MOUNTIES ON THE PRECIPICE

We have been calling for a fresh start for the RCMP for many months now on these pages.

Now, the government itself is calling for just that.

And just in the nick of time.

They taser a 68-year old guy in Kelowna for a minor parking infraction?

And months after the event, they admit that one of their own has been busted on a child porno charge?

Once again...please get some dignity and skill and a return to pride in performance and behaviour.

Ryan Baloney Causes Grief at the Xmas Party

It takes a great, great editorial cartoonist like Peterson to capture in a line an entire story. See his take on Ryan Baloney on page D3 of today's Sun.

Ryan is clutching cash in hand. The caption is, "I did not have cheques with this man!"

Wonderful! Succinct! Falling down funny.

Last night, at an otherwise warm and enjoyable Christmas party, I almost got into a punch-up with another guest.

Somehow, in a group of 4 standing about, waiting for the call to the trough, the subject of Ryan came up.

When I said that I thought, as I have thought for a great many years, that Ryan was a crook and a disgrace and a dreadful Prime Minister and that he was cheating on his taxes and that this was known as a crime, Mr. Square Head said, "Hey, that's how the real world works. That's business."

I love when guys say stuff like that.

I said, "Not my world, Pal."

So he went for the old My Asshole isn't as Bad as Your Asshole Trick.

"Yah? Well, what about Chretien?"

Guess he thought because I didn't like Ryan, I was a Liberal.

I love when guys are that simple.

"What about Chretien? He was just as bad. What's that got to do with a Prime Minister hawking war weapons and stuffing cash into secret security boxes in 2 different countries and not declaring income.?"

Fortunately, a much nicer person that both me and Square Head came along and whisked me off into a corner to talk about something else.

Cop Champions Treatment

Dave Dickson knows the hooker world of the DTES well.

He is a retired VPD officer who worked those mean streets for 25 years.

In a first-rate article by Mike Howell in yesterday's Courier, Dickson says NO to Harm Seduction and YES to Mandatory Treatment.

He says what I have been saying for only 40 years now: Help those women leave The Life.

See this story here, and read my column in tomorrow's Province on exactly this subject.

Will the Punishment Ever Fit the Crime?

Pinky, the most successful and richest madam in town, known to prosecutors as Pinky the Pimp, gets 1 year of community service for enslaving women and renting out their genitals by the hour.

She keeps her silver BMW SUV, her second home and no doubt her Imelda shoe collection.

This is how we value women.

Tranclink in Conflict

The new Transclunk board are, of course - whajja expect, Bunkie? - political hacks and dough boys.

But the worst appointee is Robert Tribe, a recently retired VP of SNV Lavelin, who built the Canada Line.

This is called CONFLICT OF INTEREST.

Is there no shame in Mudville?

Billie Holiday, My Man

Leonard Cohen: The Stranger Song

You MUST Read this Comment

Hello David.

A small but horrifying story for you, just one of many that I see every week.

There are drug dealer(s) working out of the Lore Krill social housing complex on Cordova (between Abbott and Carrall). (This is hardly news.) Walking to work in the morning, I often see drug addicts queued up at the intercom, trying to get in to get their morning fix.

This morning two addicts, a man and a woman, were at the intercom. The woman had a baby carrier on her back, and, initially, I thought she had a toy doll in it. When its head listlessly lolled back, I realized it was a live baby. It was naked. It's raining, it's three degrees. A blanket is trailing behind the woman, trailing through the puddles and the dogshit and the filth that spreads out from the homeless encampment across from Army and Navy.

Having lived in the DTES for a number of years, I know better than to directly intervene with junkies, especially those that are jonesing for drugs. Verbal abuse is nothing to me now - over the years I have been assaulted, grabbed, followed and threatened. Fortunately two men were nearby, a construction worker and a postman, and they intervened while I walked on.

I didn't see what subsequently happened. So many things bothered me about this vignette. My own cowardice, to start - it disgusts me that my fear for my own well-being is greater than my fear for that baby. But I am also swamped by a sense of futility. What difference would it make to see that the baby was wrapped up in the filthy, wet blanket, when its life is being destroyed, in far more profound and appalling ways, by its junkie mother? Why bother calling the cops - the addicts would be gone by the time they arrived, and what could the cops do anyway?

Baloney Always has a Pungent Odor

Buried amidst all the nonsense flowing from the testimony of Ryan Baloney is the widely ignored or wholly accepted fact that he was lobbying governments to buy armaments - tanks and such.

This is an honorable activity for anyone? For a Prime Minister? The Arms Business? Why not sell guns on the street?

Baloney didn't write an invoice for all the cash he received and he didn't declare any income thereby or offer to pay taxes until many years later, by which time all records had been destroyed.

These aren't crimes according to Canada Revenue?

Hate Crimes

Jews are sub-human and worthy of the firing squad.

And, oh yes, the Holocaust didn't happen.

These are the contents of a new book called, "The Jews - The Whole Truth."

The author had now been sentenced by a court in Greece to 14 months in jail.

There are those among you who will still argue for freedom of speech in such instances.

What is it about 6 million dead people that you don't understand?

Send Mandatory release to the Scrap Heap. Do it Now

The authorities are debating whther or not we should do away with mandatory parole.

Duh?

Women Run From Premier

Labor Minister Olga Illich, the latest woman to say, "Enough!" to Gordon Campbell (Carole Taylor, Dr. Penny Ballem, Virginia Greene, Tamara Vrooman and Christy Clark) blew the whistle on the cost overruns at the Convention Centre expansion many months ago.

She also was lobbying vigorously to raise the minimum wage.

What does all this say about the Premier?

Social Condition Bad. You think?

The BC Progress Report rates our social condition as amongst the worst in Canada.

Of course, all that would be required of the legislators is that they walk 3 blocks off their usual paths to the heart of Victoria which is a living cesspool of inhumanity.

Minister Claude "I never Saw a Government Job I couldn't Milk for Meself" Richmond says that the government is doing a wonderful job closing the gap between the rich and the poor.

Hahahahaha....

Sport on the Ropes

As Jim Rome, one of my favorite talk show host's put it yesterday, "Everybody in sport wants an edge. They are fierce competitors, evrey athlete, every sport. Everybody is looking for an edge."

The Mitchell report indicts everyone equally -"Everybody in baseball — commissioners, club officials, the players’ association, players — shares responsibility."

What will happen? I have no idea.

But I know this - we are all saddened and angry. While I could care less about Mark McGuire or Barry Bonds, I was, like millions of others, a fan of Roger Clemens, who henceforth will be known as Mr. Butt.

The system itself - high stakes, high payoffs, outrageous sums of money on the table - make professional sport a natural breeeding ground for illegal drugs, gambling, game-fixing and scams the likes of which most of us cannot imagine.

Remember the next time you watch the NFL or MLB or the NBA or tennis or golf or soccer, you may be seeing only a small part of the story.

2 BIG ANNOUNCEMENTS 2

1. Sorry for not getting the blog to you this morning. There was some meltdown with the Shaw server and it just wouldn't work.

2. My Friday column in tomorrow's Province has been moved to Sunday for this week only!!!

I've never been fond of Ryan Baloney, but now I really am mad at him.

Because of Ryan's latest old and boring self-pointy-headed news, the paper is obliged to run a column from Back East tomorrow.

HOWEVER...get the Sunday Province for my second column. It's a goodie.

Sickening News

No. No. No. No. No.

This is the worst, most dreadful, most outrageously bad news I have read in a long, long time.

Crack pipe kits will be distributed for free to crackheads in Victoria, Nanaimo, Campbell Rive and Courtney by the Vancouver Island Health Authority.

NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.

A sick researcher says that this is cheap and it does no harm.

?????????

DOES NO HARM????

I just spent an hour yesterday with two very wonderful and brave young women who are into their 4th and 6th months of recovery.

Why not give them garbage to keep them enslaved to drugs, you misguided horrible pigs?

Has nobody in the official world ever heard of an EXIT STRATEGY?

You don't give dope fiends dope toys, you murderers; you give them a hand that says, "Come with me to The Clean Life."

Oh, but wait, I forgot.

That takes time and effort. Real work. Often tedious and repetitive.

And it's so much easier to give people garbage, even though it ensures that the people themselves will continue to be garbage.

I really, actually almost fell out of my chair this morning when I read this shit.

PLease, please, PLEASE write your MLA and beg the government to kill this terrible, terrible plan.

The Force Behind the Mob Rule at YVR

The loudest voice in the mob scene at YVR on Monday was that of a convicted Sikh terrorist. Nagra was convicted on charges of bringing an extremist to Canada on someone else's passport. That man flew to Toronto shortly before the Air India bombing with the bombing's mastermind Parmar.

He is also the founder of the International Sikh Youth Federation, which has been banned in Canada.

So the entire mob scene was fomented by a full-time professional shit-disturber who is linked to terrorism and mass murder.

Read the whole story here. It is truly sickening.

The local Sikh community should be ashamed of itself for following the entreaties of such a man.

Jingle Balls

Mary Anne Watson is a Jewish mother on the Island, who has pulled her 5-year old son, Joshua from his local public school because it's wall-to-wall Christmas and there's no Hanukkah or rabbis or kugel.

"Mary Anne Watson" is Jewish? Well, that's another geshichta.

Since when are public schools in the religion business?

Since when have families counted on public schools to teach or enforce their religions?

I lived through umpteen years of Christmas Carols in public schools. My first acting assignment ever was as the voice of the Talking Christmas Tree when I was 5. I hid under Miss Prescott's desk (which provided a refreshing view of Miss Prescott) and recited my clever lines.

And guess what?

I am a Jew.

I am a proud Jew. Love being Jewish. Couldn't imagine my life any other way. Don't care if everybody sings Christmas songs till February. Often sing them myself. Have no belief in the divinity of Jesus. Still enjoy Christmas as a cultural staple.

Mary Anne - get a Jewish name and then get a life. Bring Josh up in a Jewish home and he'll be a lovely little mensch for sure.

Tina Turner

So Ike died.
Ike represents the worst in all of us, a serious failure of the human gift.
Tina is real story.
Marvel at her.

One for the Fifth Estate

Major kudos to Vaughn Palmer and to the power of the press in the latest turn in the case of the children's watchdog.

The Liberal government refused last week to give Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond the money she needs to do her job. They refused because she had the courage to reveal how inadequately we are serving the 15,000 children in our care.

Now, thanks to Palmer's column, they are about to reverse themselves.

They will meet again.

She will present her budget again, and they will approve it.

It's a shame when governments can only do the right thing after they are exposed for doing wrong.

It's a thing of beauty to see the press bring about such changes of heart - as if governments had heart.