An appalling example of Identity Politics

As we live through the grossest of orgiastic festivities seen since the times of the Roman Emperors (my opinion) two words that have been rattling around the vast spaces in my mind - Identity Politics. IP is the phrase used to describe voting for candidates entirely based on identity: race, ethnicity, sexual preference etc.. Voting for someone you like and can identify with because you feel some kinship with is acceptable. But what is not acceptable, to me, is voting for someone based on race or ethnicity. It means that candidates don't have to propose policies - just say to the electorate "vote for me and get back at those who have been holding you back!" The worst examples of this are the results of African elections in tribal areas. But even Mugabe can get voted out in an election that did transcend Identity Politics. BTW the test for me that Obama has to pass is the passage of the demand that was supported, and still is (he says), - the legislation that makes union organising possible by means of a "cardcheck". I'm from Missouri - show me!

Back to Washington and Obama. I know that of the two candidates I would have voted for him, but based on his policies. Not on the basis of an Oprah endorsement. Yesterday, watching the op-ed shows, was the last straw and I knew I had to speak my opinion. On George Stephanopolis's show two experienced journalists both glowed about the prospect of a man of colour being sworn in. One even bragged that what a wonderful thing it was that an "African" was becoming president. The other held up a tableau of previous presidents that showed Obama at the end of the list. Obviously different from the others, by the darkness of his skin. "That's all I want to see", said she.
This is wrong; vote for a President based on policy, how naive some say. But that's the way I feel folks.

The Doctor Issue
Went for a walk in the Mall on Saturday and passed the glitzy sign-up stand attended by representatives of the Port Hope Health Centre. I wondered then just how many people are without doctors and wonder why the "orphaned" haven't been more vocal in their demands. I hope to see a consolidated list of the numbers of "orphans" and the demonstrated need for more doctors.

The latest bailout demand based on a lie
With new reports that Ottawa is demanding that labour costs come down to the level of the Japanese makers in Canada this demand should be shown for what it is - a way to push the unions into the mud facedown. If one believes that the hourly labour cost in the big three is $75.00 and the the others pay $45.00 one has a case. But the big three are paying "legacy costs" and the way the $75.00 was arrived at was to take the total compensation and divide it by the number of active workers. This does not take into account the costs of the retirees. the Japanese do not have retirees on the payroll thus lower hourly rates in a fraudulent calculation - so the $75.00 calculation is false. The demanders of this condition don't understand the situation, they should and when they do we can all be realistic about a bailout.

The chicken has come home to roost

With the first salvo publicly fired, here , it is obvious that the main culprit is the Town itself. By caving in to each and every developers demand, in the harbourlands redevelopment, over the building period from 1988 to now. The history of the development and Secondary Plans is very simple: the first SP laid out the area with planning permission for 200,000 sq ft of commercial space. The idea being that this area would be a new downtown area. Developers over the last 20 years have found commercial space a hard sell and demanded that more immediate profits accrue therefore constant rezoning demands approved by Councils, reduced the commercial space to "a minimum of 4000 sq ft in each development". Who had the foresight to speculate that there would only be 2 developers for the complete acreage!
So the maximum amount of commercial space is now 8,000 sq ft - a pittance and certainly not big enough for a modern liquor store.
But all is not lost. The largest piece of undeveloped land in the downtown core is the former Quigley Hardware site. In these times of depressed land values it would not be too hard for the Town burghers to contemplate a land aquisition and a public building with commercial space on the ground floor. How about it folks let the seniors play cards on the top two floors and everyone else can buy their booze on the bottom floor. Now that's economic development at work. Hey if the LCBO wants to lease rather than buy then let's lease them a public building.
Just a thought. It's ironic that in the 80's the Town was offered the site by Mr Patchett but the tiny perfect Mayor (in his own mind) Angus Read said no. It's time that that land became public, even if it's 20 years too late.

Good news for some?

The Doctor recruitment committee is certainly milking the addition of the latest Doctor to come to Town. The headline in yesterday's MSM is hardly new news, this addition Dr Colin Dahle - (welcome Colin from me, you have certainly come along way since you sat in my front porch earning a pittance on a student employment programme, nice to see you come home), has been introduced to Cobourg about as many times as local Pols introduce the same infrastructure money - time and again. But if you have success flaunt it!

But the difference in style is contrasting when you look at the way the Port Hope Clinic has been staffed. Two Doctors arrive, with little fanfare and set up shop, on salary BTW, and then advertise for patients. What's with this advertising for patients any way? We have a shortage why do we need to advertise - patients should be banging their doors down to get on a list. Perhaps this will lead to the bad old days of Doctor shopping for amenable treatment.

I wish I had written this

One of the joys of reading the papers online is the amazing diversity of views that one can read and this guy, Chris Selley of the National post, does a wonderful job of aggregation (putting all the pundit's columns together in one place and then commenting). Here is his column

More on the Prince Harry sitrep:

• Comparison between the Prince and cowardly pols (British ones) here
  
  
• Still on the front page of the news of the World, the paper that paid six figures (US) for the tape, and has had a journalist convicted for hacking into the princes' e-mails. Here
  
  
• This is the button on the same papers front page, and they claim to be "responsible" journos! The title of the image "cash button" says it all.


• Soldiers' views here, buried in the back pages of the "Guardian" here
  

Today's the day for Geneaologists around the world:
Rather like the second coming today is a great day. The 1911 UK census went online here. To prepare for the day and to eliminate the crashing of the site, that ocurred with the last census release, 1911onlinecensus has assembled 25 extra servers. Be prepared to pay for access to the records. Searches are free.

Monday morning summary

A few items from the papers this morning, in no order of importance.

Youth Crime study will annoy the Cons
The National Post here lays out a story that the "Canada's revamped young offender laws -- described by Prime Minister Stephen Harper as an "unmitigated failure" -- have, in fact, been a clear success in keeping adolescents out of court and custody without increasing youth crime, concludes a new academic analysis."
This is bound to set the current government back on its heels. A cornerstone of its "tough on crime" policies is putting youth away in greater numbers than now. I wonder just how long it will be before the full force of the Con caucus hot air that will be coming its way.

Wonder of wonders lookey here
The TO Star has concluded, after an academic study, that local developers have been feeding the bank accounts of incumbent municipal politicians for their re-election campaigns. What a surprise! Anybody who has examined the campaign returns of Cobourg Councillors will know that the majority of them, including the "four dead white men" ran their campaigns on developer money. A few campaigns ago it was almost criminal, where four of the incumbents and one aspirant received money from the Company pushing the WalMart application. In fact the Walmart application was voted upon by those people whilst they had campaign money in their accounts. But that was then and this is now. So let's move on and realise that nothing has changed. Next time around Candidates will be funded by developers, not because the maximum donation of $750 will not corrupt them but because all concerned want to either feel wanted or fund their campaigns. As one recipient commented at the time, "I took the money because it's not illegal!"

Gotcha Politics at its worst

Prince Harry, love him or hate him he does provide column inches. But put it into perspective. The video of PH calling a fellow cadet "My Paki Friend" and another one a "Raghead" was sold by another cadet at the scene to a tabloid, three years after the taping, for a five figure sum.
If one wants to defend the incident look into the context for malice, there is none. On the other hand just voicing the offending words is enough for his critics to emerge. A furious Muslim community leader branded Harry, 24, a "thug", one race campaigner called for him to be kicked out of the Army and MPs are outraged. Runs the gamut.
All I know is that times have changed but the Armies probably haven't. If one looks at candid tapes from 'Ghan or Iraq the grunts are using much more severe language than this. But that's an expression of war - different horses for different courses!
These guys would never have lasted in the Army I knew, and served in!

Is this stupidity or what?

Today I want to take on the elevation of words, in other words some words are so horrific that they can only used by designated groups and never used in comparisons to other things or people. I am talking about Nazis, Holocaust, Genocide and other words that the wordmongers and Bnai Brith have taken out of the vocabulary, except for their own use.

For example Sid Ryan keeps getting into trouble with the word arbitrators. His offense was to use the phrase, and I am paraphrasing, "Israel is behaving like Nazis". All hell broke loose and he was forced to apologise. The last time he did this was when he was forced to apologise for comparing Mike Harris to Hitler for some of his political decisions. It is ironic that the criticism of Ryan is coming from the people who never have a good word to say about him. How much of the venom is directed against Ryan and how much for his turns of the phrase?

But back to the argument that only the sufferers, the Jews, can use Holocaust and Hitler, iand then in the defensive form. I think that is wrong. Words are for all and cannot be appropriated by any group for their own purposes.

If a nation and its leaders are committing war crimes against another people especially civilians then why can't they be accused of acting like murderous troops - the Nazis? And if a leader is acting like an evil dictator, at times then he should be compared to the most evil of dictators - Pol Pot or Hitler.

In conclusion what are going to call the next evil meglomaniac that the Earth will come across if the name of Hitler has been expunged?

Blog activities have hit the mainstream

There is a raging debate going on in the 'blogosphere', the main topic is the war in Gaza. the backstory is the vehement, bilious and even hateful words being hurled at each other in cyberspace. The main offender, in the eyes of the righteous, has been a site called LibLogs. This site is an aggregation of posts that have been deemed to be Liberal, or leftleaning opinionators. This site has come under attack by pundits on the right. Kelly McParland of the national post has a column about this here. Ezra Levant, the genius in his own mind (my opinion), has been hurling quotes like this, "I haven't spent a lot of time digging through the muck in Liblogs.ca, but I've found a lot of anti-Israel propaganda, some of which crosses over into full-blown anti-Semitism." So there we have it in a capsule. If you speak against Israel you are an anti semite. Rather like the fatuous argument put out by the Cons when they said, "If you don't support the war in Afghanistan you are not supporting the troops". Doublespeak. Just like those who locally excoriate the frink opponents as being against public recreation. It happens all the time.

That is why I have refrained from speaking about the war in Gaza and the amount of force being used by Israel against Hamas. Let me tell you what bothers me:

• When Hamas won a legal, and US supported by the way, election the western world immediately repudiated the results and proceeded to starve the inhabitants by limiting the travel of goods.
• I don't know how to stop the volleys of rockets, that hardly ever result in any accuracy or casualties, but a ground war is not the answer. Perhaps the mythological Mossad could eliminate, in the middle of the night, the rocketeers?
• If the Israeli claim that the UN school that was exploded was "a result of an Hamas booby trap" quote from an Israeli spokswoman on the "National" last night is substantiated I will be able to suspend my belief that all Hamas aren't monsters willing to kill their own to make a point.

Perhaps we should be following the advice of Maj. Gen. Lew McKenzie when he advocates the insertion of a UN force mandated to keep the peace, by force if necessary. Something has to be done and if the Israelis aren't going to allow the free travel of food and fuel then they shouldn't be allowed to bomb the tunnels that provide food and fuel.

I am looking forward to the Michael Coren Show on CTS @ 8pm tomorrow when a regular table sitter - Sid Ryan of CUPE - sits down at the opinion table to defend his views that have been vilified in columns such as this here Funnily enough when I went back into Kay's postpage at the NP today this column and the next one the following day of the same ilk, have disappeared. MSM toning down the debate?

Political hirings and firings

A couple of hatches and despatches this morning. First the big one for Libs, Warren Kinsella has been hired to run Iggy's war-room. In an interesting observation the Libs veteran wagonmaster has also been fired. I suppose that that means there won't be an election soon. After all if you fire the guy who keeps reporters happy you'd better be getting a good replacement. That takes time!. Anyway back to Kinsella. He has been hiding out in Toronto playing with a rock group of geezers and writing books. His latest, which was acknowledges bu pundits as the next bible of "how to win election" is called - wait for it ------ The War Room. You can read most of it here at Google books. This appointment was inevitable as WK has been fartcatching and braunosing for a couple of months on his blog about the only person who could restore the Libs to their natural governing state. Well we'll have to wait to see if two geniuses (genii) can do it.

On the other hand it has been reported in the CDS that Der Meister of Cramahe has struck again. He has fired two Directors in the Township. We don't know why and I suspect we never will but Mr Coombs who is quick to fire people obviously isn't so good at hiring them in the first place. It will be very interesting to see just who steps up into the rats nest of the parks (Community Affairs) job considering that both previous incumbents have now been fired. Kinda makes one wonder just who is running the joint or if unreasonable expectations entered in to the equation?

The first work week of the new year

This is it, everybody energised yet for the big slog? Not particularly enthused much in the news lately, I pick over the bones of local snippets and try to add some colour. For instance there is an interesting story here out of Campbellford that the lone bidder for the antique fire truck has had his bid rejected. The Mayor is leading the charge to refuse the bidder to claim his prize even though there are no other plans for it. One may conclude that perhaps there is a back story here, maybe the Mayor - King Hec. doesn't like the bidder!

The other topic bothering me is the situation in the Middle East. So everybody is down on Hamas because they refuse, on religious grounds to recognise Israel.and carry out acts of violence. They did win an election and were immediately shunned by the free world. After Hamas pumping rockets into Israel, the Israelis retaliated and invaded the Gaza Strip. So we now have a humanitarian disaster and a military stalemate. I say that because there will still be rockets fired during and after the invasion. What's the answer - I don't know but the situation is not helped by people taking a hard line on either side. In true Canadian fashion we may have the answer - street demos should replace bullets. Two sides of angry opponents separated by a security force allowed to shout at each other in public; an amazing spectacle.

Local politicians dazzled their constituents with Levee speeches and self-congratulatory moves. Mayor Delanty was quoted as speaking longer than normal. Perhaps he sees stuff that others don't. All I know is that if taxes go up a lot of people will be mightily upset. Let's all wait for the usual budget game - you know the one - a press release is issued saying that the staff wants a huge increase to fund all their pet projects. The budget chief retorts that we can't afford a big raise and proceeds to tell staff (behind closed doors) to get real. The DM then produces a budget that will be 1-2% more than the actual and proceed to get to the lower level by means of a couple of meetings designed to show that the process is working to help beleaguered taxpayers. Finally in a show of municipal muscle councillors will finalise the budget at a "marathon session". Fueled by chicken salad sandwiches and butter tarts the Council will vote on a reasonable budget. This year we should try to get it right in one go. Produce the last but one draft first and then have the sandwiches and vote on the final draft. It can be done in a month if the will is there.

Finally Minnesota may have a result in their Senatorial election. To the delight of the Dems and the disgust of the GOP the canvassing board may rule that Al Franken has won the seat. It is possible that the losers will appeal to the courts for more counting. As Tom Stoppard said, "Democracy isn't the voting but the counting!"

If you thought your holiday was boring take up with these guys

Another conspiracy theory, this time it's proven

Look at this Powerpoint file here, and then think about the amount of time and money that has gone into the destruction of the electric car. I just don't understand it, if the car companies went to the effort to create these cars who has enough money to bribe them to destroy them. In other words why create something just to tear it down? Where's the business case in that?