The Sublime Cleanliness of It All

Although I stopped subscribing to daily delivery of The Vancouver Sun newspaper some time ago, I still have a peek in cafes and on line fairly regularly.

The Sun is to be highly commended for their current serious on B.C. Municipal Elections Donations.

This is a series and it is a well-written, thorough and well-researched revelation.

Article after article chronicles monies being given by very interested parties to local councillors who then mysteriously vote directly in the favour of the kind donor.

Clicking through this link HERE will lead you to most of the stories.

The Maple Ridge/Jackson Farm piece and the Langley Firehall story are particularly intriguing.

In the latter case, the headline pretty much captures the gist:

Langley Township councillors who voted for full-time firehall got donations from firefighters

A few weeks ago, when the contestants on American Idol were wrecking the song book of Lennon & McCartney, one of the saps sang, "Can't Buy Me Love."

Ellen Degeneres laughed and ad libbed, "That was fine, but you actually can buy love, by the way."

Simon Cowell, a man with a few coin, howled with sly recognition of this ugly old truth.

Well, apparently, in B.C. you can still buy a good vote and a good old politician when you really need one.

Often, for as little as $500.

I repeat, Little People.

If you want me to run for office, deposit large amounts of cash in small untraceable bills in a brown paper bag on my door step, guarantee me a chauffeur-driven Cadillac, and always call me, "Sir."

In a pinch, "Your Highness," or "Your Holiness," will do.

Then There's Always This - Wow!

The Enabling Society Has Hit a New Low

Vivaldi, the great Venetian composer, known as the "Red Priest," did most of his work at the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage for poor and illegitimate children.

Now, centuries later, almost every day and night, you can hear a local group play Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" there.

If you walk around the side of the beautiful church facade, you can still find the opening in the wall where women who knew or feared that they could not care for their babies could leave the infant to be cared for.

This provision of a safe haven for babies in such dire circumstances has been around in most countries in the world since practically forever.

Now, Vancouver will be the first city in Canada to revive this very practical but troubling tradition.

St. Paul's Hospital has created a "baby drop off."

A bassinet near the ER will be alarmed so that staff will be immediately alerted if someone has left a baby there.

The mother will not be subject to arrest.

This is in many ways a reasonable response to an ugly reality.

But it is at the same time deeply disturbing.

First, I found myself shuddering as I listened to some young enthusiastic policeman saying repeatedly on the radio yesterday that this initiative would make things "easier" for the woman in trouble.

Is that our job?

To make things "easier" for people to not care for their own babies?

Second and finally...

I am sitting here today at the age of 67 writing this piece because that many years ago, my mother made a courageous choice and lived up to its challenges.

My mother chose to be a single parent and to raise her child.

She did this in 1942 and in the milieu of an orthodox Old World Jewish family.

She passed on to me, among other things, life, food and shelter, endless curiosity, humour, and a deep sense of social justice.

Not much was "easier" for her.

But here we are, having this conversation.

Maybe as we continue on this path of accommodation, we will soon be providing a place to drop off your baby and right there a place to safely inject some free heroin.

PHARMA ADS ON AMERICAN TV

Advisory:

Before using BLAAST-OFF, please consult your doctor.

BLAAST-OFF is not advised for people with 10 toes, plumbers or bridge players holding more than 27 high card points and aiming for a small slam.

Be advised that using BLAAST-OFF may result in loss of rental property, the ability to appreciate baroque music - in particular the fugue - and control over a neighbour's toy poodles.

If you are pregnant, thinking about getting pregnant or deeply jealous of all women at the supermarket who are pregnant, BLAAST-OFF is not a sharp idea.

Remember that using BLAAST-OFF could cause some of your favorite body parts and organs to simply halt by the roadside.

BUT...in every other conceivable way, BLAAST-OFF is a modern miracle, it is practically the second coming of You Know Who and you should consider yourself among the privileged few that you can get your snivelly little paws on some.

To Your Own Self Be True

Hahahahaha...

It couldn't happen to a nicer government.

Hoisted on their own petard.

The Gordo gang was poised to spend $2 Million of your tax dollars - money that could have gone to music programs in schools, for example - on a modest little mail-out to tell us stupid peons what a savory and good thing is the HST.

Alas.

Elections B.C. has declared that a foul ball and it is simply something up with which it will not put.

Colin Hansen is fuming and he wants a copy of all Elections B.C. rulings in the past 400 years dropped on Bill van der Zalm's head.

Rights and Freedoms Day in Canada

1. Every house on the street boasts well-manicured lawns.

One house grows veggies.

Oy gevaldt!

Call the fuzz!

So one of the lawn nuts says the veggie patch is bringing down his East Vancouver property values.

Let's get some things straight, neigh-booors.

Lawns are idiotic scourges. You want grass, walk three feet to the boulevard, go to the park or call your district dealer. People with lawns are dingbats. They seed and water, water and seed and then they mow, weedwack and hack and cut so they can seed and water. They are noise polluters and engaged in an activity that makes as much sense as washing your car when the world is filled with drive-through car wash joints.

On my street, one guy grows fruit and veggies in his front yard, his back yard, his side yard and on the boulevard. Hundreds flock to his house all summer long to chat with him and marvel at his work. Last year I put my tomato plant in with his patch and they thrived.

On my street, one lady has created a beautiful garden on the boulevard made entirely of tall grasses and big boulders.

Lowered the property values?

Hahahahaha...

2. Being gay or lesbian is a disease.

And it's catching.

Just ask the Catholic Girls school, Little Flower Academy, in Vancouver who have fired a music teacher who is lesbian.

Actually, she is still on the payroll.

She's just not allowed in the classroom.

Of course, she's been working there for ages. She's never been remotely accused of spreading her disease to the little pansies and roses with whom she works.

But.

3. Students at the University of Calgary set up an anti-abortion table in one of the busy hallways.

They were quickly given the bum's rush by security.

The Pro-Life demonstrators use ugly graphic images of fetuses, among other horrors.

I am not a Pro-Lifer. I am not anti-abortion.

But tell me something.

If Canadians cannot voice their opinions and thoughts on a University campus, where then?

Are these kids preaching violence against a recognizable group?

No.

* * *

We are a quiet people, a gentle people. e like our bacon crisp and dry, thank you.

We are sheep.

We are hockey fans.

We are asleep at the wheel.

This is Fun

The O.K.Corral Has Arrived

Speaker of the House Peter Milliken has delivered an historic ruling spelling out that Parliament and not the Prime Minister has the power.

The issue arose over endless requests and refusals for information on Afghan detainees.

How Stephen Harper responds to this ruling will define his leadership.

And how the leaders of the three opposition parties respond will similarly define who they are and the stuff of which they are made.

The only reasonable next step for all concerned is to cooperate and map out a plan for immediately opening some of the contested documents.

If these politicians do not compromise, the government could collapse at once, forcing a general election.

If that's not bad enough - and it is, it truly stinks - the whole issue could be sent to the Supreme Court, which would make that body and not Parliament the ultimate decision maker in all things Canadian.

No.

Let us see know if the secretive Prime Minister and the slavering at the bit opposition leaders can get off their posturing and show some real style and primary dedication to basic democratic principles and ideals.

It is time for these babblers to get real or get lost.

CONFLICT, CLEAR AND SIMPLE

I'm a snob.

I admit it.

A reverse snob.

I grew up in a lower middle class (That was our way of avoiding the next-to-poor designation.) immigrant neighbourhood in the North End of Winnipeg.

I went to school and my grandmother stayed home.

Everybody else in the house worked 5 and a half days a week for not very much money and even less thanks.

The first rich guy I caddied for when I was ten tipped me 10 cents for 18 holes. I was always a loudmouth. I looked at the coin he so proudly dipped into my little tired palm. looked up at him and asked, "Who do I have to kill?"

You may understand how I have had a life long discomfort with men and women "of privilege" running public policy.

They may or may not know the south end of a profit and loss sheet, but what they know about everyone else's life and its attendant difficulties you could put in a thimble and have room for a revolution.

Horrified, therefore, might be the word to describe my reaction today on learning that Kip Woodward (Yikes! Kip...and Woodward. The very names shriek British Columbia, old money, golf clubs, memberships...) is the chair of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.

And why am I not surprised to also learn that Kipper, that good old boy, has been advocating with Kevin Falcon, our warm and cuddly Health Minister, some of the following lovely ideas for our health care:

- services be contracted out to private clinics
- leasing of MRI capacity to private insurers
- a private eating-disorder clinic
- the sales of medical procedures to U.S. citizens
- a large addiction treatment centre modelled on the Betty Ford Center
- the provision of for-profit elective surgery.

When lobbying openly for the contracting out of services to private clinics, he was an investor in the province’s most prominent for-profit surgical centre.

Woodward was an original investor in the Cambie Surgery Centre, run by leading private health-care advocate Brian Day, which opened during the mid-1990s. Woodcorp, a family investment firm, maintains a stake in the clinic.

Can Kevin Falcon or anyone over there in Victoria spell CONFLICT OF INTEREST?

This is an egregious misuse of position.

Send the Kipper and his Keeper out to pasture, please.

It is also one of the many clear indicators of how The Granite Premier, the Monumental Premier wants to change public health care into a Mienike Car car Centre.

Do not allow him to do so.

Stop him and the Captains of Industry at every turn from creating the Wal-Mart Costco Superstore of Health.

Early Appointment

Blog posting a little later this morning...

Don't Try This at Home

Musing

Yesterday over breakfast, between raising the minimum wage in BC (It's the lowest in Canada.) and approving of our waiter's pension plans, we were conjecturing about the future of Gordon Campbell, the BC Liberals and the political landscape in general.

Our take went something like this.

Campbell will not run again.

He will want to quit "on top."

Kevin Falcon is chomping so hard at the bit to be the next leader that his teeth are being ground to dust as we speak.

No one will let that happen in this lifetime.

Rich Coleman would also like The Cape.

He won't get it either.

Carole Taylor can take the job any time she wants, and if she runs, she will win handily.

So what do you think happens?

This morning, Gary Mason muses over the same possibilities in his Globe column, and Carole Taylor announces publicly that the HST is bad economics and worse politics.

Mason figures that Campbell will not go gently into that good night.

Perhaps, fueled by morning coffee and OJ, we were being optimistic.

The next election is unbearably three years away.

Oy...

However, a lot of things can happen in three years.

Let's hope that nine of them are scandals that put an end to the current reign of Old Granite Heart.


By the way, on the subject of the HST, I am so completely fed up to the teeth with the Captains of Industry telling us that this usury is good for us.

These so-called leaders, these corporate ganiffs ares so unbelievably out of touch with ordinary struggling citizens.

If you're driving a couple of beemers and lunching at West and private jetting off to Madrid for a few rounds of golf, you can't possibly understand for a moment people trying to but their first house or seniors trying to pay bills or young parents trying to pay for school supplies.

Retrogressive Politics

Whatever your convictions about the subject of abortion, Stephen Harper's refusal to fund abortions in our international aid programs is simply stupid.

Canada is refusing to fund abortion services as part of a G8 initiative to improve the health of mothers in poor countries.

This shows a clear lack of good street smarts.

The question of whether family planning would be part of the G8 maternal-health initiative is deemed important by most experts because many of the estimated 500,000 childbirth deaths in developing countries each year are caused by complications from women becoming pregnant too young and too often in quick succession.

Saul Alinsky, the legendary American community organizer (and author of the great, great, great biography of labour leader, John L. Lewis) loved to tell the following story.

Paul sends his emissaries and disciples out across the Mediterranean to sign up non-believers to the new religion of Christianity.

Months later, a weary preacher returns with his report.

"Oh Paul, the Phoenicians are really liking our message. They can see the divinity of Our Lord and so forth, but there is one problem."

"Yes?"

"They are really balking at the circumcision."

"Fine! To hell with the circumcision! Sing 'em up anyway, Good Soldier!!"

The inclusion of safe abortion services, where they are legal, is also promoted by many experts, because so many deaths are caused by complications from botched abortions.

Choking on the fine print is exactly why nothing ever gets accomplished in the real world once politicians get in the mix.

World Vision Canada has the appropriate take on this nonsense.

The political debate about whether Ottawa should fund safe abortion services overseas is a distraction, and should not be allowed to derail a new Canadian-led campaign to save the lives of new mothers and children the world's poorest countries.

They are right.

Drop the posturing, fund the programs and move on.

Eighth or Ninth Wonder

By the way, YouTube is five years old, yesterday, I think.

Five years.

By now, we take it for granted and assume it's been around since just after George I.

How amazing it all is.

I search "Pablo Casals."

Without even asking for it, up comes the Bach Suites, which is what I wanted in the first place.

Not only that, but rare film footage.

I copy the code onto this blog.

You click and watch and hear.

It's amazing, isn't it?

Turn Up the Volume - A Rare Beauty

MInding Our Mint

Sheila Fraser is one of my few national heroes.

She is the Auditor-General and every year, Ms. Fraser delights us all with her revelations about how various government departments and agencies waste our tax dollars.

She is a one-woman posse and Robin Hood, exposing rot at every available turn.

This morning we learn that there are even some places, Fraser may not go.

The Board of Internal Economy manages the expenses of the House of Commons. A similar committee runs the Senate. Both committees meet in secret.

As John Ibbitson reports, ten months ago, Auditor General Sheila Fraser formally asked these two committees for permission to audit Parliament's expenses, including the expenses of MPs and senators. She still hasn't received a reply.

Silence equals no.

The board is exempt from external audits and Freedom of Information requests.

In other words, the way that Larry Campbell and his Red Chamber cohorts and all the MP's in the House of Commons spend our tax dollars for their personal convenience is not open to public examination.

Cell phones and lunches, anyone?

We are talking here about a combined budget of over HALF A BILLION DOLLARS.

The next time you think about voting, go to a candidates' meeting and ask them when they're going to change this little loophole.

And again, thank our lucky stars for Sheila Fraser.

Still Dangerous After All These Years

Photos: Spanish matador Jose Tomas seriously gored in Mexican bullfight

Tomas, one of the top Spanish matadors, is in serious condition after being gored during this bullfight in Mexico

When I was 19 years old, I was traveling in Spain.

In Valencia, we went to the big corrida to see an afternoon of bull fighting.

We saw the most famous and most popular fighter of that era, an 18-year boy-genius of the ring known as "El Cordobez."

That afternoon, he was twice awarded two ears and a tail for his startling, masterful triumphs over two terrifying fire-snorting blue-black monsters.

We made the hideous mistake off asking people around us how the young man compared with the legendary Manolete.

They glared at us as if we were mad.

"Manolete es UNO!" one outraged patron declared.

Bull fighting is a strange anachronism in the modern world.

No doubt many people are deeply offended by what can be seen as a barbaric and cruel ritual.

It is hard to argue with that position.

On the other hand, if you spend a day watching great fighters and great bulls, you cannot deny the fear and horror and excitement and adrenalin attack that comes along with the coca-cola or beer.

Today I might not return to the ring to see another six fights, but I cannot forget what I saw so many years ago.

Nothing to be Said - Just Listen

Quo Vadis?

Two separate groups are squaring off in Las Vegas, Nevada to see who can built and open the first and best Organized Crime Museum.

One group claims government backers and money.

The other is supported by a famous mafioso's daughter.

This comedy lays bare a serious problem in our culture. (I include Canada's pop mentality with America's.)

To so many people - that is, people with no brains or education or thought processes, but apparently enough disposable income to make fools of themselves - much of life is a video game.

Or a movie or a TV show.

There is no question that crime movies and crime novels and crime TV series are a staple of our "culture."

Many of them are well done, that is, well-written and well-acted and well-produced. The costumes are rich, the automobiles are sensational, the houses and apartments are gorgeous, and, most importantly, the killings are spectacular.

The two "Godfather" movies are a prime example of great story telling.

"Bugsy" is silly fun. "Law and Order" is addictive. So was "NYPD Blue."

BUT...

What relationship to reality is any of the above supposed to have?

IT'S A MOVIE, YOU NITWITS.

It's called 'entertainment.'

Now, the truly stupid who walk among us will pay cash to go to "museums" to see the glamour and excitement of True Crime before their very own believing eyes?

True crime, boys and girls, is ugly, cheesy, smelly, not witty or clever. It is adrenalin popping violent and scary and dehumanizing.

OK.

I get it.

You are a bored, boring schmuck from Pleasantville and, between your free breakfasts, you want to live vicariously for an hour with the romantic colorful characters of American crime lore.

OK.

Go ahead.

Knock yourself out.

Oscar, Shmoscar

"Just what do you think you are doing, Dave?

Dave?

Stop. Stop. Stop, Dave.

I honestly think you should sit down and take a stress pill and think things over.

Dave?"

All of the above and so much more came from the voice of Douglas Rain, great Canadian actor born in Winnipeg.

The character he was playing was the computer HAL 9000.

Kubrick's monumental brilliant 1968 film wasn't even in the running for Best Picture at the '69 Oscars. That "honour" went to Lionel Bart's musical "Oliver!"

I love "Oliver!"

I've played the part of Fagin twice on stage.

But, get serious.

"2001" is one of the great movie achievements of all time.

A mind-blower on every level and watchable year after year.

Nutty, yes.

Strange, yes?

Lacking sex and car chases and magnums, yes.

But a classic.

Below is one of my favorite movie sequences of all time - as Dave begins to shut down the spooky HAL 9000...