Adding a little heartache to this story, it’s Lafleche’s 100th anniversary as a town, and Canada Day weekend is the celebration. Now there are fewer places for visitors to stay and visit in town, and there’s just another burned out lot.
Main St.
On January 10, 1984, I was present when the Lafleche Bumper To Bumper caught fire and burned down; The story I recently read in my Grandma’s journal entry for that day.
Harper hurried out of the country, and who could blame him? He had angry professional journalists on his tail, asking him questions that have no other true answer than to admit that a crime took place in the Prime Minister’s Office. His old friend Nigel Wright was under the CPC Bus, and Stephen Harper remained at the wheel, driving it over Mike “Loose Lips” Duffy at the same time Wright was hanging onto the front bumper before resigning himself to be chewed under the heavy Harper wheels of staffer sacrifice.
A Conservative government would institute an independent office of public prosecutions responsible for investigating criminal activity on Parliament Hill, party Leader Stephen Harper said Wednesday. [Nov. 30, 2005]
“I invite you to look forward to … a bold future where people are held responsible for their actions,” Harper said on the second day of campaigning for the Jan. 23 federal election.
Under current rules, Harper said, politicians have had too much say in how those involved are dealt with and how much money should be repaid.
“Conservatives believe as a basic principle that politicians should not be accountable to other politicians, that government should not be accountable to itself,” he said.
“A new Conservative government will ensure that decisions about criminal prosecution are independent of politicians and independent of politics.”
Government should not be accountable to itself? Hell, he’s done a bang-up job implementing that promise, because not only is this government not accountable to itself, it also escapes scrutiny of the RCMP, Elections Canada, the Head of State, and the professional snoozing media who still dismissively sounds like this:
Um, I’m not sure “comments” can settle a gross ethical and legal violation of Senate rules, unless they were, “I accept responsibility, and I resign in the hope that the Crown prosecutor goes easy on me.”
.@jonkay it bothers me that #Duffy doesn't bother you that much. Senator taking $90000 hush money from PMO insiders? #cdnpoli#crime— Saskboy K. (@saskboy) May 22, 2013
@pdmcleod I guess the RCMP don't have Twitter Or TV or print media. $90000 what? Duffy Wright who? Oh wait: @rcmpgrcpolice— Saskboy K. (@saskboy) May 22, 2013
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Hat tip to Nathan who liked this part best from 2005:
‘I invite you to look forward to … a bold future where people are held responsible for their actions.’ – Stephen Harper [2005]
"Anyone who wants to use public office for their own benefit should make other plans or, better yet, leave this room" – Harper. #cdnpoli#hw— (@rabbleca) May 21, 2013
@ValckeNDP Well, he said that anyone in this for personal gain should leave the room… #cdnpoli— Stephen Lautens (@stephenlautens) May 21, 2013
Here’s Stephen Harper giving a description of the Canadian federal political system. It’s obvious that his blubbering since about not understanding something about how the Prime Minister has unchecked power, is a charade. His “coup” talk during the coalition agreement of 2008, was bogus, he knows Parliament selects the Prime Minister, not citizen voters.
Do you think he knew about Wright’s cheque to Duffy, the Senator “buddy” and “fundraiser” he appointed?
On the surface, you can make a comparison between our political system and yours [America]. We have an executive, we have two legislative houses, and we have a Supreme Court.
However, our executive is the Queen, who doesn’t live here. Her representative is the Governor General, who is an appointed buddy of the Prime Minister.
Of our two legislative houses, the Senate, our upper house, is appointed, also by the Prime Minister, where he puts buddies, fundraisers and the like. So the Senate also is not very important in our political system.
And we have a Supreme Court, like yours, which, since we put a charter of rights in our constitution in 1982, is becoming increasingly arbitrary and important. It is also appointed by the Prime Minister. Unlike your Supreme Court, we have no ratification process.
So if you sort of remove three of the four elements, what you see is a system of checks and balances which quickly becomes a system that’s described as unpaid checks and political imbalances.
What we have is the House of Commons. The House of Commons, the bastion of the Prime Minister’s power, the body that selects the Prime Minister, is an elected body. I really emphasize this to you as an American group: It’s not like your House of Representatives. Don’t make that comparison.
What the House of Commons is really like is the United States electoral college. Imagine if the electoral college which selects your president once every four years were to continue sitting in Washington for the next four years. And imagine its having the same vote on every issue. That is how our political system operates.
In our election last Monday, the Liberal party won a majority of seats. The four opposition parties divided up the rest, with some very, very rough parity.
But the important thing to know is that this is how it will be until the Prime Minister calls the next election. The same majority vote on every issue. So if you ask me, “What’s the vote going to be on gun control?” or on the budget, we know already.
If any member of these political parties votes differently from his party on a particular issue, well, that will be national headline news. It’s really hard to believe. If any one member votes differently, it will be national headline news. I voted differently at least once from my party, and it was national headline news.
Harper also famously said the following, perhaps partly in jest. Probably he was serious, and hamming it up for the friendly crowd he was trying to flatter.
Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it. Canadians make no connection between the fact that they are a Northern European welfare state and the fact that we have very low economic growth, a standard of living substantially lower than yours [America], a massive brain drain of young professionals to your country, and double the unemployment rate of the United States.
ADDED:
RT @RobertFife: Reporters booted from Tory caucus as they asked Stephen Harper to answer questions about Senate spending scandal. #cdnpoli— CTV National News (@CTVNationalNews) May 21, 2013
MT @dgardner "This is your moment, CPC backbenchers: Are you Parliamentarians or the PM’s grunts?" — Rhetorical questions work? #cdnpoli— Saskboy K. (@saskboy) May 21, 2013
Clearly @pmharper is all for accountability. Caucus pitch addressed nothing, media booted for asking questions then #PMSH ran away. #cdnpoli— Kyle S. (@random_noise) May 21, 2013
Amazing CBC coverage of climate change from the early 1980s. Bob McDonald, Peter Kent, and others make appearances:
Attention Washington: Peter Kent explains Climate Change (the briefing you won’t see).
“The natural preoccupation with the weather tomorrow, the next day, or even Thursday, has distracted public attention from the longer term implications of the Greenhouse Effect.” – Peter Kent, 1984 on CBC
“The Greenhouse Effect must be considered as the world’s most serious environmental concern.” Now he’s the nation’s Environment Minister, and he acts like a POS. What he says does not match his, or his government’s actions. “December 2011 [Kent] announced Canada will withdraw from the Kyoto accord. Canada is committed to getting a new agreement, he says, but it won’t be easy.”
Some of the best/worst parts of the video included “adaptationalists” thinking increased temperatures and acidified oceans can just be adapted to (as mass plant and animal extinctions go on around us while we supposedly soldier on). Mass delusion allows humanity to carry on as it does to its certain demise. I think I know how things will go if an asteroid is observed & predicted to hit Earth within a decade… nothing, until the crash. Humans are pathetically bad at taking immediate action to prevent long term ‘fuzzy’ catastrophes.
This video shows how the Canadian Environment Minister has known for THREE DECADES of a coming calamity to his country (and the world), and now he’s in a position of power to act, and does nothing. Worse than nothing, since pollution is still increasing. His duplicitous actions (or incompetence) make me sick, and they are sealing humanity’s fate.
Buffy St. Marie tackled the subject of Aboriginal peoples’ self image. What has been the basis for it? In many cases in popular culture, it’s from philosophers in Europe who never met the First Peoples in their life!
The reality is that First Nations civilizations were much more complex, scientific, and peaceful than depicted by European and settler academics and politicians.
Team sports were an invention of Native Americans. Helmets with animal logos. Basically the NHL. #Buffy#APTN— John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) March 27, 2013
The bully who is running the politicians will keep at it unless you are setting a stronger example. #Buffy We are creative. Grow.— John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) March 27, 2013
Win at any cost. That seems to have been Nixon’s election campaign strategy, and it worked. Had LBJ notified the public of information the FBI illegally gathered from an ambassador using a phone tap, then the future may have been very different.
Declassified tapes of President Lyndon Johnson’s telephone calls provide a fresh insight into his world. Among the revelations – he planned a dramatic entry into the 1968 Democratic Convention to re-join the presidential race. And he caught Richard Nixon sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks… but said nothing.
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This tree was at Rideau Hall last time I checked in 2002:
The discovery of Richard III’s grave is pretty awesome. Bonus, he was still inside it! It’s really hard to get the motivation to leave a grave though, it doesn’t happen very often anyway, and is entirely with assistance.
There’s a bit of hand wringing going on around Facebook amongst typically the anti-Harper crowd. Normally I’d join in, because it’s worth wringing hands over practically everything our Prime Minister has going wrong in our country. One thing he’s managed to not get wrong, is ending the penny. It’s a relic, and I’m very much for preserving history, but I don’t need to carry historical currency in my pockets when it is worth only a fraction of what a penny was worth when I was a kid in the 1980s.
Why shouldn’t you worry about retailers making at most a couple cents extra on a rounded final total, on cash transactions? Because those two cents are not that valuable to you, for one thing. Another, if you happen to use a debit card or credit card, you’re not affected by rounding yet. If you do use plastic to pay, you’re already paying upwards of 50 centsper transaction to the bank, while your retailer is also paying a fee to the bank plus maybe 2.5% of the purchase price (which they pass on to you through higher prices).
Long story short, if you have the opportunity to pay your retailer in cash, ask that they keep the one or two cents you might be owed, because both you and they are already more than 48 cents ahead of the game the banks are playing with us all.
P.S. And if you read the link at the top of this story, you should note that the Conservatives still haven’t managed to find Pierre Poutine with the help of the RCMP and Elections Canada’s 630+ day investigation. The Cons have moved on to lying about new robocalls though. Since a Liberal MP was fined $4900 for a robocall with a misleading identification, I guess the CRTC will be fining the Conservatives soon too for their “Chase Research” push poll.
I attended Hedges lecture at the UofR on Thursday night, and I think most of the crowd was impressed as was I. He did get a standing ovation when done. Then he took questions. Here is some of what went on in Tweet form (reverse chronology):
A south Sudanese woman who studies at #UofR is thanking #Hedges for his coverage. He tells a story of being there, for a bull slaughter, a big honour. The Sudanese he visited with were gossiping negatively about short people. Then they realized #Hedges was short, and they felt so bad. The next day they went and found a Sudanese pigmy and insisted he get a photo with him so #Hedges would feel tall.
Paul, a student, asks about Tom Mulcair and the NDP. Crowd laughs. Also mentioned Lang and O’Leary video which crowd applauded. #Hedges
Goldman Sachs has bailed out every penny on the dollars and done 0% interest loans; it’s not capitalism. #Hedges doesn’t know what it is.
Government under-funds what they want to destroy. #Hedges says humanities in university are withering. Question and think. #uofr
China looking to buy a Canadian oil company. #Hedges notes iPhones are constructed using slave (“prison”) labour (making 22 cents an hour in some jobs).
$2.5B spent on US campaigns of Obama and Romney collectively when it’s done in November.
#Hedges lives in Princeton with his Canadian wife. He doesn’t have a TV. (I spoke with him after to mention The Real News because he’d not listed it when asked for good independent media, and he said he’s doing something with them again soon. He also doesn’t use Twitter (and seems to have a low opinion of social media as a whole, causing distraction and benefiting the surveillance state which takes a dim view of those who don’t toe the corporate line).
#Hedges at #UofR is saying #NDAA must be already used for illegal detention. Otherwise they are planning on using it, probably to arrest and hide away some dual citizens. It’s logical conclusion of recent appeal outcome. @d_seaman
UPDATE:
The National Post reports that RCMP claim the earlier report of carvings was a hoax. It’s a puzzling hoax, and pretty elaborate rock vandalism, regardless. Who is correct?
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Priceless, irretrievable, unexplored stone markings in Alberta have been intentionally destroyed by unknown criminals using methods employed by the Taliban to erase investigation of history. Vandals with power tools, acid, and apparent historical-genocide as motive, ruined a look into Canada’s ancient past. It’s an international disgrace, and for what? For what??
