should have left when the farce of Iraq was staged. The Conservatives used it as a battering ram against both the NDP and Liberals. To their credit both parties are now not taunting Harper, with labels like Taliban Steve, or Cut and run Harper. Does anyone think if Harper was in opposition he would forgo the cheap political points?

Vietnam was a gift to the world; it kept the Americans from conquering the globe, and it revealed the truth about government, even so called democratic ones. Similarly the people of Iraq stopped the US from invading the whole Middle East. Afghanistan may prevent deployment to Africa, if it turns out that way it was a relativity inexpensive lesson. The west poured a Trillion dollars into Afghanistan, and what can it show  for it? This is what should be in the headlines today, waste not want not.

The cost of everything and the value of nothing

I used to buy Hockey cards, I have a complete set of 91 upper deck, with about 5 Mats Sundin RC and a host of others, this cost me at that time about $100. The value today about $5.00 if I could find buyers. The only card I have of any value is this Bobby Orr, maybe I could get $50.

I also have Lanny Mcdanny rookie maybe worth a $20 to some Leaf sucker.

And of course Borje Salming

I paid $5.00 for my Saku RC

Same for Pavel Bure

I did not end up with any Habs cards of value, but Serge is my best

Now I am hoping to cash is on the PHucktards latest blunders. I have two English and one French Jagr RC. I paid $15 for the French one.

And maybe this card is worth an  Vodka empty

Finally we has the Steve rookie card, never did make the NHL but always loved the Club du Montreal.