Choice

In an absolutely unequivocal editorial this morning, the NY Times has declared that Sarah Palin is unfit for high office and that McCain's choosing her demonstrates some serious judgement flaws.

The NY Times may or may not, according to your taste or mood or rigorous thinking, be the last arbiter of anything, but it sure makes interesting reading.

In case there was any doubt - I couldn't agree more.

The Simply Amazing Cassandra Wilson

Magnificent Cast, Magnificent Musical Score, Magnificent Script, Filming and Edit

A Place in the Sun

The provincial NDP's affirmative action plan for the upcoming election is either a bold stroke of courageous leadership or the dumbest thing anyone's ever done...depending, I guess, on whether or not you've had your cappuccino yet.

Fifteen ridings are now reserved for persons of the female persuasion. No doubt a few transgendered folks will take this to court.

Five ridings are reserved for "minorities" such as visible minorities (Is that white people in Richmond?), homosexuals and the disabled.

Westside Kelowna, for example has been reserved for chicks. (I'm trying to be as offensive as possible here.)

Why not all those other minorities for Kelowna.

Well, that's simple, Boys and Girls and Anyone In betweeners.

In Kelowna there are no people of color, gays or the nasty inconveniencing wheelchair folk. Kelowna, as we all know, is an enclave held entirely by blond golf players.

So, OK.

Here's my question for the Truly, Really Democratic Party.

What about reserved ridings for Greek Pastry Chefs?

Sex-starved accountants?

Atom-smashing physicists?

I want to see equality here, understand?

Canadian Law is Soooooo Sick

A serial killer is caught and charged with first degree murder.

She killed in 1998 and she killed again in 2002.

The penalty for first degree murder in this nation is an automatic sentence of life with no parole eligibility for 25 years.

So far so good.

But wait.

She first killed her seven-week old son and then in a moment of deep motherhood she allowed her next child to live nine weeks before killing him.

So, in one of those classics of Canadian jurisprudence, this dangerous nut bar will now get five years for the mysteriously lesser charge of "infanticide."

Lesson learned, class?

A baby's life is worth much less than the life of any adult, including some fool killed in a bar fight.

How, I wonder, did we come to this set of values?

Shocking News

Let me see if I've got this.

Um...

The Hell's Angels are, uh, like...they're apparently a criminal organization?

Is that right?

Wow.

Good thing there are news people out there keeping me really informed.

You say, "Criminal?"

Jeez.

Cambie Disgrace Writ Large

It was good to see Susan Heyes' editorial in the Sun this morning. It speaks as clearly as possibl about the shameful history of the Cambie Line fiasco.

The entire text follows:

To the Editor

Re: A Seed Fund for Cambie Business

I am pleased to see at least one member of the Liberal Party acknowledging the devastation to businesses along the Canada Line.

That said, although I appreciate and welcome Mr. Peterson's helpful initiative as described, his Seed Fund suggestions will not come close to satisfying the losses experienced by any but the most recent businesses along Cambie Street. This community has suffered for three years now since the fall of 2005. Many have lost their life's work.

As a merchant who has re-mortgaged my home - twice - to sustain my livelihood of 25 years, and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, this proposal would have no effect on the huge debt I and many others carry forward. Had a fund been set up before the project started, such as the one in Seattle for communities along their Light Rail project, this disaster may have been avoided.

The core of this situation is that the Canada Line is a government funded and driven, Olympics related project that was misrepresented to the public. The City of Vancouver gave its conditional approval to the project based on the proposal for a bored tunnel.

We were blindsided by the project and all it's partners when the original proposed bored underground tunnel secretly became a deep canyon the length of Cambie Street.

There was no meaningful public consultation even though this project is unprecedented in cost, scope and duration.

Had the actual method of construction been revealed - as this open trench, with all the impacts to traffic, businesses, residents and the environment - the project would most likely have not gone forward.

That was an abuse of power.

Given the known impacts for using this cut-and-cover method of construction, Canada Line did not factor any financial relief into their business plan.

Instead, they spent millions promoting themselves with facile ad campaigns and promises of future windfalls.

They also lured new businesses to come in where others had failed or fled, with assurances that the construction would be "two to three MONTHS in front of any given business.

We deserve full compensation for the consequences of this negligence.

My legal case for compensation was filed three years ago. I have three weeks of court time booked for this November for the case to be heard. The Cambie Village Business Association, of which I am a member, has retained lawyers to prepare a Statement of Claim for a potential $20 million Class Action. The membership will be voting shortly on filing this action.

I have consistently made it clear that I and others would welcome a fair settlement out of court. It is beyond belief that families have had to take this unthinkable step of taking our own government to court in order for this to be resolved.

Instead of spending millions to fight small businesses, our government should be doing all it can to support our survival.

Canada Line has built this project on the backs of all the small businesses whose livelihoods have benn expropriated. The project builders and developers who are snapping up land deals all along the route stand to gain millions in profits, while the merchants are left to struggle with no reimbursement for the sacrifices forced upon us. It will take years for this neighbourhood to recover.

At least one member of the Liberal party has publicly acknowledged the harm done and the need to offer financial relief.

The precedent that our government and Canada Line is setting with this negligence and lack of respect for the small businesses, residents and the commuting public, is an ugly one.

Who else has the integrity to make this right?

Susan Heyes

Hazel&Co

3190 Cambie Street

604 687-0721

E.G. Marshall, late American actor, introduces Judy Collins & Harlem Boys Choir. Mr. Marshall introduced me as Host on a PBS TV series on alcoholism

Quote of the Day

In defending his indefensible closing down of the fall sitting of the legislature, Premier Tickets says he wants his cabinet ministers dashing about the province speaking to citizens on "how we can share the prosperity."

"How we can share the prosperity..."

OK. I admit it. I'm speechless.

No Shame

Surrey Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal is Jewish. Who knew?

Either that or he's just stolen the whole idea of chutzpah.

It takes some sechel to stand up in public and defend the act of defending a gangster.

Dhaliwal admits that he has never checked on the gangster's record current or past.

Go ahead, Surrey, re-elect this disgrace to parliament.

Life Long Learning

The young woman who is auctioning off her virginity - and we are supposed to believe she is still in possession of same - to pay for more education already has a bachelor's degree in....wait, please...
"women's studies" and now wants to capture a master's degree in...hold, hold...marriage and family therapy.

You cannot write material like this.

"Max" is one of the many lovelies available at Dennis Hof's world famous Bunny Ranch, where our academic's sister works to pay off her college debts.

This is a family with a whole new take on things.

Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?

Surrey Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal has written to a U.S. District Court judge on official House of Commons stationery in support of convicted international drug trafficker Ranjit Singh Cheema.

Hahahaha...

In short, a parliamentarian has written his support for a gangster.

The fact that the parliamentarian is a Liberal should have no bearing on your understanding of this situation.

The fact that the parliamentarian and the gangster share ethnicity should have no bearing on your understanding of this situation.

The gangster also received letters of support from a religious organization that was embroiled in controversy earlier this year when a parade it was hosting featured photos of assassins and leaders of designated terrorist groups, who were depicted as martyrs.

My distaste for the Liberal part of Canada deepens by the hour.

As for ethnic politics, the less said the better.

Justice Derailed

This is how our criminal justice system has devolved.

We now have university psychologists recommending how judges can make their instructions to jurors understandable.

We're not quite sure if the problem is that the judges mumble or the jurors are both hearing and intelligence impaired.

But, clearly, when the Kelly Allard-Reena Virk file can be properly and finally laid to rest, something is terribly amiss.

(F)Arts Dollars

It is appropriate that the announcement was as paltry as the content.

Relegated to a paragraph or two on page B2, the miscellany of local news, the "news" is that the BC Arts Council has awarded - wait for it, hold the apple sauce, er, applause - $7 Million to 270 artists and cultural organizations.

Oh, whoop-a-tee-ai-oh!

This is lunch money.

When I learn that we have invested $70 Million or $700 Million, I'll get off the couch and dance. Until then, keep the mediocrity coming.

Democracy demands that any damn fool have his/her day

Let Elizabeth May debate and appear in public during the election.

Then we will see what a paucity is her platform.

Harper, Dion nd Doucette may be accused of many things, but sheer irrelevance and silliness may not be among the charges.

Wonderful, Informed Commentary on My province Column on Education

Dear Sir:

Thank you for encouraging people to make education an issue during elections. I wish more people in the media would scrutinize this vitally important part of our society and suggest ways in which politicians could and should improve education, which is, as you rightly point out, the key to our future and our prosperity as a society, besides being probably our second biggest public investment after health care. This second factor alone demands more public scrutiny of whether we are investing all our education funds in ways which benefit as much as possible our students, our schools, our society.

My view may not be worth a bean, but it is based on thirty-two and a half years of experience as a secondary school teacher and teacher-librarian in B.C. I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of teaching kids and working with them in the school library, but I feel that educators and the education system are being suffocated by the ever-increasing bureaucracy and politics of local school boards and their ballooning school board offices, added to the politics and bureaucracy of unions and the ministry.

Much criticism is being made (quite rightly) of the recent enormous salary raises granted provincial government bureaucrats, but the media breathes not a word of the steady increases in the number of school board office bureaucrats and of their salaries over the years, absorbing education dollars that are dearly needed in schools, in classrooms.

I am convinced that the only way to achieve renewal and improvement in our education system is to carry out a long-overdue reform similar to that adopted recently in Sweden. There local boards were abolished, and responsibility and funds were redirected to the schools, just as in the private school system. This reform was resisted by unions and bureaucrats, but it has proved to be a success for education in Sweden, and almost everyone now supports it. This is precisely the type of reform advocated by Quebec's new party, l'Action Democratique, which nearly won the last provincial election in Quebec.

Sadly, I feel that both the major parties in BC are too wedded to Big Bureaucracy to ever introduce such a healthy reform in education, and they are happy that the media almost never digs into exactly how our education dollars are being spent and what alternatives there are to this wasteful, bureaucratic and outmoded status quo. Until a sensible new political party is born in BC, as occurred in Quebec during the 1990's, I am convinced that the only real alternate viewpoint and "official opposition" that we can hope for in the issue of education (and justice and other major issues, alas) will come from the media and public comment. For this reason, again I thank you for your interest in this matter and the informed viewpoint on education that you expressed in your recent article.

Yours truly,

Richard Sharpe

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Dope

The methadone story has found its way from The Courier, where it began last Friday with Mark Hasiuk's excellent piece, to Sunday's Province to this morning's Sun.

Good to see that the story has some legs.

But will anything be done? All of the usual suspects - the politicos and the professional "Colleges" - all claim to having deep investigations in process.

Oh?

Here in BlogLand, every time I have every mentioned the word methadone in public - and I've been doing that for only 40 years now - as predictable as rain, voices emerge from the shadows to extol the virtues of this poison and its deadly, destructive official uses.

All I can say is thank you for your comments and I hope that one day you will find the strength to move on without this entirely unnecessary drug as your main companion in life.

Roger, the Great

For a year and a half now, I have been frothing at the gills, exhorting Roger Federer to come to net, to serve and volley, to play more aggressively.

Good man, he finally listened to me.

Yesterday, in defeating And Murray handily in 3 straight sets, he became the first tennis player of any of the 12 genders to win five Wimbledons in a row and five US Opens in a row.

He was magnificent and a joy to watch.

Hmmmm....Smells Good!

The Prime Minister of Thailand, Samak Subderavej, may have to step down from office.

He is accused of taking money from a private company to host his TV cooking show.

The show is called "Tasting and Grumbling."

Let us not ask why Canadian PM's have never had cooking shows?

Let us not ask if Ryan Baloney's son can host "Canadian Idol," could Papa Gucci's cooking show not be far behind?

Let us not ask if Kim Campbell lives on take out.

Instead ask who is prepared to back my new TV culinary hit, "Cooking & Kvetching and Noshing from every pot."

Played this before, but it's just so great, I have to run it again...