There's still a chance to get a couple of good seats for tonight's concert, Michael Feinstein, The Sinatra Project, at the Orpheum with the VSO.
Not only is Feinstein a terrific singer and piano player, but he is a musicologist who has made an extensive and personal study of The American Songbook (Gershwin, Kern, Rogers & Hart et al.)
Has anyone seen Gregor Robertson lately?
Is he at home? In a home? Heading home?
In story after story on Snippity Hall, Councillor Geoff Meggs is the lead man.
Which is fine. Geoff's a grown-up and a reasonable guy.
But where is his His Happiness?
O.K. Wait.
He is in the press today. He's pledging that in 10 years (oh puleeeeze...) Vancouver will be the "Greenest City." No cars. No imported cheese products.
Do the Puppet Masters just let G.R. out for these ceremonial occasions?
I don't recall a less visible mayor.
Which may be a fine thing.
I'm not complaining, just asking.
If you know what Gregor is doing these days or where they have him for safe keeping, let us know, will you?
The following comes from Jean, a dear friend.
It was sent in as a comment on yesterdays's posting, but it deserves wider exposure.
Jean has done more good and does more good every day in this field than all the local "experts" combined and then some. All she does is turn out clean and sober citizens.
"I have worked in addictions and mental health treatment for over 28 years and a move toward providing places to smoke crack is most disheartening. This would be "safe" and/or "supervised"? Smoking crack is never safe. What is to supervise? The general public should know that crack addicts smoke crack frequently throughout the day and night, not just once a day! To believe that they will hang out at the government funded facility to continue this habitual behaviour all day and night is naive. They go elsewhere and continue the behaviour. This has a negative effect not just on the addict, but on their families and the community in which they live. It is preposterous to believe that smoking up in a "supervised" setting will lead to treatment or even a reduction in use. I'm bothered that any government offical would try to sell that notion to the public. Sounds more like the government is mandating the slow suicide of persons who are willing to use that type of facility just so they can stay high. Does much else really matter to an addict until they receive a wake up call to straighten out for a while? Not really, because folks, their lives centre around the drug taking behaviour. Period. If we, if the government, really wants to do something about the drug problem in Vancouver or elsewhere, we would put money into treatment and provide motivation for addicts to want to go there."
The more observant among you may have noticed that there has been no mention in this blog of Jon & Kate or of Balloon Boy.
Over the past several months, I would be channel surfing and I would run across this repulsive little twerp sitting on a couch and yammering some drivel or other.
I'd give him the required 2.5 seconds and move on.
Turns out this is the now famous Jon of Jon & Kate, etc.
But I have the same question now that I had several months ago.
What is Twerp doing on TV in the first place?
Why is that fat ugly rock star and his fat ugly family on TV all the time?
Who is watching this stuff?
Who is watching that hideous Bounty Hunter guy and his hideous Bounty Hunter chick?
As for Balloon Boy...I don't know and I don't care.
Why is this first rate reporter, Anderson Cooper, diluting his franchise with this non-story?
Watching or paying attention to the likes of the above (Anderson excepted, of course) is deleterious to your health.
Be careful out there.
Question:
How can you tell the difference between a Canadian, Australian, and an American Police Officer?
Pose the following question:
"You're walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children. Suddenly, a dangerous looking man with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, raises the knife, and charges. You are carrying a Glock 40, and you are an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family."
What do you do?
CANADIAN POLICE OFFICERS
Answer: (Immediate thought processes)
Is the knife a ceremonial kirpan?
Does he prefer to communicate in English or French?
Will this negatively impact my chances of promotion?
Is this just his way of telling me that he pays my wages, and wants my job?
Would this be an appropriate time to hug him and sing Koombaya?
Will the media do a profile of him and how he was loved by everyone including his dog?
Is the alleged 'client' a member of the NDP or an Environmental Group?
Is he just a squeegee kid / pan handler trying to make a living on the mean streets?
Is he a member of a gang that is just 'misunderstood' by society?
Is he an undercover Toronto Star reporter looking for a news breaker?
Is he a recent illegal immigrant to this country, and just doesn't know how to approach the police?
Is he recently released on parole and hasn't been properly integrated back into the community?
Is he a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome, and just doesn't understand what he is doing?
Warn and Charter him as he approaches.
AUSTRALIAN OFFICERS
Answer: BANG!
AMERICAN OFFICERS
Answer: BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! Click.... (Sounds of reloading) BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! Click
On Saturday, I wrote in this space about cuts to programs for the mentally ill and the addicted on Vancouver Island.
That story continues with more coverage yesterday and today.
In that context of no money for real needs, how can we explain the deranged rantings of Dr. Perry Kendall, who receives a regular government pay check as the Provincial Health Officer?
Kendall wants you and me to pay for supervised inhalation rooms for crack addicts, saying such facilities would help connect users with treatment programs and help fight the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Aside from the fact that there are almost NO treatment programs and that the addicts who use Insite to shoot heroin almost NEVER end up in treatment programs, what in god's name is Dr. P smoking these days?
Mr. Kendall's support is based on a research paper published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Of course, the so-called study couldn't exactly identify the link between smoking crack and other health problems. The study found that people who smoke crack cocaine are at increased risk of becoming infected with HIV, but did not pinpoint the exact mechanisms behind that link.
The study concluded there is an “urgent need” for public health programs aimed at crack cocaine users, including safer crack kits and supervised inhalation rooms.
Now, in real science, conclusions are not an Olympic activity like JUMPING. In real science, conclusions are arrived at after careful and serious deliberations.
Oh well, never fear.
Egghead to the rescue.
A UBC professor has added this: “The biggest bang for our buck will be taking people who are unengaged in care and getting them engaged in care,” Dr. Conway said, adding that the wait for addiction programs is from seven to 10 days.
The good doctor has no idea what he's talking about.
The wait for addiction programs is 6 months and then some.
The City of Victoria has ONE BED for teenage crack users. One.
Here's what you should do to prevent this evil idiocy.
Send an email today to mayorandcouncil@vancouver.ca
Include this message:
Re: Safe places to smoke crack. If you support this idea, you will automatically lose my vote for another term.
Then look up your local MLA and send him or her the same message.
This is public money. Your money.
It is being squandered in the ugliest and most ineffective way.
Here's a headline:
The Globe has a special section today called "Report on Small Business."
The lead story is titled "Ready for a Rebound."
All of which is well and good.
Unless...
Unless, of course, you run a small business on Granville Street South between 16th Avenue and 72nd, where there will be NO PARKING in front of your rapidly starving business during a certain 3 week period next February.
How many times has the Premier said in public that small business is the backbone of the local economy?
How many times - besides Cambie Street and Granville Street - has he utterly ignored small business for other triumphs?
Well, it's good to know that at least somone in Canerda has his act together.
Too bad it's the Mafia.
Too bad all those old gags about "cementing" good relationship with government and legit biz are all based on hard-edged reality.
At least, that appears to be the case in La Belle Province.
Oh, yeah.
And Alberta and B.C. too.
(I was appraoching Marine Drive on Cambie Street on Friday and I found myself, stopped at the traffic light, gazing idly at those so attractive cement pillars holding up the new Canada Line and thinking once again about the unavoidable fact - $13 Million/kilometre for LRT vs. $133 Million for SkyJoke. Which raised the age old question: Whose cousin got the cement contract?)
Some intrepid souls are even asking for an inquiry into ties between government, business and organized crime.
Antonio Nicaso, the author if several books on crooks, says, "I don't think in Canada there is political will or commitment to fight organized crime."
All three feral parties...oh, scusa me, federal parties...have refused comment.
Apparently, much of the crime involves bids on construction jobs, which curiously, mysteriously, always always end up being filled by Mafia-controlled companies.
Imagine.
But don't worry.
"We're moving to Las Vegas, Kay, and in five years all of our business interests will be completley ligitimate. Even my father knows that his way of doing business is finished."
Jamie Graham, formerly Vancouver's Police Chief and now Victoria's Police Chief, (proving F. Scott Fitzgerald wrong when he said "There are no second acts in American life." Oh, right. Victoria isn't in America.) has come out fighting.
A religious nut case circumcises himself.
Which of course he botches.
Fair enough. Go mutilate yourself. I should care?
But now, the fool has attempted to circumcise his little boy. Which, of course, he botched terribly.
The B.C. Supreme Court has found this so-called father guilty of negligence.
Moral of the story - Home Circumcision is out.
But there is something much more interesting to me about this story.
And it is this:
The man's lawyer is Doug Christie.
Christie has made himself famous defending neo-Nazis across the nation, claiming in case after case that these scum are defenders of "free speech."
As in the right to tell school children in math classes, for example, that Jews are rats, etc.
Christie has positioned himself as a great defender of free speech.
Of course, he argues in the present case that Mr. Home Handy Nut Job was practicing his religious freedoms.
Maybe someday we will learn what it is exactly that drives Mr. Christie to his peculiar choices.
Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation has been saving the Canadian economy.
So claims a fascinating article in this morning's ROB in the Globe.
The only problem is they've gone slightly mad in the process, raising their own exposure from a $350 Billion limit in 2007 to a $600 Billion limit today.
Can you say, "Risky," boys and girls?
What isn't mentioned at all in the article is an issue that I think is equally important.
If CMHC is doing so darn well, where oh where is all the money they USED TO spend on social housing?
If you want to look at the DTES, mental health and addiction problems, so much of the problem can be put right back at the front door of CMHC which 30 years ago was funding the kind of housing we now so urgently need.
When that practice disappeared, many of our social nightmares began in earnest.
You needn't look at Gregor Nice Boy or even his Royal Meanness over in Victoria for solutions to homelessness.
The cookie jar is in Ottawa. Always has been. And it's called CMHC.
A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.
Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.
Neither Bardwell nor the couple immediately returned phone calls from The Associated Press. But Bardwell told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist.
"I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children."
Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.
"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."
If he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.
"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.
