ANNOUNCEMENT!

On Wednesday, Oct. 31st, at noon I will be the guest speaker at the Rotary Club, Chinatown branch at the Floata Restaurant on Keefer St.

The title of my speech is: THE TRUTH ABOUT ADDICTIONS - HOW GOVERNMENTS ARE WASTING YOUR MONEY AND HELPING NO ONE.

Please join us.

Parenting - The New Surrey Crime

The headine says, "Car Thieves Take Surrey Tot for a Ride."

But that's not the story.

Not by a mile.

The story is that the idiot irresponsible father of a 2-year old girl leaves the child in his Lexus SUV while he goes into a so-called convenience store at 10 pm!

Why is he not charged with leaving his car running, abandoning his child, bad parenting, aiding and abetting a criminal act and generally being a danger to his community?

Two years ago, I encountered exactly this circumstance in the shopping district on West 10th Avenue, an infant alone in a van. I looked everywhere for a parent. I hollared. Finding no one, I called the police. Before they arrived, the genius "mother" emerged from a tanning salon with a magazine and a ciggie.

"Is this your baby?"

"Yes."

"I called the police."

"What for?"

The police arrived, nothing happened except that I was viewed by the woman and one of the two officers as a meddling alarmist old fool.

Next time I see a baby abandoned in a van, guess what?

I'm going to call the police again.

Chretien Calls Kettle Black

"Shoot the messenger" is one of the oldest, most transparent, and oddly effective political tricks in the book. I think it pre-dates the Greeks.

So why be surprised that Chretien has risen from his golf course to accuse Judge Gomery of being "media obsessed."

There are at least 2 great clouds hanging over recent Canadian history. One is the Air India murders and the other is the Sponsorship Scandals. Neither of these files is closed, neither nears anything resembling justice.

In the Sponsorship/Gomery case, Chretien and Paul Martin were certainly culpable. It is not possible that skulduggery of that order could have occurred in the Liberal party without their controlling knowledge.

The Next BIG THING?

A Californian (who else?) has come up with an enormou$ plan to get us into electric cars - thousands of recharging stations dotting the landscape.

Read the story here.

The problem with this idea, which has of course already attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in investment funds, is that it is based on the same flawed model as our current (ha!) electrical grids.

Somebody who controls the flow makes up some arbitrary value for so many units of something flying through the air and charges you and me on that basis.

This provides for untold fortunes for a handful of companies and total blind obedience for everybody else, who just assumes this is he way things are supposed to be.

What if I had a small generator in my basement or backyard? What if every condo building had one?