Panglossian Notes

The Ontario - Canada - big 2 bail-out. [A gone from an earlier time but back again posting]

I agree with the assistance the provincial and federal government is offering to GM and Chrysler and I've not thought about it in any form in which I was trained as a mature then ordinary post graduate student.

I'm a former GM apprentice, those who were and became skilled tradesmen will know what that means both how you became one and what was required to get your journeyman papers. Only GM offered a complete apprenticeship program - 4 days of work in various factories with a great variety of journeymen and a day at school ( I think I learned to really write during my GM sponsored English classes in St Catherine's which served me well at university then later as a silly servant) - in Ontario and Michigan in the late 60's, a time when working with your hands so-to-speak wasn't exactly the thing to be doing, eh.

I've also been on a picket line, at GM. I was a member of the UAW when GM was struck - there was and likely still is a rotating order followed by both the UAW/CAW as to which auto company will be struck to get industry wide benefits - to get wage parity with US auto-workers way back when, parity was nominal.

I got my papers as a millwright then left for university - before going to GM I'd half(?) finished my apprenticeship as a a machinist after leaving the RCN as an Engineering Mechanic with my auxiliary watchkeeper's ticket (an EM is a stoker to dibs). As a GM apprentice, I guess I had too much time to read during my foundry assignments waiting for calls to fix things, big things, and became dissatisfied with my lot. It was the time or maybe just me and my background.

So for old foolish reasons I agree with offering the big 2 a life line with out much thinking. Jesus H Christ the  southern Ontario I know has been through enough economic crap to last 20 normal lifetimes who would want or need this potential shit.

Also, the friggin funds being offered, what is it now $4 billion, is mostly coming from Ontario anyways isn't it? Doesn't Ontario provide the federal gov't with 40%, at a minimum, of its mad money, classified as revenues in the public accounts, and hasn't Ontario kicked in $1.3 billion directly of the total amount being offered. So by my dumb-ass millwright figurin Ontario calculations hasn't my province offered 60% of the great Canadian bail-out package. So - f$%K Canada maybe.

I hope and think not, eh.

Twisting in the wind, you say!

Amazing stories in today's Canadian press.

The country's federal finance minister announces that he has invited a group of swells to advise him on stuff economic - (apologies to Jack Mintz, a pretty good economist still, I think, but whose expertise, or speciality, really is in corporate income taxes so what's he doing hanging around with the crowd blessed by Flaherty. Maybe he has turned into a swell since going home to Alberta from the dastardly East). Then the "little person" Flaherty, the federal finance minister, tries to roar like something. Maybe a lion? Who knows? Who cares?  By telling all who maybe still listening to him that he is having in those bank guys and gal (the gal is the Hughes-Anthony lobbyist person) to demand stuff off them for ... . Again, who knows what? For spin, of course, you dull fool. Get lending you guys Flaherty will say. To which the bank guys - the Hughes-Anthony person is a spinner not a real banker - will say we are lending, "little guy".

Now, switch to Canada's National Banker extraordinaire, the former investment bank type, post federal finance department, something or other, Carney, and no, not Art, but now one of those "practical men" made famous by John Maynard who have become a slave of some defunct economists. In Carney's case, it would seem first uncle Milton and now maybe - oh dog forbid - the previously mentioned John Maynard. Our Mark Carney is worried about banks hoarding cash - the buggers - and seems my old boss Edmund Clark now at the TD-Canada Trust is speaking frankly about his present intermediator colleagues and maybe agreeing with Mark.

Hmm!

A bit confusing for some of us, now just normal mortals.

I think, maybe, guys, you ones supposedly in power and I would hope trying just a wee wee bit to be "leaders", you should attempt not to be so damn dumb in your PR to the public.

But barring that, me, I'm waiting for tomorrows CPI release, it's at 8:30 EST I think, but I know finance and the Bank of Canada do, and rightfully so, get access to it well before me now just a dumb citizen. I'm wondering whether it might, like the earlier released US CPI, indicate, oh no, a reduction in prices. Oh heavens, could Canada be in a liquidity trap.

Lots of fun and games to come, eh, maybe?

Say it isn't so, Leona - the Harper Pond Inlet contradiction.

It is coming close to the end of a messy week here in Nut Haven by the Rideau, Ottawa.

Harper has been saved by the GG* to bully and pontificate for another 7 weeks. The Liberals are finally thinking seriously about getting a party leader. The NDP, from what I've seen, has shown some members who really are good in the heat of battle - none are named Jack Layton. The Bloc, unlike recent Jeffrey Simpson** recountings, has shown themselves very parliamentary and not Canada haters - in this regard the Bloc should offer lessons to Harper's party.

In general, as we look forward to a minimum of 6 or 7 more weeks of Harper, et al, spewing poison across the country, it should now be perfectly clear that the federal conservative party has fully adopted the caustic and corrosive Rovian tactics of lies, bizarre distortions and bombastic rhetoric that have come close to destroying the US as a republic.

Since Harper has no "terrorist" threat (fingers crossed of course), like his pals in the US and UK had, to cow and scare the shivering masses into believing fairy tales and, recognizing a real economic problem would be anathema to his ideological foundations, he has instead developed the fictitious terror of the "socialist and separatist" hoards storming The Hill. This seems to play well with Canada's bitter and grievance ridden crowd - I don't believe polls at this point re the coalition with the prospects of the unfortunate Dion as a potential PM, for a realist they are close to useless.

The strangest, but for me personally disturbing, example, within Harper's party, of a member apparently following directions from party HQ, has been Leona Aglukkaq who, according to Jim Bell of the Nunatsiaq News, has been acting:

"Like one of those talking dolls that emit pre-programmed dialogue whenever you press a button on the top of its head, ... [by] faithfully regurgitating her Conservative party's pre-programmed political message this week.

She's been doing this on the radio, in interviews with newspapers and in a canned "editorial" written for her by Tory staffers.

Her recent comments can be divided into two parts. The first is that the "separatist-socialist" coalition that Liberal leader Stéphane Dion and NDP leader Jack Layton announced this week is an illegitimate seizure of power. The second is that such a coalition government would be bad for Nunavut.

The evidence shows she's wrong on both points.

Editorial
Nunatsiaq News
December 5, 2008

I say strange, regarding Leona's comments, specifically referring to her use of the word "socialist", I presume, to scare or alarm, maybe?

Hmm!

An odd and, to say the least, unconventional threat to be throwing around Nunavut and within an Inuit culture?

Socialists are suppose to be scary in Nunavut and to Inuit?

To me this borders on the bizarre and indicates that Minister Aglukkaq's staff are Harper robots with no background or awareness of the culture from which she comes.

Gads, Harper PR flunkies, are you showing your dumminess. If you are going to Karl Rove an issue, the distorted square message needs to be adapted to fit into round holes. Trying to scare Inuit by threatening them with a philosophy the basis of which emphasizes looking out for others, sharing the essentials for living without charging a price and is cooperative in every real sense of that word just makes you look stupid. In fact about as stupid, ignorant and thick headed as the Southern idiots that have tried recently to villainize Inuit in Pond Inlet.

A humane and unexpected large harvest of muktuk, shared, in a socialist manner, throughout Nunavut and Northern Quebec is something to celebrate. Only cruel individuals would let creatures suffer in the manner awaiting the narwhal trapped at Pond. Do you think drowning is fun or painless a-holes! If so, maybe you should try waterboarding to test your resolve.

Political or NGO fools and cultural ignoramuses help no one or no creature.

____________________________

I don't believe that Michaëlle Jean had a choice. As the GG, similar to a judge, you make the call based on the facts laid before you. Harper would have ask to have Parliament suspended and as the GGs First Minister, I think, she had to accept his advise, period. If there is a flaw in this it is Harper being cowardly but I think also having made another huge strategic mistake. I wonder sometimes about my own commitment to what I think as my country but I'll countenance no undermining of the present GG or the office.

**I've often thought that Simpson's limited American roots stick out like a sore thumb whenever a "crisis" or "pseudo-crisis" pops up here in the North. I think I recall, it was the days before wide spread use of www to read newspapers and save clippings, some of his columns leading up to the famous '95 Quebec referendum verged on panic. He also doesn't hide his distant for anything but a 2 party system. Note his disparaging columns leading up to the referendum which was part of the last Ontario provincial election on a mixed member proportional representation system to replace the first past the post thing now in place.

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Thanks for the mess Harper

Harper and his zombie like fellow conservative party members (get the impression I don't support conservatives) have delivered another fine mess to Canada.

Thanks Steve and, just to let you know before hand, I will not watch your speech tonight on the TV - what gall.

I hope the GG kicks you out of Rideau Hall and incidentally didn't anyone in your so-called party or any of your advisors ever tell you that you don't put GG's in awkward positions. Idiot, doing so has a tendency to undermine one of the institutions in our parliamentary democracy. But I forgot, you hate Canada and its institutions anyways don't you?

I actually didn't think I could despise a political individual more than I did, and do, Mulroney, but I can.

Thanks for your mess.

Now I've read lots of bs from pundits in the Canadian print media and heard an usual amount of bs and hysterics on the radio as well as on TV but what I haven't heard anyone talk about is what's on the other side of this mess no matter what the GG decides.

Specifically how can anyone sit in the House with Harper and I mean from any party even his own after this disaster? Talk about bad blood. The meek mannered Speaker will simply be overwhelmed by an uncontrollable House. All goodwill has gone as a result of Harper and his adopted US republican ways.

Harper has been revealed for what he is, which is not the "Andy Williams" imitation he put on for the October 14th election but a thug and a tyrant.

He is either incredibly dumb and like most dumb people arrogant, for presenting the fiscal update he did and not accepting responsibility for it, or, too conniving and reckless to be the PM, if he planned or hoped for this fiasco, in order to orchestrate another election.

I don't see any happy outcome to this Harper disaster.

Thanks Harper.

Thanks conservatives.

Technorati Tags: Clown Party of Canada, Clueless Party of Canada, Cowardly Party of Canada, Creeps Party of Canada, Criminal Party of Canada